Role model in your community

[Pygoscelis]

It would be odd to surmise that nobody thought murder and rape and torture and theft may be wrong before Moses came down from the mountain, or before whatever other "revelation" was made to whatever "prophet" you care to name. Of course there was brutality and violation of such moral feelings before religion, but there has been since religion too, and religion has even been used to justify it at times.

As noted above, empathy goes a long way in explaining a lot about our sense of morality. On top of empathy we have social contracts and traditions which further flesh out our individual views on what morality is. Much of it is cultural yes, and that culture has been embedded in various religions. So for a muslim it may be wrong to eat pork and for a hindu it may be wrong to eat beef, etc. Various other esoteric and seemingly arbitrary "moral" rules came about in the same way. At the core though is basic empathy, which all but sociopaths have and which we evolved as a species, as have some other species (we are not alone in this).

Religion is not the source of human empathy. But it is one of the sources (there are other ideological sources as well) of the other "moral" rules we build into our societies.

Religion also serves as an authority to pin our moral values to, perhaps keeping some sociopaths who would otherwise behave immorally in line. But this sword runs in both directions, as authoritarianism can just as easily lead to bad as to good. It *DOES* become a real problem when people start to confuse obedience with morality itself, and do good only to obey God rather than for the sake of doing good.

That is especially problematic given bible stories like Abraham and Isaac, where obedience and morality are put up against one another and obedience is said to be more important (God demands Abraham do a morally wrong action and the obedience to God wins). People of this mindset are vulnerable to be used as tools for any sort of attrocity (all you have to do is convince them God wants that attrocity)

 

[جوري]

Moses wasn't the first prophet to bring those commandments thus rendering the rest of your argument null and void!

thank you!

 

[Pygoscelis]

Somehow Moses being first matters? Perhaps if you read beyond the first half of the first sentence of the post you claim to be responding to....

 

[جوري]

Somehow Moses being first matters? Perhaps if you read beyond the first half of the first sentence of the post you claim to be responding to....

it does indeed.. you can't establish an original completely atheistic society that instituted said standards and in fact lawless or immoral societies tend to be a cesspool for all that is wrong with humanity- as for the rest it has been peddled here before and answered here before that I find it a waste of my time personally as I know that if you have made the smallest investment you'd not be asserting the same nonsense with each subsequent post that hosts the same topic, mainly your concept of what drives people to behave a certain way and your ever favorite 'obedience' There is no visible jail term, or foreseeable punishment in the here and now to breaking God's commandments thus leading me to believe that obedience is rather a product of your psyche to describe your own human condition and those who opt for your lifestyle!

all the best

 

[Lynx]

you are incapable of remedying anything unfortunately including your ability to comprehend what is written: since I have stated and in so many words :the implication was never that one borrowed from another....

which to the naked eye can be construed as just that not borrowing but the standard norm upon which all else evolved!

Right...so my original claim is uncontested; religious morality is not a basis for secular morality.

You should request one from your person give your ''the mere existence of shared moral beliefs does not imply that one took it from the other.''

I am sorry you couldn't find a source for your claim that monotheism was the first kind of theism in history. Makes you wonder, no?

 

[جوري]

Right...so my original claim is uncontested; religious morality is not a basis for secular morality.

that is not what I wrote at all go back and re-read!

I am sorry you couldn't find a source for your claim that monotheism was the first kind of theism in history. Makes you wonder, no?

Not at all. It does give you extra homework though since the earliest moral codes we have come from religious societies! How about you find us a source for any early atheistic society that precedes religion that had said moral code!
let's start with that!

all the best

 

[Lynx]

that is not what I wrote at all go back and re-read!

So what are you trying to say? You, naidamar, and Zafran all claimed that secular morality comes from religious morality and none of you have provided a single reason in support of this belief.

Not at all. It does give you extra homework though since the earliest moral codes we have come from religious societies! How about you find us a source for any early atheistic society that precedes religion that had said moral code!
let's start with that!

all the best

So are you dropping your previous statement that monotheistic religions came first?

 

[جوري]

So what are you trying to say? You, naidamar, and Zafran all claimed that secular morality comes from religious morality and none of you have provided a single reason in support of this belief.

so what are you trying to say? you, yourself and perhaps other athys, all claim that it is possible for systems of morality to exist with a basis other than religion. and can't provide a single reason in support of this belief?

So are you dropping your previous statement that monotheistic religions came first?

Indeed!

all the best

 

[Pygoscelis]

it does indeed.. you can't establish an original completely atheistic society that instituted said standards

Which standards are you referring to? And why would not having a completely atheistic society instituting them invalidate anything in my post above? Empathy is beyond religion or non-religion. It exists both within the religious and the non religious. It can even be found in some nonhuman species. It is a basic trait that evolved in social animals. And if we take a look at human relations it can provide a lot of insight (if one cares to look instead of push out glib one liners).

and in fact lawless or immoral societies tend to be a cesspool for all that is wrong with humanity

Immoral societies are immoral you say? Well.... um, ya...

as for the rest it has been peddled here before and answered here before

Has it really been "answered" here before? All I've seen are adhoms and dodges.

that I find it a waste of my time personally

And yet here you are, with more adhoms and dodges.

mainly your concept of what drives people to behave a certain way and your ever favorite 'obedience'

Sure, and "my" other term you love so much "tribalism". Both of which seem to offend your sensibilities so much that you scoff at them without ever actually addressing or exploring the ideas.

Tribalism by the way is the downside of empathy, and also very basic to our evolved human nature. Empathy being seeing yourselves in others and therefore doing good by them, and tribalism being seeing your "group" as different from the outsider and therefore doing bad by them.

There is no visible jail term, or foreseeable punishment in the here and now to breaking God's commandments

But anybody who believes said commands are form this God of yours, believes in an afterlife in which they WILL be punished. And if they bury their moral compass and sense of empathy under obedience to dogma (by reading a holy book or listening to a prophet and accepting anything they say as good and right - even if its clearly wrong) then they are easy tools for nasty people.

Also...

If one believes that morality comes from God, then wouldn't you expect the religious to be far far more moral than the non religious? Yet our prisons are not overflowing with atheists and atheists are not more likely to murder, steal, or rape than theists.

all the best

Really?

 

[Lynx]

so what are you trying to say? you, yourself and perhaps other athys, all claim that it is possible for systems of morality to exist with a basis other than religion. and can't provide a single reason in support of this belief?


all the best

Maybe my post to naidamar might help.

Kant said the basis of his ethical system is reason. You will be able to find tons of stuff on Kant's ethics all over the internet; google is your friend. The Utilitarians thought they could create a morality based on a cost/benefit analysis of acts.

Research those two things: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ethics-deontological/

These are two systems of ethics that are designed to work without reference to a religious dogma or a God .

 

[Ramadhan]

Kant said the basis of his ethical system is reason. You will be able to find tons of stuff on Kant's ethics all over the internet; google is your friend. The Utilitarians thought they could create a morality based on a cost/benefit analysis of acts.

did kant not have any influence from religion whatsoever? how could it have possibly happened?
was he born in a vacuum devoid from any previously existing religions?
was his family not christian? was his community not mostly christian?
did he not read any religious books?

 

[جوري]

Which standards are you referring to? And why would not having a completely atheistic society instituting them invalidate anything in my post above? Empathy is beyond religion or non-religion. It exists both within the religious and the non religious. It can even be found in some nonhuman species. It is a basic trait that evolved in social animals. And if we take a look at human relations it can provide a lot of insight (if one cares to look instead of push out glib one liners).

and you call it an 'adhom' when I accuse you of not reading and wasting my time-- having an innate higher function such as this which I am not denying and said as much a few posts ago if you personally get past your own glibs you'd have seen that I asked your to account in an evolutionary fashion as to how such evolved traits came to be (if not from God).. you know on day 150000 BC gene Jah 2 got incorporated and enabled highly evolved reticular function, empathy type thing.. You understand science? then account for empathy scientifically or don't waste my time-- as you know in topics such as this where the other party is neither willing to accept God, nor willing to provide a demonstrable position for the ex nihilio I tend to lose interest fast.. everyone has an opinion!

Immoral societies are immoral you say? Well.... um, ya...

Indeed!

Has it really been "answered" here before? All I've seen are adhoms and dodges.

I find that to be an adequate assessment of what you are doing.. you can't even offer the courtesy of acknowledging something I have already written a few posts ago and come re-introduce it as if you have just had a ground breaking epiphany!

Sure, and "my" other term you love so much "tribalism". Both of which seem to offend your sensibilities so much that you scoff at them without ever actually addressing or exploring the ideas.

Neither of them are really worthy of being acknowledged as having any merits.. you really ought to explore your own psyche to see how such terms are ingrained in your own mind and like to escape often as a form of projection!

all the best

 

[جوري]

Research those two things: Kantian ethics and utilitarianism

I said the earliest society that we have in history with recorded writing-- essentially a civilization functioning working where no deity plays any part!

which part of that was difficult to understand?

all the best

 

[Pygoscelis]

did kant not have any influence from religion whatsoever? how could it have possibly happened?
was he born in a vacuum devoid from any previously existing religions?
was his family not christian? was his community not mostly christian?
did he not read any religious books?

I don't really understand why it matters if/that religion influenced morality as we know it today. I think it did. I also think religion is just one form of culture and ideology and that many others have likewise shaped morality as we know it today. At the core of our moral sense is empathy, but built around it is all sorts of cultural influence, including, yes, that which was codified into religions (religions did not create these "morals", but rather they were enshrined into religions and once that happens they are made far more robust and a bit less subject to change).

 

[جوري]

religion refined a very crude sense of justice and morality.. the same way a pathologist defines for a surgeon what a glob of mass he took out of a patients parotid gland..
essentially a mass which we know is bad or is it? can turn into Pleomorphic adenoma or papillary cystadenoma lymphomatosum, cystic papillary adenoma, adenolymphoma or Intraductal papilloma or oncocytoma etc etc well you get the pica crude sense of morality might be a fine way to live for some but when the hard questions come, those individuals can't define right from wrong and are left to their own devices yet sadly enough accuse others who have a very intricate system of 'tribalism' those who deny such an 'evolved' sense of morality and justice in my opinion don't deserve it all together.. they only deserve to spin upon themselves in confusion!

 

[Pygoscelis]

then account for empathy scientifically

There is no need to from my point above. It starts with empathy, and opines that empathy explains much of human nature. How empathy came to exist is moot.

As to how it did come to exist, we're not 100% certain, but instead of filling it with the god-of-the-gaps fallacy, some scientists have indeed looked into it. It is a fascinating line of study. I recommend (and you'll really hate this) Richard Dawkins' books "The Selfish Gene" and "The Extended Phenotype". This was his area of expertise before he started writing books about religion (and before you'd have come to hate him so). He (and others who write on this) explains what we call empathy by examining a gene's eye view of evolution. It is actually pretty amazing. We could examine it in another thread if you like. But as for my post to which you are responding it is moot.

 

[جوري]

There is no need to from my point above. It starts with empathy, and opines that empathy explains much of human nature. How empathy came to exist is moot.

It isn't a moot point at all, to take something so incredible and deny its creation and absolute purpose.. I am familiar with Dawkins work--philosophy and conjectures aren't a sound demonstrable science. I invite you if you found something in his book to answer such a question or questions of similar nature to share it with all of us.. and I'd be surprised for such an amazing book to have gone unnoticed by the entire scientific community-- I'd have been the first to personally applaud him as he heads down to Stockholm to claim his Nobel!

 

[Lynx]

I said the earliest society that we have in history with recorded writing-- essentially a civilization functioning working where no deity plays any part!

which part of that was difficult to understand?

all the best

Um obviously all civilizations have had 'some' deity playing a part. Now what is your point? Does this somehow make utilitarianism disappear? No, whether you like it or not there are ethical systems that operate without any reference to a deity. To put simply, if no one had ever heard of God you could still use the utilitarian calculus and determine, on that basis, whether something is immoral or moral.

did kant not have any influence from religion whatsoever? how could it have possibly happened?
was he born in a vacuum devoid from any previously existing religions?
was his family not christian? was his community not mostly christian?
did he not read any religious books?

If Kant did not exist, his ethical system could still operate without religion so what you're asking is irrelevant. Don't look at the author of the system, look at the system itself; deontological kantian ethics works without a God telling people what's right and what's wrong. Similarly, consequentalism has a method of working out what is right and what is wrong that is independent from religion.

 

[Zafran]

Um obviously all civilizations have had 'some' deity playing a part. Now what is your point? Does this somehow make utilitarianism disappear? No, whether you like it or not there are ethical systems that operate without any reference to a deity. To put simply, if no one had ever heard of God you could still use the utilitarian calculus and determine, on that basis, whether something is immoral or moral.

well sorry to break it to you but the socities that kant, Jeremy Benthem and John Stuart Mill were part of - did believe or had heard of a God - regardless of there ideas religion still plays the bigger role in morality. Even when people talk about empathy they like to bring the Quote of christ or the golden rule.

 

[Zafran]

[Well there are more than just Kantian and Utilitarian philosophies; I was just stating the big ones that have dominated the scene for the most part since recent times.
Anyway, I don't see how Utilitarianism, for example, could borrow from religion at all. In fact, there are many things that can be derived from certain branches of utilitarianism that are completely contrary to principles in Christianity and Islam...

Ultimatley they came out of the christian west either we like it or not. I wouldnt say borrowed but Influenced negative or in positive way.