This is one of my favorite notions to discuss. I feel morality is a construct of our social institutions and groups. The moral stances an individual has is shaped by their social understanding and ability to practice social norms. What makes us human is our sociability, which is not something we are born with, according to Jean Piaget the sensorimotor stage from birth to 18 months infants and babies are actually learning to differentiate themselves from reality (literally becoming an individual realizing you are not part of the wall and you mother is not physically part of you, really interesting). It has been shown time and time again that we learn social norms (morality being one of them) yet I find many people believe we are incapable of good sound morals without a god. My wife supports this idea that without a creator god directly influencing us we would be lost in rape, murder, and moral degradation. Just curious if anyone else finds this interesting, has a stance on the subject, or can expand the scope of the argument?
the ten comandments are from god... morals are inside of us. thats why people vary so much in moral standards. high moral standards usually makes life better for everyone.
Morals come from introspection. It may also have something to do with positivity(construction, unification, bonding) versus negativity(destruction, separation, fission).
"Morals" are simply intuition + society. All creatures operate instinctively in manners conducive to self-preservation and reproduction. For example, in the animal kingdom, you'll be hard pressed to find a homicidal serial killing bunny that kills because the "voices tell him to" or he "just can't fight the urge." In bursts of emotional show and/or self-defense, animals can be violent, but they don't think out things as far as humans are able to. What makes human beings different than other creatures on earth? We are most capable of observing our surroundings, storing and recalling our observations, and identifying patterns in our observations. We can communicate both our observations and our thoughts on these observations using words that are specifically designed to be limited in nature and produce one specific concept when heard or read. More than any other creature, we make sense of things and use this sense to attempt to benefit our species. The reality that mankind has created should still naturally follow the laws of self-preservation and reproduction. This is where our ideas of "morals" come from. It's intuition applied to specific situations. However, our reality has become so complex and varied, it becomes increasingly difficult to determine what is intuitively wrong. We form morals in an attempt to limit activities that have a tendency to be intuitively wrong in nature.
God is the source which society, as well as our individual self, comes from. In a way it is "determined" by God, but it is determined through our free will which stems from "God."
What do you say to the neurological basis for morality? There is social and moral impairment associated with early damage to the prefrontal human cortex. Their have been numerous neurological studies showing people losing certain moral standards, like the married women who got in a car accident and now cannot control her libido and her sexual morals have changed significantly. Here is a cool link to a paper that covers the neurological basis for morality, definitely a fun read! http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~steve/moll.pdf
The Spirit/Atman is the immortal aspect of you that is 1 and the same as God. In our current state, we have a mortal soul which is built up of the elements, which are still matter but in such a subtle form that we have yet to detect it. Look at the astral body as a glass housing, and the Spirit is a lightbulb within that housing. At the current moment, the glass housing has tons of dirt caked on so only some of that light shines through in various patches. Some peoples glass is cleaner than others, and hence there are sociopaths and immoral people, and then there are those who are more selfless with their True Self (Atman) shining through more. Alot of this "dirt" is Karma that has built up as well. When one can burn off all karma and put the elemental astral body into equilibrium, then one is in Gnosis as the glass housing is completely clean for the Divinity/light of the Spirit to shine through. As we go on from life to life, the moral quality of mankind in general has gone higher and higher, all one has to do is look to a social studies book to see most of the world no longer wars with the town next to them, and we're treating all peoples and races as more equal.
god? what are you talking about, morals aren't learned because you believe some man with a harp lives in the sky and tells you what to do through a book that was composed of several religious texts and mashed into one to control people
I think ethics come from the conscience, which is created by a reflection of oneself into the plight of others. Morals, I would agree with you, are another layer of rights and wrongs added on top of the inevitable rights and wrongs formed with the conscience. Of course, they are different things. For example, sex before marriage may be a negative more, but I would personally have no problem squaring it with my conscience. It's my body and my decision, and maybe I like sex better than I like that more. I would be called immoral, so I would be discreet, but not out of guilt of any kind. So basically, I'm with the OP. Morality comes from socialization and morals differ depending on who you ask. If you want to know about a universal set, you should stop looking for morality and look for ethicality... it is in that we are likely to find the largest concentration of universals.
It'd be interesting if morals were a part of a human gene and evolved over time (which would explain the more "savage" acts of the past). But I'm more inclined to believe it's from complex socialization. There is socialization for morals in every culture and they aren't all the same (which tells us that there is no agreement on a set list of morals), then within those cultures are morals for communities, than families. So it is a very heavy and complex weight of socialization of certain morals on people (Culture > Community > Family ). The origin of morals probably came from common sense (doing this sucks, obviously it didn't work for that guy, let's not do that again).
Morals seem to be the common denominator seen in societies all over the world. Now obviously they vary, but a general code of love and understanding seems to be a base line for all moral traditions. That is a universal "God" that everyone can feel, and everyone is in tune with at some level. It can inform decisions and shape your outlook on life. Religious practices all over the world have built upon this basic idea of love, but in almost every case the message has been distorted over time, represented in different ways through different symbols, becoming the worship of an individual rather than the collective whole. Many people like to project their faith and trust outwards to something exterior, rather than turning it inwards; to trust in themselves and find their true nature. A lot of eastern traditions are very aware of this universal harmony, and our western belief system seems to help strengthen the case for this human commonality as well.
I personally would not call it god but non the less really enjoyed the post, I have not thought of it this way but it makes sense the underlying controls to our morality being in some sense a god (I would more likely call it neuroelectrochemical reactions stemming from the outward social and physical realities). Now projecting faith/themselves onto something "they" worship I have felt that is a problem for a long time now, I would agree it seems it would be beneficial if we turned that notion of faith inward.
This is a good situation to analyze. In the Physical sense, when the Physical impacts the Mental, how can the Mental fight back against the Physical? Well, science does. We use science for good, to help people, fixed flaws, repair things that are broken. We use the Mental to figure out how to properly combine the Physical with the Spiritual, or force. What about without science. What about things like faith healing or some kind of supernatural power? Could this be possible? Can we believe something enough to create it into reality? I think that maybe we... or maybe we can't now, but are becoming increasingly able to. Whatever the case, I very much consider it in the realm of possibility and like studying related topics. What about the soul of the person with the brain damage? What if it makes them an immoral person? Are they doomed to hell or something? What is a soul even? This is a difficult area to get into because it involves speculating about the nature of our individuality before and after this existence. I am of the vague belief that the nature of our next existence will be a result of our own individual will and mind. I believe we may subconsciously create our next existence based on our experiences in this existence. If this is true, it places importance on understanding one's own nature and power since it truly gives us free will to create our next existence, and therefore, we might want to do what we can now to make that next existence better. The phrase, "Be what you want to become." starts to make more sense. Is Hitler in "Hell"? Well, I believe his next existence will be a product of whatever he died believing in. I don't know much about Hitler's beliefs. I want to. Another topic I'd love to study (I CAN'T READ FAST ENOUGH!!!!). But let's say he believed that the afterlife is some sort of hellish underworld and no one can avoid it, and he believed he was going there when he died. He'd go there. Or what if he truly believed that the work he did was good and just and that he was going to be a King with God because of it? If he truly, undoubtedly, faithfully, unwaveringly believed this, he would create it as his next existence. But I believe our next existence is subconsiously created, not consciously. So whatever you subconsciously truly believe is what you'll get. That's my theory and I'm sticking to it! For now.