Good question. My first answer is...see the answer I gave Jerry, lol. But what if there's no such thing as Objective morality? How can we expect people to believe in something that doesn't exist? One man's morality is another man's unacceptable. That makes it relative. You might say...the murder of another human is an objective morality that we can all agree on? And yet there are governments who still systematically put to death people they have convicted of certain crimes, effectively saying this so-called morality doesn't apply all the time. Maybe there are moralities we can agree on that aren't breached this way. In finding freedom, while living in a place that many do not feel free, my so-called morality comes more and more out of the moment. I make it up as I go along. I know what I can and can't do, would and wouldn't do, and as long as I accept that, choose it, that is what happens. But sometimes, I find myself pushing those boundaries, I have always done this. I can do things others might not and yet no matter what I do I feel I am within my own moral code to do so. It is what I know to be right for me that matters, and clearly in different cultures there are different acceptable practices anyway. Without religion people have to FIND their own morality within. It is there. Always was. There is plenty of assistance. Religion in many ways has messed with that by imposing certain moral ideas, taken up and enforced by the state, so that we became conformers, and they can control us better that way. Keep people afraid. Make them have to interpret ideas they never found themselves and it closes down the very thing religion is supposed to bring out. That's why the oldest, organised religious doctrines are losing people in droves.
I dont think it is a matter of believing in something that doesn't exist but 'coming to know' that which does exist. People often confuse this is/ought, or knowing/coming-to-know. This is the limitation of the finite being, with our limited capacity, we cannot ever perfectly know what the most absolute moral thing to do is, but if we acknowledge there is one, we can use our emotions and logic to try to get closer to that perfection. We don't know what absolute love is, but we acknowledge love, and some of us try to be as loving as possible. The fact that some societies have different morals doesn't mean they aren't objective, it might just as well mean we have different justifications and therefore different perspectives that should be compared to determine the merits and faults of each. If two parents have different philosophies of discipline, perhaps one lectures the child on why going into the road is dangerous, and the other spanks the child for going into the road, both might save the childs life, so we should compare the two approaches. You say your morals change, I submit that is because your state of being is not static and the amount of consideration changes. When one is angry, often times we don't spend as much time considering the morality of our actions, we emphasize the negative emotion over logic and positive emotion, thus our resulting action will be different than when we are in another state of being. If you don't assume an objective morality, you have no benchmark with which to compare the two different reactions, and thus the action taken when angry is no better or worse than any other action.
Right. I wasn't referring to anger as the reason one felt morally different per se, just that in freedom comes the possibility of acting differently in any given moment. Morality implies 'this is how I do it' or 'this is how i think about it'. What that does it set us in stone so as to follow the moral law we have ascribed to. Live in another culture and you will find things become more fluid. What you might not have done before you might now do, and feel fine about it, and visa-versa. To assume objective morality implies belief. Which is why religion has had the monopoly on it as belief is its stock and trade. Without morality there will be anarchy, but anarchy is not a bad thing per se. We need common law, coming out of morality, to keep people who are not able to act with integrity, according to their conscience, in check. But we are capable of being more than this. One day perhaps.
Good point. So you are connecting morality with logic, so that once accepted, it just becomes how people do it. Meaning, if they do it differently, they might find themselves punished by society for having done so. It becomes against the rules. Isn't that similar to the way religion operates? It tells us what to do. How to think. We do it or are made to feel wrong for having transgressed. I understand why rules are needed, but perhaps this need to impose morality comes out of our living in big cities and we have lost the natural connection to our fellow man that lets things operate naturally.
I like debating with you - but none of what you said is part of my issue or my solution. I’m not going to start debating with you as to whether diddling our children or torture or Catholic concentration camps are morally wrong. Word games and nothing more. J
Only if we allow it - and for some super strange reason we have and do - but we sure wouldn’t allow it under different circumstances - but under the blanket of religion we do. J
I didn't want to debate the morality of such actions, my point was that if there isn't an objective morality by which to compare such actions then there is no right or wrong to begin with. So what I am saying is that in order to dissolve religions without dissolving the link to objective mirality (and leading to a society of moral relativism) we need to show people how to derive morals without religion. We won't be perfect, we aren't omnipotent, but I think we can do better.
With all due respect - it’s semantics at that point because we all know what’s right And wrong. We don’t need a religion to tell us so - do you? If someone was to harm your woman, your children - you’d be ready to protect your loved ones from the evildoers correct? You really don’t need a church to set a benchmark - do you? The Indian who’s never heard of a church - he protects his own after his mate is killed or raped by another tribe - you think he could care less about this? J
“if there isn't an objective morality by which to compare such actions then there is no right or wrong to begin with” Scenario 1: A young boy steals a coin from a blind beggar but puts it back after thinking about it, knowing the blind man doesn’t have much. Scenario 2: Children break a mans window with a baseball but pool their coins to help pay for it - Do you really think children don’t automatically know good from evil? We do not require organized religion to tell us what is right and wrong. J
I've made my position pretty clear, all of those rhetorical questions you posed should answer themselves based on what I have wrote. I can't help but feel you are strawmanning me...
Not at all. I simply don’t feel like anyone needs any church, any God, any **anything** as a benchmark to set Morals by. I feel that humans, as a higher race, as intelligent beings - already know the difference between right and wrong. Emotions alone can dictate to someone or at least direct their brain as to right and wrong on such as hurting in animal and listening to it scream - Yes, I understand that as hunters it is what it is but if we were to use a child, and innocent child who maliciously hurt and animal for no reason and listened to it scream would figure out on his own that it was most likely a bad idea; a wrong idea. Let’s say we used another human instead of an animal as an example… I’d have to figure that that alone would set the tone for someone knowing the difference. That’s all I was driving it dude. Zero malicious intent at all. J
I am not familiar with the term; I was only referring to us not needing God or church to set a standard of morality. J
I didnt think you were being malicious, I actually thought it was subconscious. You and I see things differently, as I said I don't believe we know right from wrong, I believe we are coming to know it. There are endless examples of situations where the morally right thing to do is not clear. I'll repeat, no I don't believe church or religion is necessary in these cases. My argument would be that there must be a being from which these imperatives are derived. How do you derive right from wrong? You can say X IS causing suffering, but you cannot say that OUGHT not to be. If there is no objective morality then everything just IS. If there is an objective morality then we can say it OUGHT to be some other way.
In this case it refers to something beyond the subject/person or something that has a nature in and of itself. Subjective morality would basically mean right and wrong are whatever the subject/person decides.
When I was in school in the 70’s, my friends and I did not believe in God/Church. However, you would have never heard any of us speaking ill of it. We were raised to still respect it. Sent from my iPhone using Grasscity Forum
I’d NEVER speak I’ll of “God” - I couldn’t even begin to say weather an Almighty being exists. I’m pretty sure that I don’t believe in the God of the Bible though. As far as speaking ill of the church… We were also raised the same as yourself, at the same time we were young and weren’t told of the many evil things done to man In the name of the church. I am guessing that you weren’t either. I don’t think many people liked to talk about much of it back then. Of course all the pedophilia hadn’t been brought to light at that time either. I was raised protestant in a small church and I don’t believe that any of those folks had an evil bone in their body. There was a lot of fellowship in that protestant church. With all due respect to its members, who I don’t believe had jack shit to do with any of the evil perpetuated by the Catholic hierarchy; I have no problem speaking ill of the church when it is in reference to death and rape and torture - in the name of their God.
This ties into one of my arguments against taxes. For the same reason Catholics should cease donating money to the Carholic church (for moral infractions) I think people should cease paying governments. I agree though, Yahweh was a cunt, how anyone can think Jesus was a representative of that 'god' I don't understand. There is a problem with religion. Most think to believe in Jesus is to believe the whole Bible and all that entails. I can admit Jesus was a fantastic role model, but disregard the other nonsense, it isn't black and white to me.
Tomorrow is another day - but would like to discuss further. I just walk d in the door after a very good but exhausting weekend and it’s heading towards 1am again - so many hours past my old bodies bedtime. I am catching up before Monday morning but I need to give it some kind of a shot.