You don't need religion to have morals.

[John Cuthber]

"Any religion you cite, was predated by the ideas that created it. The ideas had to come from someone's mind."

Notable among those ideas is the concept of morality.

 

So, there's no question that morality turns up first.

[dimreepr]

Goalposts, for you Tar, are just two sticks in a forest you’ve just vaguely waved at.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

If an idea exists it must come from, or exist in, a human mind. By definition.

 

A human mind can not have something in it, that did not come from the world, whether it be physical material, or information. Information is the form getting internalized in some analogue fashion.

 

Therefore the idea is a representation of the thing.

 

If morals come from the world, and religion comes from the world, then arguing about the source of either as being different from the other, is not going work.

 

If you say that morals are possible without noticing what works in the world you would be wrong.

 

If you say that religion is possible without noticing what works in the world you would be wrong.

 

But since religion and morals have the same source, it is either God or man that has provided them.

 

If you are a humanist, then man did the job. But he did it, through religion in our case.

 

You would not have our morals, if you did not have our history. And our history and traditions include religious teachings. Some outdated, and no longer workable, like slavery and homophobia and sexism, but we have taken the best of the teachings, the most workable of the teachings and sewn them securely into the fabric of our society. The history of ideas, the underpinnings of our societies are religious in nature. Sometimes overtly expressed, sometimes held without knowing the roots, but you cannot both accept the rules of behavior and deny the source.

 

Regards, TAR

[John Cuthber]

I guess it's progress to go from this

The OP suggests that morality can be had, without religion. My thought is that morality both causes religion in the first place, and defines it, in the second place.

to this

John Cuthber,

If an idea exists it must come from, or exist in, a human mind. By definition.

A human mind can not have something in it, that did not come from the world, whether it be physical material, or information. Information is the form getting internalized in some analogue fashion.

Therefore the idea is a representation of the thing.

If morals come from the world, and religion comes from the world, then arguing about the source of either as being different from the other, is not going work.

If you say that morals are possible without noticing what works in the world you would be wrong.

If you say that religion is possible without noticing what works in the world you would be wrong.

But since religion and morals have the same source, it is either God or man that has provided them.

But this "A human mind can not have something in it, that did not come from the world" is still nonsense.

Like unicorns and God there are plenty of things in the mind that are not in the world.

one of them is morality.

 

And this

"But since religion and morals have the same source, it is either God or man that has provided them." is irrelevant

Morals and religion may have the same source, in that they are human constructs, but who cares?

Spaceflight is a human construct, but it's bizarre to say that it is the cause of religion.

 

It's clearly possible to have morals without religion.

I do.

End program.

Edited February 23, 2014 by John Cuthber

[tar]

So how do you figure you can get to our morality, without our religious traditions?

 

You can drop the God stuff and keep the workable ideas, but since somebody can be immoral or moral, according to a panel of judges, then the judge is required to have morality. Whether the judge is material or immaterial does not matter. You still need a judge. And since this judge is the basis of any judgement the question is whether the judgement of an individual is good enough, or whether one should go by higher standards, and require a quorum.

 

What authority the quorum has, is analogous to God, in the sense that you reserve final judgement for an entity outside yourself. And I am not sure how you can say you can have morality, without pointing to an outside judge. Good and evil are known to a person. Some use God and devil to illustrate this fact. Some don't. But everybody knows these fellows, be they real or imaginary, embodied or ethereal.

 

If morality can be had, without religion, who do you figure will make the final call as to whether your behavior has been good, or bad? Is it up to you alone, or does the rest of the world have something to say about it?

 

Regards, TAR2

[John Cuthber]

How do you figure that our morality has anything to do with our religion which in my case doesn't exists and in many people's cases includes the legitimacy of slavery?

 

Our current view of what's right does not include keeping slaves.

It used to

The religion didn't change.

the morality did

thus it is clear that the morality did not come from the religion (which was used as a "reason" to continue the slave trade).

 

If our morals were derived from our religion then they couldn't change (because the religion is written in a Big Book).

 

"If morality can be had, without religion, who do you figure will make the final call as to whether your behavior has been good, or bad?"

Society- of course.

One thing's for certain.

It won't be religion because they would still have us stoning adulterers and such.

 

Seriously, if you think that morals come from religion, how come we now have morals that differ from religion?

[tar]

So let's agree God is false.

 

Let's agree religion is true.

 

Let's agree that morals have evolved without God, but with religion.

 

Let's agree that morals exist in those that listen to the outside world and resolve themselves to the judgement therein embodied. And that listening to the outside world and subjegating oneself to its judgement predates any and all religions, as well as being the source of any and all religions.

 

Then morals in general can be had by all and any. People we judge as moral or people we judge as not can both have them. But to come to a particular set of morals, one must have a particular set of evolved ideas, commonaly held by his/her society that relate the indivual to the cosmos. And since this is very close, if not exactly the definition of religion, morals in general are automatic, morals in particular, require religion.

 

Regards, TAR

[dimreepr]

You don't get to decide what’s agreed.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

We still have Churches and religious people even though we have many many "reformed" religions.

 

If the God of the Bible was true, then liars would be struck by lightening, which they are not.

If the ideas proported by religion are true, the liar will receive his/her just rewards, which he will.

 

I am not sure why you point to changes in morality standards as being indicative of a preexisting morality. If a church reforms, then it changes its morality standards and that is good. Meaning that the morality did not preexist, it evolved from something not so good as before into its current condition.

 

It used to be the norm for a woman to be barefoot and pregnant. This is no longer accepted as the condition required for a woman to be good. Not by the church or by society. If you fault the church for not adhering to certain unworkable teachings, because they are not listening to God if they make such a switch that ignores what God said before, you are assuming the existence of a God to be listened to. Since there is not a God to be listened to, then any sensible reforms that a Church makes, are completely allowed and within the confines of our relationship with the cosmos.

 

You cannot both negate religion for making the proper reforms and for being improper.

 

Regards, TAR

If we don't like the morality of our leaders, we let them know about it.

 

Someone's morality has to win, by force of pen or bullet.

 

If morality existed prior the pen and bullet, there would be no need for either.

I was being hypothetical, I was not pretending we were agreed.

[John Cuthber]

So let's agree God is false.

 

Let's agree religion is true.

 

Let's agree that morals have evolved without God, but with religion.

 

Let's agree that morals exist in those that listen to the outside world and resolve themselves to the judgement therein embodied. And that listening to the outside world and subjegating oneself to its judgement predates any and all religions, as well as being the source of any and all religions.

 

Then morals in general can be had by all and any. People we judge as moral or people we judge as not can both have them. But to come to a particular set of morals, one must have a particular set of evolved ideas, commonaly held by his/her society that relate the indivual to the cosmos. And since this is very close, if not exactly the definition of religion, morals in general are automatic, morals in particular, require religion.

 

Regards, Tar

 

 

Do you realise that you have yet to answer my points about the requirement for morals before there can be enough of a society to found a religion?

 

Also, we change our morals (for whatever reason) and those changes precede the comparable changes in religion.

Religion has yet to catch up with quite a few aspects of morality.

So we plainly don't get our morals from religion.

Who cares,

I'm still here with morals and no religion.

So the answer to the OP is still yes; you don't need religion to have morals.

Nothing you say will change that simple fact.

[tar]

I am thinking about the caveman who looks back on his behavior in a search for the thing he did to cause the volcano to erupt and spew fire and molten rock and hot dust on the land.

 

We have a lot of evidence that "prior" religion there were a lot of people that thought they did something to get the volcano angry with them. Not unlikely they would look for a way to apease the volcano.

 

Are any moral values that the caveman would come up with, under those circumstances similar to what you are talking about, in terms of inate, prior religion, morals?

 

Did the caveman kill? Did the caveman rape and pillage? Did the caveman drag a captive women to his cave and impregnate her?

 

Did he, could he have had the same morals you are talking about. Those that would be present without the aid of ledgends and traditions and rules of behavior based on providing the world with "intent" that one could either apease or anger?

 

Now, we have internet and can quickly know if the world is OK with us or not. What morality though can you propose existed when it was just the caveman and the volcano, to have the conversation?

 

Regards, TAR

John Cuthber,

 

"Also, we change our morals (for whatever reason) and those changes precede the comparable changes in religion."

 

Did you ever write a sentence, and then edit it?

 

"Religion has yet to catch up with quite a few aspects of morality."

 

Like, for instance?

 

"So we plainly don't get our morals from religion."

 

I gave about a bunch of examples of where we did. Gees had a few as well. Sweden, a very moral society has a lot of Lutheran in their ideals. And the morals of most examples of man, before religion are not so wonderful.

 

"Who cares,"

 

Me for one.

 

"I'm still here with morals and no religion."

 

You are here with no particular religion, but take the peices from each that suit you. You still have been brought up with laws and values that serve the good of the planet and the life upon it. And you didn't come up with those concerns on your own. And your laws and values are not contrary to the current thought and values of the majority of the planet's humans, who are majoritywise mostly religious.

 

"So the answer to the OP is still yes; you don't need religion to have morals."

 

An individual does not have to believe in a particular god to have morals, but he/she must believe that someone else cares how they behave. And the only way we know if anybody else is making the same judgment as we are, is if we hold common beliefs to judge our behavior against. Religion provides such a sounding board and common set, and has been providing it for many a century. I for one can not discount the history of Western Civilization in its role in my moral development. I do not think you have even the slightest chance of convincing me that you have come by your morals, by yourself.

 

Nothing you say will change that simple fact.

[dimreepr]

Phi, surely hero worship should include a +1.

You would seem to be right not to hit that button, before the results were in; I bow to your wisdom.

[John Cuthber]

"Are any moral values that the caveman would come up with, under those circumstances similar to what you are talking about, in terms of inate, prior religion, morals?"

The volcano had a "right" to be angry because..."

is a moral judgement.

And, in your scenario it's a prerequisite to religion.

""Religion has yet to catch up with quite a few aspects of morality."

Like, for instance?"

Gay marriage,

Contraception.

Killing infidels.

Did you think there was a shortage?

 

"You are here with no particular religion, but take the peices from each that suit you."

Utter bollocks.

I derive practically all my views on the matter from the notion that one shouldn't inflict on others what one wouldn't choose for ones'self.

 

"An individual does not have to believe in a particular god to have morals, but he/she must believe that someone else cares how they behave"

Nope, I sometimes act in ways that nobody else will really know about, and my ideas of right and wrong apply to those to.

 

You seem very sure of yourself- to the extent of claiming to know what I do and what I believe.

It's a pity since you keep getting it wrong.

 

"Religion provides such a sounding board and common set, and has been providing it for many a century."

And, if it were the source of morality, we would still have slaves.

[dimreepr]

I do not think you have even the slightest chance of convincing me that you have come by your morals, by yourself.

 

Nothing you say will change that simple fact.

 

Jesus managed it, by your logic, as did Mohamed and Buddha; why not John Cuthber or me?

[John Cuthber]

I do not think you have even the slightest chance of convincing me that you have come by your morals, by yourself.

 

Nothing you say will change that simple fact.

Well, I plainly didn't get them from the religion (so anywhere else I might have got them is OT but never mind that for the minute)

I didn't get them from my community or family with whom I disagree on many issues.

So Where else did I get them?

Are you suggesting the sears' catalogue?

[cladking]

I am thinking about the caveman who looks back on his behavior in a search for the thing he did to cause the volcano to erupt and spew fire and molten rock and hot dust on the land.

 

We have a lot of evidence that "prior" religion there were a lot of people that thought they did something to get the volcano angry with them. Not unlikely they would look for a way to apease the volcano.

 

 

No. There is no evidence religion existed in ancient times before 2000 BC. There

can be no evidence for religion before this time because there is almost no writin

and the writing that exists is not understood.

 

If you assume the first people had religion then, of course, the conclusion will be

that religion preceded morals and it almost follows that they caused morals to ex-

ist. The first writing known to be religious comes later. It begins appearing in the

Coffin Texts which has material spanning the time between 2200 and 1800 BC.

 

I believe we should limit the discussion to known facts and caveman beliefs are

not known facts. You'll note in my previous post i ascribed no beliefs to cavemen

and merely pointed out that logically superstitious cavemen would be at an extreme

evolutionary disadvantage to scientific cavemen. This doesn't mean cavemen were

scientific merely that any who were had a better chance of survival.

 

One bunch of cavemen with religion would have a very poor chance of competing or

even surviving in a hostile enviroment when other cavemen with a scientific bent were

forever eating their lunch. Superstition would have been self defeating and unable to

propogate before the advent of morals.

 

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

The picture I took of the ornate library surprised me, when I learned it was a religious enterprise. I had thought at the time, that religious people were quite ignorant in their beliefs (5 or 10 years ago). It suited me, to consider myself more worldly and knowledgeable than Monks and Popes. The picture taught me I was exactly wrong, and the very people I had myself believing were anti science (like creationists) were actually the husbands of it. I had that insight, and I thought perhaps my words and the picture would bring that insight to you. Alas it has not and you are stuck on whatever it is you are stuck on, that requires you trust not anything religious. So be it. It is obvious to me that religion was important to both the development of the morals of Western society and the developement of the morals of TAR. Obviously John Cuthber has been able to logically define clear moral standards based on just one thought from the Bible "do onto others as you would have them do onto you." Good job. Perhaps you can straighten out the Ukraine and North Korea based on such a scheme. Perhaps not.

 

I went to a private school that had some religious founders. We were not very religious, but we had a code, an honor code, that went like the below. I was surprised, when I hit public school in the 10th grade, that most others did not go by this code. I still do, because it is workable and right.

Do you go by this code? You probably do not, because you didn't go to Pingry. But you probably should anyway, because it is an excellent code of honor. And it would not require that you believe in God or slavery or killing infidels.

 

Regards, TAR

 

I don't have it, in electronic format, I will have to get it.

 

http://www.pingry.org/page.cfm?p=278

Dimreepr,

 

My logic includes you and John Cuthber, as persons to whom I am responsible.

 

I figure we are in this together. My behavior affects your world, and your behavior affects mine.

 

We SHOULD have a common code of behavior. It makes thing much nicer to know what you believe is what others believe.

 

I figure you look to me for approval, and I look to you. Generally speaking. If you don't look to me for approval, fine, it does not stop me from looking for yours. I want to be doing the right thing. Holding the right beliefs that satisfy the needs and desires of the greater world community. That is what I was taught, that is what I believe is right.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited February 23, 2014 by tar

[tar]

 

So first comes first wise, the engraved plack was on the wall of the school, judging by its date (so at least on paper and in the hearts and minds of the students and faculty) in the school year before my birth. So I did not come up with it, on my own. It already was a working plan when I arrived at the school.

 

My morals came partially in response to the words and the spirit of the code, so the words and ideas and spirit already existed as I developed in my Mother's womb, and were instilled in me in particular, along with other's that read it, and lived it, at the school. I concurrently was exposed to a church community. My Mother took us, my father stayed at home as he was an atheist, who had been taken to church himself, and his father was a believer still.

 

I learned my morals from life and parents and great grandparents, school and church. I currently and for the last 40 years have not practiced any religion, but my wife took my daughters to a church of her denomonation. My one daughter believes in God in a general kind of way, my other daughter not so much. Both have a good moral footing and are fine young ladies. One working in an old age rehabilitation home, and the other about to find out at the beginning of the week whether her work in chemistry will be toward a PhD or just a Masters. So I am completely in agreement that morals can be held, without being religious, for my father and me and my one daughter, have the morals and do not have the religion. But my father was influenced by his father and church teaching, and proper behavior toward others. And my grandfather in turn was influenced by the teachings of the church. They did not teach me to be a slave master, or a creationist, or a homophobe. Quite the opposite, they taught me tolerance, and respect, understanding and responsibility to others. And these lessons are NOT automatic, for there are many that I have run into in life that lie, and cheat and steal, attempt to "get over" on people they should be helping, and there are many who calculate their own advantage, rather than work toward the good of the teams they are on.

 

So, with the history of religion and Western Civilization being a very real factor in the developement of my morals, ethics, spirit and honor, I cannot suggest that my morals would be the same, in the abscence of religion. Leading me to the theory that individuals can have morals, without being religious, but morals are based on the commonly held beliefs of a whole society, as to what ones relationship to the world, should be. And in the case of Western Civilization, religion played an important role in establishing Western values. So my morals and your morals have a common source and that is the Golden Rule, which some that I would call moral adhere to, and others that I would call immoral, do not. Leading me to conclude that morals follow religion and are dependent upon it.

 

Regards, TAR

[John Cuthber]

"Obviously John Cuthber has been able to logically define clear moral standards based on just one thought from the Bible "do onto others as you would have them do onto you." Good job. Perhaps you can straighten out the Ukraine and North Korea based on such a scheme. Perhaps not."

Nice soundbite, but poor logic.

If all the people in North Korea (including the loony in charge) actually followed the idea that one should "do onto others as you would have them do onto you." do you not think that would essentially solve their problems?

 

 

Incidentally that school plaque says the honour code came from the school founders, rather than their religion. It seems a sensible enough code.

 

Anyway, I'm still not religious and I still have morals.

[s1eep]

John Cuthber,

 

If an idea exists it must come from, or exist in, a human mind. By definition.

 

A human mind can not have something in it, that did not come from the world, whether it be physical material, or information. Information is the form getting internalized in some analogue fashion.

 

Therefore the idea is a representation of the thing.

 

If morals come from the world, and religion comes from the world, then arguing about the source of either as being different from the other, is not going work.

 

If you say that morals are possible without noticing what works in the world you would be wrong.

 

If you say that religion is possible without noticing what works in the world you would be wrong.

 

But since religion and morals have the same source, it is either God or man that has provided them.

 

If you are a humanist, then man did the job. But he did it, through religion in our case.

 

You would not have our morals, if you did not have our history. And our history and traditions include religious teachings. Some outdated, and no longer workable, like slavery and homophobia and sexism, but we have taken the best of the teachings, the most workable of the teachings and sewn them securely into the fabric of our society. The history of ideas, the underpinnings of our societies are religious in nature. Sometimes overtly expressed, sometimes held without knowing the roots, but you cannot both accept the rules of behavior and deny the source.

 

Regards, TAR

Not true, morals can come from wisdom. If you are wise, you may see it fit to not waste so much so that you preserve your environment, for example.

It would be wise to preserve the environment.

Thus, it is good to preserve the environment.

Edited February 24, 2014 by s1eep

[hypervalent_iodine]

tar,

There is in fact a great deal of evidence to support the notion that a sense of morality developed much earlier than and independent to religion. Humans are social creatures founded in our ability for large-scale cooperation between individuals and groups of people. This aspect of our species quite obviously predates religion. Part of being successful at cooperation within a group means that you have to adopt pro-social behaviours and those pro-social behaviours, which might include not killing or harming another person or stealing from them, are what give rise to our instinctive moral code. There is a review that I linked some tme ago in a similar thread that states the following:

A more plausible view, we suggest, is that most, if not all, of the psychological ingredients that enter into religion originally evolved to solve more general problems of social interaction and subsequently were co-opted for use in religious activities, including thoughts about God as well as cooperation. Religious concepts and beliefs can therefore motivate and even inspire the expression and justification of morally-relevant norms and values, but do so on the basis of cognitive mechanisms that are also used to motivate solidarity among members of any group, from those associated with team sports to the departmental members of academic disciplines. According to this view, religion was not selected for in its origins but, once in place, could have been a target of selection, assuming that the observed variation had some heritable component. Indeed, religion seems to offer such a cognitively inexpensive way of processing moral ideas, and such a powerful means of creating and enhancing group solidarity, that it is often argued that morality is impossible without religion.

I've highlighted the last sentence for emphasis and because it's a fantastic quote.

The review then also go on to discuss various studies, all of which indicate that regardless of religious affiliation (or lack thereof) and regardless of where you are from, basic moral intuitions are the same for all people. I would not argue that religion doesn't have some affect in very specific cases on what a particular group of people deems to be right or wrong, but the overall process that guides our moral instincts does not appear to be in any way altered by it, suggesting that it evolved independently. Here's another nice quote from the paper:[/size]

What religion can do, and what political and legal institutions can do as well, is alter local and highly specific cases. And yet, they appear to have no influence at all on the intuitive system that operates more generally, and for unfamiliar cases.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

But how are you going to get them all to follow the Golden Rule. Certainly not by force, which would be hypocritcal. All we have, as humans, as far as I can see, to morally persuade another, is to let them know when we think they are right, and when we think they are wrong, and showing them by embracing them or shunning them. I do not have the science or statistics on this, but I have noticed that people have a very good sense for how another feels about their actions. Subtle eye movements and facial expressions can communicate a great range of approval/acceptence with a great deal of subtle nuance.

 

You chided me earlier for suggesting I knew what you were thinking, as if that was impossible, since I can not see your face, and your eyes or hear the tone of your voice. But if I COULD see your face and eyes and hear the tone in your voice, I would know much better what you were thinking and feeling than just reading your words. There is communication we have with other humans through hormones and pheremones and such things, that we are not consciously aware of.

 

A large portion of our group was being laid off and I was asking some questions and got a look from my boss that I had never seen before in my life, but it communicated exactly his position and desires and I knew instantly, for his benefit, and the groups benefit and for the big bosses benefit and for my own benefit, how to adjust my questions.

 

Perhaps if I would have seen you in person when you said that you have morals, and no religion I would have halted the program there. Especially if we were in a room full of atheists...But if there was ONE religious person in the room, I would have also been aware of his/her look, and what they were thinking about the comment, as would you have. So I pretend that everybody is in the room. All the hard working Protestants that believe in delayed gradification and the Protestant work ethic and ones personal responsibility to others and the world. I include the people that believe in the trans-migration of souls, and the people that believe in reincartion and a soul's progression on another plane of existence, and the thief and the murderer, the lawyer and the politician, the health worker and the steel worker, the 60-90 percent of the planet that is religious and the 10-40 percent that are not. the old Jewish Grandma, the Russian New Age Teen, the Corporate VP and the bum on the street that has served his country. And look for the way to adjust my questioning as if I had gotten a look from them all.

 

It's a little bit, like believing in God.

 

But how the outside world would react to my behavior and words, ideas and logic, is what I care to be right about. It is argueably what defines moral behavior, and its a little bit like believing in a higher ideal than any individual man is capable of embodying.

Regards TAR

and thanks for providing me with the spelling of plaque. I knew plack was wrong, but I couldn't remember the right spelling

hypervalent_iodine,

 

We cross posted.

 

Your bolded part says it is often argued that morals are impossible without religion. You seem to take that as meaning the argument is without basis. Why? I read it, as giving basis to the argument.

 

There is a boundry that was crossed in human evolution between mere gene pool survival and consciously planned survival, when language and stories were passed down from parent to child. The rules of survival of the fittest were then not limited to the genes, but included the collective wisdom of the meme. What could only be described before this point by accident and fitness to survive in a given environment took on another aspect, where the ideas and knowledge of the world and ones fitness of it could be passed along outside the information contained in the genes.

 

One of the tenants of most religions, or at least of the Jewish/Christian/Moslem tradition, is the protection of the weak. This is quite contrary the dog eat dog survival of the fittest rules of organism evolution. So at some point, the human organism gained an advantage, beyond the genes, in its species environment. You say a thing can only exist if its selected for, or at least argue as if that is the statistical rule. I tend to think that the power of the story, and the creation of tools and technology that could be passed along outside the genes caused another type of evolution to begin, that does not go by the same rules, or at the same speed as the change by mutation, and survival of the fittest route.

 

If a human's morals must be followed in a logical way from the structure of his genes, and that is where you hope to piece together objective morality from, I think you are missing the most important part of our moral evolution, that has proceeded outside our genes, and emerged and evolved in quite an unDarwinian fashion.

 

iNow believes that religion hijacked the neurocortical mechanisms of the brain, as if the genes were doing fine on their own, and would have done something, or can do something more wonderful than religion, without it.

 

I don't believe that is correct.

 

The story is very powerful in human survival. More powerful than the gene.

 

Regards, TAR

[hypervalent_iodine]

tar, read the rest of the quote and put it in context. It is not arguing that morality comes from religion at all; quite the opposite.

[tar]

s1eep,

 

Well wisdom comes from being right, for a very long time, probably noticing things that have been true for a very long time makes you wise.

 

Let's suppose an old guy or gal in your village was searched out by the young folk to learn what he had learn from life, what he had learned from his parents, what lessons he had gleaned from the tales he was told. Each generation would get just a little wiser than the one before.

 

Regards, TAR

hypervalent_iodine,

 

I did read the whole quote and I saw the requirement for an heritable factor as an assumption in the logic. I don't think this assumption is required, and factors have passed between the generations of humans, that are not locatable in the genes.

 

They are to be found in the poets and the writers and the stories that form the "soul" of a society.

 

If it was just the genes then we would understand the North Koreans, Jews would understand Moslems, Scientist would understand Religious folk. We would all think the same things for the same reasons.

Since we don't, then other factors must be in play. The stories we go by, who we strive to "be like" have a tremendous influence on our behavior and what we think of the world, and what we consider right and what we consider wrong.

 

Some folk think flying a plane full of innocents into a beautiful building is doing tremendous good.

Some folk think wiping out two cities full of people with atomic bombs was a good thing.

 

Relatively the same genes operating in both cases...but completely different stories.

 

Which factor do you figure has more scientific plausibility in determining morality, ones genes or one's beliefs?

 

Regards, TAR

 

 

We need to find a common workable story more urgently than looking for it in our genes will allow. And we usually do. What is it they say about Americans. We always do the right thing, once all other options are exhausted. They also say you always find what you are looking for, in the last place you look. (cause you stop looking, once you find it.)

 

Sorry, I am just a little flip and giddy tonight. My daughter passed her prelims this morning. PhD candidate now. I am so, so very proud of her. Just had to share the news. Its all I really care about, at the moment.

Edited February 25, 2014 by tar

[John Cuthber]

Tar, rather than talking about redundancies where you work, or your abilities as a psychic, why not address the real issue.

How could a society without morals hang together long enough to create a religion?

 

 

Stop wasting time with off-topic red herrings like "But how are you going to get them all to follow the Golden Rule."

 

Incidentally, most social animals have non-verbal communication skills that benefit the group- sometimes at the expense of the individual.

They have , in that lose sense, morals.

Yet they have no religion: horses do not ponder the creation of the universe or the likelihood of an afterlife.

So your example argues against your point,rather than for it.

 

How could a society without morals hang together long enough to create a religion?

Stop trying to bullshit us and either answer it or accept that you are wrong.