You don't need religion to have morals.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

How could the herd stay together for the right reasons, before they knew it was right to stay together??

 

How can a snowflake form into a beautiful crystal when it does not know beauty.

 

I am working on the general principle that anything, including snowflakes and humans "fit" the world, because if they did NOT fit the world, they would not be allowed to exist, in the world, by the world.

 

If fitness is what you call morals then you can have it without being human, or you can have it without being alive, so you can certainly have it without religion. If this is the only criteria you are going by, then everybody and everything is moral. Everything fits. Everything fits exactly, and every action has an equal and opposite reaction. Every entity is made up by the fitness of the smaller entities which are its constituents, and every entity as its fitting with the place, creates larger entities, which also fit together very very nicely.

 

If morals are based on ones ability to fit, then the world is moral already, and knowing the difference between right and wrong is something everybody and everything, already knows how to accomplish.

 

If this is "correct", then the Vedic principles are as well. They propose nothing less than this, and nothing more. If this is "correct" then everything and everybody having one ultimate judge is "correct" as well, and dedicating oneself to God or Allah or the Force or Mother Nature or Science or the Cosmos is a perfectly "correct" thing to do.

 

How can you have the truth before you find it, unless its already available and then you notice it?

 

Argue your "already fit" case all the way through and you reveal God at the end or see him at the beginning, or live with him presently. And if your argument is correct, then Moses had it right in principle, just was wrong to characterise the fellow as a male, master.

 

The first book of the bible presents a situation where we were created into the world by a father, who pulled one of our ribs and made a mate for us, who listened to the serpent and had us eat from the tree of knowledge, the apple, that caused us to know the difference between good and evil, and made us feel naked and apart.

 

Set up slavery and sexism, the story did. Set up moral values as well.

Regards, TAR

[John Cuthber]

Is this sort of dross

"How can a snowflake form into a beautiful crystal when it does not know beauty."

really the best you can do?

 

"How could the herd stay together for the right reasons, before they knew it was right to stay together??"

Herds of cattle have rules,

According to you, they learned them in church.

 

"If fitness is what you call morals then you can have it without being human..."

But nobody did.

Please stop posting red herrings like that. They fool nobody and waste time.

 

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.

[john5746]

I am working on the general principle that anything, including snowflakes and humans "fit" the world, because if they did NOT fit the world, they would not be allowed to exist, in the world, by the world.

True, and a huge part of this world are other humans. So, if humans don't "fit" together, how could they ever grow beyond a basic family unit? Too aggressive and they just go it alone, too passive any they are plowed under. A mixture of passive to the "in" group and aggressive to the "out" group might work.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

How could a society without a common set of beliefs hang together at all?

 

Forget for a moment any particular religion whose story has flaws. Any story is bound to have flaws, any story is bound to have a hero and a goat. Any story is bound to pick winners and losers, insiders and outsiders, characters with whom you associate, and characters with whom you have conflict.

 

The general scheme of a story is to set the stage, develop the characters, introduce conflict, build to a climax, and have the conflict resolved by "doing the right thing", and live happily ever after.

 

So in terms of first comes first in human evolution, I put things in this order. First we evolved a way to internalize the outside world. I figure our senses and memory are good evidence of that developement. With muscles and a skeletal structure we were able to move around in and manipulate the world, remember where the food was last time, and go get it again. In looking for a neurocortical mechanism to help with this I figure the "predictive motor simulator" that allows for the "practicing" of motor neuron firings in particulal coordinated patterns before the pulses are actually fired was repurposed, to practice coordinated movements of the whole organism outside the reach of the nervous system. A "model" of the world, recorded on the inside of the skull, could be navigated BEFORE energy was wasted on the actual movement, and BEFORE behavior resulting in failure, injury or death was attempted. The human organism could learn about the world, what behavior resulted in reward, and what behavior resulted in pain or punishment. Do the good things, and not do the bad things. A simple morality, one shared by most every mammal, armed with two eyes, two ears, taste and smell, a predictive motor simulator and pleasure and pain chemicals to reward good behavior, disuade bad behavior and learn the best ways to navigate the world and behave in it. So from this we are at your level of morality, and we got there without religion. So you win your point, if the avoidance of pain and the exercise of pleasurable activities are all you are considering morals are about...except we were at that point a long time ago, and language, and symbols, and ledgends and commonly held beliefs, passed from generation to generation have not yet been added into the mix. The development of language and the the theory of mind, and the ability for one human to put themselves in the shoes of an unseen other, is part of my answer to how a group could hold together before organised religion, because the power of commonly held, sharable and generationally passable lessons of what is good behavior, that will result in pleasurable rewards, and what is bad behavior that will result in pain and torment is so close to what religion is, that one cannot separate religion from the development of our morals, without it being a required component.

 

Regards, TAR

P.S. I am not B.S.ing anybody. I actually believe what I say makes a lot of sense. If I am wrong, show me where and how it doesn't work.

Edited February 26, 2014 by tar

[John Cuthber]

"How could a society without a common set of beliefs hang together at all?"

Ask a bee.

 

"The general scheme of a story is to set the stage, develop the characters, introduce conflict, build to a climax, and have the conflict resolved by "doing the right thing", and live happily ever after."
Do you realise that that text is about as relevant as a knitting pattern?

 

"P.S. I am not B.S.ing anybody. I actually believe what I say makes a lot of sense."

What, even the red herrings I have pointed out?

Even the lack of an answer to the point about a society needing to exist before it can form a religion?

 

"If I am wrong, show me where and how it doesn't work."

As I (and others) have said plenty of times, you keep putting the cart before the horse.

We know that other apes have a sense of morals. It's fair to assume that our ancestors did too.

And so they had those before they developed any sort of religion.

So, at that point, they plainly had morals, but no religion.

And, above all, you keep trying to pretend that I don't exist.

How is that not BS?

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

Well I am pretty sure my s..thead dog knows very well that the reason I am pissed at him is because he pissed in my house. I heard on the radio today that dog behaviourists know that a dog does not feel guilt, and the ears folded against the head and the "guilty" eyes are a reaction to your tirade, and they do not feel any guilt about peeing on Moma's white lace curtains.

 

In terms of theory of mind, placing guilt in the mind of the dog, is something that seems very evident to me, but evidently not true at all in the scientists that study the animal. So I am giving the pup moral values that he does not have on his own.

 

Yet you, as a human, with a conscience and a "true" sense of moral values, consider that your sense of moral values is the same as the dog's.

 

This is not consistent logic.

 

Add to this "problem" with your line of thinking, the fact that 9 billion people on this Earth all have the dog's sense of morals, yet have "different" ideas about what moral behavior is, and one must, and I mean MUST get their moral values from a source other than the original equipment they are born with, and logical deduction.

 

If a person could derive their moral values from original equipment and logic, then everybody should have wound up with the same set, which has not happened, has not seemed to ever have happened, and does not look like it will develop any time soon.

 

I have given you well thought out complete possible "real" answers to your questions. I am not avoiding answering your questions. You are not understanding the logical requirements that I am trying to meet, in arriving at a more "total" answer then you are willing to explore or embrace.

 

Regards, TAR2

I know very well you exist and share this planet with me and billions of others. I know you have the morals of religion, but have them for reasons that do not require Gods giving them to you.

 

You say you got these morals without the aid of religion. I say you did not.

 

They did not just POP into your head. Somebody told you how you were expected to behave, and these rules, these tried and true rules were passed to you. You did not discover them by studying the behavior of bees. And what bee role do you figure you emulate the most? The Queen, a worker drone, a feeder and tender? What? Which is the "best" role. Which is the most moral role? Which morals is it that you have, that are different from the morals that religion proposes?

 

This raises another "problem" with your logic. You say religions propose crazy, baseless morals, and one can completely do without them, and somehow achieve a "perfect" set of them by just listening to and observing the evident "one" true way the universe has laid before you. This was also Mohammed's argument, which made a lot of sense to his followers, who still exist in the Billions of people who strive to live as Mohammed did.

 

Regards, TAR

 

(by the way, I do not sign Regards to people I have no regards for)

[dimreepr]

Tar, I sort of get your argument/position (I think), you’re suggesting, the all pervasive nature of religion in regards to your personal culture, means it’s difficult to think outside ‘that’ box; join the club, cultures a bi-atch init? You argue that religion, in this day and age, must, have an influence on our moral compass, as in your library analogy; but that analogy fails, because, whilst I know of the existence of libraries that doesn’t make me fluent in the dewy decimal system or even what’s contained therein; your argument fails in exactly the same way, however you try and change the focus/topic of this thread, please, whilst your sanity lasts, give up and simply do not post further nonesense.

[John Cuthber]

"Well I am pretty sure my s..thead dog knows very well that the reason I am pissed at him is because he pissed in my house. I heard on the radio today that dog behaviourists know that a dog does not feel guilt, and the ears folded against the head and the "guilty" eyes are a reaction to your tirade, and they do not feel any guilt about peeing on Moma's white lace curtains."

 

More red herring.

 

"Add to this "problem" with your line of thinking, the fact that 9 billion people on this Earth all have the dog's sense of morals,"

More straw manning.

 

"They did not just POP into your head."
somewhere between a straw man and a refusal to see the evidence.

(They didn't Pop up there, evolution built them long before there was any idea of God. So they really are there without me learning them but, by dissembling about their source, you pretend they don't exist.)

 

Just stop it.

Face the fact that I'm here with morals and no religion.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

If you are here with morals and no religion.

And some are here with morals, traceable to religion.

And I ask you to trace the source of your morals, or explain how they would arise, without religion you point me to evolution and the survival of the fittest and explain that people got along and survived and took care of each other, and had rules, before religion and nations, and apes and bees manage to work together without religion, apes have been shown to have a theory of mind concerning other apes, and bee colonies act as an organism connected to each other by invisible forces.

 

I suggest that before religion we acted like animals, protective of the family group, but not linked to other tribes of humans by any force or chemical or reason but our common genes and our common Earth and Sun. We did not act as an organism with a brain or a Queen.

 

On a large rocky and gravel, sunny area up at a lake I lived at during School Vaction, there occured on several occasions this fantastic three way ant war. Black ants, Ants half black and half red, and red ants, would battle for the territory. I would join the fray, on the side of the black ants because my sister had once sat on a hill of red ants and been stung or bitten mercilessly. Where the black and red ants were engaged with the red ants I would help the black and red ants, where the red and black where engaged with the black I would back the black. I took care to not tread on the black, for I was their ally and would help the black when engaged with the red. I was usually in bare feet and the black would rarely bite me and the bite of the red and black was worse and the bite of the red the very worse.

 

Show me a force or reason or strategy I could have used, or should have used to have those ants live together, with your moral values, that you have come to, without borrowing any ideas from religion.

 

If you did not have Western societies, and Middle Eastern Societies, and African Societies, and Eastern Societies to point to, to gleen your workable human values from, you would have no basis for your determinations. There remains a need to have a common set of beliefs that bind individuals to a greater ideal then genes and logic alone provide, to explain the situation.

 

I am proposing that language makes stories possible, and stories make ledgends possible, and common stories and ledgends are required for societies to contain people that strive to live like an ideal person. And for anyone to live like an ideal person, what an ideal person is like, must be known.

 

In your logic, if you are just yourself, like the things you like, hate the things you hate, that would be ideal and everything would work out just fine, since we all can have morals, without religion. I don't think that will work.

 

Even atheists propose humanism as a common story we should live by.

 

You can take any particular God out of religion and still have religion, but you can't take the ideal person out of religion, and still have morals.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited February 28, 2014 by tar

[Dissily Mordentroge]

IMO morals are a mental artefact; thus, subjective. However, the article quoted was concerned with whether religion defined morals or whether they are a natural part of humanity regardless of religion, which means your question should be discussed in another thread.

Morals are a mental artefact, therefore subjective?

An extraordinary assertion. Take per example your ability to read, extract meaning and respond to a post on this thread. Apart from the physical act of typing ( and neurologists will question even that) any such process/processes can be described as a mental artefact/s. If therefore we take your assertion as given, your response is subjective and therefore may be dismissed.

Whilst realising this is a discussion forum, which has rules, and one of the rules is to stay on topic, it's possible posters hold differing notions of what that topic actually is.

For instance, the central term 'morality' can be defined in many different ways. For instance, many streams of Christianity regard particular practices we indulge in our bedrooms as subject to strict moral rules whilst others claim such behaviours are outside the province of moral consideration.

Or to put it as Ronald E Merril does in describing Ayn Rand's theory of concepts in his 'The Ideas of Ayn Rand' (pub'l Open Court1991 Page 94)

"Is there such as thing as a correct definition of a concept? The most commonly held modern view is that there is not; a definition is an arbitrary convenience. This ' nominals/conceptualist' or Humpty-Dumpty school of thought holds that definitions need only be consistently maintained during a particular discussion. Just as Americans drive on the right side of the road, the British on the left, a concept such as 'bird' may be defined as a feathered animal, or as an egg laying animal. As long as everyone who is using the definition ( or the road0 agrees to accept a particular procedure, the exact procedure chosen is of no importance.

Opposed to this is the 'realist' school of thought, in it's pure Platonic or diluted Aristotelian variants, which hold that there is only one correct definition of a given concept. What though, could give this 'essence' of the concept it's special validity? The 'essence' is real in this view - it actually exists, as a Platonic form or some such entity.

Rand rejects both these approaches. As she describes it, the nominalist regards definitions as arbitrary; there is no 'essence' of a concept. The realist postulates the actual existence of the essence; essence is metaphysical. For Rand, definitions are not arbitrary - there is and essence -but the essence is not metaphysical but epistemological. Though concepts are in the mind, they are not arbitrary because they reflect reality, which is objective.

Now, why should anyone bother with all this? Rand's answer would be that philosophy is practical. The nominalist view assumes the thinking is a matter of detached, abstract debate. It is a game, and the only requirement of the rules is that they be self consistent and agreed by all players.

But for Rand, thinking is man's means of survival, and it's rules are absolutely critical. If you pick the wrong way to define a concept, it may not just be 'Well, that's an interesting way to look at the subject'; it could kill you. "

[tar]

 

Though concepts are in the mind, they are not arbitrary because they reflect reality, which is objective.

Ms. Mordentroge,

 

Although Ayn Rand may have said this, it is something I have based a lot of my thinking on, in the last 3 years or so. That is, that we absorb the world thru our senses, and must therefore "contain" some rather analogue representation of the thing as it is, which we remember in some imperfect way, and that we manipulate and practice with in our dreams and thoughts, so that we might best behave next, in a manner consistent with the thing as it is. So arbitrary, is not a word that would describe the process of building a consistent model of the world, to hold.

 

Subjective and objective then become, in my way of thinking an interesting debate, as we each strive to consider our own understanding of the thing as it is, as the most true take, and everybody else just does not possess yet the "insights" about the thing that we have aquired. And religion is an interesting development, because it merely states we all have the same objective reality to internalize and judge, but in the end, it is the objective reality that will judge us, and there is no other place, but objective reality from which we are created.

 

My own "take" on this situation, I have held in general, for many years, considering that I am in and of the same objective reality as everybody else, and my relation to it is what I am responsible for getting right.

 

Many brilliant men and women, and some just simple and plain, have found themselves in this same "human" condition over the last however many millenia that humans have had the ability to internalize and remember the world, dream and think about it, and plan their next actions in regards to it. The same basic equipment, in the same condition has been present for quite a while in the human species, as it has in any species of life on this planet that can interalize the world, and plan its next action in it. But human society has made technological advances and advances in philosophy and religion and law, that other species have not. Our ideas outlast our bodies and extend way past our bodies because we have language to share our experiences of the world, with the world. We have developed stories and ledgends and tools that we pass along, or that are readily absorbed by other "like minded" individuals as components of objective reality.

 

It is from this worldview that I approach this debate John Cuthber and I are having. He says he has morals and no religion, so morals exist, without religion being required. I point out to him that the history of Western Civilization is part of both his and my objective reality, and the history of British law and rules of behavior, and the founding of a plethora of the institutions that humankind has established and maintained, including libraries, and the United States of America where founded by "men of god" or their children, or people that base their thinking about objective reality on common beliefs and principles that you can find amongst the tenants of all religions.

 

He suggests I use incorrect logic and don't take first things first.

 

I suggest he can ride a bicycle without training wheels, but it is not likely he could make a bicycle by himself, nor hop upon it the first time and know how to balance and pedal without some practice and failure. And most certainly it was not him that came up with the idea of a bicycle.

 

Regards, TAR

Green Peace, and much of our common, modern morality, and many "new age" thoughts about sueing polluters on behalf of nature, and thoughts of sustainability, and taking care of nature and our Earth, for our own good, are not disimilar thoughts to the personification of nature. Mother nature is responsible for us and we for her. The Egyptians had Ra, we have Gaia. It is unlikely that any morality could be had without consideration of the Sun and the Earth and each other. Or the universe beyond.

[dimreepr]

Tar, I sort of get your argument/position (I think), you’re suggesting, the all pervasive nature of religion in regards to your personal culture, means it’s difficult to think outside ‘that’ box; join the club, cultures a bi-atch init? You argue that religion, in this day and age, must, have an influence on our moral compass, as in your library analogy; but that analogy fails, because, whilst I know of the existence of libraries that doesn’t make me fluent in the dewy decimal system or even what’s contained therein; your argument fails in exactly the same way, however you try and change the focus/topic of this thread, please, whilst your sanity lasts, give up and simply do not post further nonesense.

 

Tar

Are you just ignoring the difficult posts? Or is it you have no regards for me?

[tar]

And a rose, by any other name would still smell good.

[John Cuthber]

"If you are here with morals and no religion."

Get with the programme Tar, there's no "if" about it.

I dont need to explain "how" because I can simply point out that I am here.

 

Do you not understand that you are in the same position as someone saying

"There can't be mammals that live underwater; how could they breathe or give birth and suckle their young?"

 

Well the answer is that I don't know and I don't care; dolphins do it, so it's possible.

[tar]

dimreepr,

 

Perhaps I don't see the difficulty, for I am not sure what difficult posts it is that I am ignoring.

 

Nonsense?

 

Evidently there is something already established in your logic, some assumption that you and John Cuthber hold inviolate, that I am violating to cause both of you to ask me to stop "this nonsense".

 

I am ignorant of this assumption. I am not ignoring it. Please describe it so I can assume it as well, or call it into question.

 

Regards, TAR

[John Cuthber]

One of the facts that makes your point of view nonsense is that it's at odds with reality.

As I have said on many occasions, my existence proves that you are wrong.

 

My most recent explanation was to ask you

"Do you not understand that you are in the same position as someone saying

"There can't be mammals that live underwater; how could they breathe or give birth and suckle their young?"
Well the answer is that I don't know and I don't care; dolphins do it, so it's possible."

 

And, as I might have predicted, you ignored the question (I have highlighted for you the fact that it's a question by making the punctuation really big).

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

OK, I will stop this "nonsense".

 

You are here with no religion.

 

But the society you live in got here, with it. Could have done it without God, since there isn't one and we did it, anyway. Each responsible to their own personal one. Personifying reality in whatever way seemed most appropriate at the time.

 

So you can have morals, without religion, like I can take my morals from it without having the goofy beliefs. Same difference.

 

End Program.

John,

 

I didn't think I was in such a position as you said I was in. I never said the thing about the dolphins, you did. So I did not consider it a valid question. Your inability to conceive of a way Dolphins might get the breathing and procreation and suckling done is a fault of yours, as you have not looked into it and seen how they do it. Your not caring to know has nothing to do with my caring to know.

 

So you have morals and you don't care how you got them. Good for you.

 

Regards, TAR

[John Cuthber]

I never said the thing about the dolphins,

Nobody said you did,

I said you were in the same position as some, hypothetical individual, who had said it.

Specifically, you were in the position of someone who was ignoring the real world.

 

Did you genuinely misinterpret what I said,or was that another strawman?

At least you answered the question this time.

[tar]

John Cuthber,

 

Not ignoring the real world. Just very cogniscent of it.

 

We both can easily discount illogical, impossible Gods.

 

We both can easily have morals, without basing them on impossible illogical Gods telling us to be this or that way. But you are here in the real world, as I am here in the real world, as flowers and stars are here in the real world, and such has been the case for many millenia. And left to be the source of morals are only the universe itself and how it fits together, the Sun that pumps organized energy in our direction, the way life has taken hold and passed on its successful patterns over the millenia, AND the way humans have dealt with the situation, the stories we tell our children, the institutions we establish and maintain, the laws we obey, and the common ideas we hold, as to how one should act.

 

If it was ALL in the genes, and our genes are very much alike, then we would all have perfect morals.

We do not. We have a general inability to give the other guy or girl the benefit of the doubt and consider they have gene given, perfect morals, because their behavior is often not consistent with how we would do it. And even more often we want the same mate, or the same stream, or the same apple tree, to be our mate, and water and food. We have had no problem over the years, without religion, facing common threats, and learning to share with our family and neighbors. Human judgement is available to all humans, the universe is available to all humans. Everyone should therefore under your logic and principles have the same idea of what moral behavior is. This is logical, but not evident, as I think it is immoral to lie and steal and cheat, and a large number of people I have run into in the real world, and learned about on the news, do not have these same morals.

 

So I posted the Pingry Code to illustrate to you that I was operating under a gentleman's agreement, that has more to do with common beliefs, than with natural tendencies to calculate ones own advantage.

You thought the founders of Pingry had instilled in the institution a valuable set of beliefs, which the students that wrote the code, had gotten right. You said the founders need not have been religious, except they were, in this real world case I am using to illustrate the solid connection, between religion, and my morals. The fact that you thought the code was alright, had no mention of God, or slavery, or homophobia or sexism, was indicative to me, that your morals, are probably not too far off the set that I have. They are consistent with the love and peace part of the Moslem religion, they are consistent with the general tenants of all the religious and philosophical writings that I have read (with reservations). I don't like how Mohammed usurped the power of the universe and called belief in the Prophet the same as Belief in Allah. It is not the same, for I believe in the power of the universe FIRST, and how anybody else characterises it, second. However, any time someone characterises it in a sensible fashion, that corresponds with my take, I can take that part as true.

 

Such with you, having morals, without religion. You certainly do and can, but you need to have an external judge, someone else who believes the same things, about behavior and intent that you believe.

If your own judgment, your own conscience is to be your guide, under these circumstances, what the external judge thinks about the outcomes is paramount. Logically speaking you can either identify your judges, or you can make them up, or you can put your own ideas into someone elses head (as I expect my s..thead dog to feel guilty about peeing on Moma's curtain). And since it is required to be subject to the laws of nature, and to the laws of man, neither can be ignored, whilst considering where your morals come from. If they come from nature, then God is true. If they come from man, then religion is true. Either way it is difficult to suggest you have morals, without religion having happened amoungst the founders of your code of behavior. Especially since, in the case of Western Civilization, it actually did occur in the real world.

 

When I was growing up, blacks still were expected to shine your shoes, ride in the back of the bus and not be uppity. Things changed for the better in my country, thanks to John Kennedy and Rev. Martin Luther King. Religions role can not be ignored. Religions change, they are reformed, they are straighened out, when the beliefs of the old no longer make sense to the beliefs of the young. But although slavery may never had developed in the first place without the master/slave relationship depicted in the Bible, it was the thought of being responsible to a higher judge, also depicted in the Bible and passed down, that allowed Rev. King to have a dream about how things could and should be.

 

And likewise with a humanist point of view, or reverence toward Gaia, an ideal judge, whether real or imaginary is required for the thought of morals to work.

 

And religion provided this requirement and provides it still.

 

Regards, TAR

Edited March 2, 2014 by tar

[John Cuthber]

Still here.

Sill not religious

Still got morals

That's still the reality that you are still not paying attention to.

 

It still doesn't matter how I have morals without religion it is sufficient that I have morals and no religion to prove the OP's contention.

[dimreepr]

Maybe you should visit these people Tar.

[cladking]

A belief in a deity is hardwired into the brain.

Moral are hardwired into the brain.

Either can exist without the other and some have both or neither.

 

Just as a person who can "feel" with his eyes (visual cortex) when he learns braille a person can reorganize his "hardwiring" based on belief and experience.

[John Cuthber]

A belief in a deity is hardwired into the brain.

 

The sky fairy might be wired into your brain, but He's not to be found in mine.

[dimreepr]

A belief in a deity is hardwired into the brain.

Moral are hardwired into the brain.

Either can exist without the other and some have both or neither.

 

Just as a person who can "feel" with his eyes (visual cortex) when he learns braille a person can reorganize his "hardwiring" based on belief and experience.

 

You should read the link in my last post.

[mooeypoo]

A belief in a deity is hardwired into the brain.

Moral are hardwired into the brain.

Either can exist without the other and some have both or neither.

 

Just as a person who can "feel" with his eyes (visual cortex) when he learns braille a person can reorganize his "hardwiring" based on belief and experience.

If morals were hardwired into the brain, we wouldn't have had to discuss "what is moral". We wouldn't have had to *change* what is considered moral as our societies evolve socially, either.

 

In fact, if morals were hardwired to our brains, then we'd still consider it moral to:

• Stone to death children who disobey their parents
• We would still own slaves
• We would force women who were raped to marry their rapists
• We would kill anyone who disagrees with our flavor of religion
• We would not have democracy; only top-tier religious dogmatists would decide our states' fates by theocracies
• We would kill adulterers
• We would kill anyone who wears clothes with mixed fabric
• and much much more.

 

In fact, considering the fact Christianity *changed* the Judaic "morals" by declaring the 613 rules of the Torah are no longer necessary because of Christ, then if morality was hardwired to our brains, Christianity would be invalid.

 

 

That said, a person doesn't "feel" with his eyes, he sees, and if he "feels" braille, it isn't with his eyes. The brain isn't hardwired the way you seem to think it is.

Still here.

Sill not religious

Still got morals

That's still the reality that you are still not paying attention to.

 

It still doesn't matter how I have morals without religion it is sufficient that I have morals and no religion to prove the OP's contention.

I didn't have time to read every post in this thread, so I don't know if this was properly addressed, but I think it gets even "better", John; morality based on "they told me it's bad", like it is in biblical moralities, is immoral.

 

I am not religious. I believe we shouldn't kill other people from rational reasons, including definitions of social contract and orderly society, and including the idea that it's not my place to kill a sentient being. I also believe I should be nice to people because I expect the same treatment, so it's none of my business what consenting adults do in any hour of the day or night.

 

On the flip side, religious people hold their morals not because they actually believe in them, but because it was said it's wrong in a book. Not only that, the idea of religion is that "if you do X, which is wrong, you will be punished". So, it's not about being a moral person -- it's about being afraid of punishment.

 

Very Hobbsian.

 

I claim that people who don't steal or don't murder because they're worried they'll be punished are much less moral than people who don't steal and murder because they believe those are morally wrong.

 

Not only do we not *need* religion to have morals -- holding morals because of religion is a less moral thing to do than holding morals because you actually believe in them.