quote:I actually take pride in the fact that my morality is arbitrary. ... It is the constant search for self improvement that drives me to be a better person.
This puzzles me. Better, and improved, by what standard? If moral value is arbitrary, it would be just as true to say that your change is for the worse as to say it's for the better. Aren't you measuring these arbitrary moral standards by another non-arbitrary moral standard? If not, does it mean anything to call changing your standard an improvement?
(Not to denigrate your self-improvement; I think it's a worthy goal! -- according to what I consider a non-arbitrary moral standard.)
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There is no such thing as a non-arbitrary moral standard, that's my point.
In the end my definition of good can match someone else's definition of evil. Are drugs evil? Is alcohol? Is sex? Isn't it all up to circumstance and the eye of the beholder?
When I say better and improved I say so judging by my standards. Remember, my argument here is that there is no such thing as non-arbitrary moral standards so for me to judge my behavior based on things I don't believe exist would be a bit silly. Perhaps a better question would be this: Why do you consider your standards anything but arbitrary? Do you honestly believe that your definition of morality is the only one that's correct or do you ever see room for self-improvement?
Morality isn't absolute. Take a look at the world around you, do you honestly believe that the people you may consider to be bad or evil think of themselves in these terms?
We are all righteous in our beliefs. Since there is no absolute, the only thing I can do is judge based on what I believe to be right because in the end, that's the only thing I have direct control over. It doesn't mean that my morality is "correct". I admit to the possibility of being wrong and I think that's also part of what makes me good
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I think that every single religion or philosophy is going to be at least partly flat-out incorrect about some aspect of human experience. There isn’t going to be one single moral code that can deal with every variable in every event that occurs in our lives.
I think many of us get stuck because we stop holding the truth in abeyance while we examine an idea and thereby refuse to acknowledge that there are oftentimes many different names for the same thing. Assuming there really is some sort of objective reality that we’re all immersed in, we all look at an event that happens in life and come up with a causal story that imposes a structural order on the experience of living through the event. All our cultures have built story upon story through all the years humans have been able to communicate with each other, and so we all have different viewpoints to look at events from, depending on which community we originate from.
But we oftentimes mistake the story we believe in for the actual reality, when really the story is only one way to look at some particular set of certain aspects of the events in front of us. When we believe our story accounts for everything, we come into conflict with other people who think that their story explains everything. I think this is a mistake, and instead of taking offense when people unsurprisingly don’t fit into our preconceived vision of the world (which automatically shuts down conversation, since they can’t offer alternative viewpoints without “offending” you) we should instead be looking at our beliefs as useful structures that explain many things and allow us the ability to act, but which can and must be altered whenever new information becomes available to us. Not that we should just casually chuck whatever precepts we’ve built our belief structure on, just that we should always strive to reconcile all the information we have into one huge meta-story.
The scientific, biological view of life is a story we tell each other about a certain set of causation we observe in our lives as evolved chimps. The purpose of life in this story is to live and reproduce. This does not contradict the mystical, religious stories we tell ourselves about the purpose of life. It is merely looking at one aspect of the events we’re living through. Just because there is a biological cause of an event doesn’t mean that there isn’t also a just as significant spiritual component to it. If we’re studying the biological aspects of the event, we’re not going to find much evidence for the spiritual, because we’ve decided to focus on one area of causation for the event. Likewise, when we’re searching for spiritual truths, we’re not going to immediately and obviously find a whole lot of scientifically verifiable evidence for it, because we’ve stopped looking at that aspect of the situation. But there are so many causes hidden behind causes hidden behind causes inherent in every second of life that it would be foolish to assume that one perspective is enough to account for everything. There are some things that religions just can’t account for right now, period, just as there are some things that science just can’t deal with yet.
Now, I believe that at some point, the line between spirituality and secular objective science and morality is necessarily going to be blurred, because I think that there must be an objective “scientific” reason for our spirituality and a similar “spiritual” cause for the exact same event. I think that the more we compartmentalize our beliefs, the more useless they become. We should be looking for the reasons everything fits together, not try to fit everything into whatever story we’ve come to believe. For instance, many religious people say they have “feelings” which tell them that they’re experiencing a spiritual moment. The scientist will look at the event and notice that there is a physical cause for the emotion, which is a chemically-induced response in the brain which is stimulated by whatever the religious person was doing, because they had strong pleasant psychological associations with it. That is one structure that we’re fitting the event into. But I would think that the religious person should use this as further proof that their experience was real. Of course there was a real, objective cause for the response. But there was another component to the event, which would be the spiritual aspect. It’s just another name.
The world of spirituality, of ideas and philosophy, they don’t contradict the findings of science; they in fact converge with them, are inextricable from them. Some of us compartmentalize beliefs so much that we’re incapable of seeing an event except from the single lens of our religion or our science. But why does calling a “bad action” a “sin” make it any less scientific than if we called it “informed self-interest”? They’re different names for the same thing, coming at the same event from different perspectives.
The problem arises when a system of organization we have invented does its job with competence at the very least, and some of those within the community of believers forget or never realize that the system is, in itself, nothing more than a collection of stories told from person to person asserting causality and responsibility. The authority of our stories comes not from some divine power in heaven, but from the collective acceptance of the people who believe in the story enough to act on it, since people have no authority except that which other people bestow upon them.
The current political and divisive religious climate is such that our systems of organizations are being led and advertised by loudly vocal people who believe in their personal community’s story so much that they think that anyone who does not believe the same story is fundamentally and extremely wrong, even dangerous to their way of life and the integrity of their self-story. Because they are afraid of the strangeness inherent in a differing belief system, they twist the story of individual conscience and free will by asserting that the people who disagree with them have not gone through the exact same process of searching for meaningful causative stories that they have.
"I'm right, and anyone who disagrees with me must, by definition, be either an idiot, or uneducated.” We call them bigots, we call them racists, we call them Devils or Fundamentalists. We call them Republicans, we call them Liberals or Democrats, but what we are really doing is naming people who disagree with us with an exclusionary term denoting them to be of a different community which is then used as a scapegoat to cut off any attempt at communication or compromise. Once someone has been determined to be of another tribe, no one leaves the issue of truth in abeyance to examine their actual ideas before denouncing the person who holds such an idea as being off their proverbial rocker and unworthy of continued conversation.
But there is no “them”. It’s easy to turn people who disagree with us into a faceless mob of unintelligible “others”, a vast conspiracy of aliens in human form, but they are in fact only people who believe something different from us. It’s easy to look at our “opponents” and decide that the only ones on the other team who are “good” are the ones that conform to our personal idiosyncratic definition of the term, rather than evaluating their character based on whatever moral system they themselves follow. It’s easy to stifle honest dialogue by taking needless offense and thereby effectively ending conversation, or framing everything as a “debate”, with clear winners and losers, rather than the much more important but by far more challenging exchange of differing perspectives without rancor.
Rationalizing our animalistic tribalism, intellectualizing it, padding it with the psychobabble that we've learned from bad television writing and pretentious books, it makes it so being part of a group that is being oppressed by the big, scary conspiracy of Republicans or Liberals or Religious Nuts or Athiestic Communists is a badge of honor, something that is meant to be seen as tragic and ennobling by the others around us, a sacred story that we believe in because there is a certain unassailable moral superiority to playing the victim.
Endlessly talking or writing about the inherent evilness of our opponents doesn’t actually help solve the problems. Writing up strawman arguments and propaganda in place of honestly and earnestly discussing areas of moral ambiguity merely supports our personal sacred story by subtly implying that all the histrionics we put ourselves through are worthy of being written down, enshrined on the paper for all time, detritus gleaned from our lofty brows that is meant to be worshiped by the lowly Others who are loved in return only in proportion to the empirically-measured amount that they agree with us. We’re merely babbling to ourselves; clarifying our ideas, no doubt, but nevertheless still forcing others to abide within the strict confines of our interpretation of their actions.
Our preconcieved notions about what a person is like based not on the evidence in front of us but by their affiliation with a different group or religion might be pleasing to our egos, but it has nothing to do with the reality, which might very well be unpleasant, but which will have the distinct advantage of being real.
This is why I believe religions have done no more and no less harm than any other thought system, and can actually be beneficial to the believers. In every culture, in every system of thought, there are going to be moral dead-ends, mistakes, blatant masturbatory rationalizations for twisting stories into justifications for evil personal actions. But we shouldn’t separate what we learn from religion from what we learn from science; they’re both trying to structure reality based on almost hopelessly inaccurate or incomplete information, due to the fact that it is so hard for our human brains, constrained by our hideously inadequate senses, to comprehend the whole of existence. So I don’t think that secular culture is any “better” than religious culture, I think that they merely define things differently and have different problems that spring up from the assumptions that their community is founded on. I do believe that eventually we’ll find that one belief structure or another is more “correct” than the others, and has the best definitions of “good” and “evil” for humans, and if some secularists or religious people think that their structure is that correct way, I can only hope to learn from them. I think that with new advances made in our understanding of the world, ever-changing moral situations will come up that have never been dealt with before, and we need to use every bit of information we have, religious and scientific both, to discover reliable belief structures so that we can have the freedom to act and choose to live our lives the way we believe we should.
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My little story of the 2 guys illustrates my belief. You can have 2 different people and one of them can be more moral in many people's eyes, the guy who abstains from sex, but in reality he is very amoral as his behavior is more destructive than the guy who is "wasting so many girls".
I think hurting other people on purpose is not relative and is non-arbitrary. There is a black and white.
And there are a lot of people who will go to the ends of the earth to camouflage their behavior so that it doesn't appear that they are hurting other people on purpose, but they really are.
I think the whole guy thing saying to spouses, "I cheated on you because I couldn't help it, because I was weak, and you know I'm a guy and guys can't control their hormones, but I didn't really want to hurt you," is just an elaborate camouflage perpetuated by guys and girls who don't want to admit the guy they love deliberately hurt them. "Boys will be boys" is a lie. Not all boys needlessly hurt the women in their world.
But I also believe that the same behavior does not mean the same degree of intended hurt. A guy who cheats and comes from a culture that is very strong on being faithful and treating women fairly is much worse than a guy who cheats but whose culture just isn't very strong on being faithful. Yeah, this is relative, but it admits that both behaviors are bad, but that one is certainly worse because of motive.
So people that know the difference between good and bad have more ability to be good and bad. But someone who honestly does not have strong good or bad values is not as bad if they choose to do bad things. Knowing if someone really has those values is always a mystery, and at least my religion claims that God knows everyones' hearts and will judge them according to what their motives were.
I think the law even agrees with this on crimes. There are various degrees of murder, and the division between them is the motive of the perpetrator.
And I think the law draws the line that anything that hurts another person past a certain degree is a crime, like stealing their property, libel, murder, etc.
How can anyone say that hurting another person intentionally isn't bad?
And many times it seems to me that people in my culture, American culture, are constantly trying to change my culture so that bad behavior of the past is no longer bad. Certainly "free love" fits this category. And they justify it by saying that we've exposed and done away with so many accepted bad culture behaviors from the past like slavery, the restrictions on sex is another one of those bad culture behaviors and it must be done away with. I don't agree.
To me they are trading one culturally accepted destructive and hurtful behavoir and trying to replace it by making another culturally unaccepted destrucive and hurtful behavoir acceptable. In the end, they have ballanced the scales and society hasn't improved at all. And it is probable they have made more bad behavoirs acceptable than they have eliminated previously acceptable bad behavior.
By bad, I mean intentionally hurtful. For these people, they know it is wrong. For the generation that grows up in the culture that was created for them, they have less of a conviction that their culture is wrong, and they aren't to be blamed as much as the people who created the culture.
And it applies for both slavery and sex. The people who started slavery in USA are much more guilty than the people who just went along with what everyone else was doing. And the people who fought to keep slavery in the face of everyone telling them it was wrong, are much more guilty than the people who just went along with what everyone else was doing.
Certianly neither of them was noble. But motive matters.
And that makes people who are trying to manipulate our modern culture to make it more acceptable to hurt other people, or pave the way for it to be acceptable down the road, are fully guilty of hurting other people. And that is what I think the article that started this thread is attempting to do by attacking one institution that tries to do good to people (with admittedly a spotty record, but it is does a good enough job IMO).
Sorry for the long rant. I just don't get how anyone can say there is no good or bad.
quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Mormon leaders have said the real trials of faith come when they are blessed with abundance (money, safety, and security), because then you don't have fear dictating your every move.
Mormons actually believe the plan of salvation according to Satan is: make everyone behave using any means possible, especially fear.
Where do you get that from? I gotta tell you, I've been going to and been a member of the LDS church for decades, and never have I heard either of those things said, nor do I believe them.
It is true that our leaders have warned us against the sin of pride, and we do believe that Satan proposed a plan that involved him making all of us behave. But neither of those statements involve fear. That would be your own conclusion you're adding.
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Edit: this was responding to human, not quid.
Edit #2: Rereading your post, I think I totally misunderstood you when I typed this one. Sigh. I'll leave it up, tho.
Hm. I hope you don't think I'm one of the people saying that there is no good or bad.
I think that buried deep down somewhere in life, there is an absolute good and an absolute bad, or equivalent values. The problem is that humans have such an inadequate grasp of reality that when we build our self-stories, we're going to contradict each other in our definitions of "good" and "bad".
In one culture, someone might act in a way that causes me pain based on what I define as bad. But in his culture, the exact same event might have been a sign of respect or honor. Both of us might have been acting with the best intentions in the world, but because of our differing understandings of reality and the different conclusions we've reached, we end up causing pain.
I don't think any one religion or philosophy has a monopoly on the truth; the ones that last a long time each probably have some part of the puzzle of truth to them. So an athiest can easily be just as "good" a person as a theist, and vice versa.
It doesn't mean that there is no good or bad, or that one person can't be more "correct" than another. I think I'm closer to the ideal of good than someone who practices ritual human sacrifice or something is, for instance *grin*. It's just that while there might absolutely be a totally correct view of life, where good and bad are clearly defined, I think that in our day-to-day interactions with each other, we're dealing with a constant gray.
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Man, I understand and accept that there are a lot of moral relativists in this thread, but please don't pigeonhole atheism by saying it goes naturally with the idea that there's no absolute morality. And understand what you're committed to!
quote:Why do you consider your standards anything but arbitrary?
For one thing, because I agree with almost everyone who has ever lived (including even moral monsters like Hitler) about a great number of moral questions: for example, is it OK to torture an infant?
For another thing, because I am quite certain that I know the objective truth about a lot of moral facts: for instance that it was really wrong for the Nazis to kill Jews.
quote:Do you honestly believe that your definition of morality is the only one that's correct or do you ever see room for self-improvement?
No. I don't even believe that my moral standards are correct, because I'm sure that I've made mistakes in my reasoning somewhere down the line. For example, I recognize that I may be wrong about whether it's OK to eat animals. This is nothing special about morality. I also recognize that some of my beliefs about math and science are definitely wrong (though I don't know which ones). We make mistakes, that doesn't mean there's no truth out there to find.
quote:Morality isn't absolute. Take a look at the world around you, do you honestly believe that the people you may consider to be bad or evil think of themselves in these terms?
All that is entirely compatible with their being wrong, you understand.
quote:Since there is no absolute, the only thing I can do is judge based on what I believe to be right because in the end, that's the only thing I have direct control over. It doesn't mean that my morality is "correct". I admit to the possibility of being wrong and I think that's also part of what makes me good
You're being self-contradictory. If there's no truth about what's right and wrong, how could it be possible for you to be wrong about it?
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I don't know what it would mean for a statement about morality to be true. Typically you say a statement is true if it agrees with reality. In what way can, say, the statement, "It's wrong to torture an infant." agree or disagree with reality? Certainly you can say that you personally get such a feeling of repugnance when you think about torturing infants that you would never do it and would stop others from doing it. It's also likely that the vast majority of people have the same feelings. Is that really all we need for the statement to be true?
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"It's wrong to torture an infant" is true if it's really wrong to torture an infant.
Among other things, this means that we should prevent people from torturing infants, that we should be angry at people who do torture them, and that we shouldn't do it ourselves.
Note the central importance of the word should in what I said above. Moral truths are a kind of true statement of the form "I should..." or better, "we all should..."
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quote: please don't pigeonhole atheism by saying it goes naturally with the idea that there's no absolute morality
Well, if you're an atheist who believes in absolute morality, you're going to have difficulty proving your case without resorting to something like Utilitarianism or Natural Law. Most non-theist arguments I've seen for moral absolutes are really just very stubborn relativist arguments.
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quote:If there's no truth about what's right and wrong, how could it be possible for you to be wrong about it?
You're using "right" and "wrong" differently within the same sentence. In other words, you're using "wrong" to mean "something we should not do" AND "factually incorrect" at the same time, and you probably shouldn't.
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That's how I intended it, Tom. I probably should've used two different words, but replace the second instance of 'wrong' with 'mistaken and you get:
quote:If there's no truth about what's right and wrong, how could it be possible for you to be mistaken about it?
and my point still stands.
You can't believe something falsely unless it's really false.
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Rico, isn't your moral standard 100% correct, according to itself? So how can it be improved?
How can you admit the possibility of your standard being wrong, when there is no standard by which to judge "wrong," other than itself? It's it always right, by definition?
I'll answer your questions as best I can:
quote:Do you honestly believe that your definition of morality is the only one that's correct or do you ever see room for self-improvement?
I don't think my definition of morality is perfect, because I believe there is a standard by which to judge it, with which I am not perfectly familiar. If I thought there were no such standard, any standard would be equally valuable; so how could I develop a better one?
quote:Morality isn't absolute. Take a look at the world around you, do you honestly believe that the people you may consider to be bad or evil think of themselves in these terms?
I don't think many people think of themselves as evil. I don't get the connection of that to morality being absolute. I think you may be talking about the issue of personal worth, whereas I was talking about standards of right and wrong action.
...but that's just to answer questions.
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quote: If there's no truth about what's right and wrong, how could it be possible for you to be mistaken about it?
Well, for one thing, if you believe there IS a truth about what's right and wrong, and there ISN'T one, you're mistaken. Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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An atheist moral code relies on our natural sense of empathy and fairness. We have the ability to understand others, and learning what is "moral" means considering the the physical and emotional impact of your actions. Instead of learning what behavior is moral through the application and enforcement of rules, this morality fosters an understanding of the whys behind acceptable behavior.
(snip)
For example, look at sexual relationships. Where (I would say) religion-based morality leads to the prevalence of abstinence-only sex-ed, an atheist would look at the issue entirely differently. We recognize the complexity of sexual relationships and the consequences of specific sexual actions, but we do not outright reject premarital sex, because there is no moral authority to say that that is always the "right" thing to do. Instead, we recognize that marriages provide many great benefits, especially the stability that is so important when children become involved. Atheists recognize that sex can be fun and enriching outside of marriage as well, and when people spend their time thinking about the consequences of their actions, they generally make decent choices. Athiest morality wouldn't lead to less premarital sex, but that wouldn't be the goal. Without an authoritarian moral framework, one is free to rationally examine all possibilities for action and choose the one that best matches his or her individual situation.
This morality doesn't make the claim that it knows best for everybody. It recognizes some universal human goals, such as peace and understanding, and it trusts us to make our own choices to bring those goals about.
This is perfectly compatible with how I (a devout theist) make moral choices.
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quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Mormon leaders have said the real trials of faith come when they are blessed with abundance (money, safety, and security), because then you don't have fear dictating your every move.
Mormons actually believe the plan of salvation according to Satan is: make everyone behave using any means possible, especially fear.
Where do you get that from? I gotta tell you, I've been going to and been a member of the LDS church for decades, and never have I heard either of those things said, nor do I believe them.
It is true that our leaders have warned us against the sin of pride, and we do believe that Satan proposed a plan that involved him making all of us behave. But neither of those statements involve fear. That would be your own conclusion you're adding.
The first comment is tied to leaders referring to the Book of Mormon passages that talk about how the Nephites started being wicked everytime the Lamanites left them alone. Seems like I've heard it said so many times I have no idea who said it.
But I only heard one person attribute one cause to fear. He was teaching about motivation and how fear, reward, and love are the 3 motivators in life.
He also linked it as the favorite motivator of Satan.
So you are right, the fear part isn't official Mormon doctrine.
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But Destineer, what if someone says, "I don't care that we shouldn't do this; I'm going to do it anyway."? Demonstrating to them that it's true we shouldn't do this isn't going to make them change their mind, because they just said they don't care about that.
I am one of those people who don't care about "should." I'm against, say, torturing infants because it fills me with such repugnance I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I did it or let it happen when I could have stopped it. If that's what you take "should" to mean, fine, but I think you mean something else.
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quote:Originally posted by Zotto!: Edit: this was responding to human, not quid.
Edit #2: Rereading your post, I think I totally misunderstood you when I typed this one. Sigh. I'll leave it up, tho.
Hm. I hope you don't think I'm one of the people saying that there is no good or bad.
Nope. You are saying almost exactly a lot of things I have said, like we are 99% chemical reactions. Being offended (hurt) is a chemical reaction and how one gets hurt varies in different cultures.
I'll add that just because it is a chemical reaction, doesn't make it ok. In fact, my thesis is that hurting people intentionally and knowingly is bad, and is the root of all morals and criminal laws for that matter. And knowing what another person intended and knew is hard, but not always impossible to know. And our laws try very hard to define what is good and bad so everyone knows. And that is the same goal of religions. And an article that says "belief in God damages society" is a veiled attempt to destroy all the work of religions to set what is right and wrong.
If religions' definition is destroyed, what is to stop people from destroying society's definitions? You can see the consequences of this in Nazi Germany, where it became acceptable to intentionally hurt Jews.
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quote:Originally posted by Destineer: You're being a bit obtuse here. I'm saying that it's impossible to believe that
a) There's no right answer to moral questions.
b) I could be wrong about some moral questions.
That's what Rico said, and I claim that it's self-contradictory.
See I think you have the scope of my thoughts confused. While I claim that there is no such thing as non-arbitrary universal morality, I have also claimed to follow a moral code of my own. The code was built up using life experience, how I was raised, religion and philosophy. One scope applies universally while the other one applies to just me. My point was that I have no control over universal morality because we have clearly seen that the standards for morality tend to change over time. Morality as we know it isn't the same as it was thousands of years ago, so to claim that the standards we follow now are the "right" ones would be somewhat foolish in my eyes. There have been acceptable behaviors in the past that we now deem unacceptable, that clearly implies a change in morality over time which then leads me to believe that some of the values we see as "right" today might be "wrong" tomorrow.
As far as me being individually wrong about moral questions when I believe my code to be right: It's quite simple really. Evidence, ideas, perspective. Those are the new inputs I can get from the outside world that can change how I view my own morality. I may be doing something I think is right, but when someone presents me with new information I can take that new info and merge it with my existing belief.
I don't know all the facts, I can't see all the perspectives and I certainly haven't thought about everything there is to think about. I don't believe my definition of good is wrong right now, but if someone comes to me with new information that upon analysis leads me to believe my actions were incorrect in the past, I'd be morally inclined to fixing my behavior so that it once again matches my definition of "good".
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I believe that what most people here are propsing is not to destroy all definitions of morality(religious and societal). I believe that the thrust of most all of the posts here is that we should look deeply into what is "good" and "bad," understand that moral relativism has existed in the past and continues into the present day (and will, into the future), and develop a rational, working policy of morals, either for ourselves, our local society, and/or the global society.
The goal, I thought, was to recognize the reality of morals and ethics as they have existed over time, and as they exist now, and then see how they might be adjusted to work better.
I don't recall who said this before, about a person's morality being 100% correct, but nothing is ever 100% correct. Except, of course, that very last statement. I think. But seriously, I think that approaching 100% correctness is a worthy goal, as long as one realizes that one will truly never get there (and that's the realization that Pat Robertson, etc., will never have).
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quote:But Destineer, what if someone says, "I don't care that we shouldn't do this; I'm going to do it anyway."? Demonstrating to them that it's true we shouldn't do this isn't going to make them change their mind, because they just said they don't care about that.
There certainly are people like this. As long as we can agree that they're being immoral, I'm happy.
quote:I may be doing something I think is right, but when someone presents me with new information I can take that new info and merge it with my existing belief.
Sounds to me like you're saying it's possible you could find some evidence that what you previously thought was right isn't really right. For that to happen, there has to be something that is really right.
quote:I don't know all the facts, I can't see all the perspectives and I certainly haven't thought about everything there is to think about. I don't believe my definition of good is wrong right now, but if someone comes to me with new information that upon analysis leads me to believe my actions were incorrect in the past, I'd be morally inclined to fixing my behavior so that it once again matches my definition of "good".
Again, this doesn't really sound like moral relativism. It sounds like you're saying you can find out you were mistaken about your ethical beliefs. That's just not compatible with the idea that there are no ethical truths. If you can be mistaken about something, there has to be a fact of the matter for you to be mistaken about.
What about the moral system you would form if you did know all the facts? Wouldn't that be an objective morality?
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To clarify what I'm trying to say, Rico: I think it's strange that you claim there are no objective truths about morality, but then make a bunch of statements that I (a moral absolutist) would be happy to accept. Things like "for all I know I could be wrong about some moral facts." Well, sure. I agree. In fact I'm almost certain that some of my moral judgements are wrong. But I'm not a relativist, because I believe that there are moral truths out there. It's just that I'm ignorant of some of them.
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quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: If religions' definition is destroyed, what is to stop people from destroying society's definitions? You can see the consequences of this in Nazi Germany, where it became acceptable to intentionally hurt Jews.
I should add, that I don't think the goal of redefining morals will lead to what happened in Nazi Germany.
quote:Originally posted by ssywak: The goal, I thought, was to recognize the reality of morals and ethics as they have existed over time, and as they exist now, and then see how they might be adjusted to work better.
But the picture I have right now is that the only people trying to redefine morals are people who want to take the power away from religions. Take the social attitudes on sex, and religion in general. "Belief in God damages society"? How can a statement like that give a religion a fair share?
So I'm fairly unwilling to cooperate in an attempt to redefine them because I have no trust that the attempt will be fair.
I'm not saying that religions don't need help. Just that a lot of the help offerred to help redefine religions' definitions are not always wanted.
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Again, I'm judging right and wrong based on the things that shaped my current morality. I have my own standards of right and wrong, but I don't insist that they are 100% correct and if new information comes to light that I didn't know or think about before, I'm likely to make some alterations to my beliefs.
How is that not relative? It is entirely dependent on new information, if my code of morals dictated "Don't eat cows" were I to believe it is an absolute truth, I'd follow this command on every single ocassion without even thinking about it. Under relativism however, my morality is flexible, if my code told me not to eat cows but later I find out that if I don't eat cows the world will end, I'm likely to begin eating cows every once in a while, because after some analysis I found my past belief to be flawed in the way that it would make the world come to an end. I don't want that, so I'll change my code of behavior so that it better matches what I think would be good.
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quote:I don't think many people think of themselves as evil. I don't get the connection of that to morality being absolute. I think you may be talking about the issue of personal worth, whereas I was talking about standards of right and wrong action.
Because if morality were absolute nobody would ever consider what you see as "the wrong action" as "the right action" and factually, there are lots of instances where this isn't the case.
Easy example: Abortion.
Do you honestly believe that the people for either side of the argument think that what they're doing is "wrong"? If this were true, it wouldn't be an issue.
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quote:Originally posted by Rico: Easy example: Abortion.
Do you honestly believe that the people for either side of the argument think that what they're doing is "wrong"? If this were true, it wouldn't be an issue.
Some people make wrong things easier to do by rationalizing them, making them no longer "wrong". I call this lying to oneself and think everyone does it.
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Go back and re-read this guy's study (the one shat started this whole thread off). Do you think he's being biased, or just that he's posed a hypothetical, and is trying to determine its validity?
Besides, what's wrong with taking the "power" to define morals away from religion? Currently, I really do not like the particular brand of religion that the current Republican administration is using to define morality.
There are other questions to ask, besides:
Belief in God =? Damage to a society
There's also:
Belief in God =? Benefit to a society
and
Belief in NO God =? Damage to a society
and
Belief in NO God =? Benefit to a society
But let's compromise: let's chose a religion at random, and use its moral values. Wahabiism, anyone?
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quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Some people make wrong things easier to do by rationalizing them, making them no longer "wrong". I call this lying to oneself and think everyone does it.
That's pretty harsh, there. So it's entirely impossible that some people don't believe that abortion is automatically wrong?
I'd really like to see this arbitrary moral code of yours entirely written out so that I can figure out how often I lie to myself, O Great Moral Leader.
quote:I have my own standards of right and wrong, but I don't insist that they are 100% correct and if new information comes to light that I didn't know or think about before, I'm likely to make some alterations to my beliefs.
I appreciate the effort you;re making to communicate. In making my own, I'll try this: in deciding whether your moral standard is correct, what measure of validity will you use? What will you compare it to?
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quote:Again, I'm judging right and wrong based on the things that shaped my current morality. I have my own standards of right and wrong, but I don't insist that they are 100% correct and if new information comes to light that I didn't know or think about before, I'm likely to make some alterations to my beliefs.
How is that not relative?
Because all of human knowledge, even including science, is "relative" in the way you describe. It's tentative and can be revised in response to new information. Despite being "relative" in your sense, scientific knowledge is still concerned with real facts about the world. So ethics can be "relative" in your sense while still seeking after truth.
Real moral relativism doesn't just mean that you might not have the whole truth. It means there is no truth out there to find, only our social customs and habits. The arguments you've given here only support the first view, not the second. So they don't support moral relativism.
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The trouble with that list is that humans aren't a community. There are uncounted numbers of human communities, but by no means does that make all humans members of one community, no more than all lions are members of a single pride.
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Destineer,
quote:Therefore, what's good for you also makes the world better, so I have to consider your interests as well as my own. The same goes for everyone alive.
You persist in thinking that human beings are, I don't know, your assumptions seem based on the same flawed reasoning that the list Chris mentioned is: human beings are not all members of the same pack. Now you and I may wish we were, because indeed that would almost certainly result in less strife between human beings, and thus more prosperity and happiness...but right now it's not actually the case.
What is good for Nhan in Vietnam may not conceivably be good for Jeff in the USA. Heck, what's good for Geoff in Orlando may not be good for Jeff in Melbourne.
Why care about what's good for Nhan in Vietnam, Destineer? It's good for me to have cheaply produced consumer goods. It's not as good for Nhan to be working all day making chew-toys or cheap electronics. Why should I care about Nhan? All of your reasons thus far have either been because emotionally you desire to uplift Nhan, or that it's better for the species as a whole.
quote:I disagree. There are all sorts of things that I do for other reasons besides these two. When I do a math problem, do I get the right answer for evolutionary reasons? Only in a very indirect sense, because it was evolutionarily useful that my ancestors be able to understand math. There's a better way of explaining why I get the right result: because it's true, and my way of discovering mathematical truths is reliable.
Well, we were talking about morality. My mistake, I didn't mean all things. Certainly not math problems.
quote:Now think about a moral situation; say I'm deciding whether to betray my friend. Just like in the mathematical situation, I use my faculties -- in this case, my sense of empathy for my friend and my notion of duty -- to reach an answer. The right answer.
This is by no means always the right answer, and the very faculties you cite in your next paragraph are derived either from emotion or evolution. That's all the atheist has, ultimately, informing his decision to be good. Duty? Derived from placing the need of the pack over one's own need. Empathy? The same thing, and both have potential for future protection.
quote:These moral faculties, empathy and sense of duty, are evolved faculties, I grant. And in some ways they evolved imperfectly -- for example, I have a much stronger natural sense of duty for my neighbors than for people in China, even though I know the Chinese people matter just as much. But overall my moral faculties are reliable, and where they're not I can correct them by learning more about ethics. Moral knowledge is not so different from any other sort of knowledge.
Moral knowledge is drastically different from other types of knowledge. Scientific knowledge can be tested, after all. Verified, and heaps of disproved ideas usually lie in a currently accepted idea's wake. Moral knowledge, though, is subject to infinite variables. Variables of emotion, of upbringing, of religion, of circumstance. You mentioned China. Eastern and Western cultures have drastically different answers to a great many moral questions, Destineer.
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quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: Some people make wrong things easier to do by rationalizing them, making them no longer "wrong". I call this lying to oneself and think everyone does it.
That's pretty harsh, there. So it's entirely impossible that some people don't believe that abortion is automatically wrong?
I'd really like to see this arbitrary moral code of yours entirely written out so that I can figure out how often I lie to myself, O Great Moral Leader.
-pH
I could be the one lying to myself you know. Not like I'm trying to slam everyone out there.
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posted
But yeah, I think if I'm doing something I know is wrong I justify it by lying to myself. And as I've said, if a person doesn't know it is wrong, they obviously don't have to lie to themselves to justify it.
Even if I do something I think is right, but it isn't (its very bad), I still have to either lie to myself or convince myself I've been believing lies, or I suppose just being taught badly, about the behavior to change.
And as far as the abortion issue, I think there are enough lies involved on both sides to bake everyone a cake out of them. I tend to stay out of the mess because I don't know.
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posted
I think that if a person "doesn't know" that doing X is wrong, then it's not wrong for that person.
If he/she later "finds out" (decides) that it's wrong, he/she might change views and feel guilty for past actions. But at the time, it wasn't wrong.
I remember being taught in a Sunday School class that Christianity even allows for this kind of ignorance, as children are not necessarily held accountable for breaking moral codes that they were not aware of.
quote:I could be the one lying to myself you know. Not like I'm trying to slam everyone out there.
So... doesn't that just prove the point I was trying to make?
Yes and no. I mean, I think all of us here actually have pretty good morals, no matter what sides we take so I don't really find that I'm totally disagreeing with anything anyone says.
But no, because I still think there is an ultimate right and a wrong and we are suppose to find out what they are, not decide for ourselves what they are. And religion is the great way to learn which is which.
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quote:Originally posted by pH: I think that if a person "doesn't know" that doing X is wrong, then it's not wrong for that person.
I never said it was. I thought I was going through great lengths to say that. But I still believe there is an ultimate right and wrong... And if a person is choosing to do wrong, as I think nobody here really is addressing, then they have to lie to themselves to do it.
It seems like everyone here thinks everybody tries to do the right thing when I know there are mean and evil people who learn what the right thing is and then promptly do the opposite, at least what they can get away with in their culture and by nullifiying their own guilt by lying to themselves to make it go away. I would label blowing up abortion clinics in this category.
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quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: at least what they can get away with in their culture and by nullifiying their own guilt by lying to themselves to make it go away. I would label blowing up abortion clinics in this category.
And I would label most terrorists into the same category. It could be argued that some or most of them really don't know what they are doing is wrong, but I have a hard time believing that the terrorist leaders don't know exactly what they are doing.
Edit: I think terrorists could believe they are doing the right thing because they are so indoctrinated by their culture. But I don't believe there is anyone in America who is so badly indoctrinated they don't know blowing up other Americans is wrong. I think they have to lie to themselves to do it.
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posted
Sure, for an American, blowing up other people is considered bad.
But maybe for someone from Jasdlkfh, blowing up other people is considered an honorable death for those who die.
Is it still wrong for the person from Jasdlkfh? It's wrong to YOU, sure. But it's not wrong to THEM.
It sounds like a huge contradiction for you to say, "Well, if you don't know it's wrong, then it's not wrong" but also say, "There is an objective moral code that can be applied universally."
quote:Originally posted by ssywak: Besides, what's wrong with taking the "power" to define morals away from religion?
A lot of religious people would get angrier.
quote:Currently, I really do not like the particular brand of religion that the current Republican administration is using to define morality.[/QB]
I think their answer to evolution is... stupid too. And they do push the bounds of being a police state. I don't want to really take this into politics, since I would lose that discussion quickly...
quote:There are other questions to ask, besides: ...
Who is defining morals if religions don't? Media outlets? Universities? Politcial leaders? Hollywood? I'm much less fond of any of these sources than any religion I can think of.
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quote:Originally posted by pH: It sounds like a huge contradiction for you to say, "Well, if you don't know it's wrong, then it's not wrong" but also say, "There is an objective moral code that can be applied universally."
People who don't know what they are doing can still be doing the wrong thing "universally". But, it says something about a person, that no matter what their culture is, that they choose to do what they really believe is right, or whether they choose to do what they know is wrong.
If someone who chooses wrong things on purpose learns all of the universal rights and wrongs, they are going to keep doing the wrongs. But a person who tries to do what they think is right will most likely keep doing what is right if they learned all the universal rights and wrongs.
To me the universal right and wrong can be summed up by asking if the behavior hurts other people. Somewhere there has got to be allowances to tack the word "needlessly" to the end of that sentence. But that is where morals get all fuzzy.
Most behavior should not hurt other people and the only time you should hurt others is when others are seeking to hurt you and you have no choice but to protect yourself. Assuming you strive to help other people when you aren't being threatened.
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quote:Who is defining morals if religions don't? Media outlets? Universities? Politcial leaders? Hollywood? I'm much less fond of any of these sources than any religion I can think of.
Than any religion YOU LIKE that you can think of.
I can think of many ancient religions that you would claim violated this objective moral code.
posted
Also, I wonder how one would go about teaching all these universal rights and wrongs to someone who was brought up in a society that had different values.
Let's say that in Jasdlkfh, all people over the age of fifteen are required to wear blue baseball caps because that is what is considered morally right to do. This tradition has been carried on for centuries.
Well, a missionary comes along and tells them that REALLY, they're supposed to be wearing red tophats. Because that's what the missionary's god wants, and the missionary's god is clearly right and defines the objective universal morality. In the missionary's mind, of course, because really none of this can be proven in an objective manner.
What does it say about the people of Jaslkfh if they don't believe him? They've been informed. Are they all sinners now because they won't wear red tophats?
quote:Originally posted by pH: What does it say about the people of Jaslkfh if they don't believe him? They've been informed. Are they all sinners now because they won't wear red tophats?
Um. Yeah. But only if the person was "informed" well. In my religion there are allowances that just saying "bad = dvorak, good = qwerty" isn't really all there is to it. We believe that there will be a witness of the truth from the Holy Spirit. Missionaries are instructed to be worthy of having the Holy Spirit testify of their words, and to know the truth themselves so they can relate it. There are like 60,000 Mormons missionaries...
After telling people "the truth" and then having them say the Holy Spirit didn't witness to them always feels like being hit in the head with a rock and I've had it happen. What can I say. Maybe I was bad that day, the person lied, or I'm wrong.
In the absense of religion or religious unity, you got the great thinkers like the ones who came up with the US Constitution.
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quote:Who is defining morals if religions don't? Media outlets? Universities? Politcial leaders? Hollywood? I'm much less fond of any of these sources than any religion I can think of.
Than any religion YOU LIKE that you can think of.
I can think of many ancient religions that you would claim violated this objective moral code.
-pH
I was talking about today. "Cults" not included. So Mormonism is out I guess.
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quote:Originally posted by human_2.0: In the absense of religion or religious unity, you got the great thinkers like the ones who came up with the US Constitution.
I'm just not sure there is much consensus on who is a great thinker now-a-days.
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posted
I was talking about I can't think of any religion *today*, if the other choices included Media outlets, Universities, Politcial leaders, and Hollywood.
Ironically, I've now decided that the US government basically designates politicians as our moral leaders as they are the ones passing and enforcing laws on what is ok and not ok behavior, and "non-partisans" judge if people have broken them.
And politicians turn to Universities and other high intelectuals to help make their decisions. And politicians are elected by the public, which is influenced strongly by the media outlets, Hollywood, and religions. And those things also influence politicians.
Everything beyond laws is religious teachings, and that is enforced by families, friends and comunities and it is the families, friends, and communities (including churches) that decides what is right and wrong for a group.
We are very free to choose which version of right and wrong we want to believe.
AFAIK, the only version of right and wrong that says that anyone can have their own version and there is no universal is ... I don't know the name to peg it exactly. Relativism? Atheism? I don't know. Are there others? Does Buddism say anyone can believe what is right and wrong and they aren't right or wrong?
Edit: About ancient religions, I got it easy because Christianity claims to come from the days of Christ, and before that from Adam to Abraham to Moses down to Christ (for those Christian religions that believe those ancient people really existed). I'm not much on burning incense to Zeus.
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In other words, you're using "wrong" to mean "something we should not do" AND "factually incorrect" at the same time, and you probably shouldn't.
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