Morals without God or Darwin, just Empathy

Dear Stile, I do feel that there is so much sense in the God-based moral system, and it almost hurts to see people struggling to explain without God. The God-based system is just very misunderstood. It is often viewed as a cause, rather than an effect. Belief in God does not cause morality, not does following the literal words of the Bible. The Bible itself and the fear of God, are the effects of our inability to understnad these things. If you have an ability as you say...You can choose to bake a cake.
You can choose to have morals.
If you don't feel like baking, no one cares.
What do you think of people who do not choose morals?

It doesn't. The commandments and rules of the Bible are of no use when applied without reasoning.Btw, it is 'Toward Men of Good Will', not 'Good Will Towards All'.

Good. Reducing the number of people can just as easily increase our survival chances. You may have forgotten, but often doing evil to someone helps you yourself. If this is purely about survival, who wins? You, or someone else? Do you think it is ok to do bad things when no one else is involved at all? Or even to think about evil? For example, to lust after your best friend's wife?

I do, sir. I see only partial pictures, no coherance. You may give me a detailed explanation of brain functions which tell us to feel selfish or emphatic. Sounds good, but you forgot one thing; we don't do what our brain tells us.For example, when we feel like being selfish, we don't have to. That is what makes the difference between a 'natural' person, and a hero. If it is natural to act selfish, we would see no wrong in it. We say 'it is human nature to act selfishly some of the time' but we hold up as great examples those who do not. We say humans will never evolve beyond war, but we know we hate war. We are looking to something more than natural without even knowing it.

Some see no wrong in selfish actions which originate in their brain.
Some DO see wrong in the action, and therefore admit that they have no trust in their emotions and brains. They are trusting in something unseen, which I have dubbed, a moral compass. In your idea, we do not trust our brains because the world around us also does not when it comes to selfishness, correct? What is the world around us, into which we have been socialized, trust in? I assume that it is the moral compass as well.Where did we get that? You can not use 'socialization' again. That is out the door.And I DO have a question; with repeated ignoring of our brain and all of its bio-chemicals, can we cause our brain to stop putting out these chemicals? Can we make ourselves stop feeling selfish?

I do not have a God-based moral system as you might imagine it to be. It is not 'God said no!'. It is more of lloking at good and bad things in the world, and saying 'God is the good of the worlc' and therefore doing more good to be more like Him. It is a system which believes in Good as something which is more than a human brain function which chnages willy-nilly from day to day. Our ideas of good certainly do change, as we do not know very much of God to begin with, and many of them do have to do with survival, but not because survival is so important.When I do things because of empathy for another, it is empathy and respect for the soul. I feel for the soul, and I care for the body as it is the home of the soul and it is not my right to end a life before God has done His work with it.I use my intellect when deciding what is right for the situation. If the Bible says 'thou shalt not bear false witness' I must decide if lying will save someone, or hurt someone. I do this intellectually and empathically, but again not simply because I feel sorry for that person and I would not want to be hurt, but because I know that I have no right to cause them harm.God-based morality does not deny evolved empathy or use of intellect. It just considers these as part of the arsenal and tools which God gave us to survive, not as physical creatures alone, but as spiritual and immortal.

Correct. And nothing to do with whether you could be the one doing the killing. It is an un-emotional, objective thought which is triggered by nothing and no chemical until the moment you are put in that position of being killed or killing. Most of us see crime on tv and feel empathy...we walk away and quite calmly know that the person is no longer suffering, but that the action was wrong. Not because the person suffered; often they do not. Not because we feel death is bad; it is inevitable. It is because we know that we have no right to take life as we have no ability to give it. We subconsciously know we are messing on God's ground. At least that is how I feel about it.

I have written to you because I think you have been dissatisfied as I am with some of the reasons people have given for morality. It is hard to explain, but I feel there is more to it. Making it all survival instinct is making us back into natural animals, and even if I believe in evolution, I believe we have evolved to realize that there is more to life than our body or the visible universe. We have evolved detectors; emotions, spiritual awareness, etc. If there is no God, most of these evolved skills have gained us nothing in terms of survival that animals without emotion or free-will, intelligence or awareness have not gained.You are thining on your feet and in reality, the best way I can explain my position is by looking at your above two lines.In each, you speak about 'good'. You say; the world would be better with more good, but then you say; good changes. This is a problem for me. If good changes, how can the world be better with more of it? What IS good? We do not know, we are only guessing, you and me and everyone. I just believe that 'good' is really out there somewhere waiting for us to catch it, and that God has given us the ability to recognize it. This is different than saying 'good' is a product of men, and changes all of the time. Good does not change. We just do not always see it clearly.The

My bolding. Bull-donkey-donks, Larni. I think angry thoughts and I do nothing about them. That is what makes me moral, not this trivial giving in to bad behavior because I can't help it stuff. What do our social skille give us? They are but a revalidation of our choice to do something right. They are based on someone else's choice to do right. Where did we get the ability to know what is right for us? Once again, socialization is not an answer. Can I get a nice, in-depth explanation of this, please?

I had a cat once upon a time who came to me when I was crying. Her name was Gurney. I never once accredited her behaviour to morality, and since a cat can't cry, nor can a chimp, I doubt that they have anything except for body language to go off of. My small daughters react the same way when I am sad or drowsy, and again, it is NOT morality. They have not even reached an age where they know wrong and right. Feeling sympathy is just what it is. If morality was so gosh darn easy to explain, why do we even have a seperate word for it? Why not a simple answer that anyone can grasp, like the way we see a rainbow? Put it in a science book already; Where We Get Morality 101. I do not need any link or example to show me that my dogs and cats have not cried with me, and watching them do so has not opened up any new surprising insights for me. Haven't you ever owned an animal? Do you think my religion was shaken to its core when my cat came over to me as I cried?

Yes, I have seen much confusion here in general. A Perfect world is undoubtedly impossible. Good is the closest we come to God/Perfection. That is actually a nice way to look at it. Perfect is, well, Perfect. Good is a good stab at Perfect. Of course Good changes, because we are always trying some new way to be Perfect. Always failing of course. From now on, instead of referring to 'good' I will refer to Perfect. Good...means, you got a good grade. That could be anything, but certainly not a Perfect Grade. It could be better than last semester, but still not Perfect. Morality is our attempt at perfection, and to each according to his ideals.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Sure, any relative 'good' changes from day to day. Moment to moment.

How is that different from; In both cases, we wonder what happens when we die. The spiritual awareness is the detector. I have animals. I see sympathy-type behaviors. I do not see choices, or guilt over lack of sympathy. What does the in-ability to imagine God mean? Small, simple brains?

Think about this one more time. If morality is not based on anything except feelings and survival chances, and our feelings about survival chances, and our long-dead recognition of anything involving survival chances, there is really no wrong action. If we want the species to survive, we need only pick one choice of person to save...yourself, or your neighbor.In almost any situation the right thing to do is to save your neighbor. This is said to be a by-product of our life in societies. Nonetheless, it is way more natural to love ourselves. In Jesus time, when He told the disciples 'love thy neighbor' they had to ask, 'Lord, who is my neighbor?'. Jesus told them not to throw stones, to turn the other cheek, and to love thy enemy. Whoever these people were who wrote the NT, they were not thinking survival, they were not scientists, nor politicians. Do you not see that our moral standard today is based on these teachings? That these teachings were not normal in the time of Jesus? and that all of this 'scientific' evidence has been gathered from humans who have already accepted these words of Jesus subconsciously? Why are we looking for reasons for our own morality, when obviously morality has changed? The only thing we have seen is a shift from 'love thyself' to 'love thy neighbor'.We have gone from slavery, which is good for the master, to freedom, good for the slave.We have gone from rape, good for survival and quite normal, to appreciation of consent.There are a million such examples. No great prophet has ever preached survival, but love.

Sure, unless we are an innocent Iraqi, unborn, or a criminal. We still get to decide who is equal, don't we?If self-sacrifice is VERY important to a society, why do more mothers-to-be not take that little leap of blah blah natural sacrificial instinct and protect their young, the way you would die rather than be forced to rape?