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Author Topic:   Who's More Moral?
mick
Member (Idle past 4986 days)
Posts: 913
Joined: 02-17-2005


Message 5 of 125 (391353)
03-24-2007 5:44 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by anastasia
03-23-2007 4:29 PM


anastasia, what is morality?
Hi Anastasia,
Anastasia writes:
For myself the main difference is that I include love of God in my morality, which governs things like church attendance, blasphemy, attachment to creation and creatures, fasting and abstinance, and the requirements of the internal life via prayer. To me, if I lapsed in these areas, I would be 'less moral' than I could be
Either you or I are confused about what "morality" means. It is not at all clear to me why adherence to a requirement of one's God or church is considered to be a moral responsibility. If you are required to fast or be abstinent by your church's teachings, why is it necessarily a moral requirement? What is moral about fasting, or going to church? For that matter, if God tells you to do something, why is it then moral for you to do it? Are you not simply following a command or requirement? You are not necessarily engaged in any moral reasoning whatsoever.
It would help if you could explain what you think "morality" is. One example would be "it is moral to live your life in such a way that minimizes the suffering of others, and promotes the happiness of others". I'm not saying that is the best definition, simply that once we have such a definition we can go on to decide whether something is moral or not. On the basis of my simplistic definition above, going to church, fasting and saying your prayers are not moral behaviours whatsoever, because they have no effect on the suffering or happiness of others. "Attachment to creation and creatures", as you put it, is on the other hand clearly a moral concern.
Please could you tell us what your definition of morality is, and how it encompasses what seem to me to be amoral concerns such as church attendance?
Mick

This message is a reply to:
 Message 1 by anastasia, posted 03-23-2007 4:29 PM anastasia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 8 by anastasia, posted 03-24-2007 10:39 PM mick has replied

  
mick
Member (Idle past 4986 days)
Posts: 913
Joined: 02-17-2005


Message 41 of 125 (391457)
03-25-2007 4:30 AM
Reply to: Message 8 by anastasia
03-24-2007 10:39 PM


Re: anastasia, what is morality?
Hi Anastasia,
Anastasia writes:
The most basic definition is that moral behaviour is following of one's conscience
Consider the taped statement of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the perpetrators of the bomb attacks in London in July, 2005:
Mohammad Sidique Khan writes:
I and thousands like me are forsaking everything for what we believe. Our drive and motivation doesn't come from tangible commodities that this world has to offer. Our religion is Islam, obedience to the one true God and following the footsteps of the final prophet messenger.
Or from one of the other conspirators:
Shehzad Tanweer writes:
For the non-Muslims in Britain, you may wonder what you have done to deserve this. You are those who have voted in your government who in turn have and still continue to this day continue to oppress our mothers and children, brothers and sisters from the east to the west in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya. Your government has openly supported the genocide of more than 150,000 innocent Muslims in Fallujah.
The consciences of Mohammad Sidique Khan and Shehzad Tanweer appear to be clean, since their acts are justified in religious and practical terms. By your view of morality, they are behaving in a moral way.
The description of morality you have described is not a very useful conception when we want to choose a moral course of action.
First of all, there are many contradictory visions of what is good. I think it is good to carry out stem cell research to help patients suffering from brain and nervous disorders; others think it is good to criminalize the practice in order to protect the embryo; still others think it is good to murder abortionist or stem cell researchers. Without any more objective account of what is good, how are we meant to apply our moral reasoning to such problems? The abortionist and the abortionists murderer are equally moral if all that matters is "following one's conscience".
Second, we can never have access to the conscience of another so we can never determine whether they are doing what they believe to be good. Hence it is impossible to state that somebody is behaving in a moral (or immoral) way.
Finally, I am not confident that we can trust in our own assessment of the morality of our behaviour on the basis of our conscience. Cognitive dissonance may allow us to interpret our immoral or amoral behaviour as moral behavior. For example, we may well feel that "I bought a small car because I want to help the environment" instead of "I bought a small car because I'm too poor for the SUV I really want". Or "I go to church because it really helps the world" instead of "I go to church because it improves my standing within my peer group and because I can meet my friends there". I'm sure we all have experiences of this kind of self-justifying behavior. That's we need a more objective view of what is moral.
I'm a bit surprised at your view of morality - usually it is the Christians who claim that atheists have a relativistic morality while religion gives one morality with a solid basis. Yet here you are saying the opposite.
Mick
PS. As for the benefits of praying, a report from Harvard found the following: (source)
quote:
For those facing surgery or battling disease, the prayers of others can be a comfort. Researchers in the Study of the Therapeutic Effects of Intercessory Prayer (STEP), the largest study to examine the effects of intercessory prayer-prayer provided by others-evaluated the impact of such prayer on patients recovering from coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) surgery.
The STEP team, composed of investigators at six academic medical centers, including Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts; Integris Baptist Medical Center in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota; St. Joseph's Hospital in Tampa, Florida; Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C; and the Mind/Body Medical Institute, found that intercessory prayer had no effect on recovery from surgery without complications. The study also found that patients who knew they were receiving intercessory prayer fared worse. The paper appears in the April issue of American Heart Journal.
Now that you know prayer doesn't actually help anybody, can I assume you will find it immoral to continue the self-indulgent practice?

This message is a reply to:
 Message 8 by anastasia, posted 03-24-2007 10:39 PM anastasia has replied

Replies to this message:
 Message 50 by anastasia, posted 03-25-2007 7:21 PM mick has not replied

  
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