Morality without god

But it's what you said. You said that if emotions were "manifestations of molecular processes" (like a house, a tree, a bicycle, a mountain) then they wouldn't be real. If you'd now like to take that back, go for it, but don't pretend you didn't say it.I maintain that being made out of real physical stuff is precisely what makes them real, just as a house is real by virtue of being made out of real material things such as bricks.The rest of your post seems to be bizarre ramblings with no connection to anything I've ever posted, said, or thought, so I shall spare myself the trouble of translating it into English and finding out if it means anything.Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.

But the thing is that "do what other people want" cannot be modified by thinking about it more carefully --- by "abstraction", which we seem to have made the word of the day.I want you to buy me a pony. Your proposed rule is "do what other people want". Explain to me how even the most subtle application of your rule would let you off buying me a pony.Or, alternatively, you could buy me a pony.

With regard to why we willingly behave in a charitable manner. You might, I suppose, but you don't do you? Would you enjoy that dinner out if the hungry street girls were watching through the window? I don't think that you would enjoy it because, like most of us, you are thoroughly imbued with a sense of empathy. When seeing the hungry faces look through the window you would, almost unavoidably, see yourself in their position and feel compelled to relieve their suffering. If you were starving yourself you wouldn't be quite so willing to share.The fact that they are actually on the other side of the world is mute because you know that they are there. You can see them in your mind's eye. Having wheels is not always beneficial to the purpose of a car but it is the way that a car works best. Our brains have evolved or were designed to look out for number one. Who is number one by the way? I can not prove that the small voice is not the voice of God but I think that I, and others, can and have supported the idea that it is the same voice that tells you when go to the bathroom or when to cut your grass or when to get out of the way of the approaching bus. Or to punch a bully in the face or to pay your taxes. It is also the same voice that tells some to steal that car or to walk away from the store with too much change.That voice is your conscience or it is the voice of God. In both cases your brain decides what to do by weighing up the benefits of any particular action. The scale is comprised of the sum total of your experience and your default position to stay alive and prosper.Here is a thought. Does God want what is best for you or what is best for Him? Are they the same thing?

You keep stating that there is no absolute standard and I would agree with you on this point...with or without God/god/gods there is no absolute standard.Without God, we have an objective standard, but no absolute standard. Bad=that which causes all to suffer is the objective standard for human morality. Anything that relieves some suffering moves us up the moral scale away from bad. In this scenario, we determine where our own morality lies, which seems far closer to reality to me. Thou shalt not kill is important as most times, but there are certain grey areas where it does not apply and the moral action would be to kill.With God, we have no absolute standard..."Thou shalt not kill" really becomes "Thou shalt not kill, unless you are commanded to by the very thing telling you not to kill." An Absolute standard would mean that "Thou shalt not kill" always means just that, Do Not Kill. In absolutes there would be no grey area (like we see in reality), just simply a command and humans should listen. Also, with the breadth of gods that have existed, there is no objective standard because what is immoral to one god is moral to another and vice versa. Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.Edited by Tempe 12ft Chicken, : No reason given.

Read what the story actually says. I even posted it here in this thread so you could read it. Here it is again. There is no reasoning. She repeats what she was told, the serpents says "Sorry but that's just BS.", and she eats the fruit. Maybe you do, but moral humans don't. Or you are more moral than the character in the story.But the fact remains that the Bible says man has the same capability to know right from wrong as God and so there is no need of God to set and evolve moral standards and the fact that you don't kick your children out of your house when they disobey is evidence in support of that fact.

Before i respond to your above post I would like to say in general to everyone, it sure is strange not to see Buz's in in the members login list. that will take some getting use towhat I am saying Dr A is that emotions cannot be grasp in the same way a tree can be grasped. i can see the mainifestations of physical processes, but I cant actually see anger. Its not a real thing. it has no substnaceNow, carry it a bit further. Right and Wrong, if you wish call it that are even less real, if that is possible, than emotions themself. What we call right and wrong are compilations of varying opinions and emotionsThese vary with every person and inbetween species. So what do we use out of all these varying emotions and responses to determine what Rgith and wrong actually are.Any simpleton can see that such a process to establish what is right and wrong, muchless morality is an exercise in futilityMorality is even a harder thing to define than right and wrong. Since right and wrong has no logical way of being determined, it doesnt take an intellectual to figure out that establishing morality, is an impossibiltyNow if you are prepared to tackle that in some logical way, other than to say you like this or that, or think that this or that is right or wrong, Im prepared to listenReality will not allow you this luxury. But lets see what youve gotDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.Edited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

lets simplify this thing to see if we can bring it into perspective. Not only do you not have an absolute standard, you dont even have an objective standard.Using any kind of measuring rod that is derived your mind cannot be used to establish any kind of standard that could be described as right or wrong. You may wish to believe it is some sort of standard, but you have no way to decide whether it is right or wrong.Varying opinions by different people and over different periods of time make the entire process of deciding what is right or wrong at any given point in time, a logical impossiblityWhat you THINK is right or wrong is not how you establish that pointYou first have to decide whether a God exists, the likes of which no more information could be provided to that being, that would not convolute the decision making processIOWs he is all that there is and contains all information in existence to be an absolute standardConversely, if such a being does not exist, then there is absolutely no way to establish, what is right or wrong, muchless moralIronically reality in the form of information gathering will allow such a conclusion. But ironically as well, it will not allow you a conclusion that contradicts this conclusionThis position cannot be shown to be otherwise, because this is all reality will allowironically this website itself, the threads, the posts, the disagreements between Christians and Atheist, the disagreements between atheist themself, should send a red flag that the proposition I am setting forward, is evident in factYou fellas cant even decide between yourselfs things, how in the world would you decide what IS ACTUALLY RIGHT AND WRONG in realityDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

It seems to me that you are kinda making my point for me. Remember the old adage out of sight out of mind. Frankly I send money overseas but I also go out for dinner, and when I do I still enjoy the meal. I just see no benefit for me, my gene pool or my society to deplete my resources by sending money overseas to sustain life there. A number of years ago I was staying in a hotel in downtown Winnipeg. It was winter and about 30 below. I went over to a cheap diner for a bite of breakfast. As I was going in this guy stopped me and told me that he hadn’t eaten for a while and could I spare a couple of bucks for breakfast. I looked at the menu on the wall and figured that he wouldn’t get much of a breakfast for 2 bucks, so big hearted me I gave him 5 and patted myself of the back for being such a good guy. As soon as I gave this guy the money he left and being the cynical jerk I am I figured that he has gone out to buy booze or drugs. I had just sat down to eat my breakfast and the guy came back and had a friend with him. They both dined on the 5 bucks I had given him.So there I was considering that I had given up 5 dollars which meant very little to me even back then, but that this guy had given all the money that he had to his friend. It was a very humbling experience. My point is, that I disagree with your point. People are prepared to share when they are starving. Maybe your conscience is the voice of God. Somehow I’m afraid I don’t see that instinctive responses like the urge to go to the bathroom are the same as believing that we should help the less fortunate. The choice between punching a bully or loving your enemy is the type of choice that we all have to make in our lives, (although flight always worked well for me ,) and you are right, it is conscience but the question is what is the root cause of our conscience. Once again, it is a case of which is more plausible. Do intelligence and morality have an intelligent moral first cause or did they somehow evolve from a chance combination of non-intelligent non-moral particles. I would say that it is the same thing. I want the best for my kids because I love them and it brings me joy to see them happy and doing well.

I think I get what you're saying, but lets be clear. It is "murder" because that is a legal term with a well defined definition; the unlawful killing of a person. I think what you're getting at has to do with it being "wrong", not murder. Now, I could imagine a scenerio where a guy would want human flesh "for consumption and survival" and it wouldn't necessarily be "murder", so I can still exemplify the relativity of morality in either situation. For proactivity, I present the situation outlined in the movie Alive <--clicky

quote:

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Uruguayan rugby team stranded in the snow swept Andes are forced to use desperate measures to survive after a plane crash.

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By "desperate measures" they mean "consuming human flesh". Its not absolute. We all get that. What I don't get is why we can't have it as a morality.And this is the point that I'm still wating for you to support. You keep making arguments about how a relative morality isn't absolute, but you never have justified your position that a morality that isn't absolute cannot be counted as a morality.If you have, then I've missed it, and you'll provide me with a link. But I contend that you havn't. Irrelevant. That may be true, but its still remains as a morallity. I have no reason from you why I shouldn't consider it one. Minor disagreement here: If a dog, or lion, attacks a child then we will put it down. An animal harming a child is, in fact, a kind of 'immorality' from a human perspective. I've been with you from the first post: this morality I'm describing is not absolute and it is relative.But this is that part you haven't addressed yet: IT IS STILL A MORALITY.You keep asserting that it isn't, but your only argument for that is its lack of being absolute. I don't understand why you cannot accept that a relative morality, as opposed to an absolute one, is still a morality. Your only reason has been entirely circular: because it isn't absolute.Edited by Catholic Scientist, : No reason given.

Wrong. The reason we treat the crimes committed by children and the mentally ill differently from adults and the sane is because we understand that they have a poor understanding of right and wrong - they have their own versions of it which is both rational and reasonable to THEM but not to US.Morality is an agreement between the majority members of adult society about behaviour; it's fluid between societies and over time. All you're saying is that it's not absolute - well so what? You have refused to tell us what an absolute morality would actually be or even give us an example or tell us why it matters. All that you say is that it must come from a god. Will any god do?

But neurobiologists tell us that emotions do have an underlying substance. And the meaning of your post, if it had one, was surely that emotions would be less real if they have a real physical substrate. Yeah, how did Protestants decide that it was right to burn Catholics, and Catholics decide that it was right to burn Protestants? They both turned to the supposed ideas of a being which they both agreed had no underlying material substrate.Maybe we should stop doing that.

That is just your confirmation bias kicking in. That seems a contradiction that you would willingly send your resources to some stranger because it is the right thing to do and yet claim that you see no benefit in it for yourself. Doing the right thing is a benefit.What makes it the right thing to do? Have I missed your answer to this question? Yes you are right. Our willingness to share might be contracted to a smaller group when our own needs are more pressing but we do have an immense capacity for generosity. It makes sense to me that in adversity our appreciation for the benefits of teamwork is magnified.Regarding the question of which theory of the origin of moral behaviour is more plausible. We can look back down the evolutionary line and see the causes for and the benefits of our cooperative behaviour. We can see the motivation behind the creation of a control structure that socially reinforces those instinctive behaviours. The behaviour is codified replete with the threat of punishment. We can see all of the natural mechanisms and motivations that led to the development of the God figure in our psyche.While it is plausible that a real God may have revealed himself this way it seems to me that this is the reification of our own fabricated concept? However implausible it is for inanimate chemicals to spring to life the idea does not require any supernatural input. The only source for such an input is clearly identified as having arisen from our need or desire to identify causes or to imagine them when they are not evident.It occurs to me that not only is cooperative behaviour a naturally emergent quality of living things but that it is a fundamental requirement for living things that begins when the first 2 cells clumped together. Cooperation is integral to life.

In an effort to establish an actual morailty, youve failed to establish, as you have suggested, that it is right in the frist place. there is no such thing as right and no such thing as morality in an existence of purely physical things happeningExample, when a lion, when in what we call anger shreads another animal apart, even though he is devastating the poor creature, we dont call that murder.But murder, actual murder, murder as immorality, or right or wrong, doesn t actually exist, as a part of reality. We call it murder within our species, because we have decided that is how we should operate.Your right its not absolute, or anything else in reality, without GodThere is simply no way to establish right or wrong, without an absolute standard Sure I have, numerous timesFirst I pointed out that its not my responsibility to do that, its yoursSecondly, I demonstrated that right and wrong are not actual things, in a purely physical existenceThirdly I pointed out that with finite beings, disagreement and different thinking patterns on the same topic, sharp disagreeemnt, demonstate that morality is not possibleFourthly I showed that you cant have a standard of murder, that is called murer for your species, then not apply the same thing to another life formFifthly i demonstrated that there not actually anything such as right and wrong, without GodSixthly, i demonstrated that, morality cannot be established from a persons, or persons perspective, but that it had to be established from the perspective of reality By making this statement you demonstrate that without a doubt that you dont understand that right and wrong cannot be established by one species or anotherThe moment you decide that an animal killing a human is immoral, then decide that its ok to ring the chickens neck for your consumption, you throw your "morality" into nonesense No its not. Simply because you decided it is a morality, doesnt make it that in reality.Dont yopu see the iorny here. Im disagreeing with you and neither of us is right or wrong, because, your so-called morality is just matter in motionWhat you need to make it morality indeed, is a decision making process, where there can be no information gathered to make a better decision, or a decision that would alter the known (decided upon) decision, given the amout of information available. IE GodYour just matter in motion without God. Your "morality" is no different that a tree accidently falling on someone and killing themI dont need to establish the existence of God to know you dont actually have morality Unless you are paying no attention at all, I think just didDawn BertotEdited by Dawn Bertot, : No reason given.

Thanks for the reply, Dawn. Well hold on... I'm not really establishing anything. You've claimed that morality cannot exist without god and I'm questioning if and how that's true. My position on the above is that I do not have to establish that it is right in the first place in order to establish an actual morality.A morality could be arbitrary, and many have been in the past and even are today. They don't stop existing because you've asserted that they can't exist without establishing what's right in the first place. That's right, and our morality literally is 'what we have decided is how we should operate'. Some people just like to say that God told them to decide it. That's fine. And here we are still having our morality, as per the above, all relative and arbitrary. If you don't want to support your assertions then you're allowed to do that. I don't have a problem with that. We can still develop a relative morality without absolutely determining what is right and wrong. No, not that it isn't possible, but that it isn't absolute. All it has to be is relative and that point doesn't matter.Too, even with your position that God is required because it does have to be absolute, we still have disagreement and different thinking patterns on the same topic, so if that wipes out my morality then it wipes out yours as well. You showed that? Where? I see you've asserted it, but you don't really support it.But even so, you're still wrong: Murder is the unlawful killing of a human by a human. So there you go, that is a standard of murder that we can have that applies to our species and no other. I don't have a problem accepting that one because a relative morality doesn't depend on actualizing right and wrong. All we have to do is come up with a consensus on what we want to decide is called right and what is called wrong, and then we impliment that as our morality. People are free to disagree with it and it still sits there as our morality. No, I haven't seen where you've demonstrated that.And its plainly wrong. Morality is a human construct. It requires humans to exist. It can only be established from a persons perspective. Even with your position of it having to stem from God, it still takes a man to write it down and say that it came from god and that's going to be coming from his perspective. Why? That simply is not what a morality is. Trees don't have conscious intent. If I accidentally fall on someone and kill them like a tree then that wouldn't be immoral. But if I consciously decide to fall on them and kill them then it would be immoral. No, but as anyone can plainly see: godless people still have moralities. Your assertion falls flat on its face.And even if we allow it further: Some people say God says its immoral to eat shellfish, some people say God says its immoral to eat pork, some people say God says its immoral to eat beef. Even if we grant that God exists and is required for morality, in practice MORALITY IS STILL RELATIVE.

An underlying substance was the very point I was making. They ofcourse have no reality. That is why as they say you cannot capture a thought. Anyway, it does not matter, the supposed right and wrong that are extrapolations from these existent or non-existent emotions are derived from a mulduplicity of confusing ideas and expectations, they therefore cannot be objective in real sense of the world Do you think either group was right or wrong. What do you use for a standard to establish which is right or wrongDawn Bertot