Morality without god

Its not the right word.Social responsibilty it the better terminology.The Social Contract is an agreement between peoples to live together for mutual benefits and protection.Hence, the responsibility to individually protect others at some point is inherent in the very basis for putting up with eachother.Military service is an example of this Social Responsibility that once was clearly understood as necessary to defend the group.
But action which hurt the group are immoral as is inaction which allows harm to come to members of the group.This Group Theory which Nash mathematically showed to be superior to individually going it alone.
Hence we see here the idea of what Morals means emerging pretty much as live thy neighbor as thyself.

That is immoral behavior. It is wrong to kill someone for these behaviors, especially children who have never done anything wrong. We happen to think that freedom of religion is the moral choice, not wiping out entire cultures because they do not worship your god.Time and again we see God commiting immoral acts, so why follow the dictates of an immoral God?

Human morality is for humans, not other species. This is the mistake that you consistently make. Humans are moral agents. Ants are not. Humans are sentient and have empathy. Ants do not. Of course the same rules do not apply to species that do not have empathy and are not sentient. Every "absolute morality" I have ever seen is as arbitrary as the relative moralities it is said to replace.

Its not a tangible thing that I can point to... I can't show you a philosophy or an emotion, or any other intangible thing, but they still exist none-the-less. Well if you're willing to admit that our concept of a morality exists as much as our concept of a tree, then I guess that's more than I hoped for. The last time I played poker I speculated... those things do exist. Look, we don't have to go down some existential nightmare to get the point across here. Subjectivity and matter in motion can product a morality. Why does being relative make it not really an actual morality? All moralities are relative. Why? Irrelevant. Even if that's true they would still exist. I've already typed that in this thread. How about some progress; answer my questions.

sez you.What I see is that any human behavior that threatens the long term survival of the species mut bestopped or we shall become extinct.If the religious forces in society that temper sexual behavior with the rules of marirage and social responsibility to the family is allowed to disappear and be replaced with sexual promiscuity as a way of life, mankind is as threatened in the long run as if confronted by an enemy army.Islam today is responding in exactly the fashion as the Hebrew patriarchs did in 1362BC.What we read in the OT is that this was the very first time that a saving force of sexual prudence rose to denounce the behavior of the Gentile nations that ignored this essential rule for survival of the fittest.I see what Moses did as the first step toward human salvation, and what Jesus did as the second.

Of course it is.Morality is about limiting behavior so that destructive behaviors are eliminated from a Society contracting amongst it members to live together beneficially.Today, the Global Village has force us all to either live together or die together.The evidence is now clear.
Sexual promiscuity destroys the very foundation of civilized societies by breaking down the Family unit.Edited by kofh2u, : No reason given.

What is so difficult to understand about morality and immorality?Its about behavior and the restrictions that are imposed upon people because their actions will hurt other innocent people.
Its about a boundary on freedom of actions that is based upon recognizing consequnces that harm one's self or others, or about inaction that allows harm to come to others.The foundation for recognizing these boundaries is implicit in the Social Contract which is based on the assumption that living together with others is for the mutual good of thye members so doing.Prisons are a place where society sends people who insist on behaving in ways that hurt others.

[q]KOFH:
The Gentiles worship Baal, the Phallus.
God tells these Hebrews to treat them like a plague.Taq and "we who think like him:"
We happen to think that freedom of religion is the moral choice, not wiping out entire cultures because they do not worship your god. [/qs]Religion is an Institution, and one of the seven foundational institutions found in every society.Once the institution of religion was paganized and based upon myths that idealized types of behavior that could be observed in a society.There Gods of War for soldiers, and Eros for Homosexuals, the Queen of Heaven for mothers, etc.
These all condoned behaviors of their own sort.
Since 32AD, Religion has become known as a monotheistic belief that insists the pagan behaviors are harmful and self destructive.It IS a choice to believe for or against the argument that sexual promiscuity is destructive, but today, the evidnece support the former as the correct view.Note sources after each fact listed below:Statistics on Fatherlessness
CHILDREN NEED BOTH PARENTSIt’s a Fact
Here’s why:63% of youth suicides are from fatherless homes. (Source: U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census).90% of all homeless and runaway children are from fatherless homes.85% of all children that exhibit behavioral disorders come from fatherless homes.
(Source: Center for Disease Control).80% of rapist motivated by displaced anger come from fatherless homes. (Source:
Criminal Justice and Behavior, Vol. 14, pp. 403-26).71% of all high school dropouts come from fatherless homes. (Source: National Principals Assoc. Report on the State of High Schools).85% of all youths sitting in prisons grew up in a fatherless home. (Source: Fulton County Georgia jail populations, Texas Dept. Of Corrections, 1992).These statistics translate to mean that children from fatherless homes are:5 times more likely to commit suicide
32 times more likely to run away
20 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
14 times more likely to commit rape
9 times more likely to drop out of high school
20 times more likely to end up in prisonChildren from fatherless homes are*:Children from "fatherless families of single mother" homes are*: 15.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
4.6 times more likely to commit suicide
6.6 times more likely to become teenaged mothers
24.3 times more likely to run away
15.3 times more likely to have behavioral disorders
6.3 times more likely to be in a state-operated institutions
10.8 times more likely to commit rape
6.6 times more likely to drop out of school
15.3 times more likely to end up in prison while a teenage
73% of adolescent murderers come from mother only homes
6.3 times more likely to be in state operated institutionsDaughters who live in mother only homes are 92% more likely to divorce**

I doubt we have a word for it.It's a combination of intellect and restraint - an anti-heroic response.If you were a firefighter declining to enter a building because there was an unacceptable risk, you'd call it professionalism. If your child was in the house - well, we don't have a nice word for it, we're expected to die trying.It always makes me think on aeroplanes when the emergency procedures are being talked through. The instruction is to put your own oxygen mask on before helping others to do it (they mean your children). How easy would that be?

I was a firefighter. And taught fire fighters. But when another's life was at stake there were very few unacceptable risks. It's much like the informal Coast Guard motto, "You have to go out, you don't have to come back."That does not mean that there are no limits, but the limits are very, very, very high.On the plane it would be very easy to follow those instructions. And it is situations just like that that many people train for.It's unrelated to the topic though.

And yet we have committees that do exactly that. They must use something. I suggest that they identify any harmful effects and determine if the actor could have reasonably known about the harmful effects. Individual cases yield individual results. Every case involves the determination of whether or not some harm has been caused. We determine harm by referencing our own experience. This applies to everyone absolutely all the time. Well I disagree with you too and I also have a daughter. Otherwise it sucks to be your daughter (...and her boyfriend ).Kidding aside, this is an excellent example of someone failing to employ the standard. Historical examples of people failing to act morally while believing that they were acting morally has little to do with the fact that there is a constant method to determining the morality of any action.

I think you're just dissembling now; the existence of differing ages of consent in different parts of the world and at different times in the development of society is proof that these things are not absolute and that there is no absolute moral standard that can be applied.That's just one example but there are hundreds of others, from the treatment of animals to the treatment of slaves, women and homosexuals. Simply saying that the standard that you apply NOW is more right or that someone in the future applies will be even more accurate is not proof that there's an absolute standard out there somewhere, it's proof that what we feel is correct moral action changes over time. In other words, it's developmental.What we do agree on is that we have do actually have this moral sense - the golden rule. But we now know that its an emotion, like anger or love. It's a brain activity that we can physically see. Just as people have different tempers and ability to love and hate, people have different feelings about morality. When areas in the brain are damaged - the part responsible for empathy, the pre-frontal cortex - it changes their sense of morality. Ie it's plastic, not absolute and it's a brain function, not a spirit.Psychopaths' brains show differences in structure and function

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That's why I say it is both subjective - my morality is different from everyone else's - and collective, the sum of our feelings as represented in our secular laws (mostly do no harm) and in our codes of behaviour taught by society and institution, family, religion, schools, work etc. (which include 'Do good')

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I don't like the way this is said. Ones "morality" should not be different. Instead, ones morality should be capable of transcending the differences which result in moral dilemmas. In other words, a single morality should be able to describe certain rules of interaction for different circumstances and different people. For instance, one might be obligated to avoid saving the drowning man because it is effectively his choice of euthanasia.

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We can all think differently but our actions are conditioned by the society we live in and are brought up by.

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This doesn't bear on the question of what it means to be moral unless you accept that morality can only be descriptive and cannot be instructive.

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I suspect you're overthinking this and trying to be too mechanistic. Morality - or our sense of it - is an emotion. It's similar to love, anger etc - it can be seen in action using fMRI. It's partly instinct and partly learned. So some heroic actions are almost a reflex, certainly not a calculation.

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I think this is a huge error. Emotional aspects of human relations may explain why humans are moral or want to be moral, or want others to be moral, but it does not say anything about what the moral ought to be--again, unless you accept that morality is merely descriptive. Great evils can be justified if your analysis is accepted.

Any moral theory which does not take into account the actual content of an individuals thoughts is, at best, incomplete. Equating an evolutionary/economic utilitarianism to moral value is a huge error, I think. Whatever can we say about actions like rape, treatment of animals, the elderly and the otherwise destitute?

And I think it's a huge error to ascribe an 'ought' to a biological function. People 'ought' not to get angry, but they do because it's a human function. People feel empathetic to others because it's a biological function - they can't help it or stop it. The best we can do is control our feelings.Great evils HAVE been justified by our differing versions of morality. Wishing it were different doesn't get us anywhere.But there's more to us that emotions, our intellect has allowed us to overcome many of our baser emotions and the development of our societies has allowed us to create social rules of behaviour that benefit all of us. If you want to call this morality you can, because it's an extension of our individual sense of what's right and wrong into a collective one that's enforced by society - it governs individual behaviours and hopefully prevents the 'great evils' that we are capable of.