Morality without god

Often one hears from the religious side that one cannot have morals without god or holy scriptures, and they seem to be baffled how you just dont run around killing people torturing them and whatnot.Morality is a part of us a part is imbeaded in our genes, a pack of wolves does not eat and kill each other because its counter-productive to their society.And a part of it is learned from our social interactions when we are children and it evolves as we grow up. If we where to grow up in ancient Rome we would find it perfectly socaly acceptable that people are killing each other in an arena for our enjoyment, or if we grew up in an ancient Israel tribe we would find it perfectly acceptable to beat a slave to an inch of his life, our behaviour in that instance would also be religiously and morally idealised, as we where adhering to the rules of our religion. Because we would grow up with that kind of behaviour all around us. Nowadays we find that kind of behavior wrong because our culture evolved. We have decided that slavery is wrong, that hurting people is wrong, that killing is wrong, and we did it without any god telling us too, no we did it in spite all manor of religions told us the exact opposite. Only a few centuries ago the Christian religious doctrine was that the only way a black man can get in to heaven is as a slave.But what i believe most religious people who claim that one cant have morality without god really mean is that we do not have anything to strive fore in a moralistic view, why should someone strive to do better to be nicer to help others if there is no reward waiting for us at the end of our toils.I believe one needs no reward to to good to be good to strive to better ones self, if as a society we accept that we are all better off if we all try to do better. We are better off if some of us dont act greedy and hoard money and possessions for the sake that they have more money and possessions then you, sure we all have desires to have stuff but most uf us would be happy with a million in a bank account, we would still work and gain income but we would not be hoarding millions uppon millions of dollars having so much that we would not know what to spend it on how many private islands does one need anyway. how many cars ... We are all better off if we adheare to the rules and laws we make and if these rules and laws adheare to the opinions of the majority of what they should be nowdays the lawmakers are just inventing crimes and making it easier for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.What we should strive for as a society is to better ourselves in every way also intellectually nowadays in the views of the majority if one strives to learn say 10 languages, or understand some topics like say quantum physics are viewed as strange behaviour its better to have a drink take a nap on the couch and go to church on Sundays because that is what god wants from you he hates when you doubt his perfect book with its perfect explanations.Or reward for doing good and being moral would be a better world now, not a fictional world after we die.While i do believe that religion played a mayor part in to making humanity what it is now it was needed when humanity was still young it was the first way to construct a basic guideline on how to behave in a society but nowadays religion is counter-productive we can do much better then the framework of religious morality allows. Just take a look at the middle east their freedoms hampered because of a 1400 year old book about a magic man in the sky, people stoned beheaded, killed bombed because they do not behave exactly as their book prescribes.

Its because we dont see the whole human race as a society, but we see countries people religions..... How was it possible for nazie leaders to convince people to brutally torture and kill jews, gipsies, and the like. By convincing them that those people are really not people but animals that look like people who are doing harm to their society. Our morality works for people we consider a part of our society the rest is fair game. If you consider the whole human race as a part of your society then you are acting twards them all in the way your moral values perscribe, but if you see gays, blacks, christians, muslims, they are not an equal part of what you believe your group is so you have different moral standards for them.Example: american soldiers "accidently" kill a bunch of Arab-Muslim civilians. An american reaction well shit happens they are all just sand niggers anyway they should be happy that we are giving them freedom.example nr 2: Muslim resistance fighters aka terrorists kill a bunch of american civilians while trying to bomb some soldiers. The american response dos damn sand nigger bastards how can they harm innocent civilians that is just wrong only animals do that not soldiers those head diaper wearing bastards.While the rest of the world or at least me in both cases see both actions as wrong and wishing/demanding that the responsible parties be brought to justice in a court of law.

When i was 18 one new years we had a party organised by the youth of our county there where all sorts there from the age of 15 to 23. One kid got really drunk that night he was 16ish so when the party was winding down at 4 in the morning and he wanted to walk home we told him to wait we will get a ride for you some 15 minutes later the ride arrives the kid is gone. Now going after him to check if he got home aright would give me no reward i dint know him very well i just knew where his home was. But i did convince a friend to give me a ride on his motorbike to this kids house and back just to make sure he dint fall in to a ditch or something because it was -20 Celsius (-4 F) outside he would have frozen to death by morning. About 300 meeters from his home we found the kid lying on the side of the road passed out we got him home had to ring the dorbell and wake the parrents (poor guy hehe) but if we hadnt gone to check uppon him he would have died.The only reward i got from this deed is a bit of a dopamine boost in my brain as a reward for doing a good deed. But it wasnt that that drowe me to do this, if i went and had sex with my gf instead of checking up on the kid i would have gotten a larger dose of dopamine.

I dont think its just fear of men that keeps you in line i believe that apart from our invented morality, we also have an evolved sense of morality.One only needs to look at experiments on morality on our distant cousin species.I dont think it has to do with fear but with cooperation in order for members of a species to cooperate they need a sense of morality or their group would fall apart its not fear of being punished by our fellow men but the fact that we know that is socially unexpected behaviour and there is a chance that those who see our behaviour might no longer cooperate with us or distance themselves from us, leaving us an outcast.Or look at socipaths they just lack the morality gen, all of us would struggle to kill someone eaven in self defence, soldiers have the same problems they haveto be trained to kill, Soldiers whitout proper training where found to more often aim high when shooting at the enemy, but to a socipath its easy to kill to them it does not feal wrong at all. Edited by frako, : No reason given.