Morality without God is impossible

It seems to me that GDR's statement below requires its own thread It's been done before of course, but maybe we can confine this to why it's impossible for our sense of morality to emerge from the evolutionary processalone. (I'm interpreting GDR's derisive 'blind chance' phrase as a simile for the evolutionary process).I don't think it necessary to show the development of social behaviour in other species or demonstrate self-sacrificing behaviour in humans, I think we all accept those thing.The difficulty appears to lie in the assertion by believers that we can't know what right and wrong is without there being a god to tell us. The question is why not?It seems to me that their only reasoning is because they believe it so.

Faith and belief is fine so long no-one starts blathering on about the bible and what they personally believe - it's a philosophical question that requires reasoning not dogma.

I'd start from the idea that morality is, by and large, knowing what is right and what is wrong and behaving in a moral way is acting on that knowledge. The question is then how do we derive that knowledge.I'd say it's in two parts1) Learnt behaviour
2) EmotionThe first is fairly obvious in that we pick up the values of our society - Parents, education, community, formal organisation such as schools and the criminal justice system.You could base those forms of morality around simple harms and societal needs. Don't stab Johnny you'll kill him. Why can't I kill Johnny? Because we need him to hunt for food. And so on.The second is about an inbuilt emotional drive called empathy or compassion. This is a physical brain function that make us feel for others. We can see this emotion happening using fMRI scanning. As its a brain function it must be an evolved trait like all others so it must have survival advantage. We see that when people lack this emotion - pychopaths and sociopaths - or suffer specific forms of brain damage they act in amoral ways.So there does not appear to be a godly intervention in any of this process.

It would be impossible not too. People normally have the empathy emotion and all people learn how to behave from their society. It's impossible not to. Even psychopaths know what is acceptable - ie moral - behaviour, they just don't understand why. So? I think you may be confusing empathy with epiphany? This thread has nothing to do with personal revelation It's not all about you Phat.

How does this work?if there is a moral intelligence...
then there can be an absolute moralityThis obviously circular but I can see no reason at all that a creator need be moral.In fact it seems that if there is one, he is obviously amoral at best.

More simply, it's a non-sequitur -
if there is a moral intelligence...
then there can be an absolute moralityThe existence of a moral intelligence does not require there to be an absolute morality. In any case, I don't know what a moral intelligence would be. There is no absolute morality. Can you demonstrate one? That simply does not follow. Just because we have an emotion we call morality does not mean that there is therefore a morality outside our existence. We have an emotion called anger, is there therefore an anger outside our existence? Universal anger? You haven't even begun to make a link or an argument.

You have absolutely no way of knowing whether that statement is true or false. What we do know for sure is that it's not necessary for a god to be a moral being and that the god of the bible is immoral. The god of the bible is absolutely not a moral being - he's a narcissistic, genocidal psychopath. Of course it is, it's a brain function we call empathy or compassion. With fRMA we can see it work and measure it. Those are straight forward facts, but even if you reject them, you still haven't made any argument justifying your claim that morality exists outside ourselves.

Surely you know that this is a species argument? If you make a statement that you can not show to be correct what use is it? It tells us that even if there is a god it does not mean that our morality is derived from it. Regardless of your cherry-picking of your holy book and deciding to accept only the nice bits, that's what it says and what it says is all you have. It IS an emotion - what else can you call empathy and compassion? You have not; you've given us some illogical assertions that you can't back up, and which actually just amount to rationalising beliefs.

Look, this is your statementif there is a moral intelligence...
then there can be an absolute moralityThat can only be correct in meaningless sort of way because you can substitute anything for absolute morality in itif there is a moral intelligence...
then there can be bananasPlus the intelligence need not be moral nor does it need to have morals we agree with. It's not any sort of useful argument. We know what you believe, we're looking or valid argument supporting your belief. Our sense of morality is a bloody emotion! It's a brain function, we can see it working just like we can identify the speech and sight and other functional areas of the brain we know where the emotions of empathy and compassion are. You’re denying facts, why?

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Moral Emotions
Emotions — that is to say feelings and intuitions — play a major role in most of the ethical decisions people make. Most people do not realize how much their emotions direct their moral choices. But experts think it is impossible to make any important moral judgments without emotions.

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Inner-directed negative emotions like guilt, embarrassment, and shame often motivate people to act ethically.

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Outer-directed negative emotions, on the other hand, aim to discipline or punish. For example, people often direct anger, disgust, or contempt at those who have acted unethically. This discourages others from behaving the same way.

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Positive emotions like gratitude and admiration, which people may feel when they see another acting with compassion or kindness, can prompt people to help others.

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Emotions evoked by suffering, such as sympathy and empathy, often lead people to act ethically toward others. Indeed, empathy is the central moral emotion that most commonly motivates prosocial activity such as altruism, cooperation, and generosity.

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So, while we may believe that our moral decisions are influenced most by our philosophy or religious values, in truth our emotions play a significant role in our ethical decision-making.

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Moral Emotions - Ethics UnwrappedEdited by Tangle, : No reason given.

When I asked what a moral intelligence was, GDR said God so it becomes. If there is a god that governs this universe
then there can be an absolute morality.This doesn't follow.First, why can't there be an absolute morality without god?Second this god could have a morality we didn't like, for example he could be the god of the Old Testament who is a total bastard.Third, what is an absolute morality anyway? Can you describe one? If there was one, how could free will exist?Fourth, we know that in fact our morality is relative, so ?Fifth, morality is actually a biological and social construct, god has nothing to do with it

This is actually THE point of the discussion and it's why you're resisting it.I am trying to demonstrate to you that morality is an internal, biological function like all others. You prefer to think of it as an external influence on us - your 'still small voice'. I have physical evidence that it is the former, you have a superstitious, mystical belief that it is the latter. Of course, our emotional state determines to some degree how we react to situations. Sure, we may know that it's wrong but murder in a calculated and deliberate way too. We also justify murder to ourselves in times of war. There is no external absolute.But we know what is wrong because we have learnt that it is wrong and most of us also know it physically because our emotional state rebels against it - this is our empathetic functioning - we can't help but feel it. I wonder why you continue to deny this? Morality is a combination of social learning and internal emotional states. No god necessary.

With the possible exception of the higher apes, you can't talk about moral behaviour in animals, just behaviour.To be able to act morally an organism needs both agency and capacity, that is it must be able to act independently by rational choice and be mentally capable of understanding the difference between good behaviour and bad.Edited by Tangle, : No reason given.

We getting away from what I wanted the thread to be about, which was whether it was possible to have morality without god.It seemed to me that GDR's concept of morality was an external force guiding us - his 'still small voice', while I'm clear that it's internal to us, an emotion just like others. Handily we have evidence for the latter but none for the former.To demonstrate this very potently there's the example of Fred

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There's a guy called Fred, married for many years, normal.
At the age of 40 his personality changes, he starts developing overt and inappropriate sexual tendancies. He starts looking at child porn. He gets kicked out by his wife for making sexual advances to young girls. He is finally prosecuted for a sex offence and put on the sex offender's register.

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He also starts getting bad headaches and when he finally turns up at a hospital, they find an enormous tumour on his prefrontal cortex. They remove the tumour and his paedophilia is cured.

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A couple of years later he starts having sexual problems again, he checks in to hospital, they find that the tumour has returned. They remove it, it cures the paedophilia. He's currently fine.

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So this particular 'evil' was caused by neurology. Perhaps then free will and morality are dependent on the way our brains work rather than how Satan works.

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"Studies suggest that when damage is done to the frontal lobe before 18 months, people never learn right from wrong," Swerdlow said. "When damage is done after that time, people can learn right from wrong but they can't control their impulses. There is no longer regard for long-term consequences, only short-term gratification."
"Nothing puts the brakes on their behavior. They are always in trouble," he said. "If their brain wants something, they take it."

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Swerdlow said this was the case with his patient. The man knew his actions were wrong "but the pleasure principle overrode his restraint. [snip]

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"He concluded: "We're dealing with the neurology of morality here."

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Scientific paper here:
http://www.ahealthymind.org/...y/right%20OFC%20pedophile.pdf

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Article here:
http://www.rifters.com/real/articles/brainontrial.htm

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It seems obvious the basis of morality are emotions such as empathy and compassion and are evolved traits. Earlier Christians used to have this idea of a soul that was implanted by god at birth and was responsible for our consciousness and hence morality, I find that a truly stupid idea but at least it's compatible with this external cause.

I'm not sure I'm picking up the distinction your making? I think it all resolves down to harms and benefits. We all have very basic feelings of those and our societies refine them as we develop. This is why all societies have complicated normative rules of behaviour.

I think some forms of morality can be objectively judged to be better than others.If you accept that morality is based on harms and benefits to both individuals and societies then, for example, I think that a society that persecutes homosexuals is less moral than one that doesn't.