Moral Statements and rules.

beliefnet
10 Commandments and 613 detailed rules were not flexible enough even for a bunch of desert marauders.  And certainly not for the religious groups that followed, using those Commandments and rules as Scriptural truth. 

Any moral system will be local to a defined group, extremely complex and detailed, and interpreted intuitively by the members of the group.  Some moral systems will include Paul's vague stupidity, others will be based on radical humanistic standards.  There will be a lot of workable moral systems in between. 

But even something as intuitively correct and simple as don't steal. Gets mired down in situational ethics, and definitions of what is not to be stolen.  Is a song property that should not be stolen?  At what point from the composer trying it out on a group of friends to a viral iTune does it become wrong to steal it?  And that is an easy one.  What about that baguette thrown into the restaurant dumpster?

It doesn't matter whence, that is a different issue.  For the purpose of this thread throw away all the commandments, all of the rules, all of the laws and follow your conscience.  At the least it will keep you out of trouble with your family, friends, and neighbors.  In its highest form it will keep you out of trouble anywhere. 

So Help Me God

beliefnet

An oath to God when one does not believe means nothing. No Christian should support forced oaths to God.

Which is why as an atheist I have no issue with emulating George Washington and adding "So Help Me God" for political reasons in court or anywhere else someone asks.  It would be much better if they made me affirm rather than swear at God but that is their problem not mine.

If it gives me credibility among the credulous why should I care?  I will tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, (but not God's TRUTH™) because it is my responsibility as a citizen to do so.   

Politics and Morals

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Politics, religions, cultures, views of reality all greatly differ, yet morals are largely consistent. Why is it just so naturally consistent in the arena of morals, but not these other areas?

Because humans are intelligent, tribal, social animals. The differences in behavior among all of the above are simply the size of the tribe and the power of the leaders. But even the strongest leaders are bound by the simple tribal morality of respect for tribe members, follow the leader, and ultimately do what mama tells you to do before you are six.

WEPC, Morality and Humanism

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In my opinion, preaching the innate superiority of Western European Protestant Culture as he is doing skirts very close to fascism.amcolph

You realise that you are insulting the majority of atheists who post here, amcolph?  For them, morality is mere fashion, and Twenty-First Century Western Liberal Culture (which is a not-very-developed development of "Western European Protestant Culture") is the zeitgeist which molds their fashion, so it must be "superior".  Thus, for example, they frown on slavery because Western Liberal Culture considers slavery to be "bad"; but in the rest of the world, slavery is the norm. Thus, again, they consider women to be full members of society, equal to men; but in the rest of the world, women are chattels of men.Lavengro

The morality of many of the atheists who post here is humanism which is complete and utter repudiation of the elitist "Western European Protestant Culture" (WEPC).  The WEPC is being dragged, kicking and screaming, to a more humanistic morality. 

Humanists oppose slavery, all forms including wage slavery, as slavery only benefits the fascist elite and the syncophant WEPC priests/preachers/pastors/vuvuzelas who provide God's moral blessing on the fascist elite in exchange for a tithe.  But as one of the elite warns, the pitchforks are coming. Here as well as the rest of the world.  In the immortal Janis Joplin line "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose."

The rest of the world is finding out that women as chattels of men is not working too well as women gain control over their fertility.  Hobby Lobby notwithstanding.  That minimum wage slavery is easy to buy into and an independent nuliparous woman can use it as a springboard to personal fulfillment while working men's egos for pleasure and additional support without a care about hosting some prick's seed.  She may choose to do so but the choice is hers in the US as well as India, China, and much of the western world.  So much for WEPC misogyny.

The Origins of Morality

beliefnet
I have an extremely rational and objective basis for my morality.  It started at 2 or 3 when I was taught not to hurt other friends even accidentally because they would avoid me in the future and I would have no friends to play with.  Simple, rational, objective, social consequence based morality.  As I got older the definition of hurt and responsible behavior that defined the morality became more complex and stringent, but it was very simple.  If you want to play in this society you must be responsible for your behavior and avoid hurting the people who are part of it.   

The society which I choose to identify as my own is the society of highly educated, intelligent, cosmopolitans.  The definition of hurt includes the treatment of any other person as a lesser being, to be exploited or used in any way that is detrimental to their own interests. 

Happiness and Suffering.

Beliefnet

 

What awareness has you come to you through happiness?  What awareness has come through suffering?  -  Seefan

Happiness, both for those important to me and for myself brings awareness that my behavior especially my social behavior is correct and moral.  Technically it means that dopamine and serotinin are stimulating the social awareness compliance centers in the brain to produce the feeling of pleasure in complying with social rules for good behavior.  

Suffering, both for those important to me and for myself means that something is seriously awry in my social system and I must do whatever is necessary to repair the damage.  As an example I hear a baby crying in a burning building indicating that it is suffering.  Since a universal evolutionary imperative for social animals is to protect the next generation at any cost including a serious threat of survival for the adult, I am compelled to enter the probably fatal environment to attempt to get the baby out.  If I can get the baby out of a window safely, the dopamine and serotinin will activate the social compliance centers to mitigate the pain and suffering I feel from the fire.  If I can get out the window myself great, if not I have done the socially necessary thing and will die happy as the building collapses around me.  

Please note that death is the other bookend to my life and nothing follows.  My social group may remember me as a hero, but I won't be aware of that except momentarily as the building collapses.  But no matter. I have done other beneficial things for my society, and when death comes the dopamine and serotinin will flood the social compliance centers so at death I will be happy and I will indeed rest in peace.   

No God. Just evolutionary success that allows the baby to live to enjoy my legacy.

Morals as Thought Police

beliefnet
I think you are confusing morality with social justice.

Morality at least for those of us that don't get it from some deity, is a way of policing one's own thinking.  I think that is what Jesus was getting at with the message about mental adultery. If you are thinking about adultery/rape rather than simply enjoying the scenery, assuming that adultery/rape is a defined problem for you, then I would suggest you have a moral issue you need to deal with.  

Occasionally there will be moral conflicts that need to be resolved, but if you are truly responsible for your behavior you need to resolve those conflicts at the mental level before any action is taken. Jesus or a surrogate isn't going to pat you on the head, tell you to say three Hail Mary's, and don't do it again.  A responsible person must insure that it can't happen. 

Manners, Atheists and Free Will.

Beliefnet

Those who do recognize their own authority rests in their own moral sense and thinking mind have the chance to operate with a sort of free will.

F1fan

At least God gives believers the option to be moral or not.  Forget for the moment forgiveness of sin.  At least there is a choice.  In my experience the subconscious social rules in big things and little like manners learned at mama's knee allow no choice at all.  One can reason about them, but only in quiet contemplation not in the activities of life. 

Good manners were drilled into this atheist right down to which fork to use for what course.  I still find myself changing forks to eat melon after breakfast.  I learned to eat Chinese food and use chopsticks as an adult and learned Chinese table manners along with chopsticks. 

Now picture a very high class Chinese Wedding, as one of the few Euro-Americans at the wedding, the groom was far from friends and family, I was seated at the bride's mother's table with the groom's few family members.  As a courtesy the table was set with English tableware.  All went well until the duck course where I was visibly distressed to be unable to eat the 2 in. cube of meat and bones with my fork.  The hostess suggested that if I didn't like it I should pass, I gathered my wits and very courteously asked for chopsticks so I could enjoy it as it was a special treat.  That shut up the shrill voice in my head as my mother knew nothing at all about chopsticks.   

Values and Morality

beliefnet
If our values are not policing our thoughts immoral actions would be all to common.  See any fervent believer that does as told without even applying a value test.  Believer in the Shermer sense which may or may not have anything at all to do with religion. 

I do see values as different from morality, as the values are axiomatic and morality is the expression of those values.  A value of radical respect for all people doesn't do much good when the perp is attacking.  Morality is the mental activity of deciding what the proper reaction to the attack is. 

Source of morality

beliefnet
We all get our concepts of good and evil, right or wrong from the same place: The local society we grew up in, very slightly modified by adult reasoning about morality. 

You say your morality is from a Moral Law Maker. It isn't really. It is from your family, (hat tip to Robert Fulghum) your kindergarten teacher, your Sunday School teachers,  and your play groups which were probably selected from church relationships of your parents.  They all had in common a belief in a Moral Law Maker, God or Jesus depending on the church community. (Off topic my guess would be Jesus.) All moral instructions were of the form share this, don't hit, respect your elders, don't take the toy that isn't yours, etc. because Jesus won't like it if you don't do it. 

I grew up in a secular society and my friends and I learned from family, (hat tip toRobert Fulghum) kindergarten teacher, and play groups which were selected from secular relationships of  parents. All moral instructions were of the form share this, don't hit, respect your elders, don't take the toy that isn't yours, etc. because that is what we humans do. 

Please note in either case nothing is really learned, the admonitions are simply reinforcing the genetic necessities of intelligent social living.   

Pain and Death and Morality

beliefnet

Humans and other social animals work very hard to eradicate pain because pain is next to death on the spectrum of things to try to avoid. There is a problem, however, in that humans have been inventing tools, weapons and machines that are designed to inflict pain and death in order to conquer and use other humans for thousands of years. Somebody want to continue this thought? I don't know exactly where to go with it. .christine3

Inflicting pain and death is part of survival for predators and frequently pain and risk of death are part of predation.  And humans are certainly predators.  Avoiding pain and death is a characteristic more of prey than predators, and social prey animals develop moral strategies to minimize pain and death for the social unit.  One universal moral imperative is protect the next generation at any cost.  Although it might be argued that this is a species survival instinct rather than a moral precept for our purposes the difference is probably insignificant. 

The real problem for humans is that they are both prey and predators.  In tribal societies (aren't we all) especially nomadic tribes resources are generally controlled by other humans and tribal survival means better killing tools, weapons and machines and not incidentally tribal moral imperatives that encourage their use.  Kill or subdue all the heathen, gentiles, or other "non-humans" that is, not us,  with the fear of pain and death.   It is no accident that religious morals distinguish strongly between "us" and "them" and discourage any sympathy or empathy for them. 

It is perhaps significant that the "thems" have not only developed highly efficient defensive killing and pain inflicting weapons, but have also developed more inclusive moral imperatives that recognize others as important as well.  Probably the most radical and important moral innovation of the Enlightenment was that all are equal.  OK all men, but that was the critical break with the "Us v. Them" morality.  And put the human race on the slippery slope to the humane treatment of all.  There are still those trying to claw their way back up the slope to the rock of hatred, frequently led by God the rock, but those "defensive" horror weapons in the hands of the relatively enlightened are formidable intimidators of the remaining predator humans. 

Interestingly one of the most intimidating of those weapons is the Enlightenment idea that all are equal.  The people in the streets have no fear of pain or death, and can in fact defy the most powerful offensive weapons.  See Tiananman Square or Kent State University. Certainly many were hurt and killed, but the mores of the world were radically changed.

Incidentally, I would put pain as a much greater fear than death. Suicide is a common solution to pain, emotional and physical. Three banksters seem to have heard the call to jail them and fear the pain that will be inflicted if those calls are implemented.

Social Reality

beliefnet

I think of morality as a socially generated reality.  It is not coexistent with physical or science reality as there is no way to measure it directly. It becomes real over time with a steep learning curve in childhood, and eventually becomes internalized as conscience. 

Like all realities it can change as new information is internalized, but by adulthood new information is strongly blocked by the belief system in the brain.   There are several other socially generated realities, religion and politics are the most prominent, and status of other humans seems to be another social reality, which is in my view independent of morality.  Morality deals only with "My people" whatever that means to the particular individual.

All socially generated realities are real only for the individual although within a small tight social group there may be many commonalities. 

Understanding social reality may be a key to dealing with others who may have a completely different reality.  Fundies as an example inhabit a reality that may even exclude physical science as real.  Pretending that they are deluded only complicates the issue of dealing with them rationally.  Presenting facts that conflict with social realities as fact is ineffective in dealing with the social reality of the fact denier.      

Peer Pressure Morality

SciAm

 This is an astute observation because research on the motivation of soldiers during combat—well summarized by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman in his deeply insightful book On Killing (Little, Brown, 2009)—reveals that a soldier's primary motivation is not politics and ideology but devotion to his band of brothers. “Among men who are bonded together so intensely,” Grossman explains, “there is a powerful process of peer pressure in which the individual cares so deeply about his comrades and what they think about him that he would rather die than let them down.”

As a social primate species, we modulate our morals with signals from family, friends and social groups with whom we identify because in our evolutionary past those attributes helped individuals to survive and reproduce. We do not just blindly concede control to authorities; instead we follow the cues provided by our moral communities on how best to behave

One only has to look at Westboro Baptist, Think Tanks,  a JW Kingdom Hall, the NRA Leadership, et al. to see this modulation in action.  No amount of pressure from those outside the group will have any effect on the peer group.  

Atheist Sexual Morality

beliefnet
One of the reasons to side with the atheists in matters of sexual morality is that the atheist community is far superior to at least the Christian community in dealing with the modern fact, I use that term advisedly, that it is no longer the norm even among Christians for women to be married soon after puberty "To cleave only unto the husband" and spend her life barefoot and pregnant.  Women and men tend to seek partners with similar educational and vocational interests, which frequently means deferring marriage until mid 20's or later.  Perhaps a bit younger for women. 

Marriage or parenting vows, take your pick, are generally taken after considerable thought with little impetus from sex.  Indeed sexual compatibility is generally well proven by the time of parenting vows.  And the pair bond is well established usually through contraceptive monogamous sex long before the vow is taken and the contra lost.  The moral imperative is that the parenting vows are the binding ones and generally are anticipated to last through adulthood of the planned children.  No instant gratification or fashion involved.  It is a well thought out moral commitment. 

OK.  That takes care of the grown ups.  What about the horny teens? The Our Whole Lives program, a joint venture between UU and UCC, recognizes the fact that at an early age children and young adults will experiment with sexual activities.  OWL does not "Just say NO," that is a proven path to unwed parenthood.  Please note there are two unwed parents for every child born out of wedlock.  A much better moral standard is to understand that sex happens and that it is critical that when it does both partners are responsible, willing, and ready for it.  The common question "Your condom or mine?" is a simple way of insuring this moral standard.  Using this moral standard a sex act is no more (or less) significant than dirty dancing or if you prefer a formal Pas de Deux. 

Pain and God

beliefnet

Pain is not necessarily bad, but pain caused by another human whether physical or mental is bad, in fact positively immoral for the one inflicting the pain.

I know these things because I am an intelligent social animal, and inflicting pain on others of your kind is a genetic prohibition.

You will note that of your 10 commandments 5, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are commanding not to inflict mental pain on others with certain others enumerated. And 6 commands that you not inflict physical pain. This is simply God adopting basic human morality to Herm needs. No one needs God to do this and in fact the only thing God does is carve out tribal exceptions to this basic human morality. See the rest of the Old Testament and all of Paul.

An unindoctrinated human will have not inflicting pain of any kind on others as a basic component of herm conscience which is the term we give to the genetic imperatives of living as an intelligent social animal.

Absolute Moral Authority.

beliefnet

The Bible has indeed been RECEIVED ais "Authoritative" ... This is so not least because an entire Community has received It so ...
teilhard

And thus we return to the topic. Absolute Moral Authority is whatever an entire community has accepted as morally authoritative. Different communities will of course differ on the source of that moral authority, it may be God, it may be some version of the Bible, or more commonly some quote mines from a particular version of the Bible, it may be the mediator for God, it may be Mrs. Grundy. In an advanced larger society the source is more diffuse, but no less definite. As an example in the large society of research scientists, one must not knowingly falsify data, one must cite all relevant influences on the research, and peer review either of knowledgeable people within a organization if it is proprietary research, or public if it is academic research. Any breech of these moral standards will result in "excommunication" and no scientific employment will be available.

Absolute Moral Authority.

There is an absolute moral authority it comes from the evolutionary need for intelligent social animals to live, breed and compete under a moral system that allows most to survive. This natural absolute moral authority is generally based on the needs of an extended village, and is frequently hijacked by shamans, priest, pastors, imams and other self-appointed mediators for God in the service of themselves, God and always themselves. But the absolute moral authority comes from the society not from the God.

Defining Right and Wrong vs Morality

beliefnet

we're confusing DEFINING right/wrong... from KNOWING right/wrong.
Aka me, all

Not we, you and religions. Most of us social animals have no problem knowing right from wrong which is the natural imprinting of proper social behavior by the herd, pack, or tribe necessary for the survival of the herd, pack, or tribe (or equivalent social structure whatever the arrogant human animals call it.)
Most religions have elaborate definitions of right/wrong for the benefit of the shamans to control the tribe, occasionally for the benefit of the God of the tribe, less frequently for the benefit of the tribe itself and always for the benefit of the shamans. Thanks RAH.

animals are incapable of knowing WRONG. they don't have an internal moral compass. what they have is instinct through genetic programming

You are a bit confused here, animals don’t define wrong, they generally do not have shamans to tell them what it is. They do have a moral compass, partly genetic, mostly imprinted by parents and alphas where the genetic social structure is alpha driven. All social animals have the equivalent of the canine “play bow” to indicate learning behavior, including play fighting and hunting to learn proper behaviors.

The difficulty here is accepting humans as being more than animals, because then we have to start talking about "what" makes them more than animals, and conversation is then heading in the direction of discussing souls.

Again the difficulty is religious as religions have to impose a soul or equivalent on the human animal to define right and wrong for the benefit of the shamans. Without a soul the human animal generally gets along well with at least the extended tribe, including the women and children.

it's not hard to see the cause of the current frustration.

Yeah, we don’t believe in the shamans or God.

Atheist Morality

beliefnet

Morality for atheists comes from the same place that morality for theists comes from: The society of the peers we respect and interact with. The difference is that there is no God arbiter in an atheist society. Therefore the morality of an atheist is generally compliant with the current social imperatives of living in an interdependent, information rich, international, cosmopolitan society. Atheist morality has little to do with the needs of a group of bronze age desert marauders.

The Origins of Morality

Beliefnet -

--We *are* hard-wired for morality... while we can accurately describe the biology of how this occurs, in my mind it doesn't speak to where this moral compass originally comes from.
fangi

It doesn't come from anywhere, it evolved as an advantage in humans.
Rules in religion are just other types of social rules. That they are religious is just a different classification. Many religious leaders use the idea of an authority of god as a way to persuade believers that a moral idea is better than if it was proposed on its own merit.
F1fan