Morality will always be a part of the human culture. It is one of the major factors that seperates humans from other earthly creations. A wild tiger hunts, kills, and eats animals almost every day. It doesn’t pause it’s animalistic frenzy to ponder whether it is right or wrong to kill the animal. It doesn’t look up at the sky and thank God for providing it’s dinner. It just gourges itself until it cannot eat anymore and then decides what to do with the carcass. Most humans are raised with morality coming at them in many different forms. Religion is just one tool used to help guide morality on the right course. Take the religious no- no’s away and there would still be “societial norms”, law, and family values to take it’s place. Humans will always have the sense of morality, and without it then BAM! it would be chaos and everything would be up for grabs!
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Natural Law13% Voted for by Kevin, Mary O, ohsweetie970, unicorn375, SuperMoose.
We’re all born with a sense for Natrual Law; to no the difference between what’s right and wrong. If I hit you and you cry is one thing but if you hit me back and I cry; now I’ve learned something. Consequently, to spare a hurt our more experienced parents will instruct according to what they’ve learned and there we have it, moral behavior tried and tested.
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Personal decision.....13% Voted for by Nosferatu, DragonDemon, ohsweetie970, reaper of chaos, SuperMoose.
Your morality is something you have to decide for yourself. Without the guidance of dictated dogma it is easy to lead a moral life. If you are causing no harm to any one then pretty much any thing goes. Those who are restricted to their religious bounderies, I think, have a harder time remaining ‘moral’. Too many ways to step out, so to speak.
Of course this is also dependant on exactly what you believe the definition of moral is.
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People, not religion10% Voted for by Kevin, ohsweetie970, Mechanical Angel, SuperMoose.
I believe that where we were raised and how we’veb been treated reflects on our own code of morality. If you were abused as a child, you may take a disliking to abuse, while it may have ill effects on another, making them become like their abusers. However, religion has a big impact on it. Otherwise, people mainly just follow the laws set by the government and what-not. Morality is an effort to make the world a better place, but while opinions differ, majority rules. That’s why we have the “morals” or laws that we have today. Popular opinion. PEOPL set morals, not just religion.
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Atheism7% Voted for by Kevin, reaper of chaos, leggomyeggo.
As an atheist, I encumber a certain stigma of being a dirty heathen Hamurabi adherent or is anything but altruistic in any of my deeds. I find that to be completely false. One does not need a religious template to adhere to. One can see that in society, bad deeds get punished. Sometimes, this concept fails, and the human relies on his competency to determine a right decision from a wrong one, or in the case of Freud, choose between the Superego or Id.
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Immanuel Kant7% Voted for by mellilot, ohsweetie970, SuperMoose.
Immanuel Kant was highly religious, but he felt that morality should not be reliant upon God, but upon logic instead. And as far as I’m concerned he did a very good job, though others disagree…
Kant was around when the prevailing thought on morality was consequentialist, mainly utilitarian. Kant disagreed with the idea of consequentialism because he felt that morality was a product of Humans being free rational beings. Consequentialism means that we cannot know a priori, or even before we act (even after consulting the world around us) whether our action will turn out to be moral or not. If we cannot know whether what we are about to do is moral then we cannot chose to do the moral thing. If we cannot chose to do the moral thing then we cannot become moral ourselves.
Kant was heavily influence in much of his work by David Hume, and athiest philosopher who believed that morality was based on our reactions to certain actions. So if people generally tended to react favourably to benevolence then we would come to see benevolence as a virtue and a benevolent act would become a moral act. This is a form of what is known as Virtue Ethics and it is based not on actions, but on traits that people possess. Kant however felt that many traits that people consider virtuous could be used for evil as well as good- patience, for example, and bravery. Kant stated that the only thing that was good in itself was a good will. That is the only essentially good thing was a desire to do good.
Now upon this foundation of what was essentially good, and upon the assumption that humans were free rational agents Kant arrived at his Categorical Imperitive. He believed that people had a duty to follow this categorical imperitive, that if they were poperly thinking rationally they would see that the right thing to do would be that which was in accordance with the categorical imperitive, and they would then rationally have to follow that course of action.
The Categorical Imperitive was given in several formulations; Act only on the maxim through which you can at the same time will become a universal law. ~ this means that we should only do those things which we could rationally allow everyone to do at the same time. So if we take lying as our maxim, and imagined a world in which everyone lied we would see that such a world would be impossible as if everyone lied trust would be non existent and without trust it would be pointless to communicate and without communication we cannot lie. Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but at the same time as an end. Which basically means do unto others as you would have them do unto you… don’t use people as tools alone to your own ends. And; So act as if you were through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends. which means pretty much the above two combined.
Well, that’s the morality I try to follow. I do not believe in God, but I do believe that I have a moral duty as a free rational being to allow others to also act as free rational beings- which when examined is what I believe each formulation of the categorical imperitive aims for. It is logically grounded and based on what is the only single essential good as far as I can see. If you can point out any other thing that is essentially good in this world I’ll be glad to hear it
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From a few million years of practical experience7% Voted for by ohsweetie970, wbiro, lightfeather.
You forget man has been around for a few million years- true each generation has to refigure everything out for themselves again, slowing progress of the species, but certain 'common sense' behaviors and guidelines were carried over, tested, tested again, and reached their zenith when the world's religions were being put to written form over the last several thousand years. Now since most people have no common sense, the authors threw in a lot of superstition and supernatural to get their attention. The meat of religion is the wisdom for living. For example, "thou shall not covet thy neighbor's wife"- they are telling you this for your own good! Advice like this, by the way, is sadly lost on many of today's religious freaks who focus on believing in order to selfishly secure an eternal afterlife for themselves.
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consequentialist/survivalist viewpoint7% Voted for by Kevin, ohsweetie970, unicorn375.
The ultimate goal is survival of humanity and things which further that goal are moral, while things which weaken that goal are immoral.
The secondary goal is to further the development of humanity, and tertiary goals are the above two but insert individual humans in place of humanity.
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Glad for morals7% Voted for by ohsweetie970, rksweetpunk, SuperMoose.
As a christian and a pastor’s daughter, i have been graced (haha) to see numerous christian be extremely immoral (as i’m sure many of you have) sometimes people who aren’t with a religion have more/better morals than those who are supposed to be bound by those rules…just a thought
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Morality is subjectiveReligion is not so much a doctrine which tells us what morals we have to follow as it is a set of rules which gives us the comfort of believing that there is something more, that we are not to be blamed for what happens to us. Whether or not god exists, no religion’s doctrine has been ultimately proven to be 100% correct. Morality is something we glean from life experience and reason, not what others tell usVoted for by Cyan314.
if the Pope tells me it is wrong to kill, that’s his opinion. What is written in any Holy Book is an opinion, because it has not been fully proven to be correct. For all weknow as humans, the moral doctrine of Islam could be as valid as that of Hinduism, which both could be ultimatley wrong in comparison to some individual set of values. Noone knows the ultimte truth of morality. -
Freud.Voted for by leggomyeggo.
There was a guy named Sigmund Freud who looked deeply into the realms of a humans mind. He certainly was not the first, but he was the fiurst to quantify and formulate the whole process of what we now call psychoanalysis. He called the conscience the Superego, which is constantly up in arms against the Id, or primal urges, with the Ego, which is associated with reality, between the two. A healthy person has a balance between superego and id, with ego being the strongest. But enough of the scientific mumbo jumbo. There exists below the human consciousness a level of morality that transcends society. Certainly, humans develope by a fair amount of both nature and nurture, but this conscience is deeper than nurture. It is likely inherited from ancestors past, who realizae dthat killing each other is no the way for a race to prosper.
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Being MoralVoted for by PsydewaysTears.
It’s either impossible for everybody to believe in the same exact kind of morality…. or there is no set defitinition of the term. Saying that morality is impossible without the acceptance of a religion is just as arbitrary as believing in the religion itself. Claiming that one’s religion is the only path to true morality is just a way to justify categorizing the actions of all others as wrong. These type of people are the ones who sleep soundly at night because of the “fact” that Gandhi went to hell but they won’t. Unscrutinized dictionary terms are a manipulator’s favorite tool for enforcing their will upon others. If the ability to decide between right and wrong is only existent because of the intervening of a higher power then we weren’t created adequately and that feature deserves reckoning.
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The Social Laws And CustomsVoted for by Andy Stephenson.
I think it is wise to obey the laws of society(laws of your land), and to also observe social customs. I choose to do this, not a religious choice; I simply believe it is wise. I even try to conform to speed limits. There is no guilt this way, I commit no wrong. I guess that means I don’t sin and it’s easy.
You know the person you choose to be. There in lies your morals.
Andy
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you are the only authority you needVoted for by slender spider.
By recognising that you are the only authority needed to define what is moral for yourself. You do not need to have someone sitting on a throne up there somewhere dictating to you the laws of morality. All you need to do is listen to your heart. But listen deeply because, I hear tell, she talks in a whisper.
I like to believe we are all born with an innate sense of what is right and what is wrong for us, as individuals. That is why we are able to accept or reject whatever belief system or dogma or wisdom or science or affinity we wish.
I’m not suggesting you do every little thing you feel like, indulging all your whims, I am suggesting a person can reflect on what it is they wish to do, and through quiet contemplation, we are all capable of finding our own answers.
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Morality..Voted for by jaded angel.
Morality is your very own code of what you belive is better and worse in respect of your actions affecting others. Thats atleast what i believe.
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Of course not
Of course not. Now we get into religious morality, the Ten Commandments. I was only addressing morality without religion.March 23, 2005
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