We have no morality but gods

Lee M said:

The idea that we cannot be moral or know what is moral outside of learning them from someone else seems to be an effort to dismiss morality rather than consider it because it makes your morals meaningless and ends the struggle whereby we determine morality.

Is allowing another person to undermine all of your morals and provide you with unquestionable new ones and dictate that you consider that no other moral compass exists a legitimate moral effort?

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I would say such a system is neither moral nor immoral. The immorality/ morality happens when you follow such a system and what it leads you to do

K

lupusFati said:

Why argue your case when you can just block people, I guess. Even when they're just calling you out on your own evasiveness...

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What Lee seems to be angling for is for modern Christianity to make a moral judgment that homosexuality is an acceptable behavior. Any other opinion will be brushed aside as a moral decision that wasn't 'processed' properly.

I have to make an unconventional hypothesis here.

Corpus Hermeticum is a Hermetic book (ie. Ptolemaic Egyptian neoplatonist wisdom) however its take on morality seems to really elucidate the nature of thinking at this time and perhaps even that employed in the bible.

Original sin is impervious to morals - and I think that's really the gist of what modern mainline catholic, protestant, and nondenominational churches are saying when they say that we're all deserving of the fire but only through Christ are we saved.

In neoplatonic philosophy immortal and immovable = good. Mortal and movable = bad. One lives forever with inviolable integrity, the other constantly spawns and decays.

I really can't escape the impression that the issue of original sin is structural/metaphysical rather than behavioral. In that sense though seeking virtue constantly and seeking to avoid things that turn us toward our animal instincts or nature is the path of virtue and that's something that Christianity, Hermeticism, platonism, and neoplatonism all have in common.

The reason why I'm open-minded to look at a non-biblical script such as Corpus Hermeticum on this; it tells me a little bit more about the language use in the OT and NT and what kinds of word choices might have been used to convey a message. One of the real dangers I think people have in believing that they're both a) hopelessly terrible sinners set for hell fire and b) that they're called to seek out and fix every hidden sin and even any possible hidden sin that they're not aware of is that it can drive a person mad. If they're at least given some direction as up - ie. seeking virtue and avoiding base nature, it makes things a lot more cohesive (add to that love God with all you have and your neighbor as yourself). I think that helps clear up a lot of definitional over-expansion that we tend to apply, particularly to the OT, when we read it with 21st century eyes.

The vikings had their own moral system before the Bible came to Scandinavia. Looting, raping, and killing was their value system.

So no, there is no morality without a higher being. Now in 2013, people have morals without God because they've already been passed down from generation to generation, and those values are pretty obvious to us today even without a God(don't murder, steal, rape, cheat, etc). But if someone needs to believe in a higher being for their own good, then good for them.

Cuddles222 said:

The New Testament is designed to disturb the conscience of the spiritually unregenerated, and to keep on track the conscience of the regenerated. What is interesting is that the unregenerate world's conscience actually agrees with the New Testament's teaching on how Christians should treat other Christians and non-Christians, and how even non-Christians should treat others, but since it's origin is claimed to be from the supreme being and put into written words.....it is rejected.

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Well... yes. Why is it strange to you that we can agree that love is good, but not believe in God? So we can accept that Jesus had some good moral teachings, even though there is no God. It would make more sense just to say, Jesus got alot right because humans can figure out morality for themselves.

I Eat Pie said:

The vikings had their own moral system before the Bible came to Scandinavia. Looting, raping, and killing was their value system.

So no, there is no morality without a higher being. Now in 2013, people have morals without God because they've already been passed down from generation to generation, and those values are pretty obvious to us today even without a God(don't murder, steal, rape, cheat, etc). But if someone needs to believe in a higher being for their own good, then good for them.

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Why do you think what the Vikings did was representative of what can exist without God? Also. they believed in gods anyway. Buddhism doesn't really have a God, but Buddhism is pretty moral.

You can be moral without God, and have a better reasons for why morality is such as it is.

mpok1519 said:

If someone lacks the ability to discern right from wrong, they lack empathy, not religion.

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Not at all. Firstly, any two people will have at least a slightly difference sense of right and wrong. Who can decide which person is correct and which lacks empathy? Secondly, empathy means that you can understand the reasons why people have constructed a system of morality and see the value of it. This doesn't require that you think certain actions are right or wrong in an objective sense.

Paradoxum said:

Well... yes. Why is it strange to you that we can agree that love is good, but not believe in God? So we can accept that Jesus had some good moral teachings, even though there is no God. It would make more sense just to say, Jesus got alot right because humans can figure out morality for themselves.



Why do you think what the Vikings did was representative of what can exist without God? Also. they believed in gods anyway. Buddhism doesn't really have a God, but Buddhism is pretty moral.

You can be moral without God, and have a better reasons for why morality is such as it is.

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It depends what their God teaches. And Buddhists are very spiritual people.

Edit: And according to google, Buddhism, came from Hinduism. They have Gods.

I Eat Pie said:

It depends what their God teaches. And Buddhists are very spiritual people.

Edit: And according to google, Buddhism, came from Hinduism. They have Gods.

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Buddhism arose from a nation that held beliefs we call Hinduism today. But Buddhism is an agnostic faith and Hinduism is quite... complicated.

abdAlSalam said:

Buddhism arose from a nation that held beliefs we call Hinduism today. But Buddhism is an agnostic faith and Hinduism is quite... complicated.

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Eh. They have gods. And Buddhists anyways are very spiritual people. It keeps them calm and out of trouble. It's still a religion. (From what I hear, it has a good Value set). I don't hear of many of them shooting people.

All this back and forth debate is stupid since the whole point who can say whats moral or not? Whats right or wrong? Whats good or bad? Maybe killing is actually moral. Maybe defecating on a plate is sane. We only say those things are bad because of where we live or current views on it.

Without "religion" then it would be up to each person to make their own views.

I Eat Pie said:

It depends what their God teaches. And Buddhists are very spiritual people.

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Yup.

Edit: And according to google, Buddhism, came from Hinduism. They have Gods.

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I know. That doesn't tell us much about Buddhism though.

xfreakazoidx said:

All this back and forth debate is stupid since the whole point who can say whats moral or not? Whats right or wrong? Whats good or bad? Maybe killing is actually moral. Maybe defecating on a plate is sane. We only say those things are bad because of where we live or current views on it.

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I vehemently disagree with this view. I am not religious but I certainly am not a moral relativist. Relativism is internally incoherent and untenable. The relativist position is as follows: Because every culture is correct in its definitions of morality, another culture should not step in to change those definitions. However, if what is right is determined by which culture one happens to belong to, why then, if that culture happens to be imperialistic, would it be wrong to force cultural norms on other cultures? Cultural and moral relativism attempts to combine an absolute (no interference) with a relativistic 'truth' (there are no absolutes). Relativists also fail to place relativism as one of many legitimate views (which would be the relativistic thing to do). It assumes relativism as predominantly or absolutely true and others fall short of its wisdom. It is grossly, logically incoherent.

Observe the nature and endeavor of any ethical system. It attempts, in the most basic of senses, to carve out human behavior and categorize it in appropriate and inappropriate categories. Obviously such systems differ from one another but at bottom what they tend to care about is well-being; all other values most people invoke (liberty, autonomy, privacy, safety, harm avoidance, health, etc.) are mere vehicles to achieve this. This is now making an end-run on deontology, utilitarianism, care ethics, and even religious ethics and so on. Once we have conceded that morality has something to do with both well-being and its relation to entities that can be affected by it (e.g. those with sentience and ability to feel pain, to the degree they can feel it) then we have granted there is some objective measure by which we can arrive at moral truths. This does not mean morality is some Platonic form of the good independent of human experience. To the contrary, it is indeed dependent on it, but, just like the concept of health (a concept dependent on sentient beings for its coherence), well-being is not a matter of personal opinion. Surely there are right and wrong ways by which to avoid needless harm and achieve higher states of flourishing.

For example, imagine at this very moment the worst possible misery for everyone. By definition this is bad; there is nothing that could possibly be a worse state. Any navigation away from this state, then, is by definition, better—or good—and there are objective ways of avoiding it faster and further than others. Complexities, of course, begin to arise once you start dealing in population ethics and such, but such realities will not be discovered by blindly following ancient texts written by desert nomads more closely. They will be discovered through deep and honest conversation, philsophical inquiry, constant questioning, logical coherence and evidence.

poolerboy0077 said:

I vehemently disagree with this view. I am not religious but I certainly am not a moral relativist. Relativism is internally incoherent and untenable. The relativist position is as follows: Because every culture is correct in its definitions of morality, another culture should not step in to change those definitions. However, if what is right is determined by which culture one happens to belong to, why then, if that culture happens to be imperialistic, would it be wrong to force cultural norms on other cultures? Cultural and moral relativism attempts to combine an absolute (no interference) with a relativistic 'truth' (there are no absolutes). Relativists also fail to place relativism as one of many legitimate views (which would be the relativistic thing to do). It assumes relativism as predominantly or absolutely true and others fall short of its wisdom. It is grossly, logically incoherent.

Observe the nature and endeavor of any ethical system. It attempts, in the most basic of senses, to carve out human behavior and categorize it in appropriate and inappropriate categories. Obviously such systems differ from one another but at bottom what they tend to care about is well-being; all other values most people invoke (liberty, autonomy, privacy, safety, harm avoidance, health, etc.) are mere vehicles to achieve this. This is now making an end-run on deontology, utilitarianism, care ethics, and even religious ethics and so on. Once we have conceded that morality has something to do with both well-being and its relation to entities that can be affected by it (e.g. those with sentience and ability to feel pain, to the degree they can feel it) then we have granted there is some objective measure by which we can arrive at moral truths. This does not mean morality is some Platonic form of the good independent of human experience. To the contrary, it is indeed dependent on it, but, just like the concept of health (a concept dependent on sentient beings for its coherence), well-being is not a matter of personal opinion. Surely there are right and wrong ways by which to avoid needless harm and achieve higher states of flourishing.

For example, imagine at this very moment the worst possible misery for everyone. By definition this is bad; there is nothing that could possibly be a worse state. Any navigation away from this state, then, is by definition, better--or good--and there are objective ways of avoiding it faster and further than others. Complexities, of course, begin to arise once you start dealing in population ethics and such, but such realities will not be discovered by blindly following ancient texts written by desert nomads more closely. They will be discovered through deep and honest conversation, philsophical inquiry, constant questioning, logical coherence and evidence.

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A lot of assumptions there.
That the objective is "wellbeing" (to flesh it out more, the most wellbeing for the most number - hey that's utilitarian despite your claim otherwise).
That the reality of wellbeing is mono dimensional, or at least can be mapped to such.
Ignoring that rules can be arbitrary and yet effective. It doesn't matter which side of the road we drive on. In matters enormously that in any given place we all drive on the same side.

I Eat Pie said:

(From what I hear, it has a good Value set). I don't hear of many of them shooting people.

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You might like to read up on Sri Lanka and Myanmar/Burma.

xfreakazoidx said:

All this back and forth debate is stupid since the whole point who can say whats moral or not? Whats right or wrong? Whats good or bad? Maybe killing is actually moral. Maybe defecating on a plate is sane. We only say those things are bad because of where we live or current views on it.

Without "religion" then it would be up to each person to make their own views.

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And with "religion" it is up to each person to make their own views if and which "religion" is authoritative.
You can´t escape your subjectivity.

ebia said:

A lot of assumptions there.
That the objective is "wellbeing" (to flesh it out more, the most wellbeing for the most number - hey that's utilitarian despite your claim otherwise).
That the reality of wellbeing is mono dimensional, or at least can be mapped to such.

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It's not utilitarian. It is consequentialist, though--but then again so is deontology, albeit a crude, incoherent one.

Any particular assumptions you've detected that you care to hold me accountable to? I'd be happy to show how deontology, especially Kant's ethical formalism, is consequentialist in nature though it pretends not to be.

poolerboy0077 said:

It's not utilitarian. It is consequentialist, though--but then again so is deontology, albeit a crude, incoherent one.

Any particular assumptions you've detected that you care to hold me accountable to? I'd be happy to show how deontology, especially Kant's ethical formalism, is consequentialist in nature though it pretends not to be.

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I'm not a deontologist, so it wouldn't over bother me if you do think that.

I've pointed out a few assumptions. Do with that what you will.