People should be entitled to believe whatever they want. I have no problems with people having moral beliefs.
But, people shouldn't be entitled to force their beliefs and belief system onto others.
I agree except in reality people try to force their beliefs onto others. It happens every day, we can't help it. You just did it when you said
"people shouldn't be entitled to force their beliefs and belief system onto others". Thats a belief about how people should be and believe. Thats why I think we can't look at morality purely by logic or science.
The problem I think is that belief just as an internal belief and not expressed and put into action is not really a belief. A belief can only be a true belief when acted out. So we know people have different beliefs and they all need to be acted out. But they can't because they clash.
This is why we should totally remove the notion of having moral beliefs injected into our laws.
I think its impossible. For some laws they are too entangled in morals you can't seperate them.
I don't care if it is morally wrong or not. People understand the concept of property, the value of property. Therefore people will fight hard to protect their property. If we allow people in society to take stuff as if property doesn't exist, then we will end up with deaths, feuds, and wars. And that isn't a safe nor stable nor thriving society.
Yes and thats all to do with morality at the end of the day. The value of property is of value because its something that has to be earnt. That takes hard work and sacrifice. That relates to ethical truths we have long supported like 'you get what you put in' and a 'hard days work for a fair pay and reward'. Stealing undermines all that.
I couldn't care less what is written in the new testament. Some people think it is wrong to kill and eat animals. Some people think it is wrong and cruel to grow birds and pigs in cages. They have the right to that belief, therefore, for them it is immoral for people to eat animals.
OK fair enough. But I think we should not just disregard written text like the Bible as they are about our history. It gives insights into who we were, our origins. If you notice most religions have similar stories even though they are seperate cultures like there was a common understanding about the world back then. It would be like rejecting our own family tree origins which can give insight into who we are.
Yes, morality is about feelings and preferences and beliefs and conditioning. none of this is objectively derived and should not be the basis for law.
So should these subjective ideas be the basis of morality at all, of social norms. Or just have no basis.
I'm not from USA, I couldn't care less what the US founding fathers thought.
Just because some people say humans have natural inalienable Rights this doesn't make it true.
So what about current Human Rights they say the same thing and so do most nations current Consitutions and many Bill of Rights and Conventions. Why would so many believe the same thing. That humans have these natural rights. Rights like Freedom from slavery, the Right to religious belief, Free speech and conscience, freedom from arbitrary arrest ect.
It seems to me that there is a common understanding that these rights exist and should be upheld. They are not something up fro debate because they are fundementally what go hand in hand with being human. LIke you said people should have the right to believe whatever they want to believe.
But personally I think government should consider everything a right until they can justify that such and such needs a law against it because it will be dangerous for society. Govt aren't church, they aren't mum and dad, they should leave people to live the lives of their choosing, whether it is a moral or immoral life is none of govt business.
I agree the State is not the church or our parents. But they sure do act like they are. There are more laws, policies, codes of conduct governing our behaviour than ever in our history. Families use to be able to determine how they lived, how they brought up their kids. But now the State has taken this role. Mostly through the Welfare State. Its not a coincident that the welfare budget has increasing consumed more and more of total spending.
Oh, I agree that people have emotions.
Not just emotions but qualified emotions. Usually associated with fairness, justice, kindness and alturism. Not uncontrolled emotion which can be biased or extreme but balanced with a moral principle. As humans can be malevolent unqualified emotions can lead to bitterness, and seeking revenge for the percieved wrongs or ones own burdens. Turned outward instead of inward in mending oneself. Or just a way of rationalising ones own selfish desires as being ok.
People are naturally alarmed when danger is present. Seems a decent survival instinct.
Could be but then that is still an objective basis in that its anchored in biology and not just the subjective. But I think evolution falls short of explaining morality in that morality is abstract yet real and genes, or survival instincts are not abstract. So theres a category difference in their fundemental natures.
Not really. We are ingrained with this concept of moral sense by our parents, our teachers, our friends, the stories we read, the movies we watch.
It is a learned behaviour.
Actually research shows that even new borns have this moral sense through their fixation of the good acts and 3 month olds expressing gestures towards the good guys and negative judgements about the bad guys. This happens before parental influence and is consistent across cultures. Parental and societal influence comes in on top of our natural moral sense and then this is molded to each culture or even family.
One thing research has discovered is that you can't teach morality if there is no sense about morality in the first place. Like you can't teach someone to feel good about something or love someone. You have to have that sense there in the first place. Its that sense that makes us moral beings.
Well, we know how we would like to be treated, we do have the ability to have empathy.
Yes I think this is the basis, that we can sense other people as to where they are at and we know what its like to suffer injustices, unfairness, unkindness ect. Its like add a human then add some more and you naturally will get morality.
Huh, you have lived a colourful life. Mine has been quite boring in comparison to yours.
Lol I wasn't talking about myself though I have had a bit of a coloured past. I was speaking generally. As a society or nation or civilization we have seen the devastation stealing or rape or murder can do. We read about the raping and pillaging of Vikings and see that it always lead to choas though sometimes it seemed to work in the short term.
Morals cannot be tested. They can not be discovered, but rather than agonising over every decision, we find shortcuts, principles that work for us.
You don't think morals can be discovered. What about when we once thought it was ok to do something but later found it wasn't ok. Say new discover shows smoking was actually bad. Or discovery found that Black people were equal with whites as humans and not a lower species as some claimed when treating them like animals.