Godless Morality

[daniel777]

and in many monotheistic cultures they cut off parts of babies genitals to make their god happy. And some even would cut off even more just to make kids sing better.

well it's better than killing cells (babies) isn't it?

go naturalism.

 

[ngpty]

and in many monotheistic cultures they cut off parts of babies genitals to make their god happy. And some even would cut off even more just to make kids sing better.

well it's better than killing cells (babies) isn't it?

go naturalism.

oh, boy, the start of both a circumcision debate and an abortion debate! What novel topics -- I am sure that both sides will use careful, reasoned debate skills and make many interesting points to more fully explore these vital topics.


</sarcasm>

 

[ranmaonehalf]

i dont know of many religions that require abortion.

 

[The Bellman]

The unit of ethics is values. Values are things that one must work to gain or keep (a simple example of that is nutrition). These values are short-handed ways of expressing moral principles (ex. “we need to eat because otherwise we die”), and moral principles are short-handed way of expressing scientific or social facts (such as the facts about metabolism).
The basis of ethics is causality: everything has consequences, and so do actions. Actions have consequences, and our role is to find those consequences and act accordingly.
By evaluating what values are being effected by a given action in its context, we can express a sound moral judgment on that action (this was a good thing to do, this was a bad thing to do). This is true regardless of your actual moral system – we all have values, implicitly or explicitly. The real argument is about those scientific and social facts and what values they entail. There cannot be any argument on whether there are objective moral principles: it’s a discussion about as ridiculous as asking whether the Earth exists. We all need to act to survive.

This has all been discussed before - the long and short of it is that you can't support anything that you've writen above.

Specifically, you provide (and can provide) nothing at all to support:
- the unit of ethics if values (or that there is any 'unit of ethics')
- that 'we need to eat because otherwise we die' is a moral principle
- moral principles are ways of expressing scientific or social facts
- the basics of ethics is causality
- that the result of an act determines the morality of that act

And so forth.

And in several places you are simply wrong - of course there can be an argument on whether there are objective moral principles. People have it all the time. The fact that we need to act to survive is completely irrelevant to morality.

 

[daniel777]

i dont know of many religions that require abortion.

no, but i know of at least one that allows it. yes, i just called atheism a religion. OOOOO sue me.

 

[Wednesday]

Atheism is not a religion.

A - theism, get it, not theistic.

It is really quite annoying when you do that.

 

[daniel777]

edited...nevermind....

 

[quatona]

no, but i know of at least one that allows it. yes, i just called atheism a religion. OOOOO sue me.

Ah, come on. But how about me calling theism superstition in return?
I mean why should you have the exclusive right to redefine term arbitrarily?

 

[ArchaicTruth]

i dont know of many religions that require abortion.

uh....

this is Sparta?

 

[tcampen]

Rather, as Christians we must entirely embrace the Gospel and now that we are actually literate it is possible. Previously, we could be lied to and coerced into ill behavior but there has not been any of these such Christian immoral acts in a long time because we've come a far way.

This goes back to literacy and knowledge of the follower of the religion; in the 21st century we will do much better.

Literacy has done more to obscure the "will of god" as to questions of morality, as evidenced by the wide variety of opinion of God's moral stance on a variety of issues. Tell me, what is God's position on capital punishment, or the abuse of our environment, or on war, or abortion? The fact that informed, sincere, bible-believing christians can honestly differ in their belief as to god's position on these issues proves my point.

As such, it is clear people believe what they want, and then use religion to justify it.

 

[billwald]

Morality is controlled by our social contract, the culture in which we live.

 

[WatersMoon110]

Morality is controlled by our social contract, the culture in which we live.

I somewhat disagree. While laws are completely controlled by a given culture, and what is socially acceptable is - I feel that there are plenty of people who hold morals that are different than the societal normals that they live in.

 

[igotbegot]

I somewhat disagree. While laws are completely controlled by a given culture, and what is socially acceptable is - I feel that there are plenty of people who hold morals that are different than the societal normals that they live in.

True, but these "norms" are a product of our culture, not necessarily a result of the establishment pushing them down on us.

For instance, some norms oppose the laws while others are stricter than the law is. And the norms vary from place to place and time to time.

I certainly think social norms are a cultural product.