Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
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Post by Jason on Jul 10, 2007 11:49:45 GMT -4
I came across this statement in an opinion piece. Note that it's not saying that you can't have morals without a religious belief. The statement only concerns whether morals are a matter of perspective or reflect a reality beyond the observer.
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2007 14:22:32 GMT -4
Jason, you're going to stir things up with this one. I'm not sure of what the question is, but I voted yes, and I'll explain.
Okay, assuming there is no God. I voted that morality is subjective, meaning it depends on the person or society. For instance my morality would be different than yours, which would be different from a tribe in New Guinea where people have sex with their grandchildren and pigs are more valuable than women. (I didn't make that up). Would their behavior be immoral. In my eyes, I guess yes. How harmful is their behaviour to their society? Probably less than it would be in ours, I don't know. As thinking animals, man has a greater capacity for understanding what is good or bad for society, and our moral, ethics and laws reflect that. But, all of us don't think the same. Hopefully, 90% of our morals would be the same across the globe. And I don't know how to properly judge people whose 10% is different from mine. Go to different countries and you would find many practices unacceptable to your (or my) morals. There's a fine line sometimes between what is right and wrong. I have trouble myself with some issues, such as abortion. I feel in my heart that it is just plain wrong, but on the other hand I don't think I have the right to tell a woman that she can't have an abortion. It would be her choice. I believe that if there was enough support in society for her, then maybe she wouldn't have that abortion. I find that most rights or wrongs belong in the catagory of ethics not morals. Ethics being equal rights for all, fair treatment for all and fair justice for all among other things. Religion does provide a way to instill morals in people, but I'm not gonna go there, since this thread is based on the assumption that God doesn't exist. But, some religions already don't have a god - Buddhism is one - but still have strong moral and ethical beliefs. Ethics are easier to determine than morals, and it can really be tough to tell what is moral or immoral. But yeah, its subjective.
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Post by ishmael on Jul 10, 2007 14:41:51 GMT -4
Ethics being equal rights for all, fair treatment for all and fair justice for all among other things. Does everyone agree on what is fair treatment for all and fair justice for all? Ethics are easier to determine than morals, and it can really be tough to tell what is moral or immoral. How are ethics determined? Are they written down somewhere? In my opinion, people usually don't really care about being ethical or moral by any objective standard, they care about twisting their ethics and morals to coincide with their interests. I'm not sure why "I want something" isn't good enough, but people seem to be ashamed of such obvious self interest. They need to put a nice veneer of morality on it to hide the self interest.
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Post by ishmael on Jul 10, 2007 14:44:15 GMT -4
Note that it's not saying that you can't have morals without a religious belief. I would say having morals is a type of religious belief. Maybe it doens't involve a deity, but it's a set of beliefs which are held to be true without evidence.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 10, 2007 14:44:33 GMT -4
Ginnie - I think you've understood the question correctly.
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2007 15:20:03 GMT -4
Jason, you have a point about the ethics issue. Some governments may find it totally unethical to use harsh interrogation techniques and others maybe find torture ethical if the end result is good for their society. So yeah, both ethics and morals can be tricky to determine.
ishmael, I would say having morals is a type of religious belief. Maybe it doens't involve a deity, but it's a set of beliefs which are held to be true without evidence. I find child molestation immoral. Are you saying that there is no evidence that pedophilia is harmful to children? Or is it not a moral issue at all?
I think there must be some morals that everyone can agree on?
"Morality is a system of principles and judgments based on cultural, religious, and philosophical concepts and beliefs, by which humans determine whether given actions are right or wrong. These concepts and beliefs are often generalized and codified by a culture or group, and thus serve to regulate the behaviour of its members. Conformity to such codification may also be called morality, and the group may depend on widespread conformity to such codes for its continued existence." This is one definition of morality. Others just are concerned with right and wrong conduct. I think there is a lot of evidence through history of what conduct is right and wrong...
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 10, 2007 15:22:20 GMT -4
If everyone did agree to a particular moral, such as "child molestation is wrong" would that mean it really is an objective moral, or would it still be subjective?
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Post by ishmael on Jul 10, 2007 15:32:21 GMT -4
Are you saying that there is no evidence that pedophilia is harmful to children? I didn't say anything one way or the other to that point. I think there must be some morals that everyone can agree on? Maybe there are, although my experience at this web site (in other threads) is not real encouraging about there being things everyone agrees on. Is this one of them? It wasn't clear from your New Guinea example if the grandchildren were of age or not. (At whatever age one stops being a child, anyway.) And to Jason's point, does objective morality just mean that everyone agrees on it? Even in this case, we would have the possibility that in the future, someone could decide that a point agreed to by every person in history so far must be wrong. Does it then stop being objective and become subjective?
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2007 16:37:10 GMT -4
I think I know where Jason is headed. Most of us will probably say that Morality is subjective - assuming there is no God. He will then point out that he believes there is a God, and with a God morality is objective, And point out that in a godless world, morals are defined by mortals, so our laws naturally would be imperfect compared to Gods. The trouble is Jason, there are hundreds of different Gods prayed to on this planet, so whether he exists or not wouldn't matter on this issue because we still have to figure out which one is real. After thousands of years we still don't know... Or something to that effect.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 10, 2007 17:13:08 GMT -4
I didn't really plan to "go" anywhere with this thought - I just thought it might be worth discussing.
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2007 18:28:31 GMT -4
Then I apologize for suggesting it. It was said a little in jest.(I keep doing that). You must admit though that the other side of the coin - God Existing, Objective Morality become intriguing then.
Also to comment - I think part of the reason why the members like this forum is that we all don't think alike. And thank goodness for that! ;D
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 10, 2007 20:47:10 GMT -4
I'd love to hear the explanation from the person who voted neither true nor false.
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2007 20:53:21 GMT -4
Let me put in another Einstein quote : "If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed".
Here is something interesting:
A Study by biologist Mark Hauser and moral philosopher Peter Singer focused on three hypothetical dilemmas and compared the verdicts of atheists with those of religious people. The subjects were asked to choose whether a hypothetical action is morally 'obligatory', 'permissible' or 'forbidden'. The main conclusion was that there is no statistically significant difference between atheists and religious believers moral judgments pertaining to the dilemmas. Of course, that seems like a small sampling of dilemmas.
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Jul 10, 2007 21:16:12 GMT -4
Was that underlined section supposed to be a link?
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Post by Ginnie on Jul 10, 2007 21:34:36 GMT -4
No, Jason. I've just modified it so it doesn't look like a link.
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