Atheism

[ultraspatial]

nah, morality was there already, it didn't appear. there was just no incentive going for why we should be moral, until civilization/religion began

how was morality already there ?

Eudiamona was a concept that predates Christian morality and if anything Christianity co-opted pre existing Aristotelian philosophy.

i was talking about the modern world but w/e

still doesn't mean that western morality isn't profoundly influenced by christianity. morality isn't some separate being living in a bubble, it's merely a product of society at a certain point

[scspkr99]

It was profoundly influenced by Christianity which was in turn profoundly influenced by greek philosophy. It didn't start with the church and you're right in as much as the influence of the church decreasing has increased the work in secular ethics but there's little commonality.

[ultraspatial]

let's not forget that luther was quite anti-aristotelian

[Jizz]

morality was already there because it appeared with humans



by human i mean the point from where we had a conscience

[ultraspatial]

and you base this on what?

[Jizz]

nothing

im not trying to prove anything ultra, but it does not feel right to me, to say that morality was entirely born out of religion.

i think it is the constant search to decide which road is right or wrong, that consequently leads to conclusions about whether you reach the right destination, not the other way round

[scspkr99]

Luther opposed Aristotle because of the latter's support for reason and Luther's emphasis on faith. This is almost Ironic given the age of enlightenment can be traced back to Luther.

There were also great Christian ethicists , Kant most notably, but the development of ethical theories from the 17c onwards attempted to provide objective standards of morality, they claimed the first horn of Euthyphro and sought to demonstrate what was good independent of God. It's also no surprise that the best virtue ethicists of the last 100 years have much clearer links to religion than those advocating theories that have been developed since the enlightenment. Alasdair McIntyre and Elizabeth Anscombe both practicing catholics brought the theory back to prominence.

[OGLemon]

I personally view morality as being a result of the evolution of human cognition. The higher level of cognition resulted in a new dynamic of group relations. If humans were to survive in groups then they needed unity and peaceful relations within the group. This probably led things such as not killing, not stealing, etc. Without these "rules" then the group would fall apart and the chance of survival would decline. However these rules could be broken, so I believe that religion was created as a way to legitimize the rules needed for society to function. If you didn't follow the rules then bad things would happen to you. I also believe that this accounts for why the priesthood held a lot of political power in the early civilizations. That's just my hypothesis though.

[ultraspatial]

@jizzman i didn't say it was born out of religion, just that it was influenced by a protestant worldview and that it's a product of white western protestant culture.
but even if it was completely born out of religion, why would you care ? especially if you agree with it

@og you'll find something like that in freud's totem & taboo
i sort of agree with that view tbh. tho i'd explain it as the need for morality (rights-based or otherwise) being of utilitarian nature and its manifestations (rights, laws etc) being given based on utilitarian considerations

[Jizz]

well, if you were gonna continue with the argument that would've probably been my next question, about why we were even discussing this in the first place

maybe that in itself is a sign of our striving for a moral stance

i dunno maybe im just misunderstanding you here, but you cant just flat out say that morality is a product of "white western protestant culture" man. ideas of what is good or bad were always quite universal, hence why i like to link it to the advent of a conscience (or evoluton of cognition as lemon put it) as opposed to religion or any other marked historical change.

what i was saying was that its not really a product of anything from recorded history. everything we've read or learnt have only continually shown us instances of how morality was used or manipulated, not how it came to be

but yeah you're entirely right, the question of where morality is from is hardly relevant, when the present day holds much more pressing issues regarding the use of this same subject

[ultraspatial]

i meant western morality

and morality is not really universal. it's a part of a certain culture

[Jizz]

Yeah, thought as much

I'd say the concept of it is tbh, because everyone has a mental list of what is right or wrong. What would change according to culture would be the question of what entails being moral

[hubb]

i meant western morality

and morality is not really universal. it's a part of a certain culture

I would say it is exactly universal. It might not be global at certain times due to culture but it's that way around if you ask me.

When a religous morality spectre doesn't include a certain group for example, it's always a deliberate exclusion, turning it political instead and then the policy defines or creates a certain culture.

[magma]

i meant western morality

and morality is not really universal. it's a part of a certain culture

Depends on the part of morality you're talking about.

Just about all the experiments that have been devised and attempted have ended up implying that an awareness of 'morality' exists in babies that can't read or write, meaning that they have some base, genetic understanding of "right and wrong", especially with regard to stealing and sharing. It's obviously pretty difficult to devise reliable tests of these things though.

I think it's safe enough to say that most humans, largely because of their ability to empathise, develop moral codes based around the categorical imperative - do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Most of us find it difficult not to imagine how mistreating someone would feel in reverse, so we shy away from it. Over the course of a life morality is altered and skewed by knowledge - by the time you reach adulthood your moral code may have been completely shifted by the power of thought, but that doesn't mean you weren't born with a basic sense of right and wrong.

[Muncey]

Yeah I think we have a basic sense of morality innate in us. Thats not to say we always did, its very possible its evolved in us over time. You could go to a closed off tribe and I'd assume they'd feel a sense of unjust and revenge if you killed one of their group and/or family.

Morality predates religion, its just religion was very good at writing it down clearly, developing the idea and preaching it.. nowadays they're pretty good at using it as propaganda. Throughout human history we've mostly been interested in the way the world/universe works and the way we work, I think morality comes under "how we work" so it starts out innate in us but develops over time.. not just our lifetime but human history as a whole.

Religious morality came out of trying to understand morality and, wrongly imo, believing its the God(s) that tell you whats right/wrong and reward/punish.. I don't believe they necessarily creating it but it was definitely a big leap forward in understanding it. Religious morality imo is a lot like Greek philosophy, can't deny how important it played and life would be very different now without it.. they were asking all the right questions, which was massively important, but they essentially came to the wrong conclusions. Democritus played a huge part in physics but his idea of atoms being unbreakable, we now know, is wrong.. a lot of Aristotles questions were extremely important but we now know today a lot of his conclusions were wrong.. Religion tried to explain morality the best it could at the time and revolutionised the way we think of morality.. but the conclusions were essentially wrong imo.

[ultraspatial]

secular morality isn't any better either. just as universalist as religion.

not really convinced by the innate morality argument. this sort of empathy that was mentioned, could have more to do with survival instincts, recognizing potential threats etc that morality. and proper tests for this are probably unethical or even impossible due to practical constraints

[Muncey]

not really convinced by the innate morality argument. this sort of empathy that was mentioned, could have more to do with survival instincts, recognizing potential threats etc that morality. and proper tests for this are probably unethical or even impossible due to practical constraints

Yeah its impossible to prove really, but I don't understand how it can't be innate. If its not, it must have been man made and it didn't exist before. Assume a time where there are no morals, no concept of right and wrong, what would be the reason be for creating morals/morality?

The only answer I could think of is a moral one. We want to know and understand whats right and wrong so we can act right/morally. If we lived in a world with no right or wrong there would be no need to create a right or wrong, only on a moral level can morality be "created". I think it has to be innate and what may be perceived as the creation of morals/morality is the attempt to understand morals/morality, but it always existed on some level.

Survival may explain it I guess, we don't wanna kill each other because we'll become extinct, but that doesn't explain why we feel all the emotions we feel towards 'good' and 'bad' be it anger, empathy ect. I don't think there was ever a time when people sat down and said "right we should probably stop killing each other for fun cause there'll be none of us left so lets call killing bad and not killing good."

If morals and morality was created by man the reasoning would be a moralistic one, which is contradicting. Assuming the creation of morals is done on moral grounds, morals will always predate the creation of morals and morality, so it must be innate.

[scspkr99]

There are real questions of how we understand what is right and wrong, if you have two people with informed positions how do we arbitrate moral disagreement? Whether there are objective moral facts has underpinned most moral discourse since Moore posed his open argument.

What are these moral properties of things, to what do moral statements refer, what is this property of goodness, is it reducible is it naturalistic, does it emerge or supervene. Do moral statements even represent beliefs or are they instead expressions of emotion or prescriptions. None of these questions have been satisfactorily answered. Religion doesn't do much better given the challenge of Euthyphro and whether God loves that which is good or whether that which is good is so because God loves it.

[hubb]

I would like to point to the correlation between not believing in morality being innate, removing yourself from it and being a political anarchist.
They almost always go in hand.

And that that's the nice way of putting it.

[magma]

secular morality isn't any better either. just as universalist as religion.

not really convinced by the innate morality argument. this sort of empathy that was mentioned, could have more to do with survival instincts, recognizing potential threats etc that morality. and proper tests for this are probably unethical or even impossible due to practical constraints

It's all very difficult to prove, but a lot of paleontologists would probably sit in the "innate" camp. Other hominid remains aren't found in the sort of group sizes that humans are... there's something about us that makes us group together, to trust non-family members and build communities and societies without giving it a second thought. When you find neanderthal or australopithecus remains, you only ever find them in family groups - they absolutely cared for their families (plenty of healed broken bones and even severely disabled skeletons show they certainly weren't cold or uncaring), but they didn't trust outsiders. When you find Homo Sapiens, you find us in bigger groups made of multiple families. That implies that something innate within us allows us to trust each other - we've always banded together and innately considered ourselves "stronger together". We shared ideas with strangers, we shared technology (as soon as the spear-chucker was invented, it's suddenly found EVERYWHERE - when Neanderthals invented tools they stayed within the family and died when they did), we shared hunting and gathering duties and we shared food with 'strangers'.

Other apes perhaps naturally used their empathy to think the worst of others, to protect themselves - we seem to have leaned to using it to see the best, or, indeed... to see ourselves... but also probably for the same reason of protection.

The evolutionary argument covers everything. If we evolved these things we did it to survive. We kept them because they helped us breed more reliably. Humans being able to trust each other allows the species to support itself much more reliably and to divide labour over a greater population. All our social leanings are evolved, not just morality. Of course, the brain is powerful enough to override its 'evolutionary leanings' - you can teach yourself to steal, kill in cold blood or even hate your mother, but you almost certainly weren't born to do any of them.

But yeah, it's never going to get proven.