whatsit wrote:
ytrewq,
you are apparently missing the point, by about 50,000 light years.
morality is a learned behavior.
with that in mind, where should we learn our morals?
from another human?
or from "someone" that tops ALL of us.
can you see the connection here?
this is the reason i made the quote earlier:
if we cannot aspire to be like the gods, then we shall be worms.
this is the sole reason i say our morals come from a god.
surely you can understand that.
morality is a learned behavior.
.
Actuallly, there is a lot of debate about that, and from my reading it seems more likely that part of our morality is partly genetically given and partly learned. However, I think we can all agree that our morality is at least
partly learned, yes.
with that in mind, where should we learn our morals?
from another human?
That is a very good question, well worthy of debate. As I said, some is almost certainly genetically given, but it is beyond dispute that some is learned. One could write a book on this, but here are a few ideas. Firstly, of course, morals are learned from parents. Much wisdom is handed down from generation-to-generation, and taught to children by parents, and the same goes for cultural beliefs and morals that do not necessarily have anything to do with religion. When children are very young, there is really no choice but to teach children fixed rules as to what is right' and 'wrong'. However, as childeren get older, there needs to be less emphasis on blindly teaching rules, and more emphasis and debate about
why society has the rules, laws and 'morals' that it does. In other words, children need to be taught to think for themselves. There are many good ideas in the Bible, BTW, such as the 'Golden Rule', don't do unto others as you would not wish to be done unto yourself, but that principle is not unique to the Bible. Another guiding principle might be that, in general, laws should be structured so as to give the greatest happiness and best lives to the majority of people. Another principle, that I am rather keen on myself, is that a moral principle needs to be universal, that is, apply equally well to everyone. On that basis, for example, slavery cannot be justified because there is an asymmetry between the slavekeeper and the slave, and the same priciple also underpins the 'Golden Rule'. The same principle also says that it is not logically acceptable for you to steal (and many other things besides), because if it's OK for you to steal, then it must be OK for me and eveyone to steal as well. In other words, no individual (or group of individulas) can claim special rights., which includes of course the 'my opinion is inherently better than yours'. Keep in mind also that morals change with time. Many things that were normal and acceptable in the time of the Bible most certainly are not today. I made the point earlier than
in fact we do not obtain our morals from the Bible (this is very easy to prove, if you have actually read an understood the Bible, and the OT in particular) so what we in fact do is choose the parts we think are acceptable today. And do you know what, Whatsit, I don't have a problem at all with using the Bible as a rich source of ideas on an appropriate morality for today. But don't kid yourself though, there is rape and murder enough condoned in the Bible that NO moral person today would accept.
or from "someone" that tops ALL of us.
There are two problems with that. The first is that many, many people doubt the existence of your God, including people of other religions BTW, so clearly your particular God is completely unsuitable as an 'absolute' reference. Please remember the guiding principle that YOU can't claim special rights just because you are you. If you are entitled to claim that your God has absolute truth and morality, then it necessarily follows that everyone else has the right to say the same of THEIR pet God or belief also. Sorry, but there is no way around that. The other problem, in the case of the Christian God, is that as I have said, the Bible is richly endowed with the most horrible morality imaginable.
this is the reason i made the quote earlier:
if we cannot aspire to be like the gods, then we shall be worms.
this is the sole reason i say our morals come from a god.
There are many faults in that reasoning. The first of course, is that you are putting complete blind faith in a single quote of questionable truth. If you are permitted to base you morality on such a single quote from your favourite book, then so is everyone else. Sorry, but there is not getting around that. The second problem is that the quote istelf is demostrable nonsense. Exactly which 'God' I wonder, noting the plural in the quote. Anyway, let's assume Yahweh, the Christian God of the OT. Trust me, no one would wish to aspire to be like Yahweh, a petty, bad-tempered, jealous, racist, murdering bastard of a character if ever there was one. You need to read your Bible
So you see, Christians are not the only ones to have thought about morality, indeed, I could sarcastically say that they are the only ones that haven't.
But that would be unfair, because your last posting quoted above was actually quite constructive, and asked good questions for discussion.