[quote]Cortes wrote:
Second part of my post to Veg.
The other thing is, we can feel there is a true Right and Wrong not just in hypothetical situations, but in our beliefs. For example, who argues that humans are not possessed of natural rights? Who among you believes that every human does not deserve his own life, freedom, and the ability to exercise his free will? Do you really want to start splitting hairs here? If you think morality is a fluid thing (much like a “living” Constitution), then you had damned well better realize what conclusions that leads to.
I believe it is Plato who gives us the four cardinal virtues, those of wisdom, courage, self-control, and through the combination of these three, justice. There’ve been a lot of different religions, both Eastern and Western. One religion is about as different as it can be from the next. And yet, throughout all this time and all these different cultures, all of the major religions and almost all of the major philosophers until the modern age have been in very, very similar agreement as to the value of these virtues and what they mean.
You can argue that morality is this mutable, fluid thing, but don’t any of you act like you are on any kind of steady ground in doing so. If you are really ready to turn the collected wisdom of thousands of years of human history, religion and philosophy on its head, you had damn well better have some pretty good explanations for why we all ended up figuring out pretty much the same thing. Because at the end of the day, you can pull all of the exceptions and differences in this culture and that out of your bag of tricks, but greed is still bad. Deception is still dishonorable. Selfishness is still frowned upon. Courage is still a virtue. Self-sacrifice is still seen as one of the highest goods.
These things come from somewhere. And I’m sorry, but I don’t think that it’s the theists who are the ones making the huge logical leap to just where their origin lies.
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Well we are in agreement on a lot of things yes. I agree that those things NOW are widley held as absolute morlas by nearly every human population. However I find it perfectly reasonable that those common morals “evolved” though trial and error more or less throughout the evolution of human societal interaction.
Hell even primates have a loose set of morals, Chimps will hunt in packs and attack other tribes of chimps. They will defend thier own tribe members from attack. However rudimentary, this is also morals. Kill a rival tribe chimp = good, kill your own tribes chimp = bad. Just becuase our societies are massively more complex doesn’t mean the root causes of morals are now changed from (good for the advancement of the society) to (because god says so).
The things you listed as positive morals are so because they advance society, the more members of a society who adhere to those morals, the better overall the society is going to be. If a lot of members of a society adhere to poor morals, such as greed, sloth, envy, etc… those societies will crumble from within or be far more likley to crumble due to outside forces that would not effect a moral society in the same manner.
Moral societies simply put, flourish and immoral societies flounder. The time NOW is going to be interesting. In the past societies could exist within relative bubbles, with very minor influence from other societies. The world is shrinking, so the moral influence one society has on another is going to continue to increase. This will put an even greater burden on immoral societies, or societies with immoral traits. Those will be weeded out if you will.
In other words, if you were right, there would be a steady level of morality. Throughout human history. If my premise is correct, you will see an overall trend of increased morality throughout history, as bad moral traits are naturally removed from societies and good moral traits flourish. Again, long slow process, but I think there is quite a bit MORE morality on the planet right now than there was 2000 years ago. And in another 1000 years I think you will see a world that is very moral. In fact, it will probably get to a point where our societies evolve advanced enough moral codes, where simple moral breaches are firmly punished by the society.
One last point of contention I would like either you or push to clarify. If you are indeed claiming morals come from god, how is it you claim those morals are communicated to humans? Are you saying a book gave us these morals, or that there is some soul level connection with god we all have, and our feelings are actually where this comes from and you believe god directly communicates to all humans through thier feelings. I.E you mention what you would feel after strangling the baby, you focus on the negative feeling as if this was god telling you that obviously you just did something bad. I can at the very least, submit that if you are arguing the second point, though it can never be proven scientifically, I have a much easier time believing this possibility than god communicating with us through books written by humans 2000 years ago in languages no one on earth still speaks. Perhaps there is a mixture of the two, natural tendency for a society to evolve to the most moral state, along with some nudges here and there by our friendly god that help keep us moving along in the right direction far mor quickly than would happen naturally.
After all a couple hundred thousand years is LIGHTNING fast to go from where we were to where we are.
V
