Quote about connection between morality and religion and the death of religion.

[King Alexander]

I believe there is no god and death is the end, and Im good.

Well said, but this "and Im good" is based on religion moral or not?

Organized religion does no good.

People still can't understand those wise words.

But what is to prop up a moral code except for God?

Look my friend, we don't need God to tell us not to kill each other: it can't exist a civilized form of society without most of the 10 Commadments, but, these 10 Commandments were written/unwritten laws HUNDRENDS of years before Christinity Plague appeared.
In ancient Greece what people meant, was that the society, the laws and consciouness would judge one who broke the written/unwritten laws.

I live by a rigid moral code, and I'm a commited atheist, so perhaps I'm biased, but it really feels insulting and arrogant when the religious assume that morality would cease to exist without religion.

MODS PLEASE DELETE THIS POST!!! DOUBLE POST! SORRY EVERYONE!!!

 

[King Alexander]

I believe there is no god and death is the end, and Im good.

Well said, but this "and Im good" is based on religion moral or not?

Organized religion does no good.

People still can't understand those wise words.

But what is to prop up a moral code except for God?

Look my friend, we don't need God to tell us not to kill each other: it can't exist a civilized form of society without most of the 10 Commadments, but, these 10 Commandments were written/unwritten laws HUNDRENDS of years before Christinity Plague appeared.
In ancient Greece what people meant, was that the society, the laws and consciouness would judge one who broke the written/unwritten laws.

I live by a rigid moral code, and I'm a commited atheist, so perhaps I'm biased, but it really feels insulting and arrogant when the religious assume that morality would cease to exist without religion.

Well said. But of course!!! Religionist's believe that non-religionists are immoral! How arrogant and unthinking! The same goes for all the different religions around the world: everyone believes that his religion is the best and all the others are wrong! How convenient!

 

[Stapel]

Romans and Greeks codified wrong and right into law, long before Eastern religions tainted Europe.

A reference to Mayan/Aztec/Incan law is even easier to chew, I guess.

 

[CurtSibling]

That is happily agreed!

 

[bigfatron]

That depends, as any true christian will tell you, we believe that god has as it where, "written" the laws on the humans sentience, essentially, you KNOW the very most basic parts of right and wrong from birth, you naturally just know certain things are wrong, this is still something atheist have failed to explain to me. How did you get that? if we are just glorified animals how did we get a sence of right and wrong, when its obvious, that some times doing the wrong thing is better for us personally, how can you evolve a natural repulsion to theft, anything being stolen must be of worth, so back when our monkey-ancestors where running around in the bushes some where, you would think the monkeys who where better at stealing would actually be the more likely to survive, yet humans have an opposite view. And yet some how a totally non-intelligent chance force, some how figured out that the monkeys would be better off as a whole if they did not steal from eatch other?

I realize that most atheists are probably moral people, I doubt any of your are murdurers or rapists or anything like that, my question is why are you moral people to begin with, how can naturalistic occurances supposedly leading to a more advanced creature at complete random, see "in advance" enough to realize that stelaing would not be good for a modern intelligent form of ape?

Have you brought up any children yourself?! If you had, you would know that morality is learned - kids are alwys grabbing things off eachother and have to be laboriously taught to understand that other people have feelings, can be physically or emotionally hurt, that certain things belong to others and can't be taken, other things must be shared, etc.

This is all about parenting and has absolutely nothing to do with any 'outside moral influence'.

As for how this could come to be, is it so surprising that groups of humans (and before that, the early hominids) that developed cooperative behaviours were more successful at surviving testing circumstances than groups that didn't? If you accept that cooperative behaviour is a survival trait, then you would 100% expect that humanity would breed for cooperativeness, and that those lacking the capability for an empathetic approach, such as psychopaths, would become both dangerous to and excluded from the norms of human behaviour and society.

None of the above implies the existence of a guiding hand.

 

[cgannon64]

Re, all your posts:

Perhaps we are still in the stage where society is limping along on the old religious moral codes. Most of you were raised religious, after all.

But when you have children, what is the reason you are going to give them to be good?

 

[Perfection]

That depends, as any true christian will tell you, we believe that god has as it where, "written" the laws on the humans sentience, essentially, you KNOW the very most basic parts of right and wrong from birth, you naturally just know certain things are wrong, this is still something atheist have failed to explain to me. How did you get that? if we are just glorified animals how did we get a sence of right and wrong, when its obvious, that some times doing the wrong thing is better for us personally, how can you evolve a natural repulsion to theft, anything being stolen must be of worth, so back when our monkey-ancestors where running around in the bushes some where, you would think the monkeys who where better at stealing would actually be the more likely to survive, yet humans have an opposite view. And yet some how a totally non-intelligent chance force, some how figured out that the monkeys would be better off as a whole if they did not steal from eatch other?

I realize that most atheists are probably moral people, I doubt any of your are murdurers or rapists or anything like that, my question is why are you moral people to begin with, how can naturalistic occurances supposedly leading to a more advanced creature at complete random, see "in advance" enough to realize that stelaing would not be good for a modern intelligent form of ape?

Well, chemically we are predisposed to have moral behavior, and the origin can be explained with evolution.

Now, let's begin with a bit on the history of evolutionary thought. Darwin correctly surmised that evolution was driven by the process of natural selection, however he erred in thinking that only organisms are what natural selection acts on. This led to the inability to explain the altruistic behavior that you're talking about. To resolve these issues hierarchal theories of evolution were created. These say that natural selectionist ideas can be applied to other levels of life both smaller than organisms (cell lineages) and larger (demes, species, clades) as they all contain a struggle for survival, the potential for unlimited growth, variation and the possibility of decent with modification. Thus evolution can and does occur scales other than an organism's.

Interestingly nieghboring levels often conflict, in your example it's the organismic level conflicting with the greater level of its clan. Consider a clan where theft is rampant, while the best theives may be doing okay, the clan as a whole is failing becasue they cannot work together. However, a clan that works together will thrive because they can pool thier resources and share. Thus the clans are acting as the individual of natural selection instead of the individual group members, and that is how evolution can account for altruistic behavior.

Just to reiterate my point that evolution occurs at different levels, we'll deal with another well known conflict, cancer. Cancerous cells are like your thieves, they steal the worthwhile materials from the body and thus are do well compared to regular body cells. These cells are favored by natural selection at a cellular level. However, an organism made up of canerous cells does not work. Thus over the generations cancerous traits are removed, so the organismic level overrided the cellular level, just as our example with altruistic behavior vs. selfish behavior where clan selection overrided organismic selection.

 

[Akka]

Re, all your posts:

Perhaps we are still in the stage where society is limping along on the old religious moral codes. Most of you were raised religious, after all.

But when you have children, what is the reason you are going to give them to be good?

I wasn't raised religious, and I already gave the reason to be good. Have you a selective vision ?

Anyway, again, being "good" by fear of the big hand in the sky isn't being good, it's being obedient.

 

[cgannon64]

Perfection, what you posted is true. A society filled with immoral people fails.

But a society with a small amount of criminals (and a body filled with a small amount of cancer) can function quite well. Of course, the cancer grows until it kills the body.

But that is what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about a society where bad is seen as good. A society that still preaches good, but no one follows it any more. Basically, a society who's cancer has spread to every corner...

 

[Immortal]

HB: I think it is an ironic word to use, that a woman is a slut when a man is a stud, and it is usually based upon certain "moral" behaviours which are usually religion based (premarital sex).

Better to ask questions of my sexuality over PM though, saves forum from spam and wont kill the topic.

 

[~Corsair#01~]

Well, the comparison to Cancer is ridiculous- Cancer is a part of Evolution itself and will never be cured (unless you count removing your body parts and replacing them with cloned parts/ robotic parts a cure). If it weren't for Cancer, what would stop an animal from multiplying endlessly until it took over the world, used up all the resources, killed all the other creatures, then starving to death? Cancer is, like it or not, beneficial- immoral activity would be better compared to parasites. But the problem is, a society of parasites will always require the host to continue. If theives bankrupted the world, there would be nothing left to steal. But anyway, this is completely offtopic.
The Question: would society lose it's morals if not for religion?
The Answer: HELL NO! What kind of idiot would think that?! Believing that Atheists have no morals is simply pathetic Fascism mixed with obnoxiousness. I am an atheist, and I will never in a million years kill anyone (unless they deserved it) or steal or any of that crap. I know that when I die, the world will simply cease to exist as far as I'm concerned, but I still want to live a happy life and make sure others do to- others misery means revenge, which means my misery- this is simple common sense. I know that my life will never make a difference (or will it- only time will tell), but I'm hardly gonna kill myself! Every moment of my life, even in torture, would be better than death in my eyes- I love life, and I'd never give up a minute of it.

Anyway, society would never collapse due to lack of morals anyway- two words: POLICE FORCE.

 

[CurtSibling]

Edit: Double Post!

 

[CurtSibling]

Re, all your posts:

Perhaps we are still in the stage where society is limping along on the old religious moral codes. Most of you were raised religious, after all.

But when you have children, what is the reason you are going to give them to be good?

I won't brainwash them with religion, that's for sure.

And any hypothetical kids of mine that turned to it would be disowned!

A religion is just one person's idea of morality.

 

[Ayatollah So]

if we are just glorified animals how did we get a sence of right and wrong, when its obvious, that some times doing the wrong thing is better for us personally, how can you evolve a natural repulsion to theft, anything being stolen must be of worth, so back when our monkey-ancestors where running around in the bushes some where, you would think the monkeys who where better at stealing would actually be the more likely to survive, yet humans have an opposite view. And yet some how a totally non-intelligent chance force, some how figured out that the monkeys would be better off as a whole if they did not steal from eatch other?

As Akka said, morality is based on reciprocity. But "reciprocity" is a complex concept that takes a good deal of intelligence to grasp. Likewise for "stealing." So I doubt that a moral code prohibiting stealing just evolved directly by genetic mutation creating a "guilty conscience upon stealing", which was then selected for. It was probably an indirect consequence of intelligence and speech. Once people were bright enough and talkative enough, it probably didn't take long for someone to coin a word for theft and suggest that it be prohibited.

On the other hand, a lot of the emotional basis for morality exists in many great apes. Parenting and social cooperation are essential to great ape survival. Chimps and orangutans often exhibit empathy for each other.

From a "reproductive success" viewpoint, you're right that some times doing the wrong thing is better for us personally. But one of the blessings of a big brain is that we don't have to be guided by reproductive success as the end-all and be-all. The ability to reason together - which carries reciprocity, aka morality, along with it - strikes some of us as more valuable than taking every opportunity to gather more material resources for oneself.

 

[Akka]

On a more instinctive point of view, reciprocity is perceived naturally. It's called "empathy".
It's what make us furious when we see a helpless being savagely beaten by a brute.
It's what make us furious when we see a bastard abusing someone and getting away with it.

It's the ability to "put yourself in other's shoes". To, at least partially, feel what someone else may be feeling. And that is what make us considering emotionnally intolerable to do something we wouldn't like to someone else.

It can then be deducted logically by the concept of reciprocity.
Same principle, but understood on the intellectual side rather than the emotionnal one.

 

[cgannon64]

And any hypothetical kids of mine that turned to it would be disowned!

I find that quite ironic, considering you attacked certain religious people for doing the same to their Athiest children.

But I digress...

BTW I didn't make this thread to brag about how necessary religion was, or even to say that religion forcing people to be moral based on fear is good (which I disagree with). I was just wondering what y'all thought of this quote by Nietzsche, who many of you seem to like.

 

[Stapel]

Re, all your posts:

Perhaps we are still in the stage where society is limping along on the old religious moral codes. Most of you were raised religious, after all.

But when you have children, what is the reason you are going to give them to be good?

Most of my friends were raised without any god....

It is just me that was born and raised in the backward christian rural east of the Netherlands

 

[Perfection]

Well, the comparison to Cancer is ridiculous- Cancer is a part of Evolution itself and will never be cured (unless you count removing your body parts and replacing them with cloned parts/ robotic parts a cure).

No, but cancer has been minimalized in evolution a massive amount of cellular safeguards, just like in my Clan model thievery and selfish behavior has certainly been reduced, but not eliminated by the evolution of moralist safeguards. The point is in a human body the cancer cell often has a better chance of surviving than a noncancerous cell but the functionality of the organism it is in is hampered so cancer is selected agianst at the organismic level even though it is selected for at the cellular. Overall this leads to safegaurds against cancer. Just like the fact that in a human clan, the theiving human often has a better chance of surviving than a moral one, but the functionality of the clan it is in is hampered so selfishness is selected against at the clanal level even though it is selected for at the organismic. This is the essence of Hierarchal Evolution, a key piece of modern evolutionary thought.

If it weren't for Cancer, what would stop an animal from multiplying endlessly until it took over the world, used up all the resources, killed all the other creatures, then starving to death?

Other diseases, predation, climate shifts, competition, catastrophe, take your pick.

 

[Perfection]

But a society with a small amount of criminals (and a body filled with a small amount of cancer) can function quite well. Of course, the cancer grows until it kills the body.

This is also true, and it may explain why some criminality still occurs, my clan/cancer analogy there is a a key difference that may explain it, namely that organisms may shift clans or stake it out in the wild thus avoiding the general moralistic trend that clan members took. So while the clanal selection may have been the impetus for moral development residiual organismic selection may have allowed the selfish genes to continue.

 

[cgannon64]

I really have no idea what you're saying, can you repeat that?