Which came first, religion or morality?

[sanabas]

All quotes c&p from the thread on trusting atheists.

On the which came first, religion or morals question, I have a question of my own: What enables someone or something to make moral or immoral decisions? Free will? Ability to analyse choices? Ability to weigh up consequences? You can't make a decision to be moral until you have the ability to be immoral, can you? So was it that religion first gave us our ability to be immoral? Or that the ability to recognise moral (aka helpful for the society as a whole) and immoral choices lead to trying to codify those rules to help the society, which is what turned into religion? Or something completely different?

Perhaps the concept of a moral codex comes about through the recognition of the worth of other beings. I'm thinking that other intelligent, social animals have a concept of morals on some level as they show care and concern towards their loved ones and interact on a fairly complex level with other members of their community. This is not only based on a strict ranking system.

I'd go further than that. I'd say that the care & concern you're talking about, aka moral behaivour, is one of the main tools that allow social animals to thrive. Without that care being shown by a large percentage of the population, a successful society is hard to maintain.

I'm not aware of any animals other than humans that have religious beliefs, I consider it a rather abstract concept that is based strongly in a need to explain deep rooted questions.

Yeah. Although I think one of the reasons for that is lack of a complicated enough language. Language helps to codify moral behaviour, and to maintain the code, I see it as a prerequisite for the development of religion. I'd see the timeline as going roughly: moral behaviour & social animals thriving working in tandem and reinforcing each other, the development of language leading to the ability to codify morals, which in turn leads to proto-religions which developed further.

Not sure if it's been looked at at all, but I'm interested to go and see what I can find: What about other primates that have been taught language? Are they able to communicate what they think is right & wrong? The reasoning they're using, etc?

Religion came first in my opinion.

Why? Before someone has the ability to answer moral questions, can they actually show moral or immoral behaviour? So that would mean that if religion came first, it appeared before humans had the ability to exhibit moral/immoral behaviour, and it means that all the other species of social animals without religion don't have the ability to exhibit moral/immoral behaviour, yeah? In that case, what gives someone or something the ability to be moral/immoral?

 

[Tycoon101]

Heres my opinion

Religeon came first:
humans are curious creatures and we need an explanation (or not) why things are like they are. Religeous values gave value to life thus leading to morality

Yet morality may have came first because everything is moral/immoral. It's human nature to have morality.

Overall though: morality may have come first, but religeon put morality into context.

 

[Masquerouge]

Heres my opinion

Religeon came first:
humans are curious creatures and we need an explanation (or not) why things are like they are. Religeous values gave value to life thus leading to morality

Yet morality may have came first because everything is moral/immoral. It's human nature to have morality.

Overall though: morality may have come first, but religeon put morality into context.

My argument would be that humans lived in tribes before they got curious, and thus morals came first.

 

[sanabas]

Religeon came first:
humans are curious creatures and we need an explanation (or not) why things are like they are. Religeous values gave value to life thus leading to morality

In that case, why are we social animals? How did societies develop in the first place to give somewhere for religion to be invented and lead to morality

Overall though: morality may have come first, but religeon put morality into context.

Please elaborate. aka I have no idea what you mean.

 

[Xanikk999]

I think humans have always had primitive spirituality and morals since the dawn of the human race. Its just unrecorded so we can never know for sure which came first.

 

[Alex the Great]

I brought up this very point in a debate I had a while ago. I said that morality had to exist before religions because organized religion came around what? 5000 bc? Maybe a bit earlier, but before that point people weren't just killing each other, raping, vandalising, and pillaging like mad. Tough fight for survival, sure, but us humans did live by rules. "Jesus didn't invent rules" really would be the bumper sticker version.

 

[El_Machinae]

I'd think that collective behaviour occured before strong language started (considering we have animals with collective behaviour, but no language). And I'd think that we need language in order to develop a religion.

 

[Xanikk999]

I brought up this very point in a debate I had a while ago. I said that morality had to exist before religions because organized religion came around what? 5000 bc? Maybe a bit earlier, but before that point people weren't just killing each other, raping, vandalising, and pillaging like mad. Tough fight for survival, sure, but us humans did live by rules. "Jesus didn't invent rules" really would be the bumper sticker version.

Organized religion is not the beginning of religion. Its just the beginning of recorded religion.

 

[pboily]

You do something "wrong" (something that upsets people), you get your ass kicked. Survival => morality without the need for the religion hypothesis.

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

I think that most ancient religions weren't concerned with morality at all, but with trying to explain the world around the. Morality stems from the internal regulations necessary to keep a society together, whether it be a band of apes or a nation. So "morality" by this definition is much older than religion. This is my reading of history and biology.

Of course, as a believer, I feel that God had a hand in connecting religion to morality, to give everyone a way to do His will even if they didn't know Him.

 

[Raisin Bran]

you don't nessairely need Morality to have a religion

 

[Xanikk999]

I think that most ancient religions weren't concerned with morality at all, but with trying to explain the world around the. Morality stems from the internal regulations necessary to keep a society together, whether it be a band of apes or a nation. So "morality" by this definition is much older than religion. This is my reading of history and biology.

Of course, as a believer, I feel that God had a hand in connecting religion to morality, to give everyone a way to do His will even if they didn't know Him.

So you think the christian god had a hand in connecting religion to morality? What about other religious pantheons that came before it that are devoted to a different god(s)? Are they wrong?

 

[ironduck]

I'd go further than that. I'd say that the care & concern you're talking about, aka moral behaivour, is one of the main tools that allow social animals to thrive. Without that care being shown by a large percentage of the population, a successful society is hard to maintain.

I agree that in complex social systems that are not only based on rank this ability of individuals to bond is critical. We see that in all social, intelligent animals, notably the great apes, dolphins, elephants.

However, it's also possible for complex societies of animals to function on a more 'programmed' level with strict rules and no individual judgement. A military hierarchy basically. Examples include ants, bees, and a particular rodent that lives in underground systems (I've forgotten its name, but it's interesting because it's a mammal yet it lives in an insect-like hierarchy).

 

[Xanikk999]

I agree that in complex social systems that are not only based on rank this ability of individuals to bond is critical. We see that in all social, intelligent animals, notably the great apes, dolphins, elephants.

However, it's also possible for complex societies of animals to function on a more 'programmed' level with strict rules and no individual judgement. A military hierarchy basically. Examples include ants, bees, and a particular rodent that lives in underground systems (I've forgotten its name, but it's interesting because it's a mammal yet it lives in an insect-like hierarchy).

Naked mole rats?

 

[ironduck]

Naked mole rats?

That's right!

 

[Eran of Arcadia]

So you think the christian god had a hand in connecting religion to morality? What about other religious pantheons that came before it that are devoted to a different god(s)? Are they wrong?

As a believer, yes I do. I do believe that the conception of God that I have is in general the most correct, so that Abrahamic religions understand Him better than others, Christians understand Him better than non-Christians, so on. Speaking historically, it seems to me that a lot of ancient religions were not concerned with religion very much, but as a believer I am of the opinion that God set up ways by which we would have incentives to commit moral behavior.

Do you see the difference? I form some opinions by looking at science and history, and setting aside any issues dealing with the "supernatural". On the other hand, I have some beliefs stemming from my faith. Thus I "accept" as true the definition of morality as the set of rules intended to maintain order within a society of social animals, whereas I "believe" that God want us to perform moral behavior, and that we should for its own sake.

I'm not sure how clear I am . . .

 

[MobBoss]

I recognize that the question is very close to the old "which came first. The chicken or the egg" situation.

However, given that I dont know of a single society that does not have some form of religion as part of its base makeup, its hard for me to believe that morality came before religion. At least the type of morality that we view as morality.

In ancient civilizations, it very well could be seen as moral to destroy your enemies and take their land from them to ensure the survival of your tribe. Not something we would say is moral today.

Thus, I would submit that our modern view of morality certainly came after religion/religious beliefs. Now, as to the morality of survival of the fittest, I would say its a toss up.

 

[Tenochtitlan]

If you try to observe a herd of animals, say a group of chimpanzees, why wouldn't one of the chimpanzees just start killing the others? Mutual benefit. They help each other in order to survive better. To put it in other words, the herds that did not help each other had a less chance of survival, and therefore died out. Similarly, with humans, we benefit from each other, we can do much more if we work together as a team. That is just logic.

Through the years, the human instinct for self-preservation has been refined to include a natural code of morality that causes mutual benefit. That is why most human beings are empathetic with other human beings. That is why many people who watch a sad movie cry. That is why we feel disgusted (some people throw up) if we watch snuff movies or acts of violence or people being violently killed or murdered.

Thoughts?

 

[sanabas]

I think that most ancient religions weren't concerned with morality at all, but with trying to explain the world around the.

That's surprising to me. Trying to explain the world around them in what sort of sense? The way scientific stuff does today? Or trying to actually work out and then enforce the rules that enable the society to prosper from the world around them? I'd think the second is more likely, and I'd think that's all about defining and then enforcing a moral code. The thinking about the more abstract stuff seems to me something that would happen later, once the proto-religion is already well established.

However, it's also possible for complex societies of animals to function on a more 'programmed' level with strict rules and no individual judgement. A military hierarchy basically. Examples include ants, bees, and a particular rodent that lives in underground systems (I've forgotten its name, but it's interesting because it's a mammal yet it lives in an insect-like hierarchy).

Fair point that. Do they still fit the definition of social animals? Makes for another question too, is it intelligence that enables animals to live in highly social groups, or is it a complex society that enables intelligence to develop & increase? Could it be that ants, bees, other hive-type societies just haven't happened to evolve the trick of increasing intelligence?

 

[eyrei]

Many early religions (ancestor worship for example) didn't really have a moral code.

Freud theorized that some of the earliest morality came from the genetic need to not inbreed, which is definately not religion.