(From a secular point) Who is or was the author of your morality?

As a child, before I could really think, probably parents.

When I got a mind of my own, Reality itself was the standard. Nobody forms reality. It is there to be understood. It is already created. Nobody makes it up.

I had a crisis of conscience after losing religion, and had to rethink much of what was taught to me.

I decided it was certainly not OK to discriminate against people on the basis of skin colour or nationality, or their sexual preference or gender expression. On my own. I played with shoplifting, wondering if it was really bad if no one was hurt. I never got caught, but I realised that it was probably contributing to higher prices overall, and that was causing harm to people. So I stopped.

I could go on for a long time, but the truth is that I consciously made the decision that my life should do the most good and least harm that I could make happen. And I did it pretty much alone.

I understood from an early age that the basic rules of life included, do not be late, always say thank you, do not lie or steal, mostly from my parents. They were atheists both were business people and I would imagine this stood them in good stead. I imagine too their parents passed down these rules to them.

A lot of my own social constructs came from experience, also from studying a degree in Sociology and Psychology Majors. I think study does open your eyes to set moralistic values and how destructive they can be to oneself. I also lived in an era where being bi-sexual was quite shocking (that was over 20 years ago).

I believe learning even learning from a moral standpoint is a constant developmental growth area. I learned more rules from a career in corporate finance and a lot of my fathers old fashioned rules stood me in good stead too in terms of business transactions. I learned how to treat people as I managed a team of financial brokers from vastly different cultures and religions or none religions.

Culture has also taught me how different morals can be as you move from culture to culture. I have lived in around 5 countries and each steeped with their own traditions and moral structures. I learned from that to not judge others values or beliefs or even moral stand points. Rather to question with respect.

I am also a spiritual person and understand the laws of cause of effect as each belief system carries many of the same spiritual laws of like for like.

A lot of reading, but probably Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land. But mostly a melange of reading, both fiction and non-fiction, about values and how to treat people.

I developed my own moral code. it was influenced by my father who was a very fair man and a leader, but who taught me to think for myself.

I was very impressed by the golden rule, not because it was from religion, but because it made sense. If I didn’t want something done to me, I wouldn’t do it to someone else . . .lying, stealing, being nasty to people, whatever. . . I also try to do what I wish was done for or to me.

My parents.

Me. It changed and will continue to change, but it all boils down to one thing: do no harm as often as you can.

I considered my father a model of probity.

@Hypocrisy_Central Why are you repeating yourself?

Myself.
As an only child I basically raised myself, being the product of absentee parents, one physically, the other emotionally. Sure, I had some moral guidance but I based my morals on my own experiences with dysfunctional people for the most part.
Don’t do unto others what has been done unto you theory. :-)

What I live by today came from me. Learning from reality and observation of the behavior of myself and others, and the outcomes those behaviors bring, I’ve adjusted what I inherited early on from my parents. I have no idea how to trace back their views on right and wrong. I’m sure they go back at least to Paleolithic times, but I’m not privy to any of that chain.

Evolutionary biologists theorize that natural selection favored children that listened to and obeyed their parents and the tribal elders. A child might just get lucky, and learn from experience that walking too close to the cliff’s edge, swimming in crocodile infested waters, and ignoring stalking lions are really bad ideas. But the chances of surviving long enough to learn those things strictly from experience is slim. It’s much more likely children with an evolutionary bias in their brains to learn those cautions and many more from their parents and elders would survive to breed more obedience biased children.

In fact, the tendency to do that may have to do with the early rise of animistic and ancestor worshiping religions.

My mother.

If I have any doubts I ask myself “would this make your mother cry?” and if the answer is yes, I don’t do it.

I am.

The Great Dfhdgkjgfsdgrfdkrzzzzzk

@ragingloli You misspelled it.

@rojo You don’t worship the false god, Asdfghjkl, do you?

PAH on Asdfghjkl!!

I worship the true god Asdfghjkl; !!!

as I was taught in typing class in 8th grade

@rojo Did you not even read my post? Are you that hard pressed to comprehend simple English!? I SAID that Asdfghjkl was a false god. ~

No true deity has vowels in Its name.

Me, myself and I. How is this question different than the one you asked last week, by the way?

@augustlan
It is a rather transparent attempt at invoking the “law has lawgivers, therefore moral law has to have an ultimate lawgiver (e.g. “god”)” argument.
“Whether it came through parents, great grandparents, great great grandparents, or back through 1,000 year genealogy of your family etc; however it filtered down to you, who was the one who created it?”

I never really understand this argument. I mean, how hard is it to figure out not to kill people or steal from them? How hard is it to figure out for yourself what makes a person a decent human being?!

Theists hate the notion that morality is not absolute, because, according to their arguments at least, it would open the possibility of a culture where sex with children is not morally wrong.
(despite the fact that their own holy book does not condemn that very thing, while endorsing slavery and genocide)
So they escape into the moral lawgiver argument, because it gives them the feeling of certainty in their moral convictions.
Of course, the argument itself is pretty much rubbish, because if you follow it through, you end up with only two options:
1. Something is only moral/immoral because their god says so, making their morality infinitely more arbitrary than they accuse the moral relativists of.
2. Something is intrinsically moral/immoral, and god is only a conduit and a codifier, making god completely irrelevant to the question whether something is moral.

But, @ragingloli , morality cannot be absolute in a world where there are many religions and belief systems.

Morality might be absolute within a single belief system (for example, southern baptists), but as soon as you add other belief systems (catholocism, other protestant religions, etc.) then your morality tends to bend to the needs/tenets of that other religion.

That’s why I have a problem with your term “intrinsically immoral” – because in my mind there is nothing “intrinsic” about something as fungible as belief.

@ETpro and I agreed…... so wtf?

@elbanditoroso
That is why the catholic church does not see protestantism as legitimate and vice versa.

@augustlan I don’t think we’re born with an innate sense of morality, and that applies to killing or stealing. What makes us decent human beings in our society would be considered immoral in other societies.

As the all powerful Asdfghjkl would say, USE YOUR HEAD, PEOPLE!!!

You’re all wrong, all morality flows from Sithrak (warning: site is super NSFW beyond that page). Though more in spite of him then anything else, to be fair.

God is NSFW???

Absolutely

23 The word of the Lord came to me: 2 “Son of man, there were two women, daughters of the same mother. 3 They became prostitutes in Egypt, engaging in prostitution from their youth. In that land their breasts were fondled and their virgin bosoms caressed. 4 The older was named Oholah, and her sister was Oholibah. They were mine and gave birth to sons and daughters. Oholah is Samaria, and Oholibah is Jerusalem.

5 “Oholah engaged in prostitution while she was still mine; and she lusted after her lovers, the Assyrians—warriors 6 clothed in blue, governors and commanders, all of them handsome young men, and mounted horsemen. 7 She gave herself as a prostitute to all the elite of the Assyrians and defiled herself with all the idols of everyone she lusted after. 8 She did not give up the prostitution she began in Egypt, when during her youth men slept with her, caressed her virgin bosom and poured out their lust on her.

9 “Therefore I delivered her into the hands of her lovers, the Assyrians, for whom she lusted. 10 They stripped her naked, took away her sons and daughters and killed her with the sword. She became a byword among women, and punishment was inflicted on her.

11 “Her sister Oholibah saw this, yet in her lust and prostitution she was more depraved than her sister. 12 She too lusted after the Assyrians—governors and commanders, warriors in full dress, mounted horsemen, all handsome young men. 13 I saw that she too defiled herself; both of them went the same way.

14 “But she carried her prostitution still further. She saw men portrayed on a wall, figures of Chaldeans[a] portrayed in red, 15 with belts around their waists and flowing turbans on their heads; all of them looked like Babylonian chariot officers, natives of Chaldea.[b] 16 As soon as she saw them, she lusted after them and sent messengers to them in Chaldea. 17 Then the Babylonians came to her, to the bed of love, and in their lust they defiled her. After she had been defiled by them, she turned away from them in disgust. 18 When she carried on her prostitution openly and exposed her naked body, I turned away from her in disgust, just as I had turned away from her sister. 19 Yet she became more and more promiscuous as she recalled the days of her youth, when she was a prostitute in Egypt. 20 There she lusted after her lovers, whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. 21 So you longed for the lewdness of your youth, when in Egypt your bosom was caressed and your young breasts fondled.[c]

^^^^ I have a feeling someone didn’t understand women at all>

From the book of Ezekial, specifically. Also, on a ‘god is nsfw’ note, the entire Song of Solomon. In the words of Maggie Smith and Rowan Atkinson:

Grace Hawkins: The Bible. It’s full of sex, haven’t you noticed? Song of Solomon?

Reverend Walter Goodfellow: Ah yes, but that’s a song between a devout man and God.

Grace Hawkins: No. It’s about sex. You read it again vicar.

@josie When I got a mind of my own, Reality itself was the standard.
Who is to say the reality you believe is the standard applies to another or another group of people?

Nobody makes it up.
Evolution spawned morality? If so, how did it do that, what were the steps that can be traced scientifically?

@LornaLove Culture has also taught me how different morals can be as you move from culture to culture. I have lived in around 5 countries and each steeped with their own traditions and moral structures.
Did those five nations have their own morals that were totally different from the next? If not, what were similar or overlapping and did those overlapping morals originate from the same place or related place(s) and where were those places the morals flowed from?

@marinelife I developed my own moral code. it was influenced by my father who was a very fair man and a leader, but who taught me to think for myself.
How much of your father’s morality did you reject or keep? Where did he get his morality from and how much of it that he learned from [X] did you keep? How much of it did you actually test yourself to see if what he said was actually valid?

@Sunny2 I was very impressed by the golden rule, not because it was from religion, but because it made sense.
And the golden rule came from whom in history? So we can put a name on whose morals you follow.

@janbb My parents
Whom did your parents get it from? If your grand parents and so on, who started the morals your family tree eventually followed?

@tinyfaery Me.
You developed it all on your own, no help from any source outside your own mind? To do no harm you learned by trial and error, if you harmed someone and it was a negative experience then you nknw not to do it next time, you were not told by anyone not to do harm to others?

@Hawaii_Jake @Hypocrisy_Central Why are you repeating yourself?
@augustlan How is this question different than the one you asked last week, by the way?
I am not, I am asking point blank, who started the morality that people follow. It had to start somewhere. We can’t say we go by the Constitution that no one wrote, or say that what is in the Constitution was made up by entirely off the minds of the creators completely on what they thought was right or wrong. A song that has been around forever and everyone knows it has some one who penned it, put notes to it, and was the song’s author. It is a question no one here has yet to come up with as if they don’t know who the author of it was, but generations after generations later they are following some version of it. I think they would like to know who the father of their morality is.

I never really understand this argument. I mean, how hard is it to figure out not to kill people or steal from them? How hard is it to figure out for yourself what makes a person a decent human being?!
How hard is it to understand that with many might makes right? If you have the ability to take what you need from weaker people, you do. That is natural logic, works in the natural word to this day. Some would say living by those traits you spoke of is weak and useless, that is their morals. If you and 5 million others believe you should not steal or kill each other, but 2.7 million other people say you should get what you can from who you can if you have enough might, smarts, numbers, etc to take it, who is to say they are wrong? They would say you are the one that is wrong.

@Hypocrisy_Central Left wing Jews pretty much.

@janbb Left wing Jews pretty much.
From how far back, 40 years, 75, 130, 1,200?

100 years.

^ At least now I can research back 100 years on what historians, anthropologist, etc say about there the Jews of that time got their morality, then I know ultimately whose morality you are following, even if filtered through generations.

I’d rejected Christianity from an early age, but yet I kind of always believed in a higher power/purpose of sort. I usually kept those feelings bottled in though. I was an extremely empathetic child, and even as a very young child I was always able to sense pain, suffering, anxiety and fear in others rather easily. I kind of instinctly knew (it seemed) from a very early age what was right or wrong when it came to the basics. Other things however had to be ‘taught’ to me, usually by some sort of discipline or through personal experience.

These days I’d say my spirituality helps to guide me. When I say I’m spiritual I don’t mean I’m actually into anything requiring worship, nor does it mean that I partake in any type of mysticism/occultism. When I say I’m spiritual/spiritual but not religious I mean that I try to live my life according to the teachings of some spiritual teachings which I hold in high regards.

Our culture is the author of our morality, and our culture has a history of following Biblical teachings. The kind of morality that Americans follow is found in some parts of the Bible (however, other parts of the Bible can be rejected due to immoral overtones.) However, I don’t think there is any thing special about that. Long ago some philosopher sat down and thought, “What is right and what is wrong?” and wrote it down. Someone else came along and made it part of the Bible. The morality is just common sense, though. Many cultures who have never even heard of the Bible have the same kinds of prohibition against murder, stealing, etc.

Many cultures who have never even heard of the Bible have the same kinds of prohibition against murder, stealing, etc. Lets keep it real. Some of those cultures that you say never heard of the Bible are head hunters, cannibals, and offered human sacrifices. It was common sense to them that they do those things, so I guess it is moral as well.

And some people with the bible killed innocent women through burning at the stake and innocent Jews for ‘poisoning wells’, spreading the plague, or just generally not being christian. What’s your point? Confucius also used the golden rule several centuries before Jesus is said to have lived. I think it’s safe to say he never heard of the bible.

The golden rule came along well before the bible. Just because the bible incorporates something, that doesn’t mean it originated there @Hypocrisy_Central.

Jainism advocates non-violent respect for all life, and there’s evidence that it dates back to 7000 BCE.

@Brian1946 There is evidence that humans had already figured out how to live in cooperative groups governed by basic morality perhaps as far back as 500,000 years ago. But evidence can’t ever get in the way of a good old Bible thumper’s rant.

Perhaps humans could had taken a course from bonobos, tied with chimpanzees for being the closest relatives to humans. It appears that human behavior over the years resembled chimpanzee societies more than that of the more graceful bonobo. Bonobos apparently didn’t need religion either, though it was more likely enviromental factors which led to the drastic differences in behaviors between chimpanzees and bonobos. Bonobos are amazing animals.

” Lets keep it real. Some of those cultures that you say never heard of the Bible are head hunters, cannibals, and offered human sacrifices. It was common sense to them that they do those things, so I guess it is moral as well.” Wow. You still have a 12 year old’s “understanding” of what cannibalism and head hunting is or was. At any rate, Christians practiced that too. Heard of a head being stuck on a stake after a battle to warn the enemies away? As for human sacrifice, heard of Abraham sacrificing his son? There were others.
Christianity was limited to a tee-tiny portion of the world for the first few thousand years. We still had Rome, Greece, England, the Americas, cultures who had never heard of the Bible, yet had moral codes similar to Christianity. Yet your first reaction is to refer to obscure practices deep in the Congo of Africa! And yes. In their culture is was moral. Morality is subjective.

Yeah, what is communion if not ritual cannibalism by proxy?

@Seek_Kolinahr
Metaphoric gay sex.

@augustlan The golden rule came along well before the bible. Just because the bible incorporates something, that doesn’t mean it originated there @Hypocrisy_Central.
The golden rule did predate the Bible, it was given to Adam and Eve, extending down to the Hebrews before Christ came, so you were correct in that respect, though you didn’t know it. I know you were referring to some nameless, faceless people whom no one has yet been able to name. Who were they again, the ones who created the golden rule?

@Brian1946 Jainism advocates non-violent respect for all life, and there’s evidence that it dates back to 7000 BCE.
Rishabha can be speculated to have lived around 7000 BCE.—If we are to get the wording correct, SPECULATED, not a slam dunk for those who want pure facts, and nothing thereof.

Aside of that, you are alluding to there was no morality until they created or invented it? Also it is there morality you follow be it filtered through dozens of dozens of generations?

@Dutchess_III At any rate, Christians practiced that too
It happens only in the Bibles you read, never in those I read. The reason why any of those people suffered ruin was not because of secular reason, and thus has no relevance in this question. Regardless what ancient Hebrews did or didn’t it is about the author of your morality, the one you follow even if through decades of filters.

That aside, there were plenty of other cultures who did NOT practice human sacrifice, who weren’t head hunters and who weren’t cannibals. Further, they didn’t suffer ruin! Far as I know, Japan, China, India, all of those cultures are alive and kicking. The others, like the Americas did “suffer ruin”....at the hands of Christians from Europe.

@hypocrisy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
The code of Hammurabi.
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt.
Zoroastrianism
Confucianism
Taoism
Sanskrit tradition
...all have versions of the golden rule that predate even the Leviticus mentioning that one should “love thy neighbor as thyself”.

@Dutchess_III My, my, there was a lot there that said nothing. That aside, there were plenty of other cultures who did NOT practice human sacrifice, Lets stop there and ask, out of those cultures that don’t head hunt, etc, which one is the founder or author of the morality you follow; China, Japan, India, someplace else? Maybe it has been so many generations and through so many filters you figure just to call it a wrap and follow one that you don’t really know where it came from but believe it is your own invention by experience?

@Seek_Kolinahr @hypocrisy http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule
The code of Hammurabi.
The Middle Kingdom of Egypt.
Zoroastrianism
Confucianism
Taoism
Sanskrit tradition
…all have versions of the golden rule that predate even the Leviticus mentioning that one should “love thy neighbor as thyself”.
Just because it wasn’t in print before Leviticus doesn’t mean it was not in practice before then, and before the aforementioned litany of religions.

Which of those that you mentioned was are is the founder of the morality you follow today?

Which of those came up with the Golden rule 1st?

The ones who came up with it first, who is to say theirs was more correct over the others?

If the Golden rule spontaneously erupted in all of those culture, apart from influence from some other culture or each other, explain how that happened?

You all might be interested in this discussion about this topic. I think it was the second question I ever asked here, back when I was still a deist.

@hypo – Hammurabi’s was the first written legal code that we know of and have evidence for. I cannot speculate on that for which I have no evidence. However, the “golden rule” is essentially the same across the board. Asking which civilization’s version directly influenced me makes little sense, as that wouldn’t attest either to the historicity or the “ultimate truth”, if that’s what you’re digging for.

If you want my upbringing for subjective analysis, I was brought up by a formerly Catholic, practicing Buddhist, Irish father and a nominally protestant, Irish/German mother in a predominantly Jewish and Italian neighborhood in New York. When I was nine, we moved to Florida where my mother married into a family of biblical literalist Fundamentalist Christians. I dabbled in Neopaganism for a while.

Extrapolate what you will.

@Hypocrisy_Central You cannot have it both ways. You can’t rationally claim atheist have no moral foundation, but ancient anamists who were around 494,000 years before Adam was supposedly created out of dust, and Eve from his rib, understood morality much as we do today. In fact, animals as simple as ants, termites and bees understand altruism.

And lest you go of on some tangent about an evil atheist, ignoring all the great evil done it Yahweh/God/Allah’s name; consider the fact that most atheists today act in a more moral fashion that their theist counterparts.

@augustlan you were a dentist?

To answer your question, directed to me, Hippy C, “which one is the founder or author of the morality you follow; China, Japan, India, ” the ultimate answer would have to be…Africa.

When two or more people live in the same area they have to adopt some rules about who does what to whom. Any such rule is called a moré, pronounced “mor-ay”. The adjective form is moral, and the habit of following morés is morality. Morés do not have to be right, only accepted. Another group on the other side of the river might have very different morés.

Religion, law, and morality have little or no connection between them. For instance, people want to punish illicit sex by death, law prescribes jail time, and the bible commands banishment.

@SmartAZ Morés do not have to be right, only accepted. Another group on the other side of the river might have very different morés.
Why do you suppose that some people believe others can be immoral when those ”across the river” would see theirs as moral? For those on the South side to have their mores be correct or more moral than those on the North side of the river how would they justify it, for lack of a better term?

Moral = custom. For instance in the USA it is the custom to assume that morality refers to sexual conduct and also to the difference between right and wrong and also being a nice person in general. People who have not traveled always assume their local customs are laws of the universe. IOW the subject is so muddled that an American might not qualify to discuss the word at all. Your response demonstrates that.

There have been cultures through history that find the practice of killing newborns (for what ever reason) acceptable.

There have been cultures who have sacrificed children and women as some sort of offering to their god, who, apparently demanded such sacrifice (they thought.) For their culture, that was perfectly moral. As moral as hitting your knees to pray to whatever God every night.

@SmartAZ As far as morality and sexual conduct, the term “immoral” is usually applied to women. Not men. We have so many words to describe a woman of low sexual morals, but virtually no words to describe men who engage in the same, or worse, behavior. And, actually, such behavior in men is quite admired by other men.

There were also cultures that found it moral to kill a raped women because she did not scream for help loud enough, and who found it moral to force a rape victim to marry her rapist.
Guess from where they got those morals.

Morality, human morality, developed hand in hand with human evolution and culture. As @augustlan said on a previous thread ”...morals were a function of survival for mankind, long before religion came into play. “We have to get along in order to stay alive…”

^ As @augustlan said on a previous thread ”...morals were a function of survival for mankind, long before religion came into play. “We have to get along in order to stay alive…”
All that says is the people on the hill having greater numbers and growing they need more hunting and farming area. Since they have far greater numbers than the people of the valley it is morally right for them to run the valley people off the hunting land and take the choice farming and fishing areas from them, and if they do not leave peacefully or it seems they might try and come back, taking what was taken from them back, morally right to wipe them out, eliminating the threat they may cause. That will make it easier for the hill people to survive.

@Hypocrisy_Central Your idea of a moral lesson is that might makes right?

I think if you do some research into it you will find that present day hunter-gatherers (your hill people) actually do a lot more trading and bartering with farmers and livestock owners (your valley folk) than they do pillaging, raping and murdering of them. It turn out to be mutually beneficial for both sides by allowing for a more varied diet for both groups, and small subsistence farms tend to be fairly limited in the variety of produce, productive use of marginal lands not suited to farming, and also, in terms of finding prospective mates, a larger, more varied population to choose from.

I abandon this discussion because some of you are unable to accept that words have specific meanings. If we can’t agree on what the words mean, meaningful conversation is impossible.

@rojo It turn out to be mutually beneficial for both sides by allowing for a more varied diet for both groups, and small subsistence farms tend to be fairly limited in the variety of produce, productive use of marginal lands not suited to farming,
If they each desire in some way to obtain what the other have, if not; there is a problem. The valley people might be happy with what they fish, hunt, and grow I the valley, they could care less about the caribou up in the hills. If they were willing to trade at all they may be willing to go 2 quail but not the 5 bushels of barley the hill people want for it, and no fish is going with the deal. At some point the hill people might realize they outnumber the valley people 5 to 1 and they have more horses, so, let’s go take what we need from those ragamuffins, after all, they are being immoral not trading on our terms for the stuff we want and need.

You are completely incapable of comprehending the concept of reciprocal altruism, aren’t you?

Not talking hypotheticals here @Hypocrisy_Central. Look and see, do some research on present day hunter gatherers and their relationship with farming communities. There are only a handful left (The San, the Spiniflex, the Piraha and such) so it should not be too difficult.

^ There are only a handful left (The San, the Spiniflex, the Piraha and such) so it should not be too difficult.
In their regions they are probably pretty small and weak as far as military might goes so they could not have their way with anything, compromise is the only survival too they have left. If more than half of the world was agricultural those with superior numbers could displace neighbors of weaker numbers to gain the resources they have should trading not be palatable or desired.