When I was a child, religion was not forced on me, but yet I still was a believer through my fear of death and dying. I was as hardcore and problematic a conservative Christian could be, living up to every stereotype to the word. I was a twisting of the faith and I abused its words to achieve what I thought was right and written in them. Inevitably, I saw what I was doing, and a matter of difference in core beliefs left me alone from the church and shaken.

I drifted from belief to belief, absorbing what I could from each stop with the ideal that if I kept moving, I'd find what I was looking for in faith and life. Soon, I arrived at atheism/agnosticism (it's awfully ahrd to define the difference sometimes). The issue I have is that my feelings on morality, while having changed, have still retained a ring. I have not slipped into the hedonistic atheism of Satanism or the like. I've become a moral atheist, like many here and a good majority of those that don't believe.

The issue is, where do we get morals without something to dictate them to us? How do we gain a basis for right and wrong? I've been pondering it for a couple days and can find no real answers to why I think something is right or wrong except for upbringing and societal memes.

Discuss, if you will.

Most people like to say they get them from reason, but I don't believe reason is capable of delivering a worthwhile moral standard. Morality created by reason is by definition vulnerable to reason, and if you really try hard enough, you can reason your way into justifying or demonizing just about anything. In addition, any morality created by reasoning (such as Kantian) is essentially baseless, and ultimately would never even be considered by anyone in determing their actions.

Morality isn't really an issue unless you have to make it one, if you ask me. There's a difference between an action being justified and an action being moral and often the two notions completely contradict each other. In my opinion morality isn't a clear cut set of maxims but rather a loose compilation of personal experience, utilitarianism, emotional attachments and collective acclimatization. Sure that's a flimsy defintion, but ultimately I don't think it is possible to define it in any better way.

quote:Originally posted by LostEquation:

Most people like to say they get them from reason, but I don't believe reason is capable of delivering a worthwhile moral standard. Morality created by reason is by definition vulnerable to reason, and if you really try hard enough, you can reason your way into justifying or demonizing just about anything. In addition, any morality created by reasoning (such as Kantian) is essentially baseless, and ultimately would never even be considered by anyone in determing their actions.

Morality isn't really an issue unless you have to make it one, if you ask me. There's a difference between an action being justified and an action being moral and often the two notions completely contradict each other. In my opinion morality isn't a clear cut set of maxims but rather a loose compilation of personal experience, utilitarianism, emotional attachments and collective acclimatization. Sure that's a flimsy defintion, but ultimately I don't think it is possible to define it in any better way.

I reasoned my morals into existence, and I don't violate them, because once they transfer from reasoning to a moral code, it takes a much greater deal of reasoning to even bend your morals, let alone change them. (That is, unless, you have MPD)

Morality is relative and it depends upon the environment one is raised in. Whether you would like to admit it or not, the majority of your morality is derrived from social expectations within your community.

I would have to say that there do seem to be sortof "inbuilt" morals in human beings, and of course, also from society.

I mean, we ARE social creatures.

I have ethics as a course on school so we got a lot of information on questions like this. Your morals are created by your social invironment and such.

But on how you know what is wright and wrong are 2 main theory's (if I'm right).

1. Imanuelle Kant considerd humans to be good by nature and because we reason we always do the right thing. We could test this by using the rule of categoric imperative (translated from dutch, could be different) if you do something, would you want that to be the universal rule for solving that situation. (deontological approach)

2. Jeremy Bentham stated that we should always do the most 'usuful' action wich would lead to the most 'pleasure'. The only thing to be avoided is hurting other people. (teleological approach, he named this 'utilism')

quote:Originally posted by Fza:

I have ethics as a course on school so we got a lot of information on questions like this. Your morals are created by your social invironment and such.

But on how you know what is wright and wrong are 2 main theory's (if I'm right).

1. Imanuelle Kant considerd humans to be good by nature and because we reason we always do the right thing. We could test this by using the rule of categoric imperative (translated from dutch, could be different) if you do something, would you want that to be the universal rule for solving that situation. (deontological approach)

2. Jeremy Bentham stated that we should always do the most 'usuful' action wich would lead to the most 'pleasure'. The only thing to be avoided is hurting other people. (teleological approach, he named this 'utilism')

Utilitarianism.