Morality
All definitions of morality center on categorizing actions either right or wrong. For religious people it is simple: Do what holy-thingy says and what you are told is good and everything else is wrong. Having a god gives right and wrong an absolute scale since the god is absolutely right and everything opposite is wrong. Without a god things become relative and not so simple. Since there is no god the scale must be graduate to something such as benefit to the individual or perhaps benefit to one's kin. The point is it becomes relative. This means terms like right and wrong become relative and morality becomes ethics.
This is further complicated since our biological systems are designed to be binary (right vs wrong) since we get rewarded for some behaviors and guilt for others, but the rational mind must learn to overcome these. For instance eating fried food (by default) sends "right" signals since all organisms try to gather and consume as many calories as possible. Today we often train ourselves to feel guilt afterwards since our rational minds know we aren't starving and we could have made a healthier choice. Similarly the desire to categorize everything into right and wrong must be overcome so that the action can always be critically examined.
For this reason I pose that absolute morality does not exist (only personal morality) for atheists.
This is further complicated since our biological systems are designed to be binary (right vs wrong) since we get rewarded for some behaviors and guilt for others, but the rational mind must learn to overcome these. For instance eating fried food (by default) sends "right" signals since all organisms try to gather and consume as many calories as possible. Today we often train ourselves to feel guilt afterwards since our rational minds know we aren't starving and we could have made a healthier choice. Similarly the desire to categorize everything into right and wrong must be overcome so that the action can always be critically examined.
For this reason I pose that absolute morality does not exist (only personal morality) for atheists.
Labels: Religionish
posted by Eddie | 11:07 PM
5 Comments:
But, isn't their any manner in which we can measure if something is ethical or not? Can we judge actions in a non-arbitrary way?
Yes you can measure if something is ethical or not, but it will always be subjective (like marking an English paper). Since the scale (right/wrong) is subjective the crux of your question is about the definition of 'we.' For instance what may be benificial to one 'we' may be harmful to another 'we.' So one culd try and build an ethical framework of all humans (and even animals). But then you are still going to try and satify the needs of the current with the future 'we.' Take global warming and poverty. There is only a finite amount of money that people/nations will use to support these. Is it ethical to fight global warming and save future billions or should we put the money into immediate antipoverty programs and save current millions. Obviously simple numbers don't work since the future tally can't be counted. Ask different people about this and you will see ethics has no clean-cut black and white answers (provided you are realistic and take the 'do both' answer off the table).
Others responses are at http://secularalliance.ca/forum/index.php?topic=92.0
"Yes you can measure if something is ethical or not, but it will always be subjective (like marking an English paper)."
However, English papers tend to have an overall flexible rule system. Do you believe there is a flexible rule system for morality?
"Do you believe there is a flexible rule system for morality?"
Yes, but I also think this makes morality contrary to the common definition. When people say morality they mean absolute, not subjective. If you redefine it to be flexible it looses all relevance. If you have to redefine the word back into relevance I say put it to rest.
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