Where Does Morality Come From?

You and I are from different frames of references I suppose, but I'll share mine. There is a God that put all this together. His desire is that we seek relatationship with Him. He does not demand it and makes us a free agent. However, he has instilled in us a certain morality in us at birth which we are free to reject. That morality of right and wrong is within each of us, yet we can pick and choose according to our own fleshly desires. The reason for that morality is all relational and ultimately so that we can eventually have a relationship with our Creator. No one individual is an island to himself otherwise there are as many "moralities" as there are people. Mankind has embraced all kinds of moralities from "animal sex" to :child sacrifice"......your choice. For a better, honest approach to this way of thinking, I suggest the book "Mere Christianity" by C.S. Lewis.

 

Yes and I understand your perspective on this issue, given I was brought up with the same thinking, as I was brought up in a prot church, and had those beliefs instilled in me. Of course, I questioned all of this later on, while in my 20s and had a change of mind.

And yet I do not completely discount the idea, or dismiss it with certainty, that our moral code came from something man would call God. But at this point in my 76 years of existence, I think that morality rose as I laid it out. Out of the necessity for order over chaos within even a tribal human society, but just as important, if not more, in civilization. Morality is just another part of the survival mechanism needed by homo sapien sapiens, since morality does not seem to be hardwired into our genetics. It seems to have always been a choice, while perhaps lower animals and the nature of their brains do not share this with homo sapiens. In those social groups of animals, their behavior seems to be more or less hardwired, and not a free will choice at all.

I once read a book titled, The Stoned Ape, and have conjectured that perhaps morality arose at the same time as primitive religion arose in man, in ancient man. And religion with its moral codes arose from experiencing drugs like DMT, found in so many plants, and is even manufactured by the human body. For it is this drug, DMT that the scientist Strassman researched for years, and one of his discoveries was the commonality of drug induced consciousness, in regards to particular gods, which would ever serve as teachers while using that drug. For if you experiment on people, giving them all the same dose and a majority of them experience the same gods, and teachings, this would give some credence to the stoned ape theory in regards to the rise of religion and moral codes.

Of course many in the west just see this as the effects of the drug, warping the mind, and yet there is a very long tradition among more primitive people that this chemical, sourced from plants, was put here by the gods or Gods as a way to communicate with those gods or God. A substance which allows such communication and experience, while revealing perceived reality may not be ALL that reality entails. A teacher in other words, created by the Creator.

 

I was not raised in a Church or with any type of spiritual background. Like you, I searched out my own existance, listening to those more experienced and successful in life than myself and didn't come to the beginning of my conclusion until I was 25. Now I am 64. If my only goal in this life was to survive, given what I know, I would probably become a pick pocket or con-man.

 

And yet if you found yourself with those means of eating, surviving, in a highly moral society, where some of the secular laws reflected that morality, you would have been hung, and society would have discarded one individual that thought he was above this silly morality and silly laws. ha ha.

Hell, if you even take a hunter gatherer tribe, where the good hunters would hunt for the protein, and where the women would gather edible plants, tubers, fruit, even insects, and the fruits of that day's labor were shared with those who did not go on the hunt, and those who did not gather plants that day, can you imagine what would have happened if a hunter came back with his kill, which would feed the entire tribe for a couple days or more, in protein, and out of human selfishiness, refused to share with the others in the tribe?

No doubt there was some kind of moral code, a rule in place that all agreed to, in order that the tribe might survive, by all being fed. And there of course was greater safety in numbers, and early humans needed numbers, so this sharing was also a survival mechanism, when sharing was essential. And the moral code, or rules were in place due to the importance of survival and safety. It was much more important than individualistic selfishness. And I would imagine that if a sociopath arose within the tribe, and he was having none of the sharing, well, he would have perhaps ended up being shunned from the tribe and he could take his selfishness with him, and live alone, which was perhaps a death sentence.

So I have little doubt that this thing we call morality was just another essential tool in helping to insure the survival of the tribe and hence the survival of the species. If it did not come from God, it would have been necessary for man to invent it.

 

Well if it has been invented by man....it takes on a lot of shapes and forms. Some are better than others.....but there is only one that is right on and that is the one that comes from our Creator through Jesus Christ.

 

More accurately, it would be impossible, since without God's influence the best man could ever do is write laws which serve to empower tyrants.

 

Alot..alot of a person's own morality comes from their upbringing home life with whoever were the adult aged guardians.

That's why The Holy Bible says in Proverbs 29:15

"The rod and reproof give wisdom: but a child left to himself bringeth his mother to shame."

A child left to do as he/she pleases while being brought up will have different morals than the children who were brought up with 'rules', etc..

Discipline keeps the child in lines with the 'rules'.

The Holy Bible makes sense, right?

 

How about someone explaining what is a moral?

 

I like this post!

Agreed, the key here is necessity.

Morals are the qualitative/valuative principles that one adopts as their religion and lives by.

As you said, from necessity we say stealing, murder etc = bad, hence dont do it, while it is purely individual since morals can be between man and his environment as well as others of kind it becomes preventative maintenance that for the most part is universal across all cultures in one form or another. Unfortunately in todays world people have been conditioned to accept a low value way of life through the constant barrage of sophistry laden social pressures (and money) which counter high moral standards.

 

Thanks! Appreciate it.

The philosopher, Nietzsche, if my memory is still good, said something like, if god did not exist, man would have to create him. I think the same way about a moral code. If morality did not exist, man would have to create it. And he did.

For it actually does serve something very important, given we are social animals and evolved in groups. The amount of friction, disorder between the members of a group, a tribe, a nation, does matter and it does have importance. We saw apparently rules of conduct could help to minimize such friction and disorder once we noticed what behavior created the friction, disagreements, fights and disorder within the group.

It was a case of human intelligence operating in order to minimize something which was a risk to the cohesion and cooperation needed, and therefore a risk to the group as a survival mechanism. Survival early on and for 10s of thousands of years involved not an individual, but the group, the collective itself, and so anything that would weaken the group, is highly undesirable. And as I said risky.

So when the new minds enter into this world, and poopoo morality and moral codes, perhaps because it restricts their own demands for gratification, this also is probably as old as the hills. Most become much more intelligent and grow out of that anarchy. And yet some will identify moral codes with tradition, and believing they are progressive, not traditional people, this provides a short sighted excuse to try to do away with moral codes in particular or most of all codes in general. If it creates order over disorder, fighting over peace, that is a cost they seem very willing to accept. Thankfully many people mature out of this attitude, but we know not all people do. We all know of people who believe that tradition is just a very bad thing, and times change. But some things simply do not change, and that involves the behavior of people towards other people in a group. The manner in which you treat other human beings. The reactions of the victims, in this cause effect universe will add to the disorder created by the immoral, and a vicious circle is created. Cause effect, cause effect, cause effect, and sometimes will spiral out of control to the point that the tribe itself may be in great risk in continuing on.

So morality is a necessity. And necessity is the mother of invention. It is how an intelligent human mind reacts to necessity. We have always used our minds to some degree to solve problems, in all kinds of spheres. And this problem with behavior towards others probably raised its ugly head real early on in our history as a species. May have been one of he earliest social problems that man tried to address and minimize.

 

Atheists and theists have the exact same moral struggles. There are atheists who see it as a matter of personal preference just as there are theists who see it as a matter of personal preference. There are atheists who see it as more objective than that and there are theists who see it as more objective than that. There is one and only one moral philosophy that requires and depends upon a belief in God: divine command theory, which posits that morality is simply a matter of God's personal preference. Good and evil are good and evil because God says so. If he decided he liked murder and rape, then murder and rape would be moral. Which, for the record, is subjective. For just how evil that can be, see the majority of human history. All one has to do to excuse any evil they like is to claim that God prefers it anyway and that the moral judgement of humans can't be trusted. This has been used, even in just the Bible alone, to excuse everything from slavery to infanticide.

Meanwhile, if God bases his moral opinion on anything other than his own personal subjective preferences (on reason, suffering, well-being, etc.), then morality is no longer derived from God himself. God simply recognizes good and evil. Good and evil don't depend on him.

 

A moral, or better yet, the social construct that is morality, is a framework that groups use to judge right from wrong. Morals are a reflection of the values of a group. Thus, morals are really a reflection of values that the group (at least most of the group) have identified as "good".

THus, it is not morality that informs our actions, but our shared values.

For example. I value the idea of private property, therefore I embrace the moral that stealing is wrong.

I value the life of children, therefore things that cause needless harm to children are immoral.

I think One Mind's post was excellent, this is just my contribution to it.

As I'm sure you've pondered, we cannot derive is from oughts, but once we observe the consequences of our actions, some result in chaos and others harmony, we can choose to value harmony. Once we've done that, then the is-ought problem becomes easier to resolve.

Take the statement; Needless suffering is bad.

THat's not an objective fact, but it's a reality that we are aware of, therefore, we can choose to value those things that prevent it.

Once we've made that choice, there are objectively right and objectively wrong actions we can take with respect to things that cause or prevent needless suffering.

Hope that adds something to the convo....-Cheers

 

Conscience.

 

Precisely, however interestingly enough (in the eyes of an atheist) its a religion when a theist has morals but ________ when an atheist has them.

Doesnt look too social though, 'I' are not the borg.

Morals are created or proffered by individuals then later 'applied' to or 'accepted' by society does not mean they are a social 'construct', that is lazy misleading speech.

You could probably correctly say a 'group adopted' moral is a 'social contract' since it is the religion that is the building blocks of a given culture because it is agreed upon by all members of that culture.

Morals originate from a single source and are a single persons or a single entities construct 'I', in the sense that a person refers to their own beliefs/moral adaptations, regardless of the accreditation ie that persons source.

Suffice to say the construct is not social though its the adaptation by a group is social.

Morals have to be adopted by every living individual, even living on an island, group or social notwithstanding.

The social construct angle is a political pov not philosophical reduced to its core elements.

When society adopts a set of morals through the use of ethics or other means of analysis it is now a political adaptation or application.

As a side note: When governments adopt morals and impose their statutory moral compass on everyone within their jurisdiction rather than using individual court decisions, each case being decided on its own merits even the case is the same as thousands of other cases now leaves the freedom of religion realm and officially violates the constitution, wherein the state now becomes the enforcer of its statutory religion by imposing their legislatively chosen moral compass, their religion on their subjects.

Mormon religion and the state outlawing multiple wife marriages come to mind.

All things said start with one person who said it, then it catches on and a group decides to adapt it, not the other way around.

Now had you said 'socially applied construct' I would not have felt compelled to point that out.

That could be a good source, though by itself can have contrary outcomes. Good example one society chooses human sacrifice or slavery and another the contrary.

That punch line is quite well thought out, since the outcome does not affect God in any way.

sub·jec·tive - based on or influenced by personal feelings, tastes, or opinions.

Sort of like having a completely impersonal judge making a ruling that yields the highest value, a moral.

 

To what?

Such a choice has nothing to do with conscience, obviously - other than being utterly inimical to it.

 

I've always felt it came from the idea that hurting other people is wrong. There is also the Golden Rule, if you don't like something being done to yourself there seems little way you can justify doing it to others, and EVERY religion has some form of that. It originally comes from Confucianism but has Christian and even Taoist analogues.

In Christianity, morality seems to mean "don't have sex" and don't do anything that's pleasurable by extension, and don't say that's hyperbole, look up the Shakers, the Skoptsi and Origen the Church father from the 3rd Century if you don't agree with that or just talk to a Southern Baptist.

 

Philosophy is not my passion, so my choice of words could have been better. I'll accept your correction. Thank you.

My point was only that people construct (borrowing your word) moral systems based on the values they share.

 

I believe we have an innate sense of community. I break it down to an extreme to illustrate:

If a lone, unsocialized human happens across another human in an obvious state of suffering or peril, and that lone, unsocialized human has the means to help with little risk of personal loss, they will do so the vast majority of the time.

This is my beleif, of course, given that there is not a real-world way to test this. It may be because evolutionarily, we survive better when we help eachother, or because we were designed to care about eachother on a base level. But I think most of us have a moral urge to help, at least when doing do is not to our own detriment.

 

Empathy

 

Historical lessons based on what works to have civilization ensconced with religious teaching so they are not forgotten.

Remember, you don’t have to teach a child to be bad.

 

OTOH, anyone who thinks children can be taught to be good doesn't understand what good is.

 

Everyone knows what bad is.

 

Then the obvious question is why the hell so many people act as if they don't, even to the point of putting a commie in the White House; but assuming you meant to limit your remark to children, who are, at least in the US, less subject to societal brainwashing, if they know intuitively what bad is, then by the selfsame faculty they also know what good is.