I guess this is similar to the Christian’s question of why an atheist has any morals. I know atheists have morals, but as to why, the only responses I’ve ever seen are weak and meaningless, such as, “It’s innate,” or, “We have an understood social contract.”
Because unless you are a sociopath or a total asshole, most people can emphasize with other people. You know or can imagine how crappy it would feel to lose your wallet. So if you decide to take the person’s wallet you are making a decision to make someone else feel crappy. So ultimately what it comes down to is if you are the sort of person who willingly wants to make other people feel like crap.
If a person doesn’t have a sense of right and wrong and doesn’t care to, there is little you can do to change their mind. The only thing you can do is communicate to them that you don’t condone their behavior and do not want to socialize with them because of it.
You have to teach them why they are wrong. Often times this cannot be done. If a person has made up his mind not to care, there’s not much you can do.
You have to have an incentive to be good, especially now-a-days. We no longer teach or rather enforce the lesson, “good for goodness sake.”
Suppose I apply for a job and it requires I have a college degree. But it doesn’t matter what the degree is in, it’s just having a degree. If that is the kind of job you’re going for, it makes no difference if I got my grades via cheating or not, 'cause my job isn’t based on knowledge but rather on obtaining a piece of paper.
In the old days colleges didn’t prepare you for jobs so much as they tought you how to think.
It also depends if you’re a “bottom line” person. If I cheat on a test and get an “A” that is clearly wrong. But when I was in economics, I got by simply by memorizing everything with cram sessions, then I prompty forgot everything. I never really learned anything, I just memorized, but I got an “A”.
The bottom line in that example is we both got an “A” on the test and neither of us learned anything when it was all over.
If someone is wrong, you need to show them WHY they are wrong and the person listening to you must be willing to new ideas.
Another example is our jury system. We always think of a jury as 12 impartial people. With media coverage and such the way it is, we usually don’t get 12 impartial jurors. What we get is 12 people who have already made up their mind but at least are willing to listen to someone else and have their mind’s changed.
Agreed. I think that it is wrong because it is stealing in violation of God’s law. Were I an atheist, I am like you, if there is no overreaching authority above us, then why not kill 'em and hide the body as long as you can get away with it?
Do you really think this way? Given (as far as I can see though I am open to cites) the lack of correlation between crime rates and religiosity, there seems little to back this conception up.
I would argue that the codification of morality that you call “God’s law” is actually the long-ago codification of societal morality. It existed way back then because societies were essentially theocratic, hence rule enforcement and holy works would become intertwined.
Do you have any internal ethical system at all? If you somehow perceived that your god would approve of killing those who disbelieved, would your morals change?
Yeah, but can’t I just violate God’s law all I want and then ask for forgiveness at the end?
As stated earlier, most people have a sense of empathy or “treat others how you would like to be treated”. They usually learn this from a young age through their interactions with other people.
And if all else fails, we do live in a society of laws and you probably won’t get away with it. At least it’s generally not worth it for you to try.
I see a disconnect here. Some of us seem to value learning not so much for the knowledge it provides, but for the work and rule-following it requires. To wit:
According to Nobody, even a cheater “acquire(s) the knowledge.” Too positivist for me. All a cheater acquires are the answers - there’s no “why” behind them. But then again, if learning is about following rules, “whys” may not be useful, or indeed, even healthy to know.
Marley23 gets a little closer, I think, saying that cheating is in effect faking real knowledge:
But Marley still doesn’t give up on the idea that the “hard way” is part of the point. That calls a lot of legitimate learning into question: study strategies, problem solving, and the fact that some learners just “get it” sooner than others.
So consider Markxxx, who suggests that pure effort may sometimes be beside the point. His example: rote memorization through cramming.
So what is the real wrong in cheating? Not doing things the hard way - or not really learning?
Learning is not muscle training. The mind need not be worked to the point of failure to gain benefit.
I agree, BTW, that colleges no longer teach you how to think. But that’s another discussion for another time.
Yes, I know. That’s why I didn’t say it’s wrong to cheat because you won’t learn the material. Several other posters did make that argument.
I didn’t say anything about learning strategies, “the hard way,” or the value of knowledge for its own sake. I was talking about why it’s wrong to engage in academic fraud.
This is why I’m scared of Christians. Really scared, not just bothered by the stuff they’re currently actively doing.
I was raised in a religious family, but the religion never ‘took’ - and the effect of this was that I was never taught morals or ethics. My parents only knew religious morality, and that’s all they taught, but without a belief in God religious morality is meaningless.
So, as a child I acted like the theists think atheists act: when I thought I could get away with it, I stole things. Now, I’m not a risk taker, so I only stole from my own parents - I knew they would limit their reactions to punishments I could risk.
And then I grew up.
The key thing that I eventually learned is that, other people matter to me, and the fact that other people matter to me matters to me. This took me a while to figure out, because I had no examples of this in my life; everyone I knew was busy dancing to sky gods and handed off credit for every good thing they did to these critters. So, when they were nice, it was because God told them to be. When they acted like they cared, it was because God told them to. So it took me a while to figure out that I cared what people thought, and even that I cared what they felt. And that I liked to be the good guy. (I admit, it’s kind of an ego boost to hold the moral high ground.)
So. When I see theists, I see someone who is child-me waiting to happen - but perhaps without quite the cautious nature I held even as a child. If they ever realize that their god is just one out of a thousand conflicting fantasies that people have, they will drop into the world with their moral tether cut. And then Thor only knows what they might do. The fact that theists themselves express the sentiment that they would become amoral bastard axe murders without their religion suggests to me that this is something to be seriously concerned about.
To relate this back to the OP, as noted here, I have been the guy in the OP. And the only “cure” for moral apathy, aside from time and maturity, is to arrange for direct consequences that are a sufficient seaward or deterrent to alter the behavior. If you can’t make them care about the actual issue, make them care about the consequence. And yeah, you have to make them think you’ll be able to catch them at it. Sometimes that’s tricky…but that’s what it takes.
:smack: How did “reward” become “seaward”? Yipes.