Is it a man made concept designed to keep us in line or does it actually exist as part of our spiritual nature?
My personal belief is that it is part of our spiritual nature. But I guess that is debatable . . .
bad is just that which is taboo.
murder can be good. generousity can be evil.
Morality is a control mechanism.
Please explain how murder is good. Would reformation not be better than murder? (assuming that we are talking about killing murderers and the like.) But how can generosity be evil? (BTW, I don’t believe in the concept of good and evil however still interested in yout thoughts.)
On morality as a control mechanism. Who or what then do you think is controlling us? Again I ask, is it man or our spiritual nature?
My thoughts are that man creates laws to control man and many laws have a moral base to them true. But what about our own conscious and our feelings of guilt? What about compassion? I just can’t believe that we are taught to feel these things and therefore we do . . .
Morality is kin selection gone to seed.
I don’t know what you mean by “spiritual nature,” but morality is an issue because we, by our nature, care about stuff.
Well I see us as both animal and spiritual, the two being separate. I reason that if we had no spiritual nature, then we would act more like animals, very intelligent animals but animals nonetheless. We would lack moral consciouness.
—Well I see us as both animal and spiritual, the two being separate. I reason that if we had no spiritual nature, then we would act more like animals, very intelligent animals but animals nonetheless. We would lack moral consciouness.—
Maybe you are just using “spiritual” in a strange way.
We are certainly different than animals, and more developed to the degree in which we think about the effects of our outcome on others: as history progressed we even started to generalize our own preferences to universals. But that has nothing inherently to do with spirits, and it’s not distinctly human to care about others. Some animals are clearly capable of this as well: they just haven’t refined these values into abstract ideals or philosophical dictums, and indeed probably lack the capacity to do so.
The following examples are valid for the average north america paradigm:
Murder being ‘good’, let see, perhaps in the case of one ‘bad’ person trying to kill two innocent ppl, killing the ‘terrorist’ would be good.
I would go as far as saying that even to make the world a better place, it might be good to kill, ie I’m sure most members of Greenpeace would find it morally ‘good’ to have killed (retro-actively) the person who discovered modern fossil-fuel extraction methods…
‘But how can generosity be evil?’ Often ppl would be better suited to find a system to get things for themselves, instead of just having them given to them for nothing (this can be interpreted by anything from world bank loans to third world countrys to giving a child too many gifts).
’ Who or what then do you think is controlling us?’ I think we as a society have many mechanisms built into us, kinda of like a giant brain. We self-regulate.
" I just can’t believe that we are taught to feel these things and therefore we do . ." well your wrong 
good and evil are contrived and programmed. What do you think kids raised in ‘warrior’ type societies thought about killing? I bet it was a thing of honour.
Do you think ppl like hitler thought what they were doing was ‘wrong’ or bad? Of course not. They just rationalized things differently.
Good and evil are just subjective concepts.
Good is anything that agrees with your interests and beliefs,evil anything that runs counter to them.
—Good is anything that agrees with your interests and beliefs,evil anything that runs counter to them.—
That seems pretty self-sealing and unhelpful to, because one can always re-define “interests” to counter any objections.
Good and evil may be subjectively JUDGED concepts, but it is misleading to pretend that they are anything but objectively intended. When someone says that something is good, they are at least trying to state something more than “I think it should be”
Are you saying that there are no morally absolute principles? None whatsoever?
If you do, then I have a few questions for you.
So the 9-11 highjackers were performing an act of goodness? After all, their actions were in accordance with their self-interest and beliefs. Ditto for Ms. Toogood, the lady who was caught abusing her child in a parking lot.
I’d guess that the 9/11 guys wouldn’t have said they were doing good but I do suspect they would have been 100% that they were right.
Actually the idea of “dualist” natures has existed for a while and is not that strange. Maybe I am not explaining myself well.
**
We are certainly different than animals, and more developed to the degree in which we think about the effects of our outcome on others: as history progressed we even started to generalize our own preferences to universals. But that has nothing inherently to do with spirits, and it’s not distinctly human to care about others. Some animals are clearly capable of this as well: they just haven’t refined these values into abstract ideals or philosophical dictums, and indeed probably lack the capacity to do so. **
[/QUOTE]
Humans ARE animals, the difference seem to be in the way that we emote and our level of intelligence.
I do agree that some animals are capable of caring but like you said, tho in a different way, animals perhaps lack some of the mental abilities that humans do, abilities that seem to complicate life sometimes when it could be so much more simple but that is an entirely different subject . . .
Why does something have to be inherent or inate or inevitable in order to “actually exist”? Seems to me that even if morality is a social contract invented by society in order to make society possible, it is still “real”, still valid, still a hell of a thing.
I’m sorry. When I asked you to explain how murder was good, I actually wanted you to explain how murder is actually, good, not why some people might think it is good because let’s face it, just because people think or feel that it is good does not make it so in any instance. That is why I asked the question about reformation. Choosing reformation would be choosing the greater of two goods correct, presuming one feels that murder is good. If one is thinking properly, they can’t rationalize that reformation is bad can they?
I see your point but being slovenly and lazy is not a moral issue. It is an immoral issue. Immorality seems to be subject to more subjectiveness than morality which is to say that we all seem to agree, I won’t go as far as to say universally, but pretty much agree on what is considered good (morally speaking) and but become more and more divided on what we consider bad. That in itself I find really interesting. I can even use it to support my theories . . .
’
I agree that we self regulate but think that there is more that regulates us beside our brain.
’
Well if I am indeed wrong, your going to have to prove it to me because as it stands, I am unconvinced . . .
Perhaps those kids rasied in “warrior” type societies were more or less brainwashed into thinking what they think. That still explains nothing as most people are pretty much like sheep in socities anyway . . .
I think Hitler was insane . . .
Animals, most likely, don’t have the mental capacity to recognize their own spiritual nature and perhaps people that are insane are not much different than animals in this regard?
I’ll bite, JThunder. I assery that what we consider ‘moral’ is * entirely * dependant on our evolution as a species. How you can disprove this without first finding an outside perspective to judge the morality of actions, I’d like to see.
I mean, we don’t kill people randomly for the same reason that we don’t run into walls: Societies whose members did so died out, and co-operative and unconcussed people flourished.
AladyLikeNoOther: Perhaps you should read effac3d’s post again, as I think together with mine, everything is explained quite nicely.
He wrote of the subject nature of any and all semantics. How can anything be fundamentally related to anything else? Its simply the grid you use to view things.
In many arabic countries, a large percentage (approaching the majority) of people believe what ossama bin laden did was very good, so why would they be any more or less correct than those of us in north america? Are our intellects superior to theirs? Are we ‘more’ moral than they are? Or just programmed differently?
If something is built doesn’t it have to have a Builder? Morality and moral absolutes come from God imho. I’m not sure that anything is controlling us except what we allow to, as we are given free will. We can either give in to our old (sin) nature or for those who’ve become Christians we can be controlled by our new nature. It seems as if we should know that certain things are right or wrong, such as murder, adultery, etc. Of course, not everyone thinks along these lines.
(selective quote)
How then do you account for the self-evident fact that views of the deliberate killing of other humans vary ( and have varied) enormously over the geographical and historical range. Have people
(i) failed to receive God’s message
(ii) received God’s mesage but misunderstood it
(iii) received God’s message but deliberately chosen to ignore it?
( of course different options may apply to people at different times and/or at different places).