Moral is more than choices and our perception of those choices. Bush’s choice to invade Iraq was immoral, and the people who supported this choice were poorly informed when they participated in this immorality. What makes something moral or not is, the cosequences of the action.
In Xunzian’s, example, Robin Hood is righting a wrong and restoring justice, therefore, he is not gulity of immorality, but is a hero. On the hand, the invasion of Iraq without being prepared to protect the citizens of Iraq from day one, has destroyed so many innocent people’s lives, there is no way this action can be considered moral.
The God of the bible is a mythological God, however, if we do not view our actions from a higher view point than our own, we are doom to make terrible decisions. You and I are not the final judge on morals. Moral must be judged with more awareness than you and I have. Together we have much more awareness than we can have individually. That is a basic principle of democracy, collective decision making. If one nation is to take action in another nation, the collective is the UN. The UN opposed the invasion of Iraq, and the US violated the principles of democracy when it went ahead with the invasion. My point is, the bigger view is essential to moral judgement.
That’s not correct. #1 You incorrectly believe that everyone believes the same story has the same “moral” to teach. However, the reality is that one story may mean one thing to person A, and quite a different thing than person B. Our brains are designed to think universals (occam’s razor), but this is only good when we don’t have access to more information.
#2 Even if we were to make the false assumption that “all humans value their own lives above all else”, then write a story that teaches us about some danger to our life, and that’s the morale of the story. The WRITER, chose to write the story this way, to reflect this particular lesson THEY beleive is worth writing about. And just because you happen to agree with THEIR moral choice, does not make it universal!!!
It just means you agree with the writer!! Or better, you agree with 98% of the readers, which still does not make it universal, since it is, and always will be, a choice. Re-read republic, Plato suggests schooling childen in fiction, specicfically that paints a rosey picture of life. We do this…it’s fiction, and it’s specifically one sided (rosey picture). You and I may think it’s “best for society”, and it may well be. But that’s our CHOICE, and it’s always dependant on our own beliefs.
But when so few citizens really understand morality and ethics, that’s no surprise. I also don’t believe it’s fair to condition children to subjective beleifs, I think it’s unethical if taken to the extreme you suggest. That’s why they are taught science. The science of language (English, foreign languages), the science of human history (history), the science of the universe (physics, biology, chemistry), the science of mathematics (abstracts used to describe reality), the science of human cultures (social studies), and so forth.
Teaching religion or morality would be anti-freedom IMO.
I think parents are the root cause for most of childrens lack of understanding of XYZ. And as far as ethics go, I don’t see many people on any forum, or in person, that seem to have a reasonable grasp of what it means. That is scary.
I don’t agree with the war in Iraq.
I also don’t agree with your perception of it being somehow universally immoral. It’s incorrect based on the reality that morals, as old timer has noted, are beleifs of humans.
Consquences…as viewed by who, you again? That’s again, your belief. It’s relative to you, not to everyone.
If you learn one thing in any forums, i think this would be the most powerful for you, the one that will benefit you, and those around you, the most.
YOU are the final arbiter of what is or is not right (for you). And YOU may believe your view on right and wrong should apply not only just to you, but to everyone equally. If YOU believe that, fight for it, stand up for it, but do not defeat your own position by claiming that you are correct because of some mythological something, or something ABOVE humans.
Once you do that, you remove your beliefs from reasonable, to unreasonable. But worse, followed to it’s logical end, you declare all of human existence worthless. Trust me, and try to follow this.
Kate teaches that anyone woman who acts suspicious and is attractive, is a witch. Witches, she declares, are to be burned. Kate declares that Christy is a witch.
Bill questions this. WHY Kate, are witches to be burned?
Kate: Because they are evil and it’s God’s will.
Bill: can we ourselves, verify that it’s God’s will?
Kate: No, God is above us humans, it just IS. It’s universal, you cannot disagree by definition.
Bill: OK then, how do you know she’s a witch?
Kate: Because I know by the way she acts, it’s as God declared a witch would act.
Bill: But again, how can we verify that it’s true that she’s acting like a witch, I mean, maybe she’s just sick and acting a little strange?
Kate: You cannot verify it, because it’s true BY DEFINITION. I have alreayd stated that God declared this.
Bill: Then what if I told you a secret. God just spoke to me and said Christy is no witch, but is just feeling a little down lately.
Kate: Blasphemy!
Do you see where your argument, and all such arguments, both religious, and non-religious lead? Because they are not reasonable, there is BY DEFINITION no way to deterine what is or is not real. This happens time and time again in human cultures.
When you remove the ability of someone to differentiate reality vs fantasy, you in a sense, remove their freedom to know reality. That, by definition, is unethical. And of course, every example we can use will demonstrate this. And every example to the contrary will be seen for the absurdity it is, by most readers.
If you are not good enough to know what is or is not right, then no one is.
I see the trend of saying morality is subjective to circumstances. The law takes this into consideration with emidigating circumstances that aliviate from harsh punishment. Yet no matter what circumstances, stealing is considered the attempt to rid the owner of all monitary and physical value. So borrwing without asking can be considered not stealing,… especially when they were in dire need.
The basic thruth’s I wish to have you take into consideration…
We are all the same in the soul,… and thus have the same basic needs.
People who neglect certain spiritual needs will take a secondary route to alieviate the problem. These become bandages that require the user to work the bandage first, and lose site of the root cause and effect.
IE the philosophy of becomming spiritually content, and take worldly things at stride. Thus = People who neglect their spiritual needs are slaves to sin, because the sin controlls their demeanor, and corupts/perverts/creates-biasness, toward the nature of the sin. It’s the errosian of your nature into becomming dependent on worldly things over spiritual things. Since your sin doesn’t solve the problem, people tend to have a progressive underlinning level of frustration; and thus an even bigger need for the sin. Or they could give up and build up calousness that seeps out in all areas of life.
IE We are born with unconditional love. Then we learn reasons to protect ourselves from hurt. Thus calousness sets in, and the dirrectional force of hatred is limited by nothing. If we relied on God to heal the soul, then we would have the dirrectional force of love to guide us toward a holy way around the problem. Mainly understanding. Hate blames, love reaches out.
Do unto others as you would have done unto yourself. This is the rule of integrety. It’s more like situation where one divides a sandwitch, the other chooses first. Of course this is dependent on your willingness to see the other as your equal.
/In order to become a leader, you must first be a servant.
/Love inspires us to sacrafice out of love.
/Humbleness allows us to see others, while pride is only seeing how you are better then others. Yet, we learn pride from living in a self gratification society. Yet, we will never have “utopia” unless we reach out to others with our spacific strengths. In order to reach out to others selflessly, it helps if you are first content spiritually. On the deepest level of contentness we are confident/accepted on a spiritual level. God loves us, and wishes to build our strengths/gifts toward God’s will and infinate wisdom.
You can easily learn to steal when you are hungery. But if this theif became a good harted leader, they would naturally spend time setting up donations for the hungery. Thus good naturally progresses to a better way. It’s just we don’t know the better way yet.
It is persumptuous and offensive for you to assume what I think. I think children can be very creative and see a moral in a story that perhaps the author did not intend. I am also clear that moral stories do contain the moral the author intended. Just because it is there, it doesn’t mean everyone will understand it.
A moral is not what someone thinks it is, it as a law of life above our humanness. Morals don’t change, only our understanding of them can change.
Before parents can teach XYZ, they must know XYZ and they can not know XYZ if they were not taught XYZ. A society can not rely on parents to do the teaching, because the parents don’t know it all. And even if parents did know it all, it is my experience parents can teach XYZ, and the child can totally dismiss the parent’s teaching as out dated and having nothing to do with life in present.
Socrates was the master at exposing our mistaken belief that we know morals and ethics. Extremely few people have a clear understanding of such matters and are poorly prepared to teach.
You seem confused about the meaning of morale. Morale is that which comes out of being moral. It is a feeling. People can have the high spirited feeling of morale, or they can feel demoralized. Whatever, morale does not come from reading a book, unless it is an inspirational book that makes us feel good. Morale is not the understanding of words, but a feeling.
Preparing children for good moral judgement is not conditioning children to subjective beleifs. It is teaching them how to think, and judge morals for themselves. Again. A moral is a law of nature, regardless of who knows it or believes it. Like gavity, it is there. The better we understand these laws, the better our lives will go.
Be clear. Can we recognize a moral? You claim yes in reference to a child “recognizing†(you say “seeâ€, but I know what you mean I think). If yes, then necessarily we can and do identify them. This contradicts this new claim that a moral is not what someone thinks it is. Please be clear. Can we or can we not recognize, then convey information about morals? If we can, good. If not, then by your definition we can’t know anything about morals at all (which is contradictory).
Laws are necessarily defined by humans.
Morality is tied directly to, resulting from, or being (humanness). You agree with me later down this thread when you recognize that morality has roots in emotion.
Note, how can we understand them, if as you claim above, that they are “not what someone thinks [they] are?†You can solve this dilemma.
The first part is debatable, but I’ll agree in “spiritâ€.
However, the second part, parents can experience XYZ, or in thinking critically, conclude XYZ. They do not need to be “taught†XYZ.
Yet he’s not here for me to debate. Appeals to authority, remove them entirely, they are a crutch at best, you don’t need that. The minute you think about name-dropping, fight the urge!
You termed this: presumptuous and offensive.
Yet you and I and most literate humans know that reading does regularly convey both knowledge, and feelings. Now, if it’s a feeling, how is it also a law “above†our humanness? Aren’t feelings necessarily tied to the brains physiology? (yes).
I agree, teaching children to think and judge for themselves is wonderful, probably the single most important intellectual skill to have, or to teach.
And isn’t that really teaching someone how to be “free”? No surprise it’s the core of modern culture.
There are both genetic and social reasons for morality. I am not interested in arguing the issue with people who just seem to want to argue for no other reason than to argue.
I seriously need to shift to a different activity, because this one is making me feel awful. I am feeling complete incompetent in communicating concepts.
The result of immoral action is bad things. I don’t care what you think about the action. I don’t care how you justify it. If you do the wrong thing, the result will be bad. Just the same as if you know nothing about gravity and want to fly, and jump off a twenty story building, the result of the action will be bad. The moral is the action that causes the result.
It is amazing how a change of activity can clear our minds, and change how we preceive things. Now I find this statement amazing.
This brings out the point that our morality comes with our genes. We are evolved from the animal realm. Animals don’t have abstract thinking so they don’t come up with ideas of mathematical or moral truths (knowledge of universal laws), but they do have feelings, and especially social animals, are moved by their feelings in such away as to secure their welfare in the community.
It does not mean, that because we feel a fear of what will happen to us, we are moral in destroying the economy of the USSR, or attacking Iraq. Anything we could benefit from these actions, caused terrible suffering to others, and from a God’s point of view, our hands are bloody. Unlike the animals, we can be aware of such things. We can know, destroying the lives of other people, because of how we feel, is wrong. Our morality must ride above our feelings, or we are not moral. We are not moral when we destroy the lives of innocent people. As Socrates would say, it might take 3 generations before the harm done becomes our problem, but sooner or later, the harm done will be our problem.
Controlling the world’s supply of oil, is great for the US, but this is not great for the rest of the world. It is great for the trade partners of the US, but not India, China, the near or far east, unless the US can assure these countries just prices for oil, without favoritism for the west and US interest. Ever since Vietnam, the US activity on the other side of the world has been about controlling oil. It has not controlled for the best interest of the people who happen to live on the land where oil is found, and land that can control shipping lanes. If our democracy is going to be of any value to the rest of world, we must seriously up degrade our concept of morals. Our morality must be above self interest. Our morality must be universal. That is something of which animals are not capable, but humans are.
We all get that, I’ve had to stop posting on some forums to cool off for a week, or forever. But this place is pretty mild, no one seems to get too mean
As to you being incompetent, unlikely, you’re engaged in philisophical inquiry.
That begs the question though, if results that end in bad things are immoral, what are “bad things”, and who defines them? Back to you defining them. Just look at this tiny forum. Nihilists want all life to end, to end suffering as they see the worldview. So someone dying to you is bad, to them it may be the only ethical thing. How would one demonstrate they are “wrong”? It cannot be done, not because we aren’t smart enough (we are), but because it is an invald question to begin with (i.e. we cannot defy logic).
It’s like forcing someone to “guess” at what 5 divded by 0 is equal to in terms of integers/reals. The question doesn’t make sense, it looks sort of like it may have an answer, but it doesn’t really have meaning. It’s not that we don’t have the smarts to do it, it’s that the question was invalid to begin with.
And that doesn’t make morality any less important to a society, or any less powerful. In my opinion, understanding leads to greater power, not less.
How can death be a good thing. What is the big picture. I can prove that selfcentered thinking is merely ignorance. They have psychology that traces an action to show how it effects everyone around you.
I say those who suffer is a tesimony to science and religion alike that something needs to change. People who make up their own philosophies tend to merely treat the side effect of the problem. They offer a cop out to fixing the true problem. Almost all problems can be solved with preventive “medicine”. Or more likely, just living a good life.
Don’t conservatives support the death penalty? You think it’s bad, yet you promte it? Please explain.
Further, if someone is going to kill your family, and you have a split second to react either with lethal force, or let them get to your family, you really believe killing is NOT good in the case of defending your family? Please explain.
Science is just knowledge, it has nothing to do with morality. religion is just fiction, it has nothing to do with morality unless you choose that it will.
If I kill the intruder I have done the minimum to preserve moral justice. I could shoot their hand/knee if I were good enough, thus imobalizing the dirrect cause and effect of the danger.
So who said religion isn’t good enough at explaining cause and effect. Lets see,… now you bring up all the times people have gone against God’s will, in the name of God. Yet science has the duity of understanding God, not throwing God away.
Yes science has a spacific way of understanding life. No religion isn’t void of this. Religion merely has the outlook of a different cause and effect. A different angle of attack. Yet, they are so intertwined that you cannot have one without the other. You merely limit your perception of reality to one you are comfortable with. And at the same time you ignore your lackings. I call this brainwashing by limiting perspective. Who says your perspective dirrectly reflects true cause and effect?
