a simple one for you all [or not maybe]…
Should morals and ethics be based on religion in a modern secular society.
Should any given ethic or moral be self evident and have its own basis? I.e. other than a religious one.
Can they be separated from religion?
the ethical, in the deepest sense, can be grounded in the individual, and there alone
as soon as morality is introduced, thus also a codified system, a dogma, one has surely gone astray
there is no such thing as collective virtue, yet genuine virtue is at the same time accountable with respect to the collective
this demands an understanding not only of oneself and the world, but of oneself and one’s place in it
and with that i offer my $.02
When morals are sanctified, when they are followed for their own sake, when they become impersonal, they become dangerous.
Life is dynamic. I was watching this show about oceans and fish on the discovery channel and one particular image struck me. It was a bunch of fish that swam together like in a tornado. This was their way of increasing their chances of survival, and I assume it works. This way of behaving, it may be said, is the moral way for them. They probably have an instinct for it, or moral sentiment as we would say if this was people we were talking about. But things change. Seals might, and probably will, develop a strategy that preys upon just such a behavior. If these fish’s morality, if you’ll permit me to say, is made impersonal-- that is to say, if the fish believe swimming in this fish-tornado is something that must be done for it’s own sake, so that one may be moral and have that be it’s own reward–then it will become impossible to become immoral and indeed to become what is necessary.
What I mean is that morality should be a tool. It should serve us. We shouldn’t serve it.
xzc - Great post - the idea that some primitive morality evolves in nature to ensure the survival of families, kin, herds or even species is well compatible with Darwinian evolution - see me contri here
I also strongly agree -with you that morality is a tool to serve our collective interests - first and fore most!
It never drew its impulse from religion - religion is a more recent add on - which may reinforce it - but is nothing more than human creativity added on to evolution…
I think that it was Schopenhauer who opined that humans are motivated by a mixture of ego, malice and compassion.
Those things, including compassion, are in us as eveolved social animals well before we go on to inventing religions, cultures, governments etc…
kp
hmm? And when applied affects the environment/people generally, hence law and societal ethics must be universal.
Dogma is not apparent when we look at things from a secular POV, we always find that lines are blurry and we simply have to set vague standards rather than specific/absolute ones.
If an individual act virtuously then why is not a collection of individuals acting the same, a virtuous collective?
perhaps the whole problem is the individualisation of morals? this is why you have different groups fighting each other ect etc
I would think that only when they become absolute, they become dangerous. This is so in any manner either secular or religious I would think?
I think your fish-tornado thing is indeed a good example of morals for the sake of them [religion based morality] rather than relative to contemporary reality. The fish swim in a tried and tested manner that one presumes worked at some point, only now the predators break them up and devour every last one!
So I agree we shouldn’t serve it - good point.
Absolutely, people develop morals, religion compartmentalises that, takes what it want, and ignores the rest. We then have a ethics status quo which refuses to change for anyone or anything. Unfortunately for religion we live in a transient world, things change people have to adapt etc.
I think that this thread from religion covers a similar topic and does it quite well. At one point in the thread, I was discussing the issue with Carleas and said:
That basically sums up my position on it: why reinvent the wheel when a) we already have a perfectly good wheel and b) history has shown a strong probability of the new wheel being significantly worse than the old one. Instead what we need to do is look at the wheels we have available and the cars we are driving and see whether or not they match. I do think that there are a lot of people driving two-door sedans tricked out with monster truck tires as well as people driving SUVs with donut tires. To say nothing of those who have an entirely mismatched set on their car!
And among those there will be a few who, driven by their inbalanced sets to test different things over and over again, will come up with new tables.
Because we don’t have that, neither deriving our morals from a bamboo tree or from god, does the trick. lets derive them from man and his reality.
It has also shown a continual changing of tyres. Secondly it tried to change one wonky wheel with another wonky wheel. well rounded ones are whats required.
They all are ultimately derived from humanity. The winnowing and sifting of time allows for that. Religion has survived because it works and is good enough at what it does, history has trimmed off the non-working parts and allowed for an accounting of a complete human nature because it has lived it. New concepts are, by their nature, without this polishing. That means that no matter how good they may be, these new concepts will have a wide variety of unintended consequences. Plus, in accounting for human nature I believe (and this is supposition to some degree on my part, though I think the narrative of capitalism and other similar inventions supports it) start to approach the forms of the old ideas. So it is a long, painful road that results in a concept that is more-or-less back where it started. It is that process which we are continually engaged in and always have been. That is the swapping of tires.
If by works you simply mean it hasn’t killed us yet, then I’m sure a heroin culture could be said to work if heroin rooted itself deeply within the fibers of a culture for centuries upon centuries.
I don’t think it does work, remember bush using the term ‘crusades’! it is clear that religion has a lot to do with current troubles in the world, people classify themselves by it, which has obvious dualistic consequences. Equally many people are secular and wont abide by religion, and we may ask why not include other religions e.g. add shariah law.
Haha good one, kinda like drink does, but I drink so forget that one eh. goes to fridge and cuddles his precious beers 
I think you both underestimate what traditional organized religion represents. It is an incredibly effective vector for the transmission of values. These are values which have persisted for generation after generation because they either work or are neutral with respect to how things work, hence the Kamehameha II example, where the old order was swept away without a peep of complaint except for the most ardent of traditionalists, a peep which was (importantly) ignored.
To say that “it hasn’t killed us yet” is really all that is required for it to pass the selective test. Lacking a crystal orb with which to see into the future, I can’t say with absolute certainty what will and won’t work in the future but I can tell you what does work in the present and what has worked (and what hasn’t worked) in the past. Remember Master Eisai’s famous maxim: I know nothing of Buddhas present, or future. But I know that cows exist." Cancer kills people, most assuredly, but that doesn’t mean that the balance between the potential for cancer and the ability for our cells to regenerate themselves hasn’t struck a fine balance, right? People still get sick and people still get arthritis (an auto-immune disease) but that doesn’t mean that our immune system hasn’t struct a workable balance between fighting off the causes of sickness and not doing so in so valiant a manner that the body destroys itself. That sickness and arthritis exist is proof that this system is imperfect, but so what?
What works better than religion? Hm? Some hypothetical system that hasn’t been vetted? We’ve vetted all manner of post-religious systems since the Enlightenment and they all have either embraced basic religious sensibilities or gone the way of the Dodo. Not merely extinct, but extinct by human hands!
We can talk about George Bush the Second but I’ve argued against the involvement of religion in the problems of the world today and I can do so again. Admittedly, that has oftentimes been disingenuous with the goal being that the easy targets for any given problem do not represent the totality of it. But I’m also not giving religion a carte blanche here. Take the fundamentalism of Bush II. We can argue over the specifics, but his brand of fundamentalism dates back to the 1920s. It has antecedents, sure, it didn’t spring from Zeus’ head. But what we mean when we say “religious fundamentalism” (when referring to Christians) dates back to the 1880s at the earliest. With Muslims, it is even more recent. We’re talking the '40s, and that is charitable with regards to their longevity!
And the hallmark of all these systems? That they have tried to co-opt their competitor by being more modern (even if that entails a rejection of the project of modernity in toto), but the important thing is that their genesis has been de novo.
Think on that. It is tricky.
Because many think of it as the harbourer of said values. If we separated morals from religion in schools etc, then religion would just be a rather sad sideshow.
It does so on a regular basis, many millions over time and still now. So when you say it works, we really mean it works a little and has not as yet completely destroyed us.
A system composed of existing values which can be verified philosophically and in their own right. Most ethics are developed societally [in their origins] and sometimes against the grain of the religion…
You see religion groups morals into a set, you then have different sets according to denomination and religion. Without religion you have the same morals but without the sets.
Equally, religion adds the morals to its complete works, so it makes it seam like if you believe people shouldn’t go around killing and raping, then you believe in the religion.
It also says that god or some given deity says this and that is right, when it cannot back that up. Worse we are not supposed to question it!!!
In terms maybe, but the idea goes back a long, long way into pre-history.
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If we separated oxygen from water, we’ve got hydrogen. So what? Is that a meaningful statement?
[quote[It does so on a regular basis, many millions over time and still now. So when you say it works, we really mean it works a little and has not as yet completely destroyed us.[/quote]
Unsupported.
Rationality over empiricism? Really? So causality doesn’t exist? Is that the road you want to go down? Hume demonstrated why that was a terrible idea!
Addressed previously.
Not at all, I believe in humanity. And humanity argues quite convincingly that we oughtn’t do that.
How is that relevant? In the desert, pork and shellfish and fantastic vectors for nasty diseases. We can go into etiology and salmonella and all that . . . but how many people really care about that? Why not just say “God says no” and be done with it?
Unsupported assertion.
I find it hard to believe that religion plays any significant role in the transmission of values. Maybe I just don’t want to believe it. Thinking…
No one really follows religion when religious commands conflict with moral taste. That’s got to say something. To me it says that religion plays little or no direct role in the formation of moral sentiments, and that that it’s people that transmit values. I guess religion helps people towards this goal, but it’s not irreplaceable nor indispensable, although it is a powerful rhetorical device. People can convince youngsters that killing and all sorts of other things are bad without having to appeal to metaphysical entities, and some have. All religion does, come to think of it, is allow people the ability to say “…or else” when they transmit values to the younger generation, and that’s petty enough for me to feel comfortable right now.
But this is a ‘should be’ thread, and I reject the notion of original sin. I don’t think people would go ape shit and civilization collapse without the religious “…or else.”
Xunzian, your posts are certainly something worth considering. But I’d still like to echo xzc thoughts here, people do seem to generally go by their sentiments more than they rely on metaphysical or tanscendental notions. Maybe you are going to say they are cultivated by religious upbringing?
And…
… I wonder what you think about Western Europe then. Christian tradition has been on a steep decline, especially the younger generations barely know the basics about christianity. I think it’s fair to say that Western Europe is largely secular, and I don’t think you can say we embraced “basic religious sensibilities”. It depends on what you mean by that frase of course. But Islam being on the rise and the growing conflict with “European culture”, does suggest we have at least embraced different basic religious sensibilities.
Lets playa a game;
Can you put forwards a single valid moral derived from religion and not man? [society, individuals]. …and one that we employ.
Name a moral that we go by, that isn’t held by secular society too.
See above. its more like breathing gets rid of carbon dioxide in the body, so we would be ridding society of a poison.
I don’t understand, the cause of our morals is mostly a reaction to events. People get killed or raped, or stolen from, and we don’t like it, so we have guidelines concerning such things. This is how morals and laws come into being.
No it wasn’t.
Then religion takes that into its fold and then preaches it as part of said religion. More often than not it is unspecific in doing that and adds all kinds of nonsense e.g. original sin.
Because we should question and re-evaluate our morals, and without the fear of gods reprisals!
So the crusades are not religious fundamentalism? or is it just the labelling that wrong here.
Rule; ‘illusions always collapse in the face of reality’ [quetz].
What about religion is not an illusion!
It’s effects?
Diekon and XZC,
From Mencius to Hume, sentimentalists have argued for the importance of a moral education. Different metaphors abound, I use the relationship between the acorn and the oak. The acorn needs some help becoming the oak, eh? That doesn’t detract from the fact that the acorn’s purpose is to become the oak, even if not all acorns do.
Europe’s transition to secularism makes good sense. Indeed, it is precisely what I would expect. If you think of society as an engine (and progress being its goal – a romantic vision, I’ll admit but one I adhere to) religion is the well, let’s stop for a moment. Normally, I say that religion is the stator for that engine. But it isn’t religion, it is tradition. Religion is the harmonic balancer of that engine. When it works, it disperses the destructive energies of the engine and thereby ensures its longevity. When it doesn’t, well, it causes the engine to destroy itself even faster than were it absent.
Snake-god!
As an atheist, I cry “false distinction”. As a committed atheist, there is no distinction for me between “God says!” and “I, a man, says!” Except, of course, when these things have been handed down from generation to generation. But, again, “man says” and “god says” are irrelevant in that case!
Religion and secular society agree on these issues. I just think religion works better at indoctrinating the next (and the next and the next) generation.
Beyond that, I’m not seeing much of an argument.
But, no, the Crusades had many factors which involved them. The tensions between the remains of old Rome, as well as the visions of post-Rome found within Christendom and the Muslim world were critical. The religious aspect . . . ehhhh, not so much. If religious lines explained the conflict, then the disaster that is the Fourth Crusade wouldn’t have happened. But if religion is incidental, well, that sort of thing is pretty expected. So which model of history do you endorse?