It’s downward, but the return to the source occurs form the other direction.
Freedom = independence.
Life = dependence.
Freedom = degree of independence determined by power.
Confidence is its psychology. Options produce indifference for the particular. Reduced dependence on it.
I won’t argue that my own understanding of what they construed to be or not to be “the basis for morality” is more or less reasonable than my own. But Dostoevsky still managed in his own way to take a leap of faith to God while Nietzsche, in rejecting religion, attempted instead to sneak in his own Humanistic facsimile: the Übermensch.
Maybe no objective morality, maybe no immortality…but still masters and slaves.
Okay, pick one. Then, given your own moral convictions relating to a particular context, flesh that out for us. One thing for sure: don’t expect other primates to elaborate much beyond a very, very pale imitation of homo sapiens.
If you don’t think we need a context here, we are, once again, in two different discussions.
Or perhaps it’s both ways. Who knows? If according to your equations freedom equals independence, and life equals dependence, then does death equal freedom?
Death is the end of awareness. The dead have no will, no intent.
In my metaphysics non-living energies, even when unified into complex forms, follow the path-of-least-resistance and have no will, no intent.
Freedom only applies to life - energies unified and attaining intentionality, i.e., will. Only life can follow paths-of-more-resistance. The level of resistance indicating their strength, i.e., power.
Freedom is a comparison of wills. Power indicates how much resistance the will can overcome, and, therefore, how many options it can access, and therefore how indifferent it can become in relation to any one option.
Will = focus of an organism’s - organization of energies - aggregate energies towards an object/objective.
Subject moving towards an object/objective.
As such…
God is man’s idealization of himself.
Pagan gods represented natural forces, given human personalities, representing the synthesis of man with his environment.
The one-god of Abraham abstracted the concept of god out of existence - placed it in a noetic plane outside space/time, i.e., outside existence.
So it is a concept of the non-existent.
This is why it is given supernatural or absolute characteristics that do not exist and cannot exist, because if they did they would negate existence. Nullify it.
So…
Will to Life, becomes man’s will to be immortal.
Will to Power, a human need to become omnipotent.
God of the nil.
Positive nihilism is a literal self-contradiction. It is a mind fabricating a concept that contradicts - negates - its body - the physical, the tangible, empirical, verifiable, falsifiable…Mind/Body dissonance. Schizophrenia.
Most nihilistic variants - spiritual or secular - are guided by an ideal that is unattainable and if it were unattained would end existence.
To put it another way…it projects an objective that does not exist anywhere but in the minds of those that hold it to be true. A concept that must remain as obscure as it is non-existent, existing only semiotically, as words/symbols.
All concepts can be converted to this kind of obscure abstraction.
Like “value”…as someone here already did.
Like “love”, as Christianity does.
Like “morality”…like “male/female”.
Concepts are detached from their tangible, physical referents and placed in the beyond, as iamretarded would say “on skyhooks”.
But they want them there.
All nihilists want the words, referring to their preferred concepts to be as abstract, as vague, as intangible, as idealistic, as esoteric, as obscure as possible.
Then they can manipulate the concept without any limitations other than their psychological effectiveness . They are opportunists. They don’t care about integrity, only effectiveness.
They are not interested in philosophy, only politics - art of manipulating the masses.
If the concept can be used to exploit, manipulate, seduce, coerce, bribe others and bind them to their own will then it is a “good definition”.
Here…humanity = world and world = humanity.
Okay. If the structure of moral behavior is hardwired into us by a natural process, (e.g. natural selection), morality is not objective in the sense of being"out there" in the environment somewhere. But it may be discoverable in our own being. And, surprise surprise, it is! In our conscience which speaks to us inwardly and involuntarily even when we don’t want to listen. and there are our reveries and our dreams, which tell us about aspects of ourself that we don’t want to see. And there is the whole world of mythology, the narratives that told humanity about itself before some of us became too sophisticated to listen.
So no the chimpanzees are not likely to enter directly into this discussion. But we would do well to look at chimpanzee politics if we want to understand our own. Status for chimps like status for people depends on more than ambition and raw strength. Often chimps need strategic savvy as well to reach dominance and hang on to it. And for that they need to know how to act cooperatively with others to get what they want. They have to know how to connect the here and now conditions of their present social situation with the there and then of their desired position of dominance in the social hierarchy.
So politics is related to morality and religion even among our primate relatives. Religion in this case being the would-be alpha chimp’s fantasy of being at the top of his social system enjoying the privileges of food, sex and comfort and social support that position brings.
THE STONE at the NYT
Morals Without God?
BY FRANS DE WAAL
Sure, there is no doubt that there are biological imperatives embedded in whatever you wish to conclude that morality is. Social instincts beget the need for rules of behavior in order to facilitate the least dysfunctional human interactions. And these rules are going to be enforced in any particular community based on traditions, customs, folkway, mores and laws that reward one set of behaviors and punish others. And there are certain behaviors that tend to be punished in virtually all cultures down through the ages: killing and stealing and raping and robbing others.
But “for all practical purposes” this can mean many different things depending on when you were born historically and what communities you were raised in culturally.
Here of course it falls somewhere between a wild ass guess and a more or less educated guess. And isn’t that where the “popularizers” often are? They use science…but they might need to “dumb it down” for those who would be unable to follow the actual science.
And, once you throw God and religion into the mix, it only becomes all that much more problematic. Let alone it comes to revolve around “I” in the is/ought world.
Instead, from my frame of mind, the “thin veneer” emanates more from those philosophers who become “ethicists”. They can go off the deep end with complex “theoretical” conjectures about morality up in the intellectual clouds.
Then I come along – here for example – and muddy the waters all the more by insisting that we need an “actual context” in which to examine those intellectual assumptions.
Another “general description intellectual assessment”. Though, again, if I do say so myself.
And all I can do over and over again is to ask you to note how, given a particular context, this is applicable to your own life when connecting the dots between morality here and now and immortality there and then. What unfolds “in your head” in “real time” to motivate you to choose this behavior rather than that?
Okay, but another way to look at it is…memetically. And our species has a whole fucking boatload of them. While with chimps the memetic surface is barely scratched. Again, this is the part that those like Satyr play down. The more we can make it all about biological imperatives the more “social, political and economic constructs” are to be understood only insofar as they reflect Satyr’s own assumptions about genes > memes “natural behaviors”. In regard to, for example, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality…and on and on and on.
Yes, but chimps don’t have philosophers and political scientists and ethicists to justify or to rationalize this behavior. It really is far more natural behavior…driven more by the id than by the ego or super-ego.
Then, in nature, this part: 4elephants.org/blog/article … %20bonobos.
[b]"Bonobos
Two of the closest animal relatives to humans are the chimps and bonobos. Not only do these two primates contrast in appearance, but also in leadership styles. Males lead the chimps while the bonobos are female-led.
The bonobos are led by females who keep the peace between the male and female bonobos. These females usually team up together when they have to confront a male bonobo."[/b]
On and on I go…and the more I go one way I turn back and realize I could have gone the other way…not really, but let’s repetend this is so.
The more I pretend there is no way to explain human behaviour by studying other species, the more I am exposed as a moron.
Like https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=170060&p=2845980#p2845980
I return and turn…and twirl…like a zombified ballerina.
Negating, denouncing, rejecting, nullifying…and offering no-thing…NOTHING, to replace what I’ve undermined, critiqued,…because philosophy is about Mary’s abortion issue…and not about the human condition; because philosophy is about destroying and creating craters of voids, so as to promote the uncertainty of fragmentation that will make my postmodern utopia possible…in my imaginary world where there is no us/them, no war, no conflicts.
A world of peace…like death. A peaceful death.
A Paradise after death.
Geez man and I thought we were about to wrap this up. 
Again:
Or was your question directed at Mr. Fun? This festive holiday season will soon be over. And he promises us never to return again. Unless of course making a fool out of himself is just too much fun to give up.
As Yoda would say “so earnest you are!”
Just what ILP needs now…another Mr. Fun. 
Note to felix, Bob, Ierrellus, phyllo and all the other God World members here:
What have you got to say to that?
Might I suggest an intelligent and civil exchange between you and Mr. Fun to explore it?
But please create it in a new thread. This thread still exists primarily for those who are on a religious and spiritual path to connect the dots [existentially] between morality on this side of the grave and the fate of “I” on the other side of it.
Religion and Morality
Ryan McKay email the author, Harvey Whitehouse
at APA PsychNet
Of course my own preference here is not to focus in on the answers someone might give, but on how they came to arrive at the answers themselves. The extent to which their own personal opinions are more the embodiment of dasein than in answers that actually can be pinned down as more or less rational…more or less “correct”.
Debates about God and religion and morality in scientific journals? Conceptual confusions and limitations? Decompos[ing] “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded elements…?
I’d certainly be interested in links to those. Given that most scientists tend to steer clear of the is/ought world altogether. Let alone focusing in on ultimate explanations.
On the other hand, I’m all about the “complex interplay between cognition and culture.” Cognition and cultures rooted in historical variables that in many crucial respects could not possibly be more at odds when it comes down to sustaining “rules of behavior”.
Hmm, let me think…
What’s missing here? Of course: contexts!
Let’s see if they are to follow.
Thanks for posting that article. It’s interesting from my point of view. I’ll follow this thread to see if they do supply a concrete experiential context as you hope.
"The Origin of the Species"functionally replaced “Genesis” in our intellectual culture. Secular society generally believes in the lower causing the higher instead of the higher causing the lower as it did according to the perennial philosophy. So for us moderns information produces knowledge and wisdom does not exist. Matters of ought and value have no objective reality.
Traditionally wisdom is more ontologically primary than knowledge which in turn is more ontologically primary than information. What we call knowledge, Plato called opinion. It’s the basis of our technoscience. Who among us is not under its spell? After all, I’m sending this message on my phone.
But, by ceding centered intelligibility to technoscience, humanity has brought itself to the worldwide crisis of the present moment. The Faustian bargain was made before we were born. It’s part of the facticity of our collective Dasein. Will it save us? I think we need to rediscover wisdom for that to happen.
Hellenic asceticism…unlike Abrahamic or Buddhist asceticism - nihilistic asceticism.
Hellenic asceticism self–denial is a means to an end…in nihilism it is the end.
It can only contradict its own principles - self-decieve, lie - to survive in a world it denounces and denies.
See how Christianity makes-up a rule against suicide, which follows from tis own “logic”.
See how the Buddhist monk must rely on the generosity of his fellow man if he is to survive his self-denial.
Only here once again all I can do is to ponder “what on earth” you mean by this. Why? Because it is not intertwined in a context that would enable you to describe more clearly what you mean by the lower causing the higher and the higher causing the lower. Lower and higher in regard to what?
And how is your understanding of that intertwined in turn to the manner in which you connect the dots existentially between morality here and now and immortality there and then. The reason that I had begun this thread in the first place.
Same with distinguishing knowledge and information from wisdom. Given what situation in which one person makes this distinction such that it comes into conflict with how another person does.
And matters of ought and value are still embedded in contexts in which there are facts that all sides can agree on. And my point is that objective reality may well exist here. But that this would be rooted in the actual existence of a God, the God, my God. Or a secular facsimile.
And then from my frame of mind you really soar up into the clouds…
This [to me] is in the general vicinity of MenoSpeak.
Note more specifically what you mean by “our collective Dasein”. In the sense that Heidegger construed it? And save us…how? Note contexts here where this might unfold.
Then, to the extent that you believe we can “rediscover wisdom”, how might that be understood given the manner in which you connect the dots between morality and immortality?
See how none of this actually pertains to a set of circumstances where the intellectual contraption Hellenic ascetic and the intellectual contraption Abrahamic and Buddhist ascetics and the intellectual contraption nihilist actually discuss what they mean by means and ends given a particular context most here will be familiar with.
How about in regard to suicide and subsistence?