Forums → WEPR → Does it really matter....

Morality is societal and always has been. If religion is a part of society then yes, it plays a part.

I can at least agree that at our beginning as thinking, conscious creatures, we probably had a group morality innate to us, in the sense that the small bands/families of humans had to treat each member fairly and reasonably to stay alive and survive outside threats. But what happened when our population allowed for groups to interact who were wholly unfamiliar to each other? I would suggest that just because they were both human doesn't necessarily mean they lived peaceably together; it might have taken something like a religious or spiritual communal conscience, something that could be shared by multiple, non-related groups, in order to maintain peace and coexistence. Of course, I don't know, but it doesn't seem unrealistic to me.

And of course, I don't want to suggest that morality is solely religious in origin; rather that religion was what created an authority of morality. Yes, a tribal or family leader could ostracize one member of its community for immoral actions, but to enact that same authority in a larger community, with multiple different groups, would require a shared moral authority, like deifying the communal leader, maybe? Smacks of early religion...

Trying to determine the origins or religion is a slippery slope. Religion fills certain needs both in individuals and perhaps in societies, but to retrospectively apply this sort of reasoning to very early societies doesn't work.
I think that to say that religion served as a tool for understanding the world, or to give authority to moral principles makes sense, but in reality we have no idea why religion formed and what purpose it initially served.
So in trying to assess what life would be like today if religion had never been developed is, I think, quite impossible. I think we have a pretty good handle on religion's role in society today, however - even if it is somewhat obscure or difficult to define.

You're right, there's no way to know how it started, so I only have hypotheses, suggestions, musings, etc.

But it does give value to my earlier post that, the question of how we would react to finding proof about God/no god if there NEVER was religion is too difficult to answer given how intertwined religion and history are. I do believe you validated that above, thank you

YES! At least if you believe, because otherwise you'd devote your life to nothing.

Tell me why, then, before religion, as "Rational Beings" Rape, Murder, and Assault were some of the commonest things to do. In some places people buried their daughters live, others people followed traditionally to get hammered.

We find ourselves Rational because lives that have been set before us by religion have made us so. It cannot be that a simple being [as complex as we are] can grow up with a strong sense of rationality and judgement. Therefor, we are utterly at a loss.

Anyway, I'm tired of where this thread is going so I'm adressing Asherlees post on page six.

I am brining this back because this is nowhere near finished.

Religion has nothing to do with how I became 'rational' as you say. And, as said before, even without religion to set up morals and such people would still be fine. How do you think people came up with the idea to put ideal behaviours in holy texts? It is not as if before people wrote them down and added religious ideals that the world was in utter chaos.

This is a very excellent, and interesting philosophy.

I can't really put what I think into words that will make sense. So I'm just going to leave it at that.

Hah, well atleast try.

Judst imagine if the opposite of what you think to be true was porven to be correct. How would that affect you?

And should it really matter whether or not a god exists when it comes to mankind as a whole?

Judst imagine if the opposite of what you think to be true was porven to be correct. How would that affect you?

To lend a hand, I think this would affect people depending on the method by which they form and adhere to their beliefs.

For example, I can say that if something I believed in were &quotroven wrong", the condition for this would be mounting evidence contradicting my position. As I hold little stake in my beliefs other than to pursue that which is the most accurate reflection of what I perceive, on this level I am not affected at all.

In short, because I live by the constant process of examining belief as opposed to reinforcing dogma, I am open to dialogues with respect to different systems of belief.

Yay, 2^9 posts! <--geek

Anyway, I saw Asherlee's post, so I would also like to (not-so-)briefly go back to it-

Many philosophers have put forth arguments that show that morality is not contingent on religion. Most humans (those that aren't sociopaths or antisocial) are born with a good set of moral beliefs that can be separated from religion. We are rational beings, thus we can distinguish right from wrong.

Insofar as moral arguments are concerned, I do think there's a fundamental flaw in things like Hume's claim that there is some inherent intuition in humans which informs them as to what is right. To me it amounts to a fallacious appeal to naturalism because it puts the cart before the horse i.e. we are trying to define our functioning based on the need to define a moral system, when it should be the other way around. Simply put, we are before we act and are informed by those acts.

But obviously what is described by the term morality, loosely speaking, is a real part of our functioning, so while it is true that the way morality is discussed and manifests is cultural, I'm guessing that it ought to be viewed as more universal than that. This, as I understand it, is part of the basis of discussing morality in a religious context.

But in my view, it is possible to put everything together- in my consideration, both this moral drive but also variation in the predispositions in our behaviors. It won't mesh together perfectly, but if you view 'morality' as a tool contingent to our social functioning, you'll find that it doesn't need to be!

From this, not only will you be able to find how different people have different judgements based on their unique functioning (for all people, not just sociopaths), but also where morality has become the cultural feature it is so often cited, such that it affects our behaviors.

So, I'm not about to contend with philosophers and their proteges, but I must ask:

How do we know which came first, our humanity or our morality?

Small primate groups operate with some form of socially functioning hierarchy, like many members of the animal kingdom; could the transition to humans have included the development of better knowing right from wrong, before human evolution was complete? Or was that one of the defining attributes of the first genetically human antecedents?

Yeah, this is mostly an attempt to see if I understand what you are writing by asking another question... feel free to toss out a WTF.

There is no god seeing is beliveing i dont see so i dont belive! other religions do see their god though.

How do we know which came first, our humanity or our morality?

I read the passage twice before I realised you may have sneaked another presumption in the below passage: that morality is confined to the domain of human consideration. At the same time, it doesn't appear to be consistently treated in the following sentence: "Small primate groups operate with some form of socially functioning hierarchy..."

I would examine this closely, particularly exactly what you mean by 'morality', because then it might make more sense to understand how life, in a taxonomical sense, precedes (my definition of) morality.

I'll expand: it makes sense to me in that one cannot have morality without life, and that life has a broader definition that entirely contains morality...assuming that the concept of taxonomy and evolution is at least in a broad sense valid, I could say that insofar as there is berth for social interaction there is a berth for the notion of morality- but we consider things that don't necessarily have this to be living (e.g. bacteria, fungi etc.) That said, that we recognise fundamental similarities between the social structures of other animal species and our own through our observation of their behaviors, and also our own interactions, which would imply that we could quite possibly apply the term moral beings to them as well.

As said above, this leaves me more versatile and more able to make sense of things I observe with greater precision.

Speaking of which, my definition of morality is the judgement that is formed by and informs behaviors. I should have said that earlier, my bad.

OK, that's helpful.

I was thinking that "society" and "social interactions" were two very vague terms that could be applied not only to our own rather sophisticated version, but also to many of those of our mammalian counterparts. So to tie morality and society together made me wonder if that connection may have been made before our arrival onto the scene. But it would seem that your definition presumes some sort of processing of events that I am guessing would not be expected to be available to other animal minds (judgement/executive thought)?

In other words, if the broader idea of morality were to be used, it could be applied to most "societies", but that is not the manner in which morality is being employed in your discussion. Rather, the morality to which you refer is not confined to our organic capabilities, but also to thousands of years of cultural tweaking, blending, arguing, reconciling, etc.

I think.