I've asked this question in Random Thoughts.. but since there are few posters here who also post in RT i'm posting it again. I'd like to get the stoners lounge opinion on morality.. if they think there is morality.. what it is.. why we have it... etc etc You can use the poll and/or a post to express your opinion.
For the record, i don't think that 'right' and 'wrong' exist as anything but terms used by individuals to voice their individual opinion. To be straight forward... nothing is 'always' right or wrong. There is no God to dictate what wrong and right are, therefore we have no basis to create laws by which we should ALWAYS abide by. For example, murder is not wrong.. there is no universal decleration from a higher being.. to say so.. if one.. or any amount of people say it is objectively wrong.. then this does not mean their opinion is correct. Murder is not a usefull thing to have occuring in our society.. because we like to socialise.. we like to help each other.. and exchange goods. However.. murder can be useful when it comes to war.. etc. Also, even if someone where to somehow argue that we do have objective morality.. then what is the insentive to abide by it? If we enjoy to be adulterous and it is morally wrong.. then whats going to happen if we are? Nothing.. Religious morality works because religious people have a God to fear if they are immoral.
I disagree completely, there is morality, you're just taking the easy approach about denying the ones that are imposed. Any invidual who tries to find the essence of morality through reasonning is bound to find a form of morality. If you really had no morality, not even "society" would be holding you from murdering your neighbor, or doing anything that is "morally wrong", not even the voice of God which you seem to reject with firm beliefs. Problem with those kind of atheist affirmations is that you have the possibility for anything, but you're still not doing everything, are you? Sit down confortably in your chair at school, and start thinking about possibilities; throw you pencil at the teacher, get up and start running everywhere, scream at the top of your lungs... etc, etc... Wether you believe in God, or consider that God doesn't exist, you're still in the same fucking situation, you can't do all of these things at once. We live in a certain order, a hasardous order where existence itself made it impossible to realize every projection our imagination suddenly falls upon. Animals with no rationality don't do everything, and to completely tear down your opinion on murder, we can take away all signs of "social contracts" and put ourselves in a human body with no culture, no society. Now try and go kill the human 5 meters away from you with your bare hands or with your teeth. Even when you put social contract asides, murder is not meant to be, not only is it not, it's wrong, it's a projection, a possibility just like ripping my skin off is a possibility that I won't do because I am in constant connection with the reasons I've been created, wether it's God or global consciousness, or the laws of the big bang we don't give a damn. But something we cannot neglect is the fact that we aren't here, completely immoral, without any sense of right or wrong. If that were to be true, we wouldn't be here, because nothing would've had the intention to make us "be here".
Firstly, are you religious? Because from a religious perspective.. i can see why morality may be aplicable.. and the debate i would have to go into would first be 'whether or not there is a god' rather than 'is there morality'. Secondly, i may have given the wrong impression... i do believe in morality as an entirely subjective thing.. meaning that it holds no universal stance.. and is simply a word to describe what you or i favour doing over something else. They will never be able to find an external form of morality.. or in other words, a morality that should or must be followed. All individual feelings are different. Some murder for fun, some for their country, some for ritual, some don't murder.. it is pointless to argue that we somehow have a linked morality and all know 'right' from 'wrong'. Alot of people do not commit crimes because they believe there is morality.. and for some reason.. whether they think they 'know deep down that something is wrong' or they are religious etc.. they do not commit crime. The reason i don't go around killing people etc is not because i believe in morality.. but because i have emotion.. emotion and morality are different things.. i do not see anything OBJECTIVELY wrong with murdering my neighbour.. but it would SUBJETIVELY make me feel sad.. guilty.. sick etc etc.. we can live by emotion.. but emotion is subjective... unlike objective morals. So to a soldier, sent to kill my neighbour.. with no emotional attatchment to them.. it is not deemed 'wrong' but rather.. something the soldier wants to do. I'm not a computer.. not having morals doesn't mean that i will randomly assign myself to commit random acts. I do things according to what i feel like doing.. or what i think will benefit me in the future.. meaning what will make me happy.. like i said before.. what makes you think all the things you know to be negative will occurr if morality is non-existent? animals will do what ever makes them satisfied.. and that usually means to eat, reproduce and sleep. If i was put somewhere with no social contracts.. or culture or society.. but still with my knwoledge and emotion up to this point.. then i would probably not be able to kill someone.. because it woudlnt be nice for me.. i'm conditioned to feel bad about killing.. HOWEVER......if you put a brainwashed-from-birth, cold blooded soldier in that situation.. and told him to kill, he would do it. Morality does not stop us killing, emotion does. Emotion is not objective.
Also, like you did, it is common for people who hold the 'moral' stance to argue that animals and people don't go around killing and theifing etc.. and therefore they must share an in-built moral feeling. BUT considere this: It just so happens that 'morality' and 'what makes people feel good' are both very similiar things. Therefore we all do the same kind of things.. because we all have emotions.. rather than that we all have morality. Just as with the morals within the bible.. they mysteriously have a tendency to favour the rich, and male population... who also hapened to be the people in power... who also hapened to be the people who could have created a fake religious book with which they could control the masses...
Nope, I am not religious, I am a Deist and I don't believe in any religious forms of God. Although I do think that the interpretations of all of those religions and philosophies come from the same global idea of reaching this state of mind where you are no longer only physical, but able to witness existence without our biased and limited physical body and mind. Prayers, meditation, mantras, chakras, LSD, DMT, all have that same point in common, to reach this everything-ness state. And philosophy and rationality enables us to logically prove the existence of God, wether by Aristotle's Primus Motor or Descarte's perspective of God, we have reason, and through reasonning we can obtain what has given us this reasonning. Not through believing, but through thinking. Anywho, this is a classic case of atheism vs. deism and this conversation can as well never end =p But at this point I can only finish by saying that from my perception of things, morality is what we all have in common that keeps us from doing and not doing things, and that it is emotions, on the contrary, that differ from an individual to another. This morality, if I might put it this way, is one of those "laws" (yes, I know, you'll hate the word ) that make us what we are instead of anything else and that is in common in everyone's subjectivity and subconsciousness.
Yea but you see, that's the problem with atheists, I two spit on the Bible and on Emperor Constantine who decided to make Christianism the empire's "official religion" in 395AC. But Christianism, at FIRST, was a bunch of poor people getting killed by the Roman power... mostly females and children enjoying the words of Jesus simply saying that we are all equal, with the same backgrounds and same values and liberties. This goes for most major religions, having mostly the same background ideals, about equality and liberty and connecting the human with different states of existence, with different planes of realities, with the one being the highest where you are in presence with Everything. All of those things were interprated and we then built the image of God when churches were beginning to take place, where people started to mix religion with power so that they can benefit, and so on. Atheists should spit on religion, for the fact that religion is the result of political power and bad intentions. But the essence of religion, which I no longer even consider "religion", is what needs to be though of.
of course there are no objective morals, and if there are, they're as unknowable as the god that may exist who may have put them in place. I suppose I have my own personal moral code, but I don't believe in a value system that exists beyond the short-sighted ego. if I don't go around killing people it's for my own self-interest, as it could result in my own death or incarceration, etc.
I agree with alot of what you say here. I'm not an athiest, i'm agnostic. I believe there may be, and possibly even is a non-physical realm of sorts.. but i don't believe that there is a supreme individual who could lay out morality.. as law. Even if there is objective morality, whether it be some kind of non-physical social consciousness.. or created by a God, i don't see how those morals could ever be relayed to us physical beings until we die. You might say that a couple of acid tabs can help you to leave the physical world and understand these morals.. but the interpretation of drug trips.. or meditations are far to vague and ambigious for us to understand and adopt as a philosophy while we are still on earth... especially when we speak english.. and not vibes (if that makes any sense).
I believe that Morality does exsist and is a supreme order from God but this digresses from the question, the question is: whether or not morality exsists, I believe that humans as a whole have the right to determine their own standards of morality but those who are God fearing realize that morales were given to us to keep in check with our own behavior for example: when stealing you feel that it is wrong, if you did not truley feel that it is wrong then you are able to say that by no standard do I believe in morality. In truth you find that most people abide by some law or rule set in place originally by moral. I believe that without some sense of morality society as a whole would cease to exsist.
I don't believe in morals. I just do what I wanna do.. not because it's "right".. and stuff I don't do.. I just don't do it because I don't wanna.. pretty much.. I don't believe in heaven or hell.
I do believe in "karma" or whatever that is.. that the universe seems to have some sort of balance and that if you do shit.. in your life.. you'll get a lot of shit in return.. and vice-versa. I don't believe in luck - but that's a different topic - and if shit happens.. I suppose it's to sorta balance things out.. or.. I mean who knows.. I guess this theory I have can be sorta seen? I mean.. I don't believe in anything in particular but tend to wanna believe in some stuff more than other stuff.. according to what I can notice happening around me. I guess that's existentialism. I don't know. Don't care, really. But I'm way off-topic.
morality is fluid. what was moral 100 years ago, or even 50 years ago, is immoral today, and opening the floodgates of enlightenment places more restrictions on our behavior and beliefs. morality is a foolish concept, no, i take that back, societal morality is a foolish concept. everyone has their own idea of what they should believe, and societal morality just takes away our freedoms.
