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For theist
For theists, it's very simple. God. He both set the rules laws and gave us concience to navigate the world in peace. But gave us free-will to choose if we want to keep in accordance with what He set, as a test of faith.
Some fundamentalist believer cosiders the belief in God as a prerequisite to even undertand morality at all.
To be totally honest, it is a flawed and lazy explanation, designed to discourage inquisitiveness of children from arguing the "wrongness" of some of the interpreted prescription of the religion; while also using the same explanation for adults. "because God said so..","because you cant understand yet, only God knows.." and many more explanation that leaves a void in heart of the reciever, regardless of obedience to it, until the inquisitiveness is fully hampered.
For Atheist
For some athiests, moral values are innate. They are imbedded in the DNA, or maybe in the mind, the human psyche. People will automatically know differentiate what is right from what is wrong. The idea is, once the person is born, they will automatically know it. Approximately, what we regard now as right and wrong - it will emerge naturally.
This claim is really irrational. If you consider the case of feral children: children who a raised in the wild with no human contact, you can say it is not true.
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This rare occurances can be considered a proof that without other human, a person will not learn any social concept, including any concept of morality.
So, Where Does Morality come from?
As explained about feral children, morality does not just appear out of thin air. It is learned from whichever social group an individual is born from. It is absurd to think that morality is innate, since it is more accurate to describe it as "a priori"- latin for "from the one before".
What separates human from animals is the ability to communicate experiences of the past through stories so that the learners dont have to repeat the same mistakes. This capability is enhanced when humans learned to write, because they can communicate experiences to people of the future.
Since humans are actually social beings, we can imagine a whole society as one organism. This society adapts different morals over time. And depending on what set of morals it has, they will either rise or fall. If viewed in a wider angle, societies really survive in accordance with natural selection. Societies with morals that don't work are subdued by the societies that has moralities that do, or maybe just collapse on its own weight.
If we put it that way, it makes sense to say that the "a priori" knowledge that humans have as successful societies may actually be what is being referred as "God". The ideal balance of morals that will create a strong society, in the past, the present and into the future. The representation of the "perfect morality". The "alpha and omega", the "beginning and the end" not in a creation context, but in context of society building. Note that I used the word "balance" because as important as it is to adapt to current conditions, there is still a huge importance to stick to what works in the past.
Conservative Evolution
When we say that religions "evolve" over time, atheist typically would find that hard to believe. Because it is true, religions resists change. But even individual organisms' evolutions resists change too. Considering the amount of evolution a human has already went through, from the time it splits from other primates, we still have feautures that do not make sense. We have toes that are not useful, we have an appendix, tonsils, male nipples, etc, which are all human feautures we can do without, since they have no apparent purpose.
Religions are very similar. It has feautures that do not make sense in the present conditions because it does not evolve right away. They "conserve" things that worked in the past, and has a hard time letting go of it even if it is not useful anymore, hence the term "conservative". There is an amount of caution in it. "Maybe we just don't understand its' purpose."
Change is natural, but also naturally slow. Our lifetimes are just too short to even conceptualize that. Even the most atheist adopt most of their moralities from a preexisting religion, but only claims to not be a part of it just because of the miniscule details they disagree with. And this miniscule details are also what seperates religions from one another. In totality, they are really very similar.. and what we are really all debating about is:
"what little thing do we have to change in our morality in this tiny moment we have, to be the society that moves forward into the future? Do we have to change anything at all?"
And it will be unwise to answer that question without looking at the past, as it is unwise to stagnate our morality into obsolescence.
thank you for reading.
For theists, it's very simple. God. He both set the rules laws and gave us concience to navigate the world in peace. But gave us free-will to choose if we want to keep in accordance with what He set, as a test of faith.
Some fundamentalist believer cosiders the belief in God as a prerequisite to even undertand morality at all.
To be totally honest, it is a flawed and lazy explanation, designed to discourage inquisitiveness of children from arguing the "wrongness" of some of the interpreted prescription of the religion; while also using the same explanation for adults. "because God said so..","because you cant understand yet, only God knows.." and many more explanation that leaves a void in heart of the reciever, regardless of obedience to it, until the inquisitiveness is fully hampered.
For Atheist
For some athiests, moral values are innate. They are imbedded in the DNA, or maybe in the mind, the human psyche. People will automatically know differentiate what is right from what is wrong. The idea is, once the person is born, they will automatically know it. Approximately, what we regard now as right and wrong - it will emerge naturally.
This claim is really irrational. If you consider the case of feral children: children who a raised in the wild with no human contact, you can say it is not true.
You do not have permission to view the full content of this post. Log in or register now.
This rare occurances can be considered a proof that without other human, a person will not learn any social concept, including any concept of morality.
So, Where Does Morality come from?
As explained about feral children, morality does not just appear out of thin air. It is learned from whichever social group an individual is born from. It is absurd to think that morality is innate, since it is more accurate to describe it as "a priori"- latin for "from the one before".
What separates human from animals is the ability to communicate experiences of the past through stories so that the learners dont have to repeat the same mistakes. This capability is enhanced when humans learned to write, because they can communicate experiences to people of the future.
Since humans are actually social beings, we can imagine a whole society as one organism. This society adapts different morals over time. And depending on what set of morals it has, they will either rise or fall. If viewed in a wider angle, societies really survive in accordance with natural selection. Societies with morals that don't work are subdued by the societies that has moralities that do, or maybe just collapse on its own weight.
If we put it that way, it makes sense to say that the "a priori" knowledge that humans have as successful societies may actually be what is being referred as "God". The ideal balance of morals that will create a strong society, in the past, the present and into the future. The representation of the "perfect morality". The "alpha and omega", the "beginning and the end" not in a creation context, but in context of society building. Note that I used the word "balance" because as important as it is to adapt to current conditions, there is still a huge importance to stick to what works in the past.
Conservative Evolution
When we say that religions "evolve" over time, atheist typically would find that hard to believe. Because it is true, religions resists change. But even individual organisms' evolutions resists change too. Considering the amount of evolution a human has already went through, from the time it splits from other primates, we still have feautures that do not make sense. We have toes that are not useful, we have an appendix, tonsils, male nipples, etc, which are all human feautures we can do without, since they have no apparent purpose.
Religions are very similar. It has feautures that do not make sense in the present conditions because it does not evolve right away. They "conserve" things that worked in the past, and has a hard time letting go of it even if it is not useful anymore, hence the term "conservative". There is an amount of caution in it. "Maybe we just don't understand its' purpose."
Change is natural, but also naturally slow. Our lifetimes are just too short to even conceptualize that. Even the most atheist adopt most of their moralities from a preexisting religion, but only claims to not be a part of it just because of the miniscule details they disagree with. And this miniscule details are also what seperates religions from one another. In totality, they are really very similar.. and what we are really all debating about is:
"what little thing do we have to change in our morality in this tiny moment we have, to be the society that moves forward into the future? Do we have to change anything at all?"
And it will be unwise to answer that question without looking at the past, as it is unwise to stagnate our morality into obsolescence.
thank you for reading.
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