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Morality (2 Viewers)

fortyfortyforty

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How do you atheists choose a strong system of morality? It seems like you're just going with whatever society says is good and bad because you don't have any real principles. Who says something you consider to be bad now will not be considered to be good a few decades in the future? The laws and rules of Islam, which come from the holy Qur'an and the Hadiths, on the other hand, have been unchanged for 1,400 years!
 

JINOUGA

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How do you atheists choose a strong system of morality? It seems like you're just going with whatever society says is good and bad because you don't have any real principles. Who says something you consider to be bad now will not be considered to be good a few decades in the future? The laws and rules of Islam, which come from the holy Qur'an and the Hadiths, on the other hand, have been unchanged for 1,400 years!
Not necessarily a bad thing as one can argue morals in themselves are defined by sociocultural evolution. In other words, moral relativism as opposed to moral absolutism
 

Lolsmith

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How do you atheists choose a strong system of morality? It seems like you're just going with whatever society says is good and bad because you don't have any real principles. Who says something you consider to be bad now will not be considered to be good a few decades in the future? The laws and rules of Islam, which come from the holy Qur'an and the Hadiths, on the other hand, have been unchanged for 1,400 years!
just like how raping kids is all right according to islam
 

Lolsmith

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lol these guys seriously believe that being consistently all right with raping children for 1400 years is an achievement
 

Bored_of_HSC

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Your arguement lies on the assumption that a static set of morals for centuries is a good thing.

u lose
 

Frostbitten

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I often go out raping and murdering on the weekends, too busy to do it during the week you know with school and all. I've robbed, 4 no 5 old ladies of their handbags and king hit about 8 people at Kings Cross. Just a question, is this wrong? I don't have anything to go by you know being an atheist and all...
 

fortyfortyforty

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Not necessarily a bad thing as one can argue morals in themselves are defined by sociocultural evolution. In other words, moral relativism as opposed to moral absolutism
Your arguement lies on the assumption that a static set of morals for centuries is a good thing.

u lose
So tomorrow slavery, raping, murdering, stealing might be okay. As senator Bernardi brought up, there are plenty of people who want gay marriage and bestiality legalized, because, why not?


I often go out raping and murdering on the weekends, too busy to do it during the week you know with school and all. I've robbed, 4 no 5 old ladies of their handbags and king hit about 8 people at Kings Cross. Just a question, is this wrong? I don't have anything to go by you know being an atheist and all...
What if you grew up in a society where robbing/raping was okay?
 

JINOUGA

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So tomorrow slavery, raping, murdering, stealing might be okay. As senator Bernardi brought up, there are plenty of people who want gay marriage and bestiality legalized, because, why not?
because society has evolved to not accept this behaviour.
 

Frostbitten

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What if you grew up in a society where robbing/raping was okay?
Hmmm, I can't tell because I haven't been in one, I might be a person who will along with it or I might decide to be the black sheep in the society and question it. I really would have to have lived in such a scenario to determine it.
 

funkshen

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If an action has a purely egoistic imperative, it can have no moral worth. The implication, therefore, is that a man whose piety is impelled by the plight of his soul in the afterlife is not such a moral man after all. Morality is instead founded in the everyday phenomenon of compassion. The spontaneous participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it. Only insofar as an action has sprung from compassion does it have moral value; and every action resulting from any other motives has none. You will find, then, that your dogmas and codes are of no moral value at all, for the experience of the individual - acting in accordance with his own freedom - is at both the beginning and end of morality.
 

fortyfortyforty

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because society has evolved to not accept this behaviour.
Which means it could easily accept any behaviour again in the future.

Hmmm, I can't tell because I haven't been in one, I might be a person who will along with it or I might decide to be the black sheep in the society and question it. I really would have to have lived in such a scenario to determine it.
With a solid grounding of morality (Islam) you would know it's not okay. With atheism you would just go with your peers.
 

AAEldar

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What's right is obviously subjective - but there are definitely boundaries. Murder? There's one. Rape. Slavery. Polygamy (this one just doesn't even make sense, sure not as bad as others just odd). Bestiality. Stealing. etc, etc.

In this modern time none of those are acceptable - we have adapted and evolved socially for these to not even have to be thought of being done. Why? Because that shit puts us in a backward step. I think it's idiotic for you to say that atheists change their views with the times - of course they do. Why would you want to be stuck with a couple thousand year old ideology? I'd rather have the newest 'view' if it was the right one.

To quote the Dalai Lama:

"If science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change. In my view, science and Buddhism share a search for the truth and for understanding reality. By learning from science about aspects of reality where its understanding may be more advanced, I believe that Buddhism enriches its own worldview."

All religions would deal well to heed those words in my opinion.
 

Absolutezero

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What's right is obviously subjective - but there are definitely boundaries. Murder? There's one. Rape. Slavery. Polygamy (this one just doesn't even make sense, sure not as bad as others just odd). Bestiality. Stealing. etc, etc.
Technically these boundaries are subjective as well. There are many societies where slavery is morally acceptable for example.

The thing is, it can only be considered unacceptable if there is a change inside that society. I think the thing that people forget is that there is no outside onlooker. If we look at a tribe, we can consider some of their actions are immoral, because we have our own system. But if we're inside that system, we don't have the outside perspective. It's morally correct, because the system deems it morally correct. We can't compare it with our own system of morality, because that doesn't exist.
 

JINOUGA

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If an action has a purely egoistic imperative, it can have no moral worth. The implication, therefore, is that a man whose piety is impelled by the plight of his soul in the afterlife is not such a moral man after all. Morality is instead founded in the everyday phenomenon of compassion. The spontaneous participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it. Only insofar as an action has sprung from compassion does it have moral value; and every action resulting from any other motives has none. You will find, then, that your dogmas and codes are of no moral value at all, for the experience of the individual - acting in accordance with his own freedom - is at both the beginning and end of morality.
Interesting
 

Lolsmith

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If an action has a purely egoistic imperative, it can have no moral worth. The implication, therefore, is that a man whose piety is impelled by the plight of his soul in the afterlife is not such a moral man after all. Morality is instead founded in the everyday phenomenon of compassion. The spontaneous participation, independent of all ulterior considerations, primarily in the suffering of another, and thus in the prevention or elimination of it. Only insofar as an action has sprung from compassion does it have moral value; and every action resulting from any other motives has none. You will find, then, that your dogmas and codes are of no moral value at all, for the experience of the individual - acting in accordance with his own freedom - is at both the beginning and end of morality.
This sounds extremely familiar.
 

funkshen

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not really. le bon david never spoke of such things.
 

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