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@showtimeiQ and @JohnnyAppleseed : I see you're point, showtimeiQ, about the need for exceptions to be made in situations that require a seemingly "wrong" action, (such as lying) to produce a better outcome to the situation. (such as protecting your daughter's life). And you're right, those choices are made merely using the discernment that each human develops as he grows and matures throughout his lifetime. However, I do not see how this discernment he develops points to the fact that morals have "evolved" as humans have "evolved" on the Earth's timeline. Where is your proof of the evoloution of morals is coming from? The first civilization's we have records of have essentially the same moral ideas as we do today. They have the same ideas of right and wrong, we just apply them differently, and take certain parts more seriously than others. We have no proof of any civilization with a completely whacked out sense of morality that gives us evidence that our morals have evolved. You are both completely speculating about this idea of the evoloution of morals, you have absolutely NO proof.
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Cheysmilesalot: Great points! You make sense, but I think I see where you and Appleseed are missing each other. Appleseed is right because morals are not black and white and they do evolve. There are exceptions to almost every rule. Following rules take discernment. It use to be immoral to pick up sticks on Saturday, but if it's sticks for a fire to keep your baby from freezing to death....would that be immoral? Lying to a rapist to protect your daughters life would not be considered immoral, would it? In fact, that's a situation where lying would actually be considered MORAL. As a human, we CAN however, have some absolute morals that apply to us humans. It's immoral to murder and eat a human. But is it wrong for a shark to kill another fish and eat it? See how that's relative to the situation? Relative to humans, there are some absolutes, but there is always room for possible exceptions. Was it immoral for the guys from the movie ALIVE to eat human flesh? It's dependent on your motive. Here's an easy way to figure out what's moral.....By avoiding unnecessary harm, you are by definition...moral. To cause unnecessary harm makes you IMMORAL. Sometimes to figure out what's moral takes hard work, weighting consequences, research, etc.
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Internal code, concious, God, whatever you want to call it, it's wishfull thinking. People don't want to beleive they are alone, that they will die, and that they aren't better than any of the other animals that inhabit this Earth. They want to beleive that there is a magic man in the sky with a magic wand that will fix everything for them and always be there for them. The worst is that they do so in blind defiance of scientific evidence clearly proving them wrong. Religion is blind ignorance and it is only holding the human race back. Science will move us forward, Religion can only hold us back. No heaven, No hell, No Jesus, No soul, JUST US. And the only way to truly accept our existance is to accept these facts.
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And the internal code thing is not exclusive to religion, there are plenty of non-religious people who believe they have some sort of conscious..something that makes them feel bad when they do something wrong. A conscious is exactly the same thing as an internal code.
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There are plenty of books by renound scholars that explain this point. This is not opinion. Just like Gravity, and Natural Selection, This is proven.
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We werent created for some magical destiny. Its just nice to think that there is a plan and that we wont ever die because it makes us feel better. But thats not reality its just wishfull thinking. Arrogantly putting ourselfs rightiously above other animals is not the way to understand our species.
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I believe that there are many diverse ways that people can behave and still be moral, but that there is a non-relative standard of morality which comes from our Creator and which has been established so that we as humans, and as a part of this living world, can attain a great potential and destiny for which we were created. There are many definitions of morality that have been given by different philosophers, theologians, etc. There are 2 usages of the word "morality": 1) Descriptive: referring to the moral beliefs of a particular group (such as a culture, country or religion) or of an individual and 2) Normative: referring to a code of conduct which people "Aught" to follow for some compelling reason. The first usage is relative by definition, but the second is more interesting. Different reasons lead to different systems Normative of morality. The most compelling "First Principle" that I can think of is that an action is moral if it promotes the betterment, that is the greatest fulfillment of potential, for the entirety of humanity and of all living beings. I do not believe that we humans are capable of knowing what that potential truly is or what sort of actions or code of morality will lead towards its fulfillment. I DO believe that the potential of our world is much greater than what any of us can imagine. I also believe that there is a Being - which we may refer to as God or Allah or The Great Spirit or the Creator or by any other name which is, nevertheless, totally incapable of conveying that Being's reality - and that that Being has created us and all of this universe for a purpose and with a high destiny. I also believe that that Being sends instructions to us humans from time to time in order to lead us in the direction of fulfilling that purpose and destiny. The instructions and code of morality which come to us from that Being through certain human-like Manifestations of the Creator is a non-relative morality which is applicable to all people of whatever culture. The morality of culture, nation, or individual can be judged in comparison to this morality. It is important, certainly, that the teachings of the Manifestations be seen in themselves and in their entirety, and that the pollution of human "tradition" and "interpretation" be ignored. What I am saying, then, is that there are many diverse ways that people can behave and still be moral, but that there is a non-relative standard of morality which comes from our Creator and which has been established so that we as humans and as a part of this living world can attain that great potential and destiny for which we were created.
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Morality is absolutely relative. No one is born with morals. They are instilled in us from birth by our parents. No child thinks it is wrong to steal untill their parent yells at them and punishes them. Each society has a different set of customs and standards that may be considered taboo by another society. We werent made with some rulebook in our heads. Over time, "morals" evolved with the human species as we needed rules to prevent decending into chaos. There is no absolute wrong and absolute right. These terms have been invented by us for what we considered a civilized society. The only reason we have morals is because each parent always instills them into their children. We are merely animals. Very intelligent animals, but still animals none the less. No divine intervention, no wishfull thinking, just us. And if you didnt punish a young child for soemthing you considered wrong he would never consider it wrong. Evolution of morals. I win.
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Morality is absolutely NOT relative, everyone is born with an internal sense of right and wrong. Of course different cultures have slightly different views of moralality on small issues, on things like marriage, but for the most part, morality as a whole has not changed since the beginning of time. Have you ever heard of a society where someone was praised for stabbing everyone who had ever been decent to him in the back? Or where a someone was given and award for walking away from an opportunity to save a child's life? If you say morality is relative you are saying that right and wrong are relative, which is also completly ridiculous to say. Everyone believes in right and wrong, and they are lying to themselves if they say: "Well, whats right for you might not be right for me, but that doesn't mean you're wrong." Let's say someone broke into your house and killed your puppy. Based on what you say you believe, it was okay for them to kill Sparky, right? Because who are you to tell them that it's wrong to kill people's puppies, right? No, in reality you would be angry and hurt that they killed Sparky. Feeling hurt by the murderers actions is subconciously admitting that he did something WRONG that hurt you. i win.
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No, if morality were relative all of us would be running around like animals. Society and our families place these standards on us, in addition to the standards we place on ourselves. I think applegrass had it right when she/he said it the application that is relative.
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Morality is completely dependent of culture. For example, in western countries we see stoning a woman to death is a monstruosity, but it is seen as a righteous punishment in other countries*. To set my country as an example: It is inmoral to live with your couple if you are not married, yet, it is more than accepted in some European countries. Now, apparently ethics is a completely different matter and it is supposed to be universal. * I do not believe any kind of punishment that results in death to be right.
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In some places, in some eras, some things are correct; in others, they are not. An example: There has been a time and place when a man was required to marry his brothers widow, even if he was already married, and raise his nieces and nephews as his own. Polygamy? And suppose she killed her wife-beating husband so that she could be with her lover... LOL
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Being moral is a principle, not a list of black and white rules. You don't just follow a list of rules in order to be moral. Instead, you follow the principle -- love thy neighbor and avoid unnecessary harm.
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In order for morality not to be subjective you would have to be God yourself. As long as you are not God morality is subjective. Since noone but god knows everything and noone but god is free of error (assuming god would exist of course) So everybody else has to treat morality as subjective. Philosophy studies morality and ethics and discussing morality can make us better humans. Certain things are easy like knowing if killing someone for no reason is good or evil. However knowing if killing someone to save 10 other people can prove a little bit more difficult. No human can hold ultimate morality, because their logic is fallacious.
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If you follow moral relativism through consistently and completely... you quickly see that the idea is beyond wrong, it's absolutely ridiculous. Morality is not relative, the debate is over (in philosophical, educated circles, at least). If you believe the doctrine true you either lack an understanding of what it implies or are simply ignoring reason. If you like academic papers, here's my favorite (it's actually really easy to read and talks about samurai, so that's cool): http://www.abandonstream.net/25victoriast/text/ValSoc/MIDGLEY.html" target="_blank">http://www.abandonstream.net/25victoriast/text/ValSoc/MIDGLEY.html
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I've often heard morality referred to as relative, and the more I think about it, the less I think it's an inaccurate turn of phrase. To say that morality is relative implies that different individuals under the same set of circumstances will have different moral obligations. This is not an idea I am not comfortable with, and can't really support. I would like to put forward that morality is not relative, but rather context-sensitive. I don't think one's upbringing changes one's moral obligations (although it might change one's responsibility towards those obligations), but a different set of circumstances will effect whether any particular action is moral. For example, my upbringing cannot give me any more right to kill another human being than anybody else, but I can be put into a circumstance where it is acceptable to kill someone, and anyone put into those same circumstances would have the same "right" (not the word I'm looking for, but I can't think of the one I am looking for, so it will have to do). The change in moral status doesn't come from the individual performing the act, but rather the conditions under which the act is performed.
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Yes it's relative on 90% of it's levels... there's that universal 10% that says don't kill, don't hurt people, treat people the way you want to be treated... then we get into the messy 90% that gets clouded by region, religion, family, and upbringing... and don't kill turns into don't kill unless __noun__ is __adverb__ and __verb__. And it all turns into a fill in the blank style mad-lib of loop hole from there.
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