natural morality versus taught morality.

[kaboomin]

ok... so, i was in an argument with an overly religious ridiculous dude the other day, when we got onto the topic of morality, and his theory being that if it weren't for religion we wouldn't have ethics and morals, etc etc, when i pointed it out to him that civilization has existed long before modern religion has, and they've worked just fine.

your thoughts?

natural morality is within every human i think, some just choose to go against it and be cocks. lawlawlawl.

[Deverex]

I, personally haven't believed in any sort of religion my entire life, and i would say that i am a good person. unless i suppose when i want to be a giant dick to people, either because it would be funny, or because they deserve it. I would base most of my actions on what will benefit me the most, so if being mean to a person I don't know and never will see again will give me some entertainment, i will go for it. But if I care about the person, there is really no point in them being angry at me now is there.

I don't really know the motives behind any other person, but it might be somewhere close to how I think.

[kaboomin]

yea, i get what you're saying, although for people with different brainwave patterns (serial killers, rapists, the pope, etc etc) they might have a completely different thought process than an average person.

[Deverex]

I would assume people with some sort of power, or people who think they are "better" than everyone else would have a little different mindset than most of us. But I think that some serial killers, rapists, and just criminals in general do the things they do either because they think they have to to survive (not rapists and serial killers), or just purely for the thrill of it. I do know some kids that only break the law just for breaking the law and they don't care how they do it, just if they break it somehow. I mean sure there might be the people out there that are "crazy" so they would think a little different. just my two cents

[kaian]

Well, I'm convinced that no matter how independent-minded a person is, his or her morals and beliefs are still largely influenced by the culture in which he or she was raised, because it permeates every aspect of that person's life. And since cultures tend to be founded or based largely upon one religion or another (or an attempted balance between several), a person's morals are then influenced (not necessarily controlled) by a religion.

[kaboomin]

Aug 6, 2008 9:26:50 GMT -6 kaian said:

Well, I'm convinced that no matter how independent-minded a person is, his or her morals and beliefs are still largely influenced by the culture in which he or she was raised, because it permeates every aspect of that person's life. And since cultures tend to be founded or based largely upon one religion or another (or an attempted balance between several), a person's morals are then influenced (not necessarily controlled) by a religion.

i suppose that's correct, but what if a person has never been to a church/mosque/synagogue, whatever.... i know i've never stepped into any of them, and i'm a pretty moral person. also, in our culture, how big of an influence is religion really? the only time it seems to come up is on ridiculous right wing news shows and late night television programming...

[Deverex]

Just because you have never stepped into a church, or any other kind of religious structure, doesn't mean that the religion hasn't affected you in any way. Most parents were raised with some religion, and they most likely tried to push their beliefs onto you, in some way shape or form. It really doesn't matter how religious a person is later in their lives (it does but not to the point I am making) it matters how the person was raised, by their parents, and the people they hung around with while they were growing up.

[kaian]

True, I agree with that. Morality in general I believe is taught, especially if we're going off of the opposition between those who believe in intelligent design vs. those who don't. People aren't born with morals... instincts yes, but those generally revolve around self-preservation (such as eating or sleeping, avoiding getting killed, the important stuff) or enrichment (exploration, seeking social contact). Just because a kid kills a frog or punches another kid in the face doesn't mean he'll become a serial killer later in life. Our culture teaches us that it's immoral to kill. Morals are acquired, just as language is - every infant has the ability to learn any language, but the one it experiences the most is the one that sticks the best.

And while I agree that right-wing news shows are probably some of the most annoying things ever, not to mention fillled with religious propaganda, there are so many more places to find religion in everyday life: the pledge of allegiance, for one. Though it's just something you recite, a lot of times schools - even public schools that don't claim to have any religious basis - get really tweaked out when kids refuse to stand or recite it. In court, you have to swear on the Bible to tell nothing but the truth. Money has "in God we trust" printed on it, and it's the US motto. Even if we don't identify ourselves as religious (I'm not, though I have been to church in the past. My mom's Catholic, my dad's Jewish, and my parents had my sister and I go to a Unitarian Universalist church until we decided we didn't want to anymore), there's no avoiding even small bits of religious influence.

So even though I doubt that ethics and morals were totally created by religion (as the guy you talked to believed), I believe that the dominant morals found in certain cultures are greatly influenced by the dominant religion (just look at the Middle East or non-industrialized India, for instance) whether we want it to or not. Not saying that this determines one's beliefs and that you can't change it, just saying that you being a good or decent person is partly due to the Christian morals this culture was influenced by.

Wow. In typing that, I just had another thought. What if it's the other way around: instead of religions being the cause of morals which influence the way people live their lives, what if people's morals instead created religions? Hmm.

[kaboomin]

valid points all around, it's just a bit sickening to think that humans need to be taught how to behave, i almost wish scientists would set up an experiment to raise a child with no influence to good or bad, right and wrong, etc etc, just to see what kind of person the child would develop into...

[thefunkygrail]

I'm going to have to go with your last comment, Kaian. It seems to me that religious beliefs are largely shaped by cultural norms and societal morality.

[Shyft Trakia-Vorga VahtiDahl]

Influence to good or bad? How would they interact with the child? It would have to be fed and cleaned up after at least. If that was the only interaction and the child was other wise left in a white room, it would never learn to talk, may be never walk, and would barely be mentally human. Is that the experimental result that you are looking for, Kaboomin?

[kaian]

Here is a study not necessarily of the morality of children, but the morality of those raising them. There was this girl named Genie who was confined in a bedroom for the first thirteen years of her life, strapped to a toilet during the day and tied to her crib at night. Her dad didn't communicate with her at all except to yell at her to shut up whenever she made a noise, so the only language she knew was "Stop it." Because of her sensory deprivation and lack of social contact, she had become mentally retarded and was unable to learn complex language beyond simple sentences and signing after her rescue.

Some social workers spent a lot of time trying to rehabilitate her and teach her to talk, to control and express her emotions in a socially acceptable way (she would sometimes hurt herself when she was upset). Because she kept placing one year higher on psychological tests, her doctors thought she could someday be fully rehabilitated and assimilated into our culture. But she got beaten once for throwing up, and since then has stopped talking completely. She's 51 years old in psychiatric confinement again.

So. Okay. Even though this girl had almost no human contact (certainly no positive contact) or opportunities to learn language, how to interact with others, and essentially to be human, she was able to learn all of these things as long as she was in a nurturing environment. I certainly don't think it's right at all for her father to have treated her that way, but is it right for the doctors and social workers to become so attached to her, like surrogate parents, and then to abandon her and give her up to another form of confinement once their grants ran out and she refused to speak?

There's a reason why they call that the Forbidden Experiment - because real people's lives are drastically affected by it, and often to no good result besides the ability to say, "Well, we thought she was making progress, but looks like she's unable to function in society. Oh well."

I don't think there's ever any good (or is that ethical? moral? right?... Heh. Here we are back at the beginning) way to find out if morals are natural or taught. That crosses a line that I don't think should be crossed, no matter the "greater good."

What do others think?

[Shyft Trakia-Vorga VahtiDahl]

The rehabilitation process was just as much influence as regular parenting at a younger age. Her original confinement was pretty much how I described some thing like that. It all just means that Kaboomin's kids will be mindless beasts};<)>

[unseen651]

"what if people's morals instead created religions? Hmm. " - kaian

From an evolutionist's view that would have to be correct considering humans wrote religion right?

[kaian]

Sure! It just seemed like kind of a chicken-or-egg thing at the time... Like, if religions were created to help explain why the world is the way it is or the origins of culture, as well as to create a doctrine of ethics for people to live by, then it could be said that religion "created" (or I guess organized/laid out/proclaimed) what morals are right for a certain culture. But then, if religions were created by people, then as thefunkygrail said, they are molded by existent values and morals.

[Shyft Trakia-Vorga VahtiDahl]

Even if the Bibble is the word of gid and the gid man is the real, people still had to have their own feel for right and wrong, in order to be able to choose gid. Same goes for any other religion, am sure.