Here Today... Gone To Hell!

the question says it. Where? I think its from religion being religious but what do you guys think?

I disagree.

I see organized religion as a way to preach morals, but not necessarily adhere to them.

Humans evolve through memory - we learn from our experiences.  When people are cruel to us we remember what it feels like and we learn from it.  We learn to loath the person who is cruel and we make an effort not to be like that ourselves, which over time has given us a good idea of what constitutes 'right' and 'wrong'.  Morals have been engraved into our society because we teach these things to our children.

Religion has been used to enforce morals onto other people, but it is not where they come from.  Religion and morals both come from evolution.

There always were there.

When men lived in a cavern, he had sex with his daughters in order to reproduce.

As soon as there were enough men and women, morals came in. And incest, for instance, became a taboo, one of the 7 sins.

The actual 7 sins are not coming from christianity, it's as old as we are.

So i guess morality is a way to protect man against man and protect our race from becoming degenerated.

From your parents, case closed.

that was funny,.... :hihi:

I think we learn along the way. Sure, for some people morals have a lot to do with religion. Not for me though, because I don't have a religious background. We are taught morals by our enviroment, so where your morals come from will have to do with the environment you grew up in. For me, the answer would probably be parents and school. Later, in my teenage years, from friends and media (television, newspapers, magazines, internet).

I agree...that and as you age you develope your own :peace:

A giant rabbit sneaks into your room while you're sleeping and places them under your pillow... or something like that.

Is common decency nature or nurture?

This happened with me. I don't know why he required my teeth though...

It's nurture.

No nature at all you think?

A mixture of both perhaps?

societies without morals self destructed

i think morals are self preservation of the specie and they usually come back in " fashion" when man has reaaally gone downhill.

It's a combination of nature, nurture, parental lessons, religion and what Danny Top Hat said.

other animals dont have morals though

Not true... in "March of the Penguins", a penguin whose egg had frozen tried to steal a live egg from another penguin.  Immediately, an entire troop of penguins came down on her big time.

Also, when they huddle to keep warm, they take turns standing on the outside of the huddle circle.  Shows an understanding of fairness.

the entire troop of penguins could've just been anger though. Also, outside the huddle circle they could just be warm enough for a while and wait outside

They were angry because one of them was committing an immoral act (i.e., stealing / eggnapping).  And no living thing is ever "warm enough" when its one hundred degrees below zero in one hundred mile per hour winds.  They risk being frozen to death (and many do die) just so all in their community have equal time in the center of the circle.

someone must have taught them morals somehow. Problem is who started it?

Its all in the mind.

Every living thing has morals.

We are born with them.

Some just have a stronger moral sense than others.

na you cant just be born with something

You're born with a brain aren't ya!

As someone said earlier, morals probably come from a necessity to keep society functioning. If everyone steals from everyone else society can't function. If everyone kills everyone else society can't function. One day someone thinks "We better stop this killing thing before everyone is dead," but it takes a strong leader to stand up and say what most of the people are thinking. Morals can't come from nature as not all societies and people have the same morals, they must first arise from certain situations and then later generations are taught (through parents, religions, etc.) these new morals. Sometimes (most times probably) these get muddled and changed throughout the years. Sometimes the teaching of these morals becomes so screwed up that the original morals are lost (or at least the point of the original morals are lost) and twisted versions of these morals are now taught. Such is my opinion anyway.

We're not born with morals.? Children learn from their environments what's "wrong" and "right" and try to adhere to the rules out of fear (and hopefully understand eventually).

 Maybe it is a little of both though, nature and nurture...

I think everyone is born with morals, depending on what your exact def. of morals are. Morals come from your conscience. No one was taught to feel guilt, loyalty or value human life, that's your basic instinct, just like no one was taught how to lie, you just do. Even tarzan had morals and he lived with the fucking apes.

Good post. I guess if we do really want to talk about this we should agree upon some kind of definition for morals. Of course, that's not a terribly easy thing to do. It's like trying to define virtue or good or something. Bringing up Tarzan is interesting though. He lived without human contact and turned out to be a good person, but the kids in Lord of the Flies grew up being taught right and wrong, etc. and all but a few of them lost their morals and turned into beasts until the sight of an adult at the end brought them back to their senses. I know these are both fictional, but I think they both bring up interesting, yet varying thoughts on the matter.

Yes, but I think that the kids in Lord of the Flies were corrupted BEFORE they were stranded... by adults... by school... because the one thing every kid yearns for in school is to be popular. They just didn't have a chance to show their corruption until left to their own devices in an inhabited and uncivilized jungle.

Adults cause corruption, but they also restrain it.

If those kids had never ever come in contact with adults, they would have been wild, but they would have had morals.

That's what I think anyway.

I think morals come from you too, if you care and have a heart you won't do certain things.. I think you're born with certain morals..

morals are all nurture if you ask me. our most basic of instincts are to eat, sleep, fuck and stay out of harms way.

well...also parents have a hand in teaching right and wrong....eg... I usually defer to older people and always say please and thankyou, it's just how i was brought up...I mean i did develope my own as time passed but in the beginning your parents define what is right and wrong...even teachers or whoever you may look up to they all have a hand in defining your morals...even society influences morals, as the boundaries are pushed i think that our limits are extended.

If indeed this is the case, then the corruption needs to begin somewhere. For the sake of argument I'll agree for a moment and say people are born with morals. If this is the case then how do these morals become corrupted? Some people must either not be born with morals at all or be born with lower morals than the rest of humanity. Are these people greater in number than, equal in number to, or less in number than those with morals/strong morals? If they are less in number (which seems to be the case as the world is still standing and functioning relatively well) than they can not have a great affect on the rest of humanity, for they would not be implant their morals in someone with strong morals, thus no one would be capable of being corrupted. Perhaps we can say that everyone is born with some sort of capacity for morals. These morals are then taught to us or learned through experience. However, saying this is like saying we are not born with morals, which I feel is not something you would agree with.
          Also, if the children were corrupted before they were stranded yet didn't do anything terrible before they were stranded (I think it's safe to assume the murders of Simon and Piggy on the island were the first murders they commited) that would suggest that the adults, establishment, etc. kept the children in check. Perhaps they did corrupt the children as well, but they kept this corruption from causing the children to do anything bad. As for children wishing to be popular in school that is not something that adults teach. That is something that happens on its own. No one tells a child it is desirable to be liked, you just want to be liked. But this is probably nurture as well for as a baby you see that it is good to be around others because they feed you, pay attention to you, etc. Of course the boys in the book are English which means the book could be about the repression in English society being detrimental to the health of a person. You can't be so restrained or you will abandon this to the extreme if given the proper opportunity. I think the book is probably a bit of this and a bit of discussion on human nature.

something created are brain, didnt they?

Years of evolution............

I didn't think anyone would pick up on my Tarzan reference : ok:

Great point about Lord Of The Flies. the thing is, even though the kids were falling into a mob mentality, which actually changes your train of thought, thinking ext...and the fact they were sinking into very primal behavior, they still knew the difference between right and wrong. They knew what they were doing was wrong, but mob mentality, and the fact they were so young, plus they were military school cadets; strict supression lead to the way they reacted when they realized there was no one there to tell them what to do. Kind of like the 60's free love explosion from repression...  The end of the film version shows this in the most profound way when they discover the adults have come to rescue them and they burst into tears, that they knew what was right and wrong.

Knowing the difference between right and wrong is what I consider morals.

Best post I've read in this topic.  :beer:

I think that morals come from awareness. People that act morally wrong do so for one of two reasons; either they are unaware of the pain that they will cause, or else they are aware of any harm that they are going to do and as such act in a way that will cause the most anguish. Somebody who commits murder on the grounds of the first does so out of ignorance; he who commits it on the grounds of the second is morally aware of their wrongdoing.

There is more to awareness than simply knowing the consequence of an action. There is a difference between stealing, and stealing and being aware of the nature of the aftermath. In some instances, in order to be morally aware you have to engage with the consequence on a personal level.

Yes, morals are beaten into us as kids, and that is why there are few here who would be willing to kill a man tommorow. I have no doubt that those who are not taught moral standard through their upbrining can still learn, because it is part of what makes us human. While the vast majority of us are almost programed into recognising right from wrong, others will learn from experience. While a lot of the morals that we would live by do come from our parents, this is not moral origin and is only half of the story. Saying that our morals come from our parents, while true, is an almost evasive answer; it is like asking "where do apples come from?" and being told that "they come from shop." The answer is that they grow. Morals that we have, we have because of our awareness of other living things and of cause and effect. It is this which seperates us from animals, and it is our interaction with consequence that not only seperates us from animals but builds the fundamental morals that we believe in.

Morals can be taught, they can be passed on or they can be learnt, but it is the extent of our understanding that truly determines our engagement with them.

I think that it was Socrates who said that evil is bred out of ignorance; if we were omnipotent, if we were able to see all things, then we could not help but do good.

You are absolutely right. I didn't take that into account in my first post about Lord of the Flies and I really only briefly touched on at the end of my second. But what is right and wrong? lol,

Great points in your post as well Jim. I completely agree that morals come from experience. We are taught morals that have come out of the experiences of others and perhaps we can never really know what these things mean unless we experience them ourselves, which brings up that old proverb "Do unto others," etc. Perhaps what truly makes us human is not our awareness of these consequences (as I just watched this disturbing show on elephants and how similar they are to people in the way they think and how they react to events) but our empathy, as Phil Dick suggests in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?". If that were to be the case then I suggest that sociopaths are not really human at all, or at best severely defective humans. If my understanding is correct, they see the pain that they cause to others, but they just don't care.

Aye, I completely agree. Awareness isn't enough, it is because of our empathy that we are able to appreciate the effect from that awareness. I've never read that book. Maybe I will.

nope. Wrong answer. How can we evolve? Doesnt make any sense

Sakib, you're like a kid who has heard the answer that he wants to hear, and so covers his ears to avoid hearing any other possibility, lest it should disprove the former.

Rubbish. If something like evolution doesnt make sense that how is that covering my ears? I've heard many possibilities but they dont make sense to me. When the question is how? and why? and there's no answer, then it doesnt really make sense.

Why would i want to hear evolution is false? Why?

Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that one of the major prejudices concerning western philosophy was that philosophers would try, in their work, to make the world encompass their weltanschauung (... It's German), as opposed to presenting a theory that would fit the world. Go figure.

Your 'how?' is easily enough answerable by a comprehensive understanding of survival of the fittest. Have you ever read Origin of Species? I haven't, but right now I don't feel like I need to. You're the one with all the questions right now, maybe you would stand a better chance of having your questions answered by resorting to a base level; as opposed that is to consultation of your science text books, and books written by those that are pro-your view of creation and human development.

One of the hardest, but most important, things to comprehend in order to understand evolution in any way is the vastness of time, and just how old our planet is in terms of our own lives.

I can reconcile my own views with yours in as far as, yes!, I feel sure that evolution, if it happened at all, did happen for a reason, I cannot comprehend that we would have become, as humans, what we are now without some greater force, or higher power... , at work; but to dismiss evolution out of hand shows nothing more than childish naivity and an unwillingness to accept the facts that are there, in front of your eyes, if only you wanted to see them.

I do read the other views. I go to a school (well did, just left and finished my GCSEs) and they teach evolution and you have to know about Lamarck and Darwin and natural selection, Lamarck's theory of characteristics developing due to necessity, however i think that evolution is flawed. The Archaeoptryx for example (spelling may not be accurate) was supposed to be an ancestor for birds but it turned out it was a bird.

I can see the "facts" you are talking about but it's flawed and i think as logical as it sounds, evolution has holes and dont make sense. I understand if the alleles and genes are similar structure to other creatures but that doesnt support evolution as there;s no proof they evolved.

... As I said. GCSE teaching on evolution isn't exactly extensive. When I did it three years ago, you wouldn't have been expected to know any criticism of the theory. I doubt that has changed. Not over here in the UK, at least. As such you wouldn't have been expected to question it as a theory. GCSE's are little more than regurgitation, and it's one unit amongst [how many, six? 10? I have no idea], and that is in science alone!, never mind the other 8 subjects. So, as I said. If you want an extensive understanding of evolution, and a means to criticize it in more depth, then you will need to look further than your GCSE exam. As I [meant]. Origin of Species.

You can't afford to be broad.  : ok:

Wrong. It wasn't ever supposed to be an ancestor for birds, it was the FIRST bird!! Pterodactyl was the true ancestors for birds, and that evolved and became Archeopteryx after many millions of years.

Have you been thinking that Pterodactyl and Archeopteryx were in the same era?

actually, i'm taking biology A-LEVEL, the syllabus has changed dramatically over 3 years, it changes on a 2 yr basis and I do triple science so i get three separate sciences. I do look at other articles as well, mind u my biology teacher believes in evolution but i know its wasted 150 years in history and the fact that its non religious apparently cracks me up. Its pagan

Philosophers (especially lovers of Plato and Socrates) hate to hear this but I completely agree. Ever read Ptolemy? If ever there was an example of the above statement it is in his great work. Hell, Plato even suggests the above statement with the cave allegory in "The Republic" but then goes on and does the same thing he writes against.

not according to my source. and evolution didnt happen. And if it did how? None of it makes sense.

the quoted article was ancestor of bird was actual bird. The Pterodactyl could've just died and some other bird could've been created at a different time frame.