Atheist Billboards Deep In The Heart Of Texas

[Star]

Who sets morals? Who decides what is moral and what is immoral? Society. Sarge claimed that we all as humans develop a set of morals on our own somehow through magic, aside from those with mental instabilities. He claimed that as an atheist and his experience with something that he knows doesn't exist shaped his morals...told him that murder was wrong and not right. But, if someone was raised in a society where murder was acceptable, then their morals would be different. If someone was raised alone, without society, then they would have no morals. Go to an Amazonian tribe...for some reason their morals differ than ours.

Not to rain on your parade, but even animals don't kill their family and pack... it's a natural behaviour. As we evolved, humans came to the realization that any killing of our own species is wrong. It's human nature..... that's why murderers are sociopaths, not just raised badly.

If you isolated someone, they would be socially weird but I doubt they would go on an murdering rampage

 

[moraldeficiency]

Not to rain on your parade, but even animals don't kill their family and pack... it's a natural behaviour. As we evolved, humans came to the realization that any killing of our own species is wrong. It's human nature..... that's why murderers are sociopaths, not just raised badly.

If you isolated someone, they would be socially weird but I doubt they would go on an murdering rampage

That's not true at all, many animals do that frequently for food, avoid competition or claim dominance (some also do so to elimante opposing genetic lines). Ducks, crows, lions, scorpions come to my mind of the top of my head but there are many. Evolution is a strange and funny beast, it goes one way with some creatures but the opposite with others.

 

[chaseter]

Not to rain on your parade, but even animals don't kill their family and pack... it's a natural behaviour. As we evolved, humans came to the realization that any killing of our own species is wrong. It's human nature..... that's why murderers are sociopaths, not just raised badly.

If you isolated someone, they would be socially weird but I doubt they would go on an murdering rampage

You didn't. Animals are taught behavior just like we are by our parents and by others through interactions and watching....social construction of our behavior.

When you raise someone in isolation, they don't know how to act and they haven't had anybody telling them or showing them what was right and what was wrong. There is nothing that tells that person that killing is bad. Of course they won't go on a killing spree but they would act out through their emotional responses.

We were talking about morals earlier and the other person posed that we learn right from wrong through human nature, that we as humans all share the same base set of morals which is completely wrong. Nothing in our evolutionary history has coded us to tell us that rape, murder, stealing, etc...is wrong. In early Europe, it was widely acceptable to marry siblings and cousins to keep the bloodline pure in a family of rulers. Now, incest is unlawful and considered gross. It is now deemed immoral and taboo to even consider. Was that change in morality caused by society or by human nature? It was also alright for older men to marry 13, 14, and 15 year old girls but now that is deemed statutory rape. In some Amazonian tribes, cannibalism occurs if they defeat or capture an enemy. They think they can eat the flesh to gain their spiritual power. Slavery was once fine, human sacrifice is murder but was once thought necessary, we have fought wars for millenia which we consider justified murder, etc...

Morality is set by a majority in a society and then can be turned into law and what is considered taboo is forbidden and those that cross that line are deemed deviants and criminals. Morals in different societies are not the same.

Moraldeficiency is also correct. Male lions will kill off all the male cubs of a pride he just took over because they are not in his lineage.

 

[Carcharodon]

You didn't. Animals are taught behavior just like we are by our parents and by others through interactions and watching....social construction of our behavior.

When you raise someone in isolation, they don't know how to act and they haven't had anybody telling them or showing them what was right and what was wrong. There is nothing that tells that person that killing is bad. Of course they won't go on a killing spree but they would act out through their emotional responses.

We were talking about morals earlier and the other person posed that we learn right from wrong through human nature, that we as humans all share the same base set of morals which is completely wrong. Nothing in our evolutionary history has coded us to tell us that rape, murder, stealing, etc...is wrong. In early Europe, it was widely acceptable to marry siblings and cousins to keep the bloodline pure in a family of rulers. Now, incest is unlawful and considered gross. It is now deemed immoral and taboo to even consider. Was that change in morality caused by society or by human nature? It was also alright for older men to marry 13, 14, and 15 year old girls but now that is deemed statutory rape. In some Amazonian tribes, cannibalism occurs if they defeat or capture an enemy. They think they can eat the flesh to gain their spiritual power. Slavery was once fine, human sacrifice is murder but was once thought necessary, we have fought wars for millenia which we consider justified murder, etc...

Morality is set by a majority in a society and then can be turned into law and what is considered taboo is forbidden and those that cross that line are deemed deviants and criminals. Morals in different societies are not the same.

Moraldeficiency is also correct. Male lions will kill off all the male cubs of a pride he just took over because they are not in his lineage.

I would argue that self-awareness at the human level is at least partially responsible for the idea that killing is wrong, and that it's not purely a social construct. I think that, by definition, self-awareness means that we are inherently aware of others' awareness, which means that the gravity of the act of murder is not necessarily absent even in the isolated mind.

 

[chaseter]

I would argue that self-awareness at the human level is at least partially responsible for the idea that killing is wrong, and that it's not purely a social construct. I think that, by definition, self-awareness means that we are inherently aware of others' awareness, which means that the gravity of the act of murder is not necessarily absent even in the isolated mind.

I would agree with that in how we as a society have formed. We need each other to survive, no one man can live on their own which is partly how societies and social groups did form...out of need. But, if you create a society in which murder is acceptable, then they would have no qualms about killing someone. They wouldn't murder the individuals in their society because they would have seen that they need each other. That is how we justify things. We can murder countless lives on enemy soil and that is morally right. But, if you murder a citizen of your society then you are a criminal. And, that mode of thinking has risen from the society.

 

[huskerwebhead]

It seems to me there are really two different sets of morals that keeps going back and forth here. Yes, there are morals that are defined by society, but there are also personal morals. Someone can live in a society that values a certain set of morals, but that doesn't mean their personal morals parallel those of that society. They may have some commonalities, they may not. A person still has the ability to form their own morals, or decide for themselves what is moral and immoral....regardless of the society they live in

It would seem that you are indicating that if a person is part of a particular society that they automatically adopt that societies morals...which I would disagree with.

 

[chaseter]

I said the majority of people in that society sets morals. I never said that everyone adheres to that set of morals as designated by the majority. I said that the people that do things outside of what that society has deemed as moral or immoral are deemed deviants or criminals. If everyone lived 100% by morals set by the majority we would live in Stepford. The argument was that morals are developed through internal occurrences where I think they are developed through external occurrences. I think some even thought I was talking about emotions experienced for instance when an animal's baby dies. You will still experience emotions no matter what even if you grow up in isolation. If a monkey grows up alone with a blanket, he is emotionally attached to that object and if it is taken away he will feel sorrow. What it won't know how to do is properly interact socially and will do things that the socially raised animals would feel as wrong.

 

[C.F. Kane]

Hah!

What show is that? Reminds me of the UK's version of Bill Maher.

Have I Got News For You, it's kind of a combination of Real Time and a game show. It's been running for years now. There's plenty of other clips on youtube if you're interested.

 

[Sentinel X]

"I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

- Mark Twain

This is an interesting quote but I find it somewhat pointless. How would Mark Twain know if he didn't exist billions of years before? What if he did?

I have actually thought about existence before birth. Assuming that I temporarily didn't exist for a certain amount of time,

I went from non-existence to existence...so who is to say that this cannot happen again?

Of course this doesn't have much to do with God just the afterlife in general...but I do think it is interesting and something to ponder about!

 

[chaseter]

If reincarnation does exist...then we all once existed before we were born...who knows!?

 

[Metamorpho1977]

Not to rain on your parade, but even animals don't kill their family and pack... it's a natural behaviour. As we evolved, humans came to the realization that any killing of our own species is wrong. It's human nature..... that's why murderers are sociopaths, not just raised badly.

If you isolated someone, they would be socially weird but I doubt they would go on an murdering rampage

gotta side with the unbeliever here on part of it. Doing the right thing is not in human nature. You don't have to teach babies to lie. It's something they already know how to do. The part that I believe isn't part of human nature is the ability to differentiate between right and wrong. I believe that part comes from somewhere else I believe.