Secular basis for morality?

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Of coarse it's a slight bit difficult to describe... But religions are full of allegories, many of those people in the stories are mere personifications of plans, actions, religious books are business plans from the "serpent who lies below the world not dead, but sleeping". They've had the entire century planned through those books, written in typical masonic mystery religion speak and double speak, so that the "profane" (common people) would not understand of coarse. This is where the "lamb of god" comes from, because a lamb is a sheep.
Yet, there exists something that intervenes with their plans from time to time, something that seems to scare the hell out of them (the elites), that even with all their advanced technology they can not begin to explain, which tells them that they are not in control. And if you know anything about the psychopathic mind and their agenda, everything to them is about power and control. This is of coarse why theyr so gung ho about getting people chipped and deeming books as "terrorist material" (books can develope intelligence).
All the major religions are partially correct though. Partially. There is a small bit of truth in all of them, which are neccessary to different stages of individual developement and understanding of our one true god. Theyr all connected.
But religion in itself was merely a tool for social control and also to pit people against one another so the people on top of the pyramid could profit from it.

Basically, we're living in the final days. Revelations from various "faiths" have all pointed out something very true, that it would be the few who were accepted into the kingdom of heaven, the few who seen it coming, and those few would be scoffed at and scorned.
Basically, god wants people who help themselves, he doesn't want people to lean on any interpretation of "god" as a crutch. He wants people who are conscious, self sufficient, individualistic, non-conforming (ie the people who can break through the matrix so to speak, because here is the first layer of hell, on earth, this is THEIR world, THEIR system, do you see?). People say "you've got to find god", and the key word there is "find". Not "be given". It begins by looking inside ourselves, growing beyond our egos, because you see everything that is going on in the world around us is happening within each and every one of us.

"With or without religion good people will do good things and evil people will do evil things, but for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." --Steven Weinberg

And those who NEED religion to do good, will not make it into heaven. Often times those people, as I said earlier, will do bad in the name of their religion too and claim it as "higher morality". Theyr not fit to enter the kingdom. Only conscious, free thinking people have what it takes. it will be the few who make it.
Hell was initially hel (one "l") it came from nordic mythology, and it meant "dirt", when the average person dies, they are buried in the dirt. This is the first stage of hell here.

You see, we where given a chance to enter only because we had a conscience, that conscience is being driven down by the machine we live in. Conformity restricts the conscience, because conformity limits thinking and puts up walls within a person's mind. A spirit must be developed, and this is done by developing the mind as well, as mind, body, and soul are all connected. You'll find bits of truth in budhism as well.
Most people are easily brainwashed in this system though, they lack a self identity, they are a product of their indoctrinations and conformity, and because of this they are internally dysfunctional. And you can not bring these people (which are the majority) into a utopia because they would wreck it, they would cause problems, because they are internally dysfunctional. They are what the high mason's call the "profane" (even though the high masons are evil themselves and are in fact the ones who created the "profane" through mind control and such).

No, and most Christians I know of would agree.


The obvious answer? Why wouldn't it be okay though? Where does the morality come from to say that torturing babies is wrong? Most Christians and other monotheists argue that morality comes from God, but most other religions still reference morality in terms of a world beyond this one. If atheism and agnosticism are positions born of skepticism, then why do they still accept the idea of a moral ethic? It is very useful as a tool and it is pushed into them by society, but to claim any notion of morality is also to make a claim of an odd entity of "ought"ness that can never ever be justified empirically or rationally and thus is even more unworthy of consideration than a deity which at least could theoretically be proven if all naturalistic explanations for something were exhausted(something the ID movement is trying to do but which is also perhaps impossible given the number of naturalistic explanations that could occur for any given phenomena).

And I'd like to see this question debated: "Where is the origin of right and wrong/morality?". It seems like that is the original question and too often I see morality presupposed without any legitimate proof.

But of course in order to judge either we need a moral matrix or coordinate system in the first place. With religion this fits into an entire, large schema, but without religion, morality seems to be a sloppy attachment kept alive by the need of a human mind for ethical foundations. A little something that the human brain does not and perhaps cannot let go of.

I think that is a circular argument along the lines of: the universe could not exist without God; the universe exists; therefore, God (as my religion envisions him or her) does exist.

Gravity exists. Whether this is related in any way to a Christian God or the Hindu Gods is irrelevant to people that shake coconut trees.

Time exists, and did so even before we had digital watches and the theory of relativity.

Morality exists; even in polytheist, animist, and atheist societies. Morality is not an absolute, scientifically predictable thing like the behavior of objects in a gravitational field. Morality is a human value system. But ideas of right and wrong, good and bad appear everywhere in human societies.

And a study of the way morality has changed within religions poses some interesting questions. For example, Solomon had hundreds of wives, and that was ok. Now, polygamy is considered immoral.

The standard religious answer is that God changed the rules. But honest skeptics ask how we can be sure that human ideas didn't change, and then God was invoked (as a universal fudge-factor) to explain and justify the change. Little Nelly asks her mom why the sky is blue. Her mother tells her "God made it that way, dear."

How do we know that religious injunctions to kill witches (people of other religions) really came from God? And when did these get repealed? It seems that many of the moral principles that people take for granted are not absolutes, even within the Judeo-Christian ethic. Most Christians would say that it is ok to eat shellfish, as Jesus represents a 'new covenant' that supercedes kosher religious laws ... in spite of the fact that Jesus said he did not come to abolish Jewish law, but to uphold it.

Yes and for people who seek absolute truths about the world to condemn things, simply calling it a human value system is a failure as it reduces all morality to a function of desires and forces egoism on all people, which is not their hope. Morality, as I am using it to be a sense of oughtness, does not necessarily exist. Moral nihilism and skepticism are valid philosophies of morality and they could be used more often or at least recognized more often. The fact that something appears everywhere does not prove that it is real or even that if it were that we could know what it is. Spiritual concepts appear in all sorts of human societies as well, but atheists take their path as a logical breach of past idiocies.


Honestly, can we know any moral truth? I believe witches are identified as those with the power of casting spells, any if it were any other then the Jews or early Christians would be throwing their bodies upon the romans and other pagan groups rather than living amongst them and buying meat from them. Well, all moral absolutes within that ethic come from divine command, and that at least lends it to a measure by which morality and immorality can be judged that can be referenced back to something within the overall schema of the worldview. Nobody is denying that religion can easily just be a cultural construct, the issue is that if religion is a cultural construct then why isn't morality so? Then if morality is just a social construct, then why does conformity to it matter? Who cares who is more or less moral then, following morality is merely an egoist decision based upon a being's conservative impulses. Jesus also said it was that which came out of a man's mouth that made him unclean, not that which goes in. Matt 15:11 Which is taken by most to be a repudiation of that old code.

I think morality is only objective in the “is” sense, as it is the ideal set of instinctive behaviors for social creatures to survive/reproduce. Altruistic thoughts and behaviors are associated with positive emotions while antisocial thoughts and behaviors are associated with negative emotions. Our sense of right and wrong is an inherited biological trait. In my mind it seems unparsimonious to assume that morality exists both as an “is” and as an “aught”. The “aught” seems so strongly dependent on the “is” that it makes little sense to distinguish them.

By Awesomelyglorious’s definition I'm a moral nihilist, yet I don’t see why my stance is such huge problem for humanity. It’s not like nihilists are going to go on a killing rampage because they have no philosophical justification for morality. They will still have the same inhibitions and predispositions toward altruistic behavior as the rest of humanity. History has shown that belief in religious and/or philosophical moral constructs has little bearing on the actual behavior of human beings. Most people will behave the way they do regardless of whether they have considered the religious/philosophical groundings of their morality. I think dogmatic belief is more of a danger to world peace than lack of philosophical moral groundings.

The foundation of morality is probably biological. If it became customary to kill all babies then the race would cease to exist. It is still common to kill girl babies in several cultures because it is expensive in those cultures to raise and marry off a girl child. Boy babies are favored in many cultures because they carry the family name. In Roman times many children who were undesired were left in the wilderness to die.
If all people stole and raped within their culture then the culture would fail. It's just a matter of practicality to behave well. Nevertheless there are individuals in all cultures including our own that violate morality and do well by it as is obvious by the corruption in all cultures. Many currently wealthy families started their fortunes through the slave trade or by bootlegging in the times of prohibition and I have no doubts that many respected families today are secretly involved in the very remunerative drug trade since there are billions of dollars involved. And there is nothing so immoral as enslaving some poor dumb kid to narcotics. The respectable British in the early 20th century fought wars to keep their opium trade going in China.

Ah, I don't assume morality is truly an is but rather that it refers to a higher ought. The ought and the is are separate for people can have different is's but they will condemn those with different is's based upon an ought.

Right, and the second part of my statement is that if morality doesn't exist then why does it matter how human beings act anyway? It all falls down to a matter of whether they act as you want. Now, I will agree that human beings will try to fall into some norms no matter what, but morality does not exist in this situation, this is merely an expression of conformity and egoism. Is that right or wrong? Well, if there is no morality there is no basis to describe what these people do as anything, it just is. It can either be liked or disliked.

Well I'm a freethinking agnostic. I'm also teetotal & drug-free, I wouldn't have sex outside a meaningful relationship, I volunteer (occasionally - not as much as I would want to though), I have never been in trouble with the law...I would say I do pretty well in terms of having a moral framework without religion. Religion has no monopoly on the Golden Rule.

Except in terms of its foundation, which is what the discussion has been about for a while now. True, if we define morality as action within the framework which modern society has determined to be moral then anybody, except those who are psychotic, can be moral. The issue is that if society determines what is moral, then what does conformity really mean? It means nothing as even Hitlerian genocidal maniacs could be moral by their society's standard. Not only that but if this definition is accepted then atheists could easily be condemned as immoral anyway for a lack of reverence to the deities of the time. This then ends up forcing us to either deny the existence of higher morality, the one that could matter, or to say that higher morality is a metaphysical concept that makes no sense in an anti-metaphysical framework, such as those often invoked by atheists and agnostics(not by all of them mind you, but many of them).

Who said that the Golden Rule was moral though?

But the “is” is not based on an individuals behavior, it is based on the ideal behavior for a functional society. It comes from the natural selection of biological traits that produce moral inclinations in individuals as well as social selection of moral ideas that reduce conflict within a society. There will always be outliers, sociopaths being the most extreme, but these lie outside the ideal and are hence immoral in the “is” sense.



It matters because we are programmed to think it matters. It also matters because society would cease to function without it.

IMO people have a moral instinct that, though molded and channeled by social norms, guids our desicion making and any philosophical or religious explaination for why we consider certain actions we or others have done are good and bad are generally rationalizations of these gut moral insticts. This is why classic "positive" Utilitarianism and Kantianism don't work in practice, and religious moral systems are simply a fusion of these gut moral insticts mixed in with a society's social norms. Our moral gut insticts are a mish-mash of behaviors we have aquired as a result of evolution and do not generally follow any coherent, over-arching morality.