What is Right and Wrong?

[navarre]

I too find the belief of atheists having no morals to be offensive and narrow-minded. Religion did not create morality, and you do not need to study it nor have faith in God to feel what is right and wrong.

It may not have created morality, but it certainly does a good enough job of promoting morality. Please don't confuse the two terms.

[Ads]

[Gikoku Harakami]

It may not have created morality, but it certainly does a good enough job of promoting morality. Please don't confuse the two terms.

I am not confusing the two terms, as that sentence was not directed at only you. I am only saying that Religion is not the root of all morality, and it is not necessary to have in order to understand what is right and wrong. I am aware that religion has helped promote morals onto others.

[AndThen?]

Irregardless, religion has done a damn site of a good job of promoting morality. Perhaps you don't have to be religious to have morals, but i do believe most of the morals in society are derived from religion.

Take the treatment of the Indigenous Australians when the British arrived in Australia. The Aboriginal people are known to have been curious of the white settlers (they were "ghosts", such pale skin was completely bizarre), but they were hospitable (in contrast to say, the Maori of New Zealand). And what did they recieve? European diseases, such as smallpox, kill more than half of the indigenous population. Their traditional lands were taken from them (they didn't understand the concept of land ownership, of course, so they could just move somewhere else, surely), genocide in Tasmania, various massacres on mainland Australia, and children stolen from their mothers to be raised into white culture.

Would you argue that the British - thanks to the influence of religion, of course - acted in a more moral way to these people influenced only by a now dead religion, and more spiritual than anything?

And morality was developed long before any modern religion, so it's not derived from it. Being nice isn't a religious convention, lawl.

[Diomedes]

A toddler has no sense over what is right or wrong primarily because they are sollipsists.

To extend that, does true innocence lie in those who do not yet understand the concepts of 'good' and 'bad'? Nor 'life' and 'death'?

[Sixty]

British convicts, right?

[AndThen?]

No, not at all.

[rukus]

British convicts, right?

before it became a prison.

[navarre]

Take the treatment of the Indigenous Australians when the British arrived in Australia. The Aboriginal people are known to have been curious of the white settlers (they were "ghosts", such pale skin was completely bizarre), but they were hospitable (in contrast to say, the Maori of New Zealand). And what did they recieve? European diseases, such as smallpox, kill more than half of the indigenous population. Their traditional lands were taken from them (they didn't understand the concept of land ownership, of course, so they could just move somewhere else, surely), genocide in Tasmania, various massacres on mainland Australia, and children stolen from their mothers to be raised into white culture.

Would you argue that the British - thanks to the influence of religion, of course - acted in a more moral way to these people influenced only by a now dead religion, and more spiritual than anything?

And morality was developed long before any modern religion, so it's not derived from it. Being nice isn't a religious convention, lawl.

That's a pretty bold statement you've made. Judaism and Hinduism go back thousands of years. Have we any evidence that people acted morally before the introduction of religion?

[Boethiah]

That's a pretty bold statement you've made. Judaism and Hinduism go back thousands of years. Have we any evidence that people acted morally before the introduction of religion?

What do we define as religion? Animism believed in spirits in nature, and was the first religion that we know of. They did not believe in higher beings. They obviously did not have a set list of moral codes to follow. Were they immoral?


Religion did contribute to morality, but for the wrong reasons. Atheists are decent people, we just don't act morally to ensure salvation.

[RPGMasterTurk91]

Just like to pick a few points:

A toddler has no sense over what is right or wrong primarily because they are sollipsists. I do not believe it has anything to do with them naturally not knowing.

But morality is entirely subjective. Hitler, who is generally regarded as morally wrong, believed that somehow, exterminating eleven million people was the right thing to do. He believed it was for the greater good that Jews, Communists, Roma, homosexuals and the like should meet their deaths and become extinct. So, if he thought what he was doing was right, and wasn't actually naturally evil, then surely the man had some morality in him?

I don't know- it's a complex situation. I suppose there is a minmum sense of morality in every human being, and that is what distinguishes us from other animals.

Ah we have a sociologist here! I'll respond to this later when I have time. I hate to keep putting off these things but when I find time I'll have my own input here as well.