Thread: Do we need religion to have morals?

Originally Posted by StephenT

I remember reading a study a while back which showed that non-religious inmates occupy less than 1% of jails. Statistically, they should occupy 16%. This also denounces that morality is spread by religion, which would mean that anybody who hasn't at least been the subject of a conversion attempt would be immoral.

It really depends on how you read that statistic. It could just mean that the other 15% of atheists are better at not getting caught in the crimes they do commit

(For the dense among us, that was a joke.)

Originally Posted by Alextanium

It really depends on how you read that statistic. It could just mean that the other 15% of atheists are better at not getting caught in the crimes they do commit

(For the dense among us, that was a joke.)

Ha ha... yes... a joke >.>;

*runs for the hills*

I always find the statement that we do need morals from an external source very insulting to our intelligence. We are humans, for goodness' sake! We have higher intelligence than anything else on this planet, we can think about stuff! It's the same as saying we need an external source to have taught us language. It's true that language, just like (most) morals are passed on from generation to generation, so it comes from an exterior source NOW. But does that mean we couldn't have possibly figured it out ourselves?

Quite a famous biologist and a very prominent ethologist and primatologist in our country, who is also, by the way, very much recognised in the whole wide world, is Frans de Waal. He has studied apes, particularly chimpanzees, for years and years at a time, and he has found out that they DO have morals (or at least the building blocks for morals). They have sympathy, for example. When a chimpanzee was unable to take care of himself, the others shared their food with him. And yes, it's true that chimps are a bit more primitive in their thinking than we are, but they still have some sense of morals. How can this be? Well... I don't know... Maybe it's natural?

Now, let's work this out further... Think about this: we are humans, right? So we can think, right? Do you think the world would work efficiently when we would steal from each other? When we would kill each other? When we would steal each other's wives? When we wouldn't take care of someone when they got sick? I don't think so. So that's why we shouldn't do it. It just wouldn't have any use, not to mention the fact that when we would kill someone, their family would probably come after us as well... So much for survival, ey? Also keep in mind that morals have been passed on time and time again, and they would've therefore been made up in the time of the early man, when we lived in tribes of maybe 15 men. At that time, EVERY person counted. Would it be useful, then, to kill someone? Or to steal and make him your enemy? No... The less people there are, the less chance there is of you killing a mammoth, the less chance there is of having a nice piece of meat lying on your plate. And the more enemies you have, the less chance there is of them including you in their group, therefore making you into a loner, therefore dropping your chances of survival to nihil. (also see cuddlyperson above)

So: where do our ethics come from?
Careful consideration (probably during the times of the cavemen) about how our world, our society would work best, and how we could live and survive the longest. This is then, as language becomes more developed and the population starts to grow, passed on from person to person, as we've become indoctrinated, almost. And morals are, of course, also connected to our natural (and evolutionary?) values: family values, property values, etc. And sure, ethics have evolved since then, to adapt and fit to the society of today, to the cultures, the values and the discours of today, but the fundamental building blocks are still there... 'Thou shalt not kill'? Too late, man... The cavemen did it already!

And that's also the reason why we have immoral people: some kind of value is stronger than their moral codes. Think about a mugger, for example: he steals so that he can eat, or so that he can snort some coke. I can understand why he does that: if he wouldn't get the money, he wouldn't be able to satisfy this need (in this case: hunger, survival, or the satisfaction of an addiction (either physical dependance, or mental)). His survival values, or his mental/physical dependance values at this point are higher than morals, and therefore they have the power to 'take over' people who have a 'weak' will.

Which brings me to the word 'immoral'. I don't like that word. It's not that they're immoral. Most criminals do feel bad for the things they do, and the rest (try to) talk it right by appealing to those values (murderer: 'but he shot my daughter'). Only people who are mentally insane (mass-murderers) could be called immoral, and even then their thinking is impaired by a mental condition. Depressed people might turn to drugs, and might in turn turn to theft. Their mental condition has rewired itself to think 'nothing matters', and this, along with their values, might result in them stealing without feeling much remorse. So, true, a mental condition might make someone immoral, but that's not their fault, they're simply ill.

And then of course, we have the 'Do unto others as you would have others do unto you'. And yep, that has originated and indoctrinated in our society because we can think... When we had decided every human was equal, it isn't to hard to go to the 'he has the same value as me, so I should treat him like he's me'-mentality, now is it?