Sorry, I'm having trouble here. For some reason it wont post my rebuttal, just the last message.
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Ok just managed to fix my post...
Green:
"We all have the instinct"? No we don't. You are simplifying the concept of morals far too much here. First, three guys with a hammer, we don't know, but people like them might not even have the instinct that they're doing something wrong. Second, it's easy to say we all have the instinct that tells us it's wrong to torture a child, but what about moral grey areas. Is it okay to discriminate a person? Is it okay to steal? Are you saying morals are only tied to instinct? No of course you're not. You'd then say that it's also determined by culture. But what do u actually say to the guy with a hammer to actually convince it it's wrong - in other words, how do you argue for your moral stance - Do you go "hey dude, I have this gene and we have these customs that say it's wrong to torture kids"?.
I'm certain we all have the instinct, it's just that some people might be capable of over-riding those instincts and become capable of evil. that is the "nut case factor" I've been on about.
And I have stated several times that morals come primarily from instincts and social morals evolve from those, I see no other primary source of morals.
As for your moral grey areas instinctive morals allow you to make a decision on the facts, whereas absolute morals give you a fixed yes or no, which in many cases would not represent the true situation. For example absolute morals would say that murder is always wrong; but what if you kill one person to save the world?
I can judge my moral actions on instinct by assessing the situation without fixed rules to work to.
And I would appeal to the person with a hammer by telling them that murder should feel wrong and that society doesn't deem it morally good, etc... But there is the chance he wont listen. Society can punish them based on collective instinct though and that would work as a deterrent.
How about this though, what if you thought something like condemning homosexuals was a despicable act, which others see justified by their absolute set of morals (e.g. westboro' baptist church). How would you try to convince those people of change when their absolute morals condemn homosexuality? You would never be able to change their evil practice because their set of morals is fixed, even though they are committing a heinous act which should not be in place.
Religion is no guarantee for good morals. I never even claimed that religious people on average have better morals in practice than what atheists do.
But religious people often follow an absolute set of morals, by that logic their sense of right and wrong should be more effective, but it's not. That just seems to show me that people who follow absolute morals have quite literally just defined their instinctive morals.
And how do you do it? Do you go "hey dude, I have this gene and we have these customs that say it's wrong to torture kids"?.
or do you say like radiantshadow would (a very common atheist apporach):
"Its all relative, so it doesn't matter"
I think you can extract my answer from earlier on in this post.
Blue:
I don't believe that they really changed. Some things were okay for the Jews to do at a certain point in history, but they're not moral examples meant for mankind. Technically God could change some moral standards though, but not the one that are tied to his personality.
But the absolute morals did change, you even admitted it when you disregarded the statement about stoning blasphemers because it was from the old testament. The fact that Jews were able to do some things like stoning blasphemers in the past shows that the moral examples meant for mankind have changed, I don't see how it can be any other way. I also fail to see how God can only change the absolute morals if they are not tied to his personality, maybe he can change something like "thou shalt not steal", but I see blaspheming God and stoning (presumably murdering his creation) as tied to his both his personality and being.
Also, are God's morals instinctive morals? What are the origin of God's morals?
Orange:
Exactly. Different standards for different times. Like the slavery example. Back in 17th Century Amerca it was okay to hold slaves. But I don't think it was okay. And I am convinced this is not a phenomenon that just floats back and forth, that in 500 years we will have human slaves again and people like you will argue that it's perfectly right morally. There simply are absolute morals.
There simply isn't though. I am confident that absolute morals are just instinctive morals and people have put a label on them and claimed that they are absolute and unchangeable. Looking into examples of absolute morals I can see that they change frequently, people jut claim that they're permanent.
Anyway, different standards for different times is merely evolution of morals. You have listed a negative example, which I grant is an example that is not good. Although for the most part from the dawn of civilisation until a few centuries ago slaves were seen as morally justified, but we haven't gone back since. I think condemning slavery could be more permanent than you'd think.
But instinctive morals would have positive effects too, a recent example would be pollution. A few decades ago pollution wasn't seen as a problem, but now our society is evolving this concept that pollution is bad because it destroys the environment. Soon I am convinced it will be immoral not to recycle used goods and dump waste. This is a positive ipact which have come from not having unchangeable morals.
Also, I can see it building up like the business cycle, where their are always ups and downs, but after many peaks and falls the cumulative result is more positive than it was at the start.
I am perfectly fine with that argument, evolution of morals. But they don't explain all morals in my opinion.
Can't you see just from studying your liberal brethren that morals today are sort of ahead of it's time? There's almost zero tolreance towards discrimination by the politically correct establishemt - the same people who should believe it's natural for humans to be selfish, that it's natural that humans hold to tribalism, racism, self-pleasure and gain through violence etc. Yet at the same time, since i believe in a universal moral, I can see that we are still in a primitive era. In the future we will think it's wrong to kill higher animals for food. That's where we're heading, because no matter what our genes say there is objective morals which say it's wrong to kill just for food.
I don't see our morals are ahead of our time, I can only see them as representing our time. We are selfish, we also have capitalism which accommodates selfish behaviour (not disagreeing with it, as you know I'm an advocate of capitalism). But Isee that we are constantly evolving past aspects such as racism. Most of my generation are not racist, but many of my parents generation are and even more from my grandparents generation.
And I see the catalyst for these recent rapid changes being our modern times. Modern science, politics and other accelerated fields have made us adapt to new society quickly. We are no longer in the biblical days, our society has changed to an almost unrecognised degree from that point.
Absolute morals dont evolve. What evolves is our discovery of the right morals which were already there.
Sorry, I don't see how that is true. How can you translate the 2000 year old scripture and genuinely say that they are directly applicable for modern problems?
How about something like modern brain surgery, a more specific example could be the moral minefield and now unused trans-orbital lobotomy, a situation people from 2000 years ago would have never dreamt up. What does the Bible say about removing part of someone's brain to alter their personality?
And we are bound to design more and more abstract new moral minefields that the bible will become increasingly difficult to decipher the message from. What will change is people's instinctive morals and we will decipher what the moral situation is from them, as opposed to drawing on bible verses that will have an increasingly tenuous connection.
A lot of it could be labeled as instinctive or evolutionary, biological. But on top of that there is timeless universal morals (see above).
Well I can honestly say that I see religious morals as morals that exist as a result of instinct, but some people have labelled them and called them absolute.
Extra question:
The absolute morals are reflected in all religions (thankfully) and in most humans, and it's what I earlier called the "divine spark" (please don't hang up on this specific term, it's for illustrative purposes only, for convenience and the sake of discussion). But like i said, religion dont guarantee good morals. Obviously. There are just as many religious nut-cases as atheist ones.
But you missed my point, the absolute morals of a Hindu differ from the absolute morals of a Christian. How can the divine spark as you put it exist twice? If there is one God with one set of absolute morals, how can countless sets of conflicting absolute morals exist?
I can use the example of animals for this as well. Some animals will never kill another member of the same species, but others will in mating battles or territorial battles. The same divine spark should exist in all animals, but it clearly doesn't.
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I dont care if morals are effective or not. I want to do the right thing. Slavery was wrong in 17th Century America as well as today, no matter what the court of the day will say.
But your God used to say slavery was acceptable. You can argue that he wanted to regulate it, but the bottom line was that God endorsed slavery in the old testament, it is rarely (if ever) condemned. You say your absolute morals are inflexible, but they really aren't, you see your beliefs now as the inflexible beliefs, but they have changed before your time.
And again you've tried to bog instinctive morals down with negatives, but we are adaptable to positive change and I am convinced that positive change will be the net outcome. In the future would you still consider something like mass deforestation or poisoning lakes with acids a sin, even though it wasn't seen as one a few decades ago? Our secular society is adapting to see those as immoral, which is positive.
To the one below (editing problems):
How can morals be absolute if they open to interpretation is my point. You may say it is the weakness of my morals, but it is the accepted structure of my morals, they are never perfect, just constantly adapting to new environments, I will admit that and I think that it works too. Your morals are unadaptable and quite frankly open to the same level of error.
Well, this is exactly what I see as the weakness of your morals. By definition non-absolute morals are destined to change depending on many weak-links.
