Aielyn said:
One can understand and then not entirely agree. I look at Kohlberg's stages, and I view the sixth stage as something that can be considered part of society's development - that is, people will reach the sixth stage more often as society matures. As for the "seventh stage", it sounds very much like an artificial way to try to enforce religion in what should be a secular topic of discussion. And if Kohlberg truly believed that there's a level of morality that can only be described as "cosmic-level", then I simply disagree with him. Kind of like how one can consider, say, Miyamoto to be the greatest game developer in the world, and still consider one of his games to be entirely bad. Nobody is perfect, and you take from the theory up until you consider it to not make sense. And again, I wasn't applying the stages to religion, but to the religious. There's a difference. I do not comment on the morality of murder, but on the way that people arrive at that morality - and the bible establishes it as simple obedience, "god says do not murder". This doesn't mean that all religious people are stage 1, but that the bible operates as a stage 1 morality. The very fact that you think that the 7th stage imples "atheists can't be moral", or opens up discussions on that topic, shows that YOU don't understand the stages. They're not about the morals themselves. That's made abundantly clear. They're about how one FORMS the morals. It's about the justification BEHIND the morals. One could be at stage 6 and consider murder to be morally acceptable. |
Except it wasn't "I disagree". It was "If this is the case.... I disagree."
In otherwords it betrayed the fact that you've never read anything about Kohlberg's work... and have no frame of refrencee on the matter... outside of a wikipedia page you didn't even fully read. The fact that you think you understand his work... and can disagree with it from that is laughable. You've not seen any of his data, any of his vast explinations of what the stages are (which you get wrong), you haven't seen any of when he see's the average person moving through said development stages and you haven't seen any numbers based on how many people fit where on average.
Hell you don't even know any of the flaws in his methods. You are nearly completely ignorant of Kohlbergs work, going off of a wikipedia page to hope it proves your point (and ignoring another wikipedia page that contradicts it.)
I have read Kohlbergs work, i've written papers, on it, been tested on it... I know Kohlbergs work. I disagree with his work... because it's terrible... and I actually understand what his stages are.
Also, I didn't say that i thought the 7th stage implies "Atheists can't be moral." I said it often causes people to jump in and argue that... even though we're talking about a hypotetical stage that is one step further then another hypotetical stage. According to his work an Atehist wouldn't be able to reach "True Ultimate Morality"
