That strikes me as confused.Ethics was about what was good and wrong within the natural order of the universe. — Dharmi
The harder question would be, why anyone would be moral without believing in a religion that rewards (or punishes) them for it. — Tzeentch
Doing what is right for fear of punishment is ethics for three-year-olds. Adults take responsibility. — Banno
not many 3 year-olds there.
— Tom Storm
Yes, there are. They just have older bodies. — Banno
There once was a — Banno
My understanding of morality is that it is intended to reduce the friction and conflict among people who are consistently fractious. Secular morality can ignore the god-man relationship which religious morality attends to. — Bitter Crank
It can also be seen as a code of conduct that is largely shared by a community or culture — Tom Storm
Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Obedience is doing what you are told regardless of what is right. — H.L. Mencken
What need is there to justify morality, by the way?
Questioner: "Prove that you should be moral, Ciceronianus!"
Ciceronianus: "Why should I do that?"
/.../ — Ciceronianus the White
For example, when I was a vegetarian, a Christian made clear to me that I was wrong to be a vegetarian, and he said, and this is from memory, but almost verbatim, that I am allowed to be a vegetarian, provided I concur that it is wrong to be one.Unfortunately it is much easier to follow rules than to engage in self reflection and improvement. Especially when you can pay for a lawyer. Or Bishop.
And so we have a common way of thinking about ethics that is assumed in Franz Liszt's OP, where the key question is not "how can I become a better person?" but "Which rules should I follow?"
Can you justify morality without religion? The notion that one might need to justify doing the right thing is ridiculous. — Banno
To which theists tend to respond along the lines that one ought to do what God commands not out of fear of punishment, but out of love of God -- that this is how one takes reponsibility.Doing what is right for fear of punishment is ethics for three-year-olds. Adults take responsibility. — Banno
Absolutely!In the same vein, people agree that there is such a thing as the familiar and the alien, the understandable and the strange. The problem is that morality , and its judgments of what is right and what is wrong , generally comes down to these dichotomies, so that morality is just another word for the drive to enforce
conformity. — Joshs
Since there is such moral diversity in the world, in order to navigate said diversity, one might acutely feel the need to justify one's sense of morality.But you could justify it to yourself, and I don't know if most people really need a philosophical justification to do good things anyway. — Dharmi
I don't see how one would be in a position of not feeling compelled to justify one's morality. — baker
Get involved in philosophical discussions about knowledge, truth, language, consciousness, science, politics, religion, logic and mathematics, art, history, and lots more. No ads, no clutter, and very little agreement — just fascinating conversations.