Why do right?

Nevermind the spiritual reprisals. WHY do you do what is right?You have mentioned survival. Do you by instinct do what is right? When it comes to survival, you eat, you drink, you procreate, you take care of your children. I don't see animals having all of this problem about guilt when they lie and empathy for each other.Why do you feel empathy for others? Why do we even have this stupid idea of right and wrong if it has no meaning?

Why would Jesus even speak to the Father if He has abandoned religion? Besides, I thought this was just words put ito Jesus' mouth to fulfill a prophecy.

Dogs do 'know' that you will get angry when they pee, or that they aren't supposed to do it. That is why most well-trained dogs will hold it. It is all cause and effect, mental assosciations like with a baby. But I have to ask, why has the dog not forgotten all-together about the pee? What you are saying is that the dog will not have a good enough memory to remember that he peed, but will have a good enough memory to remember a less recent event like your anger.Besides, all the dogs I've ever met know damn well the difference between their pee and someone else's

kuresu, I am disappointed that you keep having the same misunderstandings of religion.First off; Why do you only do the right thing because of fear of your mother? Can't you do right because you love her? If right is right, it is. The only difference between you and I, is that I say right is part of God, and you don't. I say that all 'right' IS God, is part of God. You say that 'right' is part of you. It begins and ends with your opinion, and the opinions of people around you. That is a pathetic 'right' IMO. Don't you think ANYTHING is meant to be? Even if 'right' is a survival instinct, WHY? Are you denying your free-will? If 'right' is an instinct, you don't have free-will, anymore than you have free-will to breathe. People who claim that 'right' is an instinct, are forgetting that 'wrong' happens just as often, and is sometimes more beneficial.

What make something 'right'? You can't say 'it just is' without giving it a reason why. If you have no reason, well, you know the old saying. Faith begins where reason leaves off. What if someone say 'I do the wrong thing just becuase it's the wrong thing'? I have left the stage of doing things because my parents said so. I have left the stage of doing things because God said so. Rules are for stupid people who can't figure out what God or their mother would want, and who can't figure out WHY their mother or God told them to share their toys and tell the truth. Most people who have good use of their mental capabilities leave the stage of cause and effect, action and punishment, around the age of reason. At that point, they can decide for themselves if it is more fun to lie and steal, or if love for their parents and for 'right' will stop them from doing it before they even get caught. In the end, love leads to right. Love of God is no different. If you see someone hate in the name of God, you automatically feel repulsed, by them and their God. You are almost admitting that God exists by saying 'God can't be like that'.

So doing 'right' is just pure dumb luck? That is interesting! Just let us say, that all gods aside, if you think anything is MEANT to be, you might as well just say 'godditit'. Maybe not the Xian God, maybe not Jesus, etc., but you ARE acknowledging a higher power. If it is all evolution, and genetics/survival is as high of a power as you get, then fine. I would be bored with that. I am not afraid, kuresu. I do right because it is right, because it makes sense (sometimes) because I love people. I call these things 'God'. If you read what Phat siad, you will see. People who are not able to grow up loving themselves and being loved, are not able to love others. The saying is 'do to others what you would do to yourself'.

I am not sure you can think in concepts. At least your posts have not shown me that. Why do you do what the right thing to do is? You can't keep going in circles like this. Do you do it to fit in? Do you do it to avoid jail? Think about this; if I am late picking up my kids from the babysitter's, I can lie and say something big happened, or I can tell the truth and say I was having fun. Which would you do, and why? Is it right to make everything fine by lying and saying I had a flat tire? Or is it right to tell the truth and lose my sitter? Where is the evolution, the dumb luck, the law, the mother? Where is my peer review to tell me what is right? Where is the survival instinct? You mean, the popular thing? I don't see at all. You are telling me what is right but not why it is right. Well, then what does? Your opinion? Someone else's opinion? You need to make sense. This is your thread. If something 'just is' is it so abstract that you may want to call it God. None of you people have given me any reason or example of how you can know what is right by 'it just is'. I agree it is 'just is', because God made it so. What made it right for you?When your mother tells you not to do something, it is attached to something concrete. You most often will hurt yourself. If she tells you something stupid like 'don't eat eggs until 5 pm', you can decide to ignore it when you are old enough. Do you think all religious people are walking around with their common sense tucked in their back-pocket? Some might be, but I am sure even you follow the rules your mother gave you when you are in her house. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

If doing right is just something you should do, again, why?I aksed you if you ever feel something is 'meant to be'. You say little is meant to be. I invite you to tell your future husband or wife that meeting them was just dumb luck. It is not that romantic. Besides, if everything is just dumb luck, how do you know a woman is 'right'?

(Easy one first The avatar is of course not me. I had wanted to do something original, but that entails more work. Since anastasia means resurrection in Greek, the butterfly is a propo, and the human half butterfly even more so.See, I like dealing with you, and you have given me insight to how to deal with others. Pick apart the argument anyway you can. The question is 'why do some need God to tell them what is right?' I am saying I do not need a God Manual in my back-pocket to refer to. I do however blame 'right' ultimately on God, and the inability to determine 'why' I call 'God'. Think about it. If there was an answer to the question, 'why do what is right', other than kuresu's 'because', we wouldn't really be having this discussion. This topic keeps resurfacing because NO ONE KNOWS. If you tell me 'why' is irrelevent, that is fine, but you are not helping me to replace God. You are leaving room for God, rather than filling in the space. Simply satiating a need does not show that it is a survival mechanism. You can't say 'we eat, and when we finish, we are full' in the same breath as 'we open doors for others, and when we finish, we are full'. One bears directly on our survival, the other doesn't. There are many things that we do that bear upon the survival of somthing more than our bodies. Poetry, for example. Or music. They satisfy parts of us that go way beyond survival. Well, what IS the meaning? What is the point of right and wrong, sin and righteousness? If you keep evading the question with another question, you are leaving room for my God. I will not make the mistake of others in assuming that you have not filled that void.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Good, then you should have no problem understanding the idea of a complete human being a complete God.

Why? WHY does it make you feel bad? You are not answering the question. Why does 'right' feel 'right', why does 'wrong' feel 'wrong'? Switch 'em as you like, but answer the question. If you are not afraid of God, why oh why be afraid of yourself?As to 'fate', 'luck', etc. I don't know what it means to find the 'right' person. I have thought about that in my adolescent years. If the right person dies, is there another? Why is the right person always within reach, and not buried on the other side of the world? The point is, we believe that true love is meant to be. If we don't, it is a product of our environment, our limited choices, our 'neediness' and our personal state in life where we just 'want' to believe. I have good reasons to believe my love was 'planned', not perfect of course, but just looking at my children I can say they were 'meant to be'. We need that in our lives. We NEED the feeling of magic, no matter how we define it. I would not like a life without it.

Lol. You have left another hole for God.Your analogies are fun and interesting, but they are sometimes misleading.You sense a space and it is not there. You create an analogy which assumes there will never be a space, when in reality there may be a chasm the very next time you turn the lights on. You can think all you want. But please, if our feelings of empathy are soooooo important to survival of the species, why do we have to write books about how to be 'good'? Why do we have to make laws? Not everyone is following this empathetic instinct, obviously. Are they just mal-functioning? Do we put them in jail because they are not helping our species survive? Silly me, what are all the abortion doctors doing on the streets, then? If you don't need a Celestial Spook, the question should be easy. What IS the meaning of 'right and wrong'? What makes right, right? If I keep getting answers like; 'right is just right because it is right', and 'the meaning is whatever WE make it', then I think you are correct.

I don't want a 'how'. I want a 'why'. Why are we hard-wired to feel empathy for another? And how do you account for the fact that hard-wiring or no, some folk seem to feel zero empathy even if they aren't autistic?

Music and art definitely seem to be a by-product of our innate 'something' but obviously it is not dependent on words. I am not sure how this relates, not that I am policing you. Ringo was talking about doing 'right' because of garden-variety empathy for others. From there the question went on to whether empathy is a survival mechanism. See, it is no good. First of all, we don't all open doors. Even if we do, we only have a possibility of having the favor returned, and then once it is returned, things are even. We put out effort, we get relieved of effort. As a survival tool it is pointless. We are expending effort on people who may not ever return the favor, and if they do, we are in absolutely no better position for survival then we would be if we opened our own doors and no one elses.Nope, I am thinking 'right' has nothing to do with survival, or we would see more people doing it. What we do see is people in love with anti-survival. They are bound and determined to avoid reproductive relationships, abort babies, use drugs or birth control. It is 'wrong' to tell people that these actions are bad. So, please do not tell me survival of the species is important to us. Humans seem to be the most selfish beings which look only to survival for the individual.

Why not just kill them? They are using up the resources while in jail, of the productive and functioning members of society. They are not reproducing, and for God's sake, why would we want a mal-functioner to reproduce any way? Don't you understand why Rob is always rambling about Hitler? Because this is the logical conclusion to your 'survival' instinct. It is self-defeatest. We empathize with others, and this helps us survive (supposedly) but then we empathize with criminals, so we use up our time and resources on them even when it is detrimental to our survival? So, since when does survival think about 'wants'? It doesn't have those kind of emotions. That is a grossly ignorant statement, for all the wrong reasons. Go tell the children in the orphanages that they are not helping the survival of the species. Tell that to my husband...he was adopted. Are you feeling Hitlerish?