Morality without God is impossible

This reply is to Tangle, too.A quick search found this: Was it Always True that Slavery was Wrong? It's an interesting read that walks through several ways of examining the question and concludes, in part:

Catherine Wilson:

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Slavery in the ancient world must have been wrong. For the alternative judgements – that it was not wrong or that it was neither wrong nor not wrong – imply that we have learned nothing about the moral acceptability of slavery since ancient times. And that seems plainly false.

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I disagree, and if I properly interpreted you and Tangle, then you also disagree.This means that a reexamination of the morality of American slavery says that it wasn't wrong. Southerners certainly understood it that way. It implies that the current cleansing of America of our history of slavery and racism, most recently exhibited in the renaming of Fort Bragg since Braxton Bragg was a famous Southern Civil War general, is simply using the current dominant (not unanimous) moral code to censor information about an era where a different moral code was dominant.Right and wrong are relative, unfortunately. Another example is abortion. For antiabortionists abortion is the murder of a human being and no compromise is possible. Even allowing abortion before six weeks is, well, an abortion, applying the double meaning, because life begins at conception, not at heartbeat.Pro-choice people say that these extreme (but large in numbers) antiabortionists have a flawed definition of when life begins. Conception is just one step on the way to new life. Every step is necessary, and no particular step is the one that achieves new life.Who is right? No one. Which choice will cause the most suffering? Even that answer is unclear. How do you balance the suffering of murder against the suffering of carrying an unwanted pregnancy to term and then raising that child or living with giving them up for adoption?Did anyone already mention that slavery is still practiced in some parts of the world?--Percy

Right and wrong in morality are subjective value judgements that may differ by person, community, location, millennium and on and on.There are also moral social movements over time in societies. Took about 400 years for the abolitionist view to reach from France to the colonies. Took another 200 years and a war for the morality on slavery today to become the rule. In the colonies, the collective human consciousness learned, changed, fought, warred … evolved slowly from slavery = meh to slavery = bad. The “meh” part was the $$$ and political entrenchment of the powerful oligarchs of the time.Did we know back in ancient Roman times that slavery was bad? No. The morality of the time didn’t register any objections. When the Servile wars ended and thousands of slaves were crucified along the Appian Way to Rome, there were no great, or little, protests by the greater society. In their view, slavery in that time was not wrong and neither was the mass execution of prisoners of war. Those are no longer acceptable in our modern societies.Of course, we have learned (evolved) a moral repugnance of slavery since ancient times. We evolve all our morality from the past. I don’t see the logic of the quote or of the entire article. Acknowledging the ancient view that slavery was acceptable does not mean we have to accept their reasoning or their view. And I fail to see how such implies anything about our present reasoning. Slavery is atrocious, inhumane and, by today’s standard, very bad indeed. Caesar saw it differently. Our view on slavery is different from the ancients. The quote seems to imply otherwise.As for right or wrong … the only right morality is the one you and society presently support. Be assured that view will change with time.

All I know is that the Enlightenment birthed modern-day liberalism. For better OR worse.

deleted. wrong thread

But there always has been a sense that some things are wrong or bad some things are right or good.
Sure those ideas change from one culture to another, but why do we even consider some things good or evil. From what you write you seem to think that slavery in the right context was not necessarily good but that it was ok and not bad at all. Is that correct, or was slavery always wrong. Naziism was the dominant culture in Germany in 1940. Was that good, bad or morally neutral within that culture?The practice in the world at the time of Jesus was to leave unwanted babies, usually girls, in the hills or even in dumps. This way they weren't actually killing them and they might have a chance of survival. Was that good, bad or morally neutral as that was the accepted custom in that time and culture?

Because we have a brain. A pre-frontal cortex. It reasons. It's why we're called Homo sapiens. Wise Man. We figure stuff out.

Sure we can figure out what works, but we find things in life that we do, not because we can see that it works or can see that it will bring about some particular result, but it is something we "ought" to do just because it is the right thing to do.If someone in front of me drops a 50 dollar bill on the pavement, why is it that, whether we return it or not", is it something that we all, somewhat instinctively, know we "ought" to do?

[offended]Fuck no! Your reading comprehension sucks.[/offended]As I said:- Slavery was practiced in the ancient Roman empire.
- They didn't care.
- 2000 years later, we do care.
- Just because we acknowledge their historical use of the practice does not mean we condone it.Is this clear? Is this understandable?So, now, again, we have a morality where slavery was accepted as normal by societyand,we have a later morality where slavery is abhorred.All the evidence of reality shows the difference to be due to 2000 years of human evolution.No god whispers evident. That is the entire point of this discussion (my part of it anyway).And remember this. When you think of our initial morality judgements think australopithecus not human. That is where the family tribe began. We evolved our base group morality from them.

In your case I would blame your religious upbringing for that sense of shame and guilt you feel when you consider keeping it. It's only $50. Not worth the bad emotion. Give it back.Me? Serious? I got to think real hard. Do I need this? Do I care? Dinner at Sizzling Sirloin? Ahh shit. My own guilt. Mom's still watching from inside my head. Give it back.Acculturation takes many forms in a society. Religion is but one ... or rather some 40,000 or so at last count.

So here we go again. It's an evolved trait. Scientist Finds the Beginnings of Morality in Primate Behavior - The New York TimesIt requires the emotion empathy which is instinctual and found in other primates. When combined with an ability to reason and imagine a future and the feelings of others the feeling is amplified and our early communal life reinforced it.Our current high degree of organised society comes from the evolved instinct/emotion of empathy, an evolved, reasoning brain and an evolved set of social rules (laws and punishments for breaking them.)If you want to believe that god put your 'still small voice' into our ape ancestors I guess I can't help any further. I would just ask why he left it (empathy) out some modern day people. Psychopaths.They lack the instinct but because of their reasoning brain can learn the rules - they just don't feel the need for them. They don't understand 'ought' - but they do understand the consequences of not doing ‘should’.

So please tell us the good things of the pre-enlightenment period.Also, please define what you mean by modern-day liberalism.

GDR won't bother reading or understanding. He will come back to this again in 6 months as if it is a new argument.
Wash, Rinse, Repeat.

But that misses the point. Did they have it wrong 2000 years ago. Yes, it was accepted but did that make it ok?

I have no problem with saying it evolved. The question is simply were they wrong 2000 years ago when slavery was the norm?

What?? You talk about 'the still small voice of god' and 'sacrificial love' and other religious gobbledegook. I show you that apes do it too and all-of-a-sudden, it's no longer a personal, human god-whispering thing and you're all right with that!? I'm confused. They were neither right nor wrong; they were following the rules of the society they had built. We say they're wrong now because one section of society was exploiting and harming another. But we do the same now just in different ways.In Christian America we allow impoverished black ghettos. In Catholic Europe we try to prevent the immigration of persecuted and war damaged people. In Hindu India they have a class system that includes the Delta "untouchables". In Muslim Afghanistan they prevent women working and force them to wear Hijabs. And so on.I think we can now make objective decisions about morality. I think it is perfectly possible to state that something is an immoral act, that something else isn't and that something is more moral than something else; we just measure harm. A country that harms the fewest people in the fewest ways is more moral than one that doesn't.By that standard we say slavery is wrong. It was always wrong, but people at the time did not see, or want to see the harm and if they did, they didn't think it mattered. We forget - or actually have no comprehension of - how short and brutal life was in those days. It was objectively wrong, but they weren't enlightened enough to see it.They still believed in gods and fate and superstition. It was god's will and fate that made someone a slave and someone else an emperor. Morality had nothing to do with it. Until you throw those stupid religious concepts away and note the harm to others you can't have a just society.