After reading some of the posts
and the .... you can't equate morality to moral belief.

I have to disagree with that statement completely.
that is implying morals are some universal law ... like gravity.
they are not.

the closest to a law morals comes is the will to survive. And has often shown that it trumps any moral beliefs we think we have.

It implies no such thing about morals Thorb unless one holds that morals, moral belief, codes of behavior, and morality are one in the same thing. I do not hold such a position, and argue against it.



We must not interchange morality and moral belief as though they are one in the same thing, because they clearly are not.

Moral belief is relative to individual particulars and therefore changes along with different culture and upbringing, whereas morality underwrites them all equally. Morality is a combined set of universal human conditions that give rise to the individual particulars, they exist and apply to all cases, without exception. The difficulty is had in identifying what those universal conditions are. I put it to you that humanity has yet to have successfully done this, but rather we get closer and closer as our knowledge grows and is applied retrospectively to the things we once thought were true.

Pointing out that there are/were differences in codes of conduct and/or moral belief does not tell us anything at all about morality.

This deserves a second look as well...



You've invoked Plato here...

Interesting.

Lets use an example.
Is abortion Moral.
When, why?

Does our scientific knowledge of when the central nervous system of the fetus develops make a difference? Why?


If we believe in some kind of soul that transcends the human body, does that make a difference? Why?

If we understand that a clump of skin cells that makes up a callous is more developed then a 1 week old pregnancy does that make aborting the one week old pregnancy no more morally objectionable then filing off a callous?

At what point does the label of baby, or the label of callous make moral sense of our actions, and when does it not make sense?

If the sum total of characteristics for what it means to be a baby does not match the clump of cells then is it appropriate to call it such? If not then does that change our moral perspective?

Does magic thinking effect this? Clearly.

One premise is that humans ought not to kill other humans.

The other premise is that humans become separate from their mothers.

The problem is when? If you think the fertilized egg has a sould, (unverifiable either way), then yes, abortion is a sin.

If you think that there is no evidence for that, seeing that human memory is connected to self-awareness, then you can conlude you get your soul at the age of two or three, or in some cases, at one or one and a half years of age.

Whom do you believe? God, or the concept that man created, which says soul arrives to a human at the moment of conception, which begins his life?

Or do you reject God, even if it is man-made (made by people just like you), and declare that human life begins no earlier than one year of age?

This is why it's a question of belief. Pro life or pro choice, we can't prove anything, save for introducing data which has questionable validity itself (like "God says/said", while god itself is not proven to exist, so how can a possibly not existing thing say anything.)

I suppose I do not see the need for magical thinking.

Moralistic view and acceptance is everchanging and will continue to the more our global population grows and meshes closer together eventually there will be no such thing as camping because humans occupy every inch of land, but that is a humane outlook. more than likely we will wipe eachother out before then

my pants. new question

HAHA niiiice

And that's certainly changed through the years even among religion. At one point in time, an abortion was fine up to the second trimester or "quickening". The Church didn't care. And if recall correctly, babies weren't named till 7 days after birth when they became ensouled.

Morals/morality changes over the years.

Morals are passed down from previous generations, religions, cultures, laws and societal dictates....

Morals may change, if by morals we mean the specific beliefs which influence our behavior. Morality however is different. While the reasons given to justify our moral codes change with knowledge, morality has not changed. We are still overcome with righteous indignation when our morality is offended.

But moral indignation remains different amongst societal dictates ethnicity cultural backgrounds and amongst people individually what makes one morally indignant may not even affect another.....

It does not follow from the fact that different things matter to different people that no thing matters to all.

What......

While it is true that different things matter to different people, cultures, groups, etc, we cannot use that to conclude that there are not some things which matter to everyone.

Why would there be a need for a feeling of justified sacrifice to be moral?

That doesn't make sense unless we revert to the belief that man in natural form is evil and will do evil things if not controlled.

Really, which ones exactly??

C.S.Lewis. Mere christianity

Book I deals with this issue in great depth. I know that many of you will reject this book out of hand, but some of you might be interested in what CS Lewis thought on the subject.

It is known that morality happens without religion and without sacrifice on a person's part so there is a base reason it happens in a person naturally.

I still think it is empathy and the understanding that what happens to others and the pain they experience from actions of other humans can happen to us just as easily.