Ethical frameworks exist that don’t rely on religion or spirituality. Utilitarianism, kantism, etc…
I’m not sure if I understand the statement properly, but I appreciate the challenge here. Why precursor?
My argument is that a “unified morality” can only be the result of a Spiritual or Religious belief structure due to the subjective nature of morality, the need for it to be easily communicated and enforced, and the need for a “bigger than me” idea to connect the species to in order to follow.
I support this by the fact that the evidence we have of Human civilization, and precivilization humans, demonstrates a spiritual belief structure in all documented groups.
This is not to say that morality in the modern age requires either Spirituality or Religion, because it doesn’t due to the thousands of years of “debate”, but that the formation of these things were necessary to bring our species together into larger groups because there is no inherent moral code in humans, and we are simply animals who need to be taught everything to survive by our elders and peers.
I do not believe in a “God” and I am not arguing that one is required for morality to exist, but I am saying that spirituality is the precursor to the idea of “morality” and required for “morality” to form in the first place.
Wow, thanks for your thorough clarification!
I do agree somewhat, or at least to the extent that without spirituality the morality concept is weak. Things like compassion and altruism don’t necessarily need spirituality to exist, yet offer vague subjective guidelines for morality.
No problem!
I don’t believe we don’t have a compassion and altruism towards other members of our species. We most certainly aren’t the only species with those traits either, which is amazing and they do not need spirituality to exist. Those are “premoral behaviors”, as described in other animals, and that to me assumes they cannot be “morality” if we aren’t willing to call other animals “moral” who present them.
The problem with those traits is they must still be nurtured and taught, and we can barely get 2 people to agree on how to raise a child let alone a whole community or country, which is why I believe the solution was forming a morality through spirituality using those basic traits as a starting point.
I just don’t calls those traits “morality”, but they are what make us capable of being “moral” or defining what is “moral”. I honestly laugh at the idea of “Cause rock say” was likely the easiest thing to communicate for early humans to explain why you shouldn’t do something before we had super advance language, and it snowballed from there. haha
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Wish you well on your journey!
Every time somebody like this pops up, it’s a great reminder that you can block people and you should block people.
You don’t need to explain to this moron why he’s a moron.
You just waiting for me to respond so that blocking doesn’t stop me from seeing this? Or are you just being a knob?
I have neither spirituality nor religion and I consider myself a rather moral person. Neither of those did anything for me and I do not look at any religiosity I may have been taught as a child as a reason for my morals. Live and let live works pretty well for me. Always has and I’m almost 60. So no, I don’t agree with your point.
I am not saying that you require either in modern times. I am saying that without both Spirituality and Religion in our civilizations history we wouldn’t have the moral codes that exist within our species.
It doesn’t serve us well to murder our own communities. It doesn’t serve us well to cause conflict and strife among ourselves when external circumstances are tough enough.
Living on the steppe or on the savannah would have been extremely tough, and I believe that pragmatism would have naturally lead to a sort of morality – don’t steal from, harm, kill, antagonise other people in your group or you’re putting the entire group at risk.
It doesn’t have to be spiritual or religious!
It doesn’t have to be spiritual or religious!
But historically, according to all available evidence, it was spiritualism and religion that promoted these behaviors in a more widespread way leading to larger groups of people coexisting.
The behavior you are referencing is seen in other species and known as “premoral behavior”. I do not deny that those behaviors benefit the group, what I am saying is it is not a demonstration of morality. It is however the first step into developing morality.
Thanks for the response :) it’s an interesting question you’ve raised, and I haven’t looked into it enough really.
I think I’ve keyed into your phrasing, particularly “precursor”, in my answer. If “premoral behaviour” is a step in developing morality, does that make it a precursor?
What happens between premoral behaviour and morality that develops it? I would have assumed that reward/punishment behaviours between humans socially based on those “premoral” behaviours I described would have led to more nuanced moral systems that would have then been written into religious and spiritual practices.
What do you think happens between premorality and morality? What role does spirituality or religion play – does a higher power give us our morals?
I think I’ve keyed into your phrasing, particularly “precursor”, in my answer. If “premoral behaviour” is a step in developing morality, does that make it a precursor?
Yes.
What happens between premoral behaviour and morality that develops it?
Mysticism and spirituality is what is between “premoral behavior” and “morality”.
I would have assumed that reward/punishment behaviours between humans socially based on those “premoral” behaviours I described would have led to more nuanced moral systems that would have then been written into religious and spiritual practices.
What do you think happens between premorality and morality?
We had spiritual practices before written word. These were kept through oral histories.
I see the path to the idea of morality like this:
Once a species begins to show “premoral behaviors” (Things like demonstration of altruism to other members of the species) overtime these behaviors ingrain into that specific population of the species. However, these animals will still go against those behaviors and will require as you said a “reward/punishment” system. This helps to reinforce those behaviors within that specific group.
This will work for a few dozen people, but even then there would be dissent and disagreement over what is and isn’t acceptable leading to violations of rules in place. The consequence is violence.
What I believe was needed to get past this point and have larger groups of humans work together was an idea that being “good” was “bigger than us”. Spirituality is that step from “rules” to “morally correct”. Without the idea of something bigger making the rules and declaring actions “good”, we are simply making rules that other agree and disagree with that require enforcement through violence.
Which isn’t to say that Religion isn’t a history of violence and disagreement, but there is a difference between “Rule enforced by Man” and “Rule enforced by an all powerful being” when trying to get a group of people to act “appropriately” in precivilization humans. “I can kill you if I disagree, but this “God” thing sounds like I don’t want a piece of that”.
does a higher power give us our morals?
No. All evidence suggest there is no God, no afterlife, and nothing special about our species beyond becoming smart enough to kill ourselves.
I honestly still just feel like we’re agreeing on the order of things here though. Premoral behaviours develop naturally, become ingrained, and then get written into religions or spirituality to give them even more weight – sort of like how a lot of myths about evil water spirits supposedly being warnings to children to not play near water cos they’ll drown.
Just to clarify, when I say “written into” I’m not necessarily meaning physically written down. I mean more like “built into”.
I don’t think we’re disagreeing here, right?
You’re agreeing on the order. The difference is he’s trying to stuff his religious beliefs into a process that doesn’t need it.
The difference is he’s trying to stuff his religious beliefs into a process that doesn’t need it.
I am not religious, and you are a bigot for assuming so. Not everyone who talks about religion is religious.
I don’t know enough about your though process to say we agree or disagree, but it seems we aren’t in disagreement.
“Without the precursor of gender roles, there can be no morality.”
“Without the precursor of tradition there can be no morality.”
“Without the precursor of >insert social structure< there can be no morality.”
Some of our social structures have things to say about morality. Sometimes they’re saying"love your neighbor as yourself," and sometimes they’re saying “burn that city to the ground and keep all of the preteen girls as sex slaves.” Just because religion and spirituality have things to say about morality doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re worth listening too, and it doesn’t mean we couldn’t have developed a system of morality in their absence.
Without religion and spirituality, we may have developed a better, more universal system of morality, rather than the patchwork of haphazard and contradictory traditions we currently enjoy. We’ll never know, because religion was created early in our history, and for the rest of eternity, we get to listen to asinine armchair theologians tell us “without religion, there would be no real morality.”
and it doesn’t mean we couldn’t have developed a system of morality in their absence.
The fact is we have no evidence to suggest our species has ever developed a system of morality without spirituality. Just because we may have been able to, evidence clearly demonstrates a trend of that either not working or not being an idea for precivilization humans.
Without religion and spirituality, we may have developed a better, more universal system of morality, rather than the patchwork of haphazard and contradictory traditions we currently enjoy. We’ll never know, because religion was created early in our history, and for the rest of eternity, we get to listen to asinine armchair theologians tell us “without religion, there would be no real morality.”
I am not arguing that religion is good. I am saying it was a means to an end, and we can point to all evidence we have and see that. Regardless of how you feel about it, not a single culture developed a moral system without first developing a spiritual one that we have evidence of.
I hate to throw out this old chestnut, but “correlation does not equal causation.” Just because religion existed in one form or another in almost every single culture, does not mean it’s necessary for morality. As I mentioned previously, lots of social structures existed in early societies that had things to say about morality. That doesn’t mean they were necessary precursors.
I feel a lot of the people disagreeing here are making assumptions about your beliefs, missing the point, and then simply refuting you to refute you without providing explaination. I think this is a fair and interesting premise. I disagree with it and will ecplain why, though do note I am not invested enough to specifically look anything up so if I say something inaccurate, please evaluate if the logic falls apart or not.
I think the first part of your main justifications has been hard to refute. Most, if not all societies we have known have had religion or spirituality. However, I think your following conclusion, “those societies must have then used morality based on those religions”, is where the flaw is. I think most societies had religion as a form of a “God of the gaps” and used it to explain phenomena they couldn’t. I would say that is the main reason they did have it. However, that doesn’t yet mean they didn’t use it for morality. To see that, I’d ask you to look at Greek and Roman mythology, or as known to them, religion. Now I believe, Zeus turning into a swan and doing Zeus things doesn’t have a moral (or not a useful one, it’s mainly that Zeus is an asshole)… Likewise, Aphrodite turning Arachne into a spider didn’t really inform some Greek moral of don’t be too pretty, just showed Aphrodite is, for lack of a better word, a fucking jealous bitch. Let’s similarly look at Norse mythology. Loki makes Fenrir and tries to kill other gods and generally does shenanigans. There’s not really a moral attached to that, he kinda just does shit cus he’s a hit of a dick.
My main point here is that while these religions existed, they did so to explain phenomena or were then essentially fanfic extensions of the reasons/personifications of those phenomena, and often were not the basis for morality of a culture (but very well likely were themselves molded by a cultures morality in a reversal of causation). Because Greece, Roman, and Norse cultures were more secular, they could therefore have stories without morals that just had assholery abound. Because the time around the formation of the Christian church was more tyrannical (now I’m guessing), the bible had much more heavy handed morals (ten commandments, 7 deadly sins etc).
I hope that was a better argument for disagreement. And, I don’t think your premise was as outlandish as so many others are making it out to be, despite my disagreement.
I sincerely do not think you understand my point if you are only willing to think as far back as Classical Greece, while also demonstrating a pretty ignorant understanding of Greek, Roman, or Norse culture. I would highly recommend reading up on the history of all those people before trying to use their belief structures in argument.
My point is 100% of all documented groups of people had spirituality and religious practices in their history, and a unified idea of “morality” cannot exist without those precursors.
You are operating under the impression that humans 10,000 years ago had access to even a fraction of the education and time to reflect and think you have.
Classical Greece was just one of my examples. My main point is that, even if all documented groups had spirituality and religious practices (which I don’t refute), is that you have not convinced me of the cause and effect between morality and spirituality in human society.
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I do believe people did not need a modern formal education or a ton of free time to reflect and think at a high level. If that belief is an issue, then we fundamentally disagree on that point.
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You continue to state that all societies have documented spiritual and religious practices, and I apologize that I didn’t make it clear enough that I understood you meant all societies and that I was only using a few societies as an example, but you have not stated why that means spirituality caused morality or needed to have caused morality. Genuinely, could you explain to me how it is implausible that any moral principals found in those religions were the product of societal morals of the time and not the other way around? Even if morals are subjective, religious interpretation is also subjective. As far as meanins to humans and structure goes, neither is more objective than the other in my opinion. Or maybe morals are more objective if we assume they were developed as guided by survival of the species rather than as guided by religion.
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If you want to ignore everything else, here’s as simple a summary of my question as possible: Why do you insist religion -> morals? Why can it not be morals -> religion?
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I’ve heard this bullshit so many times…
What we call “morality” is simply put to words those behaviours that has made us a successful species. We are a communal species, one of our greatest strengths being the delegation and specialisation of tasks; all working together. Everything we’ve built, everything we’ve achieved, can be attributed to that feature of our species.
Now, imagine how far we’d get if every individual in our species acted “amorally”.
Morality is a product of evolution.
Morality is a product of evolution.
Yes, and spirituality is the point between “premoral behavior” in animals, and “morality” as a unified idea in us as I have argued.
I get where you’re coming from. I used to think the same thing. I don’t anymore and I would urge you to look more into subjective vs objective morality. Alex O’Connor has some really good thoughts on the matter.
I would urge you to look at the fact that every documented human group we have evidence from had a spiritual belief structure, and that it is safe to assume that a spiritual belief system was required for our species to form larger groups and bigger populations.
This does not argue the existence of God, just our species constant and persistent belief that something supernatural is behind that shit. Which also happens to be the driver of early scientific study.
If you assumed I was Religious based on my post I also urge you to check your bigotry.
Yes, humans tend to explain things they don’t understand using myths. And yes, humans have historically used those same myths to explain morality. How does it then follow that religion and spiritualism are required for morality to exist?
If a unified morality is required for our species to coexist in ever larger groups, and evidence of spiritual belief has been found in every documented group of Humans, why wouldn’t it be safe to assume that spirituality was a requirement for our species to move beyond small family units?
I think the issue here is horse before cart
Humans as a species have a need to explain the world around us. Unfortunately the thought process before the codified use of science was “i don’t know there for god”
This means the spiritual system was in place was in place before morality.
This spiritually was bent around what was acceptable at the time. Slavery capital punishment polygamy etc. All of which are more or less moral based on nothing more than where you live
This sounds like you agree with me.
Not really your arguing unless I’m misunderstanding you your basically arguing coronation = causation
We are now in a time where spirituality is not built in (terms and conditions apply) but morality still exist.
Hell I’d argue in this day and age societal spirituality is harmful to morality
We are in a time now where morality does not require spirituality or religion. My point is that it was required to get our species to the point we are at now by unifying a “moral code”, and all evidence we have supports that idea.
I am not arguing for religion or spirituality in the modern age, I am saying it served a purpose.
Again causality vs coronation
There is nothing to say if by some quirk of faight (yeh i know what I’m saying but roll with it) something akin to the scientific method was the norm in place of i dunno there for God. We would still come up with societal norms or morality.
If that were true, why has no documented civilization or precivilization existed without an element of spirituality or religion in their history?
The point is Spirituality came first, and based on evidence, was needed for humans to form groups larger than a small family unit as a way to unify “morals”.
“What if we had science instead” is a moot point because we have Science now and proved early humans wrong.
“‘Without religion, how would you stop yourself from raping and killing all you want?’ I already do all the raping and killing I want. That number is ZERO because I don’t want to rape or kill!” - Penn Gillette.
With or without Religion we seem to, as a species, not inherently think raping and killing is wrong considering all of the raping and killing that goes on.
My point is all documented human groups had a spiritual belief structure so evidence suggests that belief structure was required for a consistent, easy to communicate, “moral code” that exists today.
Go back 10,000 years if you want to see what “inherent human morals” look like.
That doesn’t suggest that at all. Correlation does not equal causation.
You tell me what every single group of humans having a spiritual belief structure means then. Otherwise don’t waste my time
What do you even mean by “precursor”?
One that precedes and indicates, suggests, or announces someone or something to come.
I didn’t ask for the dictionary definition, I asked what you meant by using it in the context you used it.
That is what I meant in the context I am using it in. When you say words you assume the person listening understands the definition of the word in order to understand the over all statement in context.
That is how words work.
Now do you have a point to make about my very clear statement, or do you want to go start a fight elsewhere?
Okay, so you’re just stringing together big words to try and sound smarter than you are, because “precursor of spirituality and religion” is a nonsense phrase.
Okay, so you’re just stringing together big words to try and sound smarter than you are, because “precursor of spirituality and religion” is a nonsense phrase.
Whatever you say buddy. Have fun being angry at a thought.
I’d say morality came first and people invented religion to justify the moral frameworks they already had. Cultures invented gods and ascribed their culture’s shared moral views to their gods
Even animals have some kind of morality
If you think religion is the only reason to be a good person, you need therapy.
I don’t think that and never said that.
Either your argument is that morality is somehow “god given” through religion, in which case I have to ask, which god? Which religion? There’s a lot of those around or no longer around, with different nuances of morality, contradicting that idea.
Or each civilization developed religion and incorporated their respectove ideas about morality, but then morality necessarily precedes religiosity.
Either way, doesn’t make sense.
Besides, the idea that a fear of god is necessary to make people “moral” is ridiculous. If you would commit immoral atrocities if you didn’t believe in god, then I’m sorry, that makes you a bad person; but don’t project that unto other people.
Empathy is sufficient for morality, while god, arguably, is an amoral monster.
Cheers, a moral atheist
Either your argument is that morality is somehow “god given” through religion, in which case I have to ask, which god? Which religion? There’s a lot of those around or no longer around, with different nuances of morality, contradicting that idea.
That supports my idea. It doesn’t contradict it.
All evidence we have demonstrates spirituality has existed in our species as long as we have existed in groups. This leads me to believe that spirituality was a catalyst to a unified morality that took a very long time to agree on, and we still don’t agree on it.
Or each civilization developed religion and incorporated their respectove ideas about morality, but then morality necessarily precedes religiosity.
Spirituality predates recorded civilization. It is also observable in other animals.
Either way, doesn’t make sense.
Probably because you are assuming I am religious, when I am simply referring to our historical evidence.
Besides, the idea that a fear of god is necessary to make people “moral” is ridiculous. If you would commit immoral atrocities if you didn’t believe in god, then I’m sorry, that makes you a bad person; but don’t project that unto other people.
Who taught you your morals?
I also agree with you, but we are speaking about precivilization humans so do not be offended for them. They didn’t know any better and it was either believe the rock brings a good hunt or starve in the wilderness alone.
Empathy is sufficient for morality, while god, arguably, is an amoral monster.
Empathy is not inherent, or it wouldn’t need to be taught.
God cannot exist based on all evidence we have on the subject.
Cheers, a moral atheist
Thank your Religious ancestors and ancient humans for debating all of these ideas over thousands of years so you can quickly come to the conclusion that God cannot possibly exist.
Cheers, someone who thinks atheists are as annoying as theists, and just as prone to being human.
All evidence we have demonstrates morality has existed in our species as long as we have existed in groups. This leads me to believe that morality was a catalyst to a
unifieddiverse spiritualitythat took a very long time to agree on,and we still don’t agree on it.See, it’s the same when you swap them around. When both morality and spirituality exist throughout all of written history, how can you make any claim of causality? I think spirituality is a natural extension of morality, as people began to establish collective morals, spirituality and ritual can be used to spread and reinforce ideas.
And the idea that empathy isn’t inherent is wildly ignorant. Mirror neurons are a fundamental part of our brains, suggesting empathy is taught is like claiming taste is. People are taught what to do with their empathy. Whether to embrace it or ignore it. Hell, look at any of the hundreds of examples of empathy in animals. It’s not even exclusive to vertebrates, much less civilization.
Does an Elephant have morals?
Given they mourn their dead, I think there is evidence that they do. If they can value a life, then there must be some framework within which that value stems from.
If we’re willing to agree on that, then the follow-up question would be, “do elephants have supernatural or religious beliefs?”, as you claim that’s required for morals.
I certainly wouldn’t discount the possibility. They unquestionably have empathy. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have spirituality too.
How do you define morality?
A set of principles of behavior. A concept of actions that are acceptable within the social group, and actions that are not.
Elephants are animals with long memories, complex social structures, and even elaborate mourning rituals. It would not surprise me at all to find they have their own set of rules for being accepted into the herd.
