(July 31, 2019 at 7:46 am)Grandizer Wrote: An ought was given, and it was given by society, by people just like you and me.
The basic error of many religious people is the notion that morality is invalid if it doesn't have some backing authority -- in their case dispensed by a Strong Man who imposes the rules on penalty of various things ranging from withdraw of favor and protection to eternal perdition. There is no particular reason to think this to be true, other than that they have been taught it from the cradle -- and, ironically, believing in imposed and enforced moral absolutes spares them having to make any morally difficult or ambiguous decisions, or to take personal responsibility for those decisions. The promise of the whole notion is that one will have moral clarity and the confidence of their own rightness. The fear and loathing they express around not having morality imposed from on high is of a scary, confusing world where "anything goes". This also feeds into their concepts of utter depravity and original sin; this makes them feel incapable of making good moral decisions that aren't externally imposed.
It's a great example of how the various memes that Christianity is constructed from interlock and interact. The whole idea is to rob you of your virtue, your moral agency, your ability to reason, and replace it with blind obeisance to ecclesiastical authority.
In point of fact, morality is valid because WE decide FOR OURSELVES what works and what doesn't. When you are free to add things to your life that bring value, and subtract things that don't, you ultimately find that how you treat yourself and others is intertwined, so you end up acting both in accordance with your own long range rational self interest, AND that of others.
In point of fact, morality has never been anything other than a work product of society that religion appropriates for itself, tweaks in some superficial ways to make it seem special, and then claims to be its inventor and protector.
