RE: As a nonreligious person, where do you get your moral guidance?
October 16, 2022 at 10:47 am
(This post was last modified: October 16, 2022 at 10:55 am by Anomalocaris.)
(October 15, 2022 at 10:52 pm)Gentle_Idiot Wrote:(October 15, 2022 at 10:35 pm)Belacqua Wrote: I think Ahriman is right here, though perhaps in an indirect way.
So for example MY morality didn't come from religion, because I've never been to church, and didn't start reading about religion until well into my 30s. Safe to say my morality was pretty much set by that time.
But history didn't start with my parents. If we're of European descent, the culture we live in was shaped, like it or not, by Christianity. We may have shed the religious justifications, but a lot of our morality is directly descended from religion.
Many atheists reproduce a specifically Protestant view of society, how it should progress, what responsibilities we have, etc.
Readable book on this topic:
https://www.amazon.com/Dominion-Christia...626&sr=8-8
As for whether one religion's moral system is better than another's: that's a tricky question, because we are always judging "better" based on our own set of values. That other religion can just as easily judge us.
I still remember reading a scholar who spoke of Nietzsche's Ubermensch concept, that ultimately the only great way to judge morality is whether or not it is "life-affirming". Essentially, to Nietzsche, does your worldview allow you to live a life that strengthens both yourself as the individual and your community? If you are a rampaging murderer, you will kill and then get killed. But perhaps a rampaging murderer in a battlefield in which you fight for the preservation of your nation and its citizens is a noble thing.
Was a rampaging murderer in a battlefield in which you fight for the preservation of the third Reich a Nobel thing? Is morality fundamentally about prescriptions or responsibilities? Are prescriptions training wheels on the way to responsibility or sufficient as end in itself?
Who would say responsibility is an end to itself and why?