RE: Why Secular Morality is Superior
September 6, 2012 at 2:28 pm
(This post was last modified: September 6, 2012 at 2:33 pm by Ryantology.)
(September 4, 2012 at 11:42 pm)elunico13 Wrote: Sorry about dodging the second part. Since there are terrible crimes in the bible then you should be able to tell me why they're terrible.
They are terrible because I would not want any of them perpetrated on myself. I would not want to be killed, maimed, turned into a rape slave, have my property stolen or destroyed, have my children's brains dashed out on rocks, etc. My morality is formed on a very clear basis: certain things can cause me great amounts of stress, pain, or outright annihilation, and I do not want any of those things done to me. It would, therefore, be immoral to do those things to others, because my experience in interacting with other people indicates to me that none of them want these things done to them, proving to me that my morality is not based on quirks unique to myself.
That's all I, or anyone, needs to know. I do not ever want to experience harm, except the kind which is an absolutely necessary by-product of a process which will ultimately improve my life. Harm for the sake of harm is terrible, to me, and my experience tells me the vast majority of people agree with this. That is the basis of my morality. It is far stronger, and more beneficial to everyone I encounter, therefore it is the superior morality in every way, especially compared to the morals of a book which gleefully permits so many things I, or almost anyone else, could never find moral. It's why even believers, all but the most insanely literal at least, have long since cherrypicked biblical morals and keep the ones which are mostly similar to what I described. Unfortunately, they do still pick a lot which are harmful to other people simply for the sake of harming them, though, of course, they wrap up their immorality in pages of the bible, so that they can pretend it isn't evil.
Why do I choose the term 'evil'? Because there's no more concise way to describe moral evil than 'harming for harm's sake'.
Quote:How do you know your brain is fully developed and not in a sociopathic state? "My brain tells me".
I do not rely solely on my brain for this information. I rely on outside knowledge, the way people interact with me, and the relatively objective observations of others (such as the science of biology and the study of psychology) which give me the knowledge that my brain is mostly finished in its physiological development and that my mental state is in no way exceedingly out of whack. I could not possibly form a meaningful picture of my mental state if I had nothing to compare it to.
It is the theist which derives entire worldviews from single sources they insist are infallible; you shouldn't make that mistake about me.