Replacing Religious Morality

[henryp]

Morality is really about the well being of sentient beings.

Even with out empathy, it is easy to use evidence, and rational and logical thought in order to discern that, in general: life is preferable to death, health is preferable to disease, comfort is preferable to pain, etc.

Even without a sense of empathy, morality can be rationally ascertained.

I think that's the intuitive answer. But I don't think reality reflects that. When you start saying preferable, that implies some metric is being used to measure things. The kid doesn't want to die in Africa because he values living, lets say. The problem is that his living being valuable is not an absolute. It's a subjective value some people hold, and some people don't.

The example I'm growing fond of is "If the world exploded on Tuesday, who would care on Wednesday?" The answer is nobody. Our entire existence would no longer matter in any way, because there is no absolute meaning.

So individually, we tend to prefer health/living, but that's mostly for us and those who we have attached value to. Your dog gets hit by a car, you shed tears. 1000's of phillipinos die in a typhoon, you watch a video on CNN and think "that'd suck" and move on with your day.

--

When I referred to empathy as a religion, I just meant it was a tool to control the masses. To give us motivation to act in an irrational manner. Religion, nationalism, political idealogy, and whatever else that can be used to control us.