RE: From where come your morals?
April 17, 2015 at 5:16 pm
(This post was last modified: April 17, 2015 at 5:19 pm by Mudhammam.)
(April 11, 2015 at 8:29 am)urlawyer Wrote: So, this is kind of a big topic amongst theists and atheists alike since it is paramount to each of our identities, worldview, and how we live our daily lives. I take a firm stance in the grounds of subjective morality which is why we have such a diversely opinionated people.My morals are derived from what I perceive as real human needs. In this sense they are objective because needs apply to everyone, as they are both biological and psychological, and as a result of evolutionary fitness, we share a closeness in genetic composition so as to experience the same needs. We all need food and drink to stay alive, for example, but each culture may vary in the food and drink they view as nutritious. That doesn't restrict a person from evaluating the health of each culture and making a determination of better or worse conditions based on a universal definition of health. The same goes for morality. As humans, we possess certain psychological needs, such as an ability to further our knowledge and relative freedom to exercise our rights, such as the autonomy of our own persons, privacy, speech, etc., which are rights because each person requires that these be respected by others in order to live well, and living well is the natural right of living if living is worth anything at all. As Socrates thought the unexamined life not worth living, Aristotle thought the unplanned life not worth examination. In order to plan, one must decide on what it means to live well, and this first and foremost means supplying one's self with the needs precluded by human life, and then with the wants that the good life entails. As man is a social animal, he forms bonds by which this goal is better achieved and protection is more ensured. This is the state. It is a person's wants that conflict, not his or her needs, which we all share. When a person wants more than they need, and it impedes on the wants or needs of another, there is conflict which sometimes involves a difficult moral dilemma. The only way to objectively evaluate their dispute is to apply the particulars to the universal as best as possible, e.g. "How would our ruling in this instance affect society if the rule was applied to all similar instances?”, and to consider the consequences in context of both the past and the future.
What I want to know is what values do you personally hold as a baseline for your own morality? Theists are welcome to join in the discussion but if you propose your holy scriptures as your foundation, please offer some specific pieces instead of the entirety so this doesn't turn into another "this-is-why-your-book-isn't-a-valid-source-of-morality" thread.
My personal baseline values are: human existence, individual enjoyment of said existence, truth, and knowledge.
I suppose these values make me something of an intellectual humanist... if my understanding of what a humanist is is correct.
He who loves God cannot endeavour that God should love him in return - Baruch Spinoza