(April 26, 2015 at 8:52 am)wallym Wrote: There are plenty of discussions on morality, and it goes 'round and 'round as folks all claim what is moral or immoral, and what humans naturally feel about such things. And of course, being a bunch of different people, everybody comes up with their own rules and beliefs/lack of beliefs.
What if we're looking at it slightly skewed:
The general rule of thumb is that people inherently want(know) to be good. What if instead what society/evolution has ingrained in us, is that we want to believe we are good.
It seems to me like human behavior makes a ton more sense based on the 2nd idea?
The difference is subtle. The goal of being good as we generically understand it would be partaking in good actions/behaviors, I'd think. The goal of believing you are good would be to rationalize your behavior in a way that you conclude you are a good person. There will definitely be crossover, but when we see discrepancies, it would be explained by where we set the bar and how well we can rationalize. I may believe posting Twitter hashtags makes me a good person even though a good person would probably do more than post hashtags on twitter.
Don't know if you could tell the difference between the two if your rationalization about your own goodness is predicated on some form of action.
It's also amusing to think about the implications for religion, if an omniscient god knows that you're not doing something for the sake of others, but for the sake of placating one's own ego, then that's not going to impress that god concept.
Same goes for your decision to believe, if it's only to save your own skin from eternal punishment, then this god concept would be angered, not mollified by your decision.
Everyone fries in hell, the greatest cosmic joke ever.
Using the supernatural to explain events in your life is a failure of the intellect to comprehend the world around you. -The Inquisition
