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From: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (Paul Dubuc)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: Schools and Churches (really 'support' for areligious moral codes)
Message-ID: <5934@cbscc.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Sep-85 09:38:03 EDT
Article-I.D.: cbscc.5934
Posted: Thu Sep 19 09:38:03 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 05:58:17 EDT
References: <623@hou2g.UUCP> <5884@cbscc.UUCP> <1154@mhuxt.UUCP> <5906@cbscc.UUCP> <1683@dciem.UUCP>
Reply-To: pmd@cbscc.UUCP (unix-Paul Dubuc,x7836,1L244,59472)
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories , Columbus
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Xref: watmath net.politics:11082 net.religion:7702

In article <1683@dciem.UUCP> mmt@dciem.UUCP (PUT YOUR NAME HERE) writes:
>
>>
>>I assume you are in favor of laws that compel people to obey some of your
>>moral standards, Jeff.  I assume you are against things like rape, murder
>>and theft and think it is good that others are compelled to obey this standard
>>by our laws.  I also assume that you believe that laws like this are not
>>a matter of individual preference and that, on the other hand, the rightness
>>of a law does not depend only on whether the majority of people think it's
>>right.  So, then, what is the justification for these laws apart from religion?
>>
>>The thing I am contending against is the idea that a moral code of behaviour
>>can have it's implications for society disregarded solely on the contention
>>that that moral code is based on religious belief.  As I see it, the argument
>>behind that contention is that morality may be completely divorced from
>>any religious grounding.  I consider that religious grounding to be any
>>appeal to transcendent standards (i.e. those which are validated on
>>an authority above Mankind or, as Kant believed, reason alone.)  If laws
>>must ultimately be based on a transcendend standard to have validity, then
>>I suggest that arguments against "imposing morality" based on religion
>>are ill founded.
>>
>>-- 
>>
>>Paul Dubuc      cbscc!pmd
>
>I wonder what religion is followed by baboons and other primates, or
>by wolves or lions (social animals generally)?  They *behave* as if they
>have moral codes not unlike ours, though perhaps less complex.  They
>can't really argue on Usenet, so we don't know why they follow these
>codes.

Can baboons *decide* to disobey these "moral codes"?  Can they analize
them and calculate the risk of not doing so?  Why should I have to
obey our human moral codes because baboons obey theirs?  We *can*
argue on USENET and in politics, and that makes all the difference.

>Isn't it much simpler to believe that the basis for our moral codes
>has evolved from successful strategies for behaving as social beings,
>than to bring in appeals to a religion that started only 2000 years
>ago, long after people were behaving morally (oh, I suppose the Periclean
>Greeks were immoral -- after all, they didn't abhore homosexual love :-)).
>It seems totally ridiculous to me, to suggest that moral codes derive
>from religions.  Perhaps the religions were invented to provide a
>framework for the moral codes?

I did not suggest that moral codes derive from religions (that may
be true or false, but it was not my point).  My point is that only
religiously grounded moral codes can claim any real authority over
other human beings.  This is a transcendent standard, one that subjects
that king to the law as well as the peasant.  If the law is not based
on a transcendent authority, then it is whatever the king (or government
in today's terms) says it is; those in power define right and wrong.

If moral codes are a product of evolution as you say, then so is my
ability to reason and question those moral codes.  Should I just obey
them because they were supposedly right for "primitive humans"?  Do it
because that's the way it's always been done?  The technology we have may
help me avoid the consequences they had.  How does this basis for
morality help answer the question of whether it is right for me to cheat
on my income tax?

-- 

Paul Dubuc 	cbscc!pmd