Comment on Without the precursor of Spirituality and Religion, there can be no morality.
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks agoSome came from religious teaching, but mostly I got my moral code from my peers and personal experience. I very much start with treating others as I’d be happy/like to be treated. If you follow that principal to start with then most other morals fall into place.
My point is your peers, the books you have read, your parents, grand parents, etc have all been influenced in some way by Religious moral codes. One does not require it in modern times, but there was a point where it was necessary to define “morality” and unify the population under an exact moral code, and spirituality and Religion were necessary to spread and encode that morality in the greater population.
This is why all Evidence we have suggests humans have always been inclined to be spiritual or Religious through out history.
Not sure what you’re getting at about how far back you have to go but perhaps I can head off that discussion by saying that most morals can exist in the absence of religion and spirituality.
Morals can now exist in the absence of Religion and spirituality, my point is that wasn’t always the case, and all evidence we have suggests spiritual practices are a driving factor in our ability to form larger groups because all the information we have suggests spiritual belief in those populations.
Religion or spirituality of some form or another has existed for as long as we have any detailed information on any societies. The main problem with this discussion is that spiritual, religious and plain moral beliefs long predate any written language system so we can’t refer to any solid evidence.
The verbal histories we have intact also demonstrate longstanding spiritual beliefs. If all evidence suggests that some form of spirituality was required for our species to agree on “morality” and form larger groups than I see no point arguing about things we don’t have evidence for.
If you start with “I don’t like that” as a simplistic moral, then that predates any language as well and therefore spirtuality or religion.
“Like” is subjective, and if I cannot communicate with you whether or not I like something we have no way of moving forward. When we can communicate, and we disagree, then what?
Morality is subjective at the end of the day. Not everyone believes the same things are wrong that you do. If this is the case now, imagine what “debate” was like before communication and what would be required to instill consistency in the morality of the population.
Redfox8@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Haha, I thought you’d say that! Well no, given how widspread and old religion and spiritually is that’s not possible for anyone but a child raised by wolves to say it hasn’t been an influence!
My centre point of discussion is to look back before, wayyyy before any of these ideas could be cultivated. I feel that you are starting somewhere at a point where these morals are in the process of being developed and refined, if in early days, so your arguments are somewhat self supporting (happy to be corrected, just the impression I’m getting).
You say there’s no point in discussing what cannot be proven with evidence…well that makes this whole discussion somewhat defunct then unfortunately!! I’d already written the below so I’ll leave it should you wish to discuss further despite this :)
You say it was necessary for formation of larger social groups etc but…I go back to my basic starting point of “I don’t like…” As you say there needs to be discussion, development and unity of belief for it to become a recognisable, repeatable, lasting moral system. But that just demonstrates my point that basic, individualistic morals came first then once complex language started to develop then shared likes and dislikes become more prevalent. Imagine what it was like before? Just take a look at chimpanzees.
The developement of shared beliefs, religious or otherwise, will no doubt have occurred simultaneously. Overlapping, replacing and morphing over millions of generations. Some ideas being discarded/diminished as other new ones arose - e.g. that great 1 in 1000 year volcano eruption replacing the end of the 20 year flood occurance, to use my natural disaster example again.
But “I don’t like…” is still the starting point for pretty much any discussion about morals as far as I believe.
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I think we agree but we are misaligned on the wording.
Would you agree with the following statement:
The Human species can use the basic idea of “like and dislike” to form rudimentary “premoral behavior”, but require the ability to communicate that information efficiently with a large group of humans and historically with the evidence we have this was done through spiritual and religious belief structures.
Redfox8@mander.xyz 3 weeks ago
Quite possibly, I’m a devout athiest so don’t even begin to think in any religious or spiritual terms (could you tell?!)
But yes, I certainly agree with that statement without argument. Thanks for the discussion :)
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 3 weeks ago
I don’t believe in Spiritual things. I know they are made up, and I know there is no argument or evidence to support the belief that any “God” exists. If something “Supernatural” exists (It doesn’t, but Gorillas were once a “cryptid” like big foot until we finally got one. haha), it is just a natural event we can now explain. So I would say we agree. haha
Other than the “Atheist” thing only because I don’t want to label myself something that theists came up with, even if by definition one could argue I am one. haha
Awesome! Thanks for the great discussion! :)