Comment on Without the precursor of Spirituality and Religion, there can be no morality.
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 4 days agoMy argument is that a “unified morality” can only be the result of a Spiritual or Religious belief structure due to the subjective nature of morality, the need for it to be easily communicated and enforced, and the need for a “bigger than me” idea to connect the species to in order to follow.
I support this by the fact that the evidence we have of Human civilization, and precivilization humans, demonstrates a spiritual belief structure in all documented groups.
This is not to say that morality in the modern age requires either Spirituality or Religion, because it doesn’t due to the thousands of years of “debate”, but that the formation of these things were necessary to bring our species together into larger groups because there is no inherent moral code in humans, and we are simply animals who need to be taught everything to survive by our elders and peers.
I do not believe in a “God” and I am not arguing that one is required for morality to exist, but I am saying that spirituality is the precursor to the idea of “morality” and required for “morality” to form in the first place.
lerba@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
Wow, thanks for your thorough clarification!
I do agree somewhat, or at least to the extent that without spirituality the morality concept is weak. Things like compassion and altruism don’t necessarily need spirituality to exist, yet offer vague subjective guidelines for morality.
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
No problem!
I don’t believe we don’t have a compassion and altruism towards other members of our species. We most certainly aren’t the only species with those traits either, which is amazing and they do not need spirituality to exist. Those are “premoral behaviors”, as described in other animals, and that to me assumes they cannot be “morality” if we aren’t willing to call other animals “moral” who present them.
The problem with those traits is they must still be nurtured and taught, and we can barely get 2 people to agree on how to raise a child let alone a whole community or country, which is why I believe the solution was forming a morality through spirituality using those basic traits as a starting point.
I just don’t calls those traits “morality”, but they are what make us capable of being “moral” or defining what is “moral”. I honestly laugh at the idea of “Cause rock say” was likely the easiest thing to communicate for early humans to explain why you shouldn’t do something before we had super advance language, and it snowballed from there. haha
lerba@sopuli.xyz 4 days ago
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Wish you well on your journey!
Arkouda@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
Thank you for listening and engaging! Also, Happy Cake day!