No but really, in a world without religion - from what can morality be formed?

No but really, in a world without religion - from what can morality be formed?

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Nothing

Pragmatism.

The will of the people

Nothing, and that's how it should be.

Religion is simply a way for people to legitimize certain systems of order.

religion of humanity my man. read some durkheim desu

Ask East Asia. They managed. Though not necessarily a world without religion, they understood their gods-equivalents to be aloof of mortal concerns, only to be honored, not worshipped.

Human brains.

Like with religion.

Certain universals shared by 99.9% of the world's population.

Whatever it is formed from now. Morality doesn't come from religion and never has. Mindlessly obeying arbitrary rules is not morality.

the same way it always has: the need for community. humans are not solitary predators, we are social animals

I have recently been thinking about this, does the converse imply if there is an omniscient, omnipotent, etc. God who is a separate entity from us he has the virtue of grounding morality? Based on what, other than an understanding of morality as "the set of attitudes and behaviors expected of humans by the omnipresent deity"? Is this what morality is meant to be?

considering religious morals are the morals of people who first invented them and later on became integrated in a system to be called religion, your question is a bit silly...

>whatever it is today

Today it is a set of instilled values, that a lot of people forget are Christian, which have been diluted by the poison of political correctness and victim culture.

The further we stray from the foundations the worse it gets.

From existing religion.

Philosophy and religion are left and right hands, so even a moral philosophical code would stem from the morality that the pre-existing religion has.

No hypothetical situation is an actual present standpoint, so to gather information in this way is somewhat ridiculous.

What makes those rules arbitrary if they were formed by people that felt a need for such rules?

>MUH SCIENCE AND OBJECTIVE REALITY
>PHYSICS WILL SOON DISCOVER THE UNIFIED THEORY OF EVERYTHING AND WE WILL ALL BE ENLIGHTENED BY OUR OWN INTELLIGENCE

Bullshit. Most people do fine on 'treat others as you'd like to be treated'

>hurr why shundt i kill dis guy
Cause it takes literally a second to imagine how you'd feel if someone killed someone you like, if it were possibly, how you'd feel if you were killed, and you know why it's wrong.

>Today it is a set of instilled values, that a lot of people forget are Christian
Anything worth keeping isn't Christian only.

nothing

and then we will finally be free of spooks

>the foundations
So we should revert to the morality of Christians more around 50 A.D?

What are the founding values of civilization that are Christian in origin?

They seem to be mainly;

>murder is bad
>harming others without justification is bad
>theft is bad
>lying is bad
>disloyalty is bad
>rampant hedonism is bad

These are absolutely not exclusive to Christianity.

>killing people is universally bad
Human prehistory is literally the story of who genocided who next.

Original inhabitants of India genocided on the Indus River, original North Americans genocided by the native Americans, etc etc...

Hell, precontact native Americans were still genociding each other.

You think a North Korean sees a capitalist pig and thinks twice about shooting? No, because they were taught that.

The concept of treat others how you want to be treated is Christian lol. "Eye for an eye".

>Christianity isn't the best.
I'd argue Buddhism and Confucianism are the only superiors.

Sorry, poorly worded. I meant more so where Christianity was at the start of the modern age.

You're right, but like I said, our society is built from Christianity. Laws, morals, judicial systems, all derived from it.

Sure Christianity isn't the only religion that preaches that, but evidently it is a good system, as it produced the strongest set of countries on the earth.

Some would argue religion has nothing to do with that. They are stupid.

Every successful civilization ever has had a taboo against unprovoked murder, war is different in popular conception and you know it.

>original North Americans genocided by the native Americans

>muh solutrean hypothesis

Yeah countries that consistently went against Christian teaching

Sure, every successful civilization had laws against outright murder. But I think we've drifted from the main point of the thread. WHERE were these morals derived from? I think you know the answer.

>dissing my boy Clovis

You looking for a fight?

People like food, sex and safety. People don't like getting stabbed in the face. There you go, now you have the basis of a moral framework. Like what the fuck kind of stupid question is that?

>WHERE were these morals derived from? I think you know the answer.

The fact that they arise in every civilization seems to imply that they aren't drawn from religion, but rather that religion is drawn from them.

You have vastly different faiths and folk beliefs from Mesoamerica to Germany, but for all of their differences they all have taboos against more or less the same things.

That says to me that people uniformly arrive at the same conclusions as to what is morally acceptable for a society to function, and then justify it by creating religion that attributes these taboos to the will of a higher power.

And are now on the verge of being destroyed.

>every civilization

Except they really weren't the same for everyone, were they? I mean the two you mentioned, Mesoamerica and the Germanic region, both practiced human sacrifice pre-christianization, Islam allowed (allows) honour killings, etc. The value of human life very clearly wasn't the same everywhere.

The punishment for adultery in the medieval Islamic Middle East might be death (might still be), in Christian France it might be as simple as jail or a fine, in pagan Scandinavia it might be laughed off and nobody cares.
This is the same for many crimes, but like the difference in Scandinavia with the other two, some crimes may not be viewed as crimes in other cultures.

>morality

The fact that they have created rules and standards as to why they are able to 'legitimately' kill, means that you cannot kill for no reason. This is true for all cultures. Common sense dictates that living together with other people demands a set of rules, wolves have social rules that are enforced, do you think wolves believe in jesus too?

>but evidently it is a good system, as it produced the strongest set of countries on the earth.

Causation is not equal to correlation, it's basically the first thing you're taught in any research based scientific field.

Sure christianity might have influenced it, mainly by preserving structure and knowledge during the dark ages, but to claim that the dominance of europe leans heavily on christianity is ridiculous to me. I'd love to see some sources or arguments as to why you claim such a thing.

From people empathy, good will, common sense, social tradition and instinctive biological mechanisms.

> Laws, morals, judicial systems, all derived from it.
Judicial system was literally derived from Roman Empire and they was Pagans when created that.

Christianity was merely religion that was adopted by Roman Society, the real basis of every strong county on the Earth. You can see how religion of Christ works alone in a fucking Ethiopia that was never under Romans.

I don't think I ever claimed that all morals everywhere were descended from Christianity, did I? The point I'm arguing is that morals are derived from religion, which you still haven't addressed yet.

> morals are derived from religion
It isn't like the one was here before the other, more like they evolved together, and religion adopted the whatever moral principles there are already is. You can't prove that religion was here before morality.

The only correct answer is virtue.

So China and Japan's successes are largely attributed to the Roman Empire? Russia's? Germany's?

All that I am saying here is that western morals are derived from Christianity. This really isn't a subject of heated debate, it's the same way China's morals are derived from Confucianism, India's Hinduism, etc.

I'm sorry I gave the implication that Christianity was the sole reason the West was great, I meant a definitive influence at the very least.

One thing that solidified European hegemony of the world was its global expansion, correct? In history class the motives for this are often referred to as the three g's. Gold, gospel, and glory.

Once the pope deemed the natives to have souls worth saving, there was a huge push to proselytize from the Spanish, French, and English. The French and English competing for Protestantism and Christianity, while the Spanish were driven by zeal alone.

This is just one example of religion being a factor for development of the West.

What d'y'all need morality for?

suffering

Let's engage in a little brain exercise though. Sorry if I'm being a bit stubborn.

Imagine you're born into a tribe say, 20000 years ago. Is there something in you that inherently tells you things are wrong? What in your mind, would tell you that thievery is wrong?

Very likely the only thing stopping "crimes" from happening, and by proxy keeping th tribe together, is the mutual assurance of violence should you not cooperate.

However when the bearded man with the book tells you that thievery is wrong because an omniscient God in the sky says so, you learn to think of it as inherently bad.

Am I making any sense here lol

> Russia's?
Third Rome
> Germany's?
Holy Roman Empire

> Confucianism
It's philosophy, not a religion.

im pretty sure there are like 2-3000 years' worth of moral philosophy that doesnt draw from religion or moral imperative dictated by a god

you could look that up

No but really, in a world with religion, how can morality be formed? If moral groundings can only come from divine revelations, and can be made arbitrarily, how can there be any basis for morality? If a holy man wakes up and says God told him this or that is moral or immoral, how can we have any groundings for morality?

The only safe grounding for morality is in reason. There can be no morality with God.

Neither were settled by the Roman Empire, which is what you claimed all great nations were based off. What about the Ottomans than? The sultanate of Rum? Shouldn't Turkey be great?

You also forgot China and Japan.

> What in your mind, would tell you that thievery is wrong?
What are you even going to steal 20000 years ago when people was hunting, gathered and shared all stuff between each other anyway? Okay, suppose that is the pretty advanced tribe. There would be a two problems. The one is that people would be the really angry for stealing shit and would punish you, that creates natural balance of power, where crime isn't really worth doing. More than that, there exist people who would teach you how to behave. I don't know, maybe your mother or father said that being a thief is a great dishonor and unworthy for man, it isn't like omniscient God was invented. It is 20000 years ago. At best, you got some kind of primitive spirits that can be tricked or doesn't really care, if you thief of not. They care about getting sacrifices and you deal with them like with any other people, basically. They are just more powerful, because... I don't know. They control weather and shit? There was clearly no holy books 20000 years ago either.

They adopted Roman institutions in one form or an another. That was a base for them being a nominal Romans, at least. Ottomans was great and Turkey still a regional power even today.

Greek philosophy? (No doubt influenced by religion tho)

It's a weird point to bring up in a thread based on the implication that morality is solely derived from religion and wouldn't be present without it. Mainly because nobody in their right mind would dispute that western morality is partly derived from christianity, that's like arguing if the sky is blue.

Furthermore, it adds absolutely nothing to the discussion. Even the OP already concluded that morals and religion are heavily intertwined. The question we're asking ourselves here is what would we base our morals on if it was not religion. We already concluded that our morals and religion are two peas in a pod.

Off topic but OP's picture has lead me to wonder.

How is Gustave Dore regarded in the art world? I know him for his woodcuts of Dante's Divine Comedy and I thought those were great, but I've never heard anything else about him.

the idea that you help others you make friends thats more likely to help you

seriously in every philosophy class theres always this person with the argument that religion is the only bases for morality, when classical east asian cultures had morality developed without linking it with a supreme since zhou dynasty

>1406113
but east asian religion is based strongly on ethnic identity, ie, "arr rook same" ....confucius basically said don't show up drunk to family reunions, that's shamful dispray

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ethnic_groups_in_China

>Han are over 91%

ok

ONE WORD PURE REASON THREAD OVER.

...What is your question exactly? He is most known, perhaps, for his Dante work, yes. And he is well-regarded for it. His other work is well-regarded too, but of course it is shadowed by his magnum opus which is his Dante illustrations.

Let's imagine human communities existing all arround the world. They're small - arround the size of Middle Ages villlages, with some bigger towns here and there - and have technology comparable to that of the 1200s. Despite that, everyone lives reasonably well.

Troughout time, people would start realizing the importance of certain things, such as the importance of children to the continuity of the village. And they'd also start talking about how they felt very umcomfortable when they saw this or that. Finally, these communities would start thinking of primitive ways of how they got there, either trough memory or sheer imagination.

This would eventually lead to the idea of morality. However this morality would sooner or later have to be formalized, officialized, and that's how religions are in most cases born.

nukes

>I don't think I ever claimed that all morals everywhere were descended from Christianity, did Why are you taking his point about wolves at face value, you chucklefuck? Morality obviously stems from the need of living within a cooperative society. You can't really cooperate with your fellow human being if you lie through your teeth with every word you spit out of your mouth, thus lying is forbidden in most if not all religions.
And so it goes.

Why are you taking his point about wolves at face value, you chucklefuck? Morality obviously stems from the need of living within a cooperative society. You can't really cooperate with your fellow human being if you lie through your teeth with every word you spit out of your mouth, thus lying is forbidden in most if not all religions.

As a side note, the 4chingos need a fucking preview button hopy shit

but now they are rejecting these and they have really high suicide rates....

> really high suicide rates
Yeah! Should be protected by Jesus like glorious Hungary.

Its a more recent phenomenon due to ethnic cleansing.

Manchu were way more populous in the past eras.

To be fair, Japanese see suicide as the honorable thing to do in their religion.

This , same goes for the Ancient Greeks, more or less.

From logic

I know this sounds fedora as fuck, but why the hell do people always need a written set of rules to live their lives by. All you gotta do is think about it to figure out what is wrong and what is right.

Virtue.

Absolutely, egoism makes a perfectly workable premise from which to base morality, it works actually quite well in Taoism (Yang Zhu's perfectly selfish man comes to mind, though that's arguably religion rather than philosophy).

All those countries are very non-religious though, I don't see why you'd post it.

Tradition mixed with efficiency, i'd imagine that most groups of people would learn pretty quick that nobody wins when someone helpful dies.

Korea and Hungary are both fairly religious. Either this way here's a more recent list:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate

The top 20 are a mix when it comes to religiosity but I think the take-away is that suicide rate doesn't actually have much to do with religion and much moreso with socio-economic conditions.

From what the religious morality was formed you idiot ?

>inb4 god

Even if god is a man-made invention it's still useful as a concrete grounding for morality. There's no authority higher than a perfect creator of the universe. When it comes to utilitarian or more pragmatic systems of morality you CAN devalue them if you just keep asking why you should give a shit. Of course, it's mostly religious preachers who do this sort of thing as most reasonable people can agree on at least one axiom to build a moral system on. Such as it's good when people are alive and happy and work from there.

Regardless of the usual philosophical debate, a world without only the three major monotheistic religions would be a drastic improvement, could we please just have that?

Natural Law. Do no harm but take no crap.

>a world without only the three major monotheistic religions would be a drastic improvement

There's no way to really know that. If those were not in place some other cult would have likely filled the void such as The Cult of Mithras or just a continued belief of the Roman gods.

There's also no way to really know how the west would have turned out without it's religions, we do know that China with Confucianism, Buddhism, and Taoism ended up deciding to turn inward as well as Japan. The West without Christianity very well could have became isolationist and we could all be speaking another language.

China also without our monotheistic religions managed to kill off most of it's population more consistently that the west could have ever dreamed of.

Empathy. It's exhibited in infants and even other species.

It's only through societal mechanisms and brain disorders that we lose our capacity for empathy.

Pure reason taken to its logical conclusion leads to death camps.

And yet even this authority is flawed and quzstionable. The religious morality, as any other was enforced by tradition and repression. Any system uses this, claiming god created morality is not more valid than saying stalin is the savior of the nation for a good soviet

> There's no authority higher than a perfect creator of the universe.
Except the guy who says that God actually wants X instead of Y and you in no position to argue and it isn't like only one guy do this shit. You can see how thousands of people done that shit in past or how they do same shit today, literally devaluing a moral systems to a level of edgy bullshit like ISIS. It is a wishful thinking to say that a system based on authority without any personal presence would somehow stand on concrete grounding. God have zero personal presence. Authority means nothing if he at best nominal figure with a promoted brand.

I would say that Stalin name was worth more than God at times where he is alive as he could correct other party members about their faulty views. That is how political correctness was born.

I'd blame Mao for "political correctness" before Stalin.

Religion is a set of morals invented by humans, I don't see your point here. People can set those morals without religion, it's just easier to spread them when it's more than just a certain code of morals.

>>People like food, sex and safety. People don't like getting stabbed in the face. There you go, now you have the basis of a moral framework.
hedonism is good!

Yes, it is. The only real problem is the people who doing what they want to do, instead of what would be pleasurable for them.

this; emotions matter to hedonists who think hedonism is a good life style.
But of course, most people love hedonism far too much to stop being scared of leaving hedonism. Most people are not meant to be something else than hedonist. In fact, the whole humanity is here because people love to cling to what they feel and think and refuse to do something else with their life.

for people saying that hedonism is relevant,
>life=what you feel+what you think+what you expect from your desires from what you feel and think
therefore,
>grade your desires
and
>non acting on your favorite desires = non life = death

hedonism is not an effective doctrine to be happy. Hedonists believe that you literally die if you ''do not think nor do feel''. They have faith that 'no moving' is death.

of course, doing the opposite brings you a better life:
>perpetual evanescence and lack of control of what you think and feel, therefore cannot be taken seriously (to be happy) => stay still towards what you think and feel.

Once you try to reach stillness, you are more equanimous and benevolent.

Look at buddhist morality.

Its basically a empathy based morality rather reliance on a sacred scripture from a God or a Buddha.