the origin of morality

[KillCarneyKlans]

Well, contrary to popular belief you can't extract yourself for the fact that the Bible, possessed knowledge that would be nearly impossible to know ... under those times and conditions ... Not the Digital Age ... that was delivered to Israel as a health law ... this is just one of a whole list of instances that "foreknowledge" exists, it was for our benefit, and it was factual ... I could go on further about this point that follows ... into how this corabulates other evidence such as how on the 8th day after birth [the day of circumcision], an infants anti-body count is highest ... I could weave a plethorea of evidence here in a bio-info way that precludes any evidence against it.

Why did Jesus need to be circumcised if he was the son of God?
http://au.answers.yahoo.com/question...0034326AAK2dcD

Because he had to fulfill the law that is one requirement of the law.
If he wasn't a jew he wouldn't need to.
But thats the whole point, that since Adam & Eve fell, there would be someone of the seedline that would eventually, redeem us from sin that leads to death.
Circumcision, is now medically proven to halt sexual diseases.
Because of latent mitochrondria under the foreskin.
This has been successfully used in Africa as a dterent to HIV Aids.

Article: Circumcision Shown to Slow Spread of HIV in Africa
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-2796039.html
The studies, in Kenya and Uganda, found that circumcised men are about 50 percent less likely to contract HIV than those who are not !!!!!!!!!!!

Hitler, Stalin, Amin Al-Husseni, Marx, Mao just to name a few people with totally non-religious views or agenda's, bordering on nilism, and possibly a form of insanity in some cases, destroyed millions in there pursuit of Godlessness so ... Although this maybe an extreme example but, its entirely relevant to the scope of the argument ...

Ancients don't get me started there ... William F. Albright: The work of the American Biblical archaeology school under William F. Albright seemed to confirm that even if Genesis and Exodus were only given their final form in the first millennium BC, they were still firmly grounded in the material reality of the second millennium.

© 1993-2003 ENCARTA Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Ethics (Greek ethika, from ethos, “character,” “custom”), principles or standards of human conduct, sometimes called morals (Latin mores, “customs”), and, by extension, the study of such principles, sometimes called moral philosophy.

Jefferson knew exactly what he was doing when he changed Locke’s trilogy of rights “life, liberty, and property” to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Property, and the individual’s right to it, was but one form of the larger human right to individual happiness. The Enlightenment’s revolutionary objective, enshrined in Jefferson’s text for the Declaration of Independence, was to place the sacredness of each individual’s quest for happiness at the heart of politics. No longer was there assumed to be a Christian conception of the good life or the moral life, defined by the church and state ... [Yes, that's what you came out of, No don't elipsis our founding fathers words ... Nor Religious view will be held over another by the state and sanctioned ... that does not mean they didn't believe in God and practice it ... this country was founded on it] The Enlightenment assumption was that each individual pursued his or her own happiness and individual sense of the good life—as long as in doing so they did not interfere with other people’s lives, liberty, or pursuit of happiness. Or as Jefferson put it, as long as “it neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my leg.”

[Cults - speak for you and talk for you ... when you no longer have the right of free expression, or are under the suppression of it, or an alternative of it, or a sanctioned form of it under license ... it becomes evident]

[Reported] Crime is Big Busines ... righteous people and there societies become less susecptible to its cost ... America, spends billion in this form of "usary"

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...ins-page2.html
Where or what, Gnome forms are there in nature? I can point to many forms in nature mimicked by man. But not Gnomes ... I don't have to "Prove the Existance of God" .ie. Conspiracy Theory ... or 'gnomes' ... or nihlism

Deep Beliefs could be someone from a very religious background, to someone who had a spiritual and or revelatory experience, to a paradigm that completely changes one's worldview, or something to that effect, i suppose.

Nihilism (nothing) is the philosophical doctrine suggesting the negation of one or more putatively meaningful aspects of life.

Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) posited an early form of nihilism which he referred to as levelling. He saw levelling as the process of suppressing individuality to a point where the individual's uniqueness becomes non-existent and nothing meaningful in his existence can be affirmed:

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...d-origins.html

Demographics_of_atheism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_atheism

Poll: Majority Reject Evolution - CBS News
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/...in965223.shtml

On Darwin's 200th Birthday, Americans Still Divided About Evolution - Pew Research Center
http://www.pewresearch.org/pubs/1107...on-creationism

Gallup 'Darwin's Birthday' Poll: Fewer than Four in Ten Believe in Evolution - God & Country (usnews.com)
http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/god...e-in-evolution

Well, I suppose what category you would fall in - as an atheist asking me that - it would constitute an oxy-moron.
A poll from a few years, can't remember where it is at in my posts somewhere. Based on the activity of the divine. which stressed an: Active creator - Active Agent in Creation to a No creator - No Active Agent in the physical world Scenario
Scores rather favorably for the Big Guy Up Stairs.

Atheists 5% ??? Real, Imagined or Perceived [Seculair Humanists]

http://www.historum.com/blogs/killca...d-origins.html
The Ring analogie relates to the condition of man, since you 'all asked, his perspective, the question of right and wrong, and the question of God [&or Magnitude]. I believe the examples still hold true to the Survival vs BioInfo question.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring
Tolkien wrote the following about the idea behind the One Ring: "I should say that it was a mythical way of representing the truth that potency (or perhaps potentiality) if it is to be exercised, and produce results, has to be externalized and so as it were passes, to a greater or lesser degree, out of one's direct control." (Letter #211, 1958).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_of_Gyges
According to the legend, Gyges of Lydia was a shepherd in the service of King Candaules of Lydia. After an earthquake, a cave was revealed in a mountainside where Gyges was feeding his flock. Entering the cave, Gyges discovered that it was in fact a tomb with a bronze horse containing a corpse, larger than that of a man, who wore a golden ring, which Gyges pocketed. He discovered that the ring gave him the power to become invisible by adjusting it. Gyges then arranged to be chosen as one of the messengers who reported to the king as to the status of the flocks. Arriving at the palace, Gyges used his new power of invisibility to seduce the queen, and with her help he murdered the king, and became king of Lydia himself. King Croesus, famous for his wealth, was Gyges' descendant.

In Republic, Plato puts the tale of the ring of Gyges in the mouth of Glaucon, who uses it to make the point that no man is so virtuous that he could resist the temptation of being able to steal at will by the ring's power of invisibility. In contemporary terms, Glaucon argues that morality is a social construction, whose source is the desire to maintain one's reputation for virtue and honesty; when that sanction is removed, moral character would evaporate. However, Glaucon does not actually hold this belief; he merely produces this tale so that Socrates' argument for justice can be made stronger:

Suppose now that there were two such magic rings, and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other ...

Socrates goes on to explain that justice would not be defined by just this social construct; the man who abused the power of the Ring of Gyges has become morally bankrupt and suffered irreparable failings of character, while a man that chose willingly not to use it is at least at peace with himself.(Republic 10:612b)

http://www.christianityboard.com/top.../page__st__180
Oh, to my critics, Tolkien took some 20 years to produce his 1st manuscript. CS Lewis produced 7 works in 7 years, which included The Narnia series and the Screwtape letters. Without Lewis' instance Tolkien may have never published anything, without his friend's insistence, or rather posthumously.

Three Rings for the Elven-kings under the sky,
Seven for the Dwarf-lords in their halls of stone,
Nine for Mortal Men doomed to die,
One for the Dark Lord on his dark throne
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.
One Ring to rule them all, One Ring to find them,
One Ring to bring them all and in the darkness bind them
In the Land of Mordor where the Shadows lie.

[Heteronym]

is it naturally human to be moral or is it a concept that only came about because of the rise of religions?

In other words were humans morals before the birth of religion?

I think we can all see from everyday situations morality emerge from groups. Living according to a set of rules is practical when we have to share the same world, or bus, or office, or bathroom, or classroom, or queue, or apartment with other people. Since humans are biologically social creatures, morals have evolved from our having to live together without killing each other. I belief religion is a byproduct of this necessary, and at the same time it's come to codify certain unspoken but intuitive rules - don't steal or be stolen, don't kill or be killed, don't lie or be lied to, don't betray or face the group's wrath, et cetera.

[jmanu86]

good question! I thought of that recently, and in my research I found Umberto Eco questioning: Does a good man in the need of a God to be that way? I don't remember exactly the phrase but I think that is. It's from the book "belief or non belief"

I guess the point is that we as a society have created moral as guide to explain our way to live properly. But that's something we born with. Or there wouldn't be moral codes before the Ten Commandments for example.

I believe moral is innate to humans. There's no need of such a role model as religion, which, can be a good parameter but if we remember not to become fanatics.

[Dodo25]

(Most) humans do have empathy, so there are tendencies for altruism. Humans also have tendencies to fall into a strong in-group out-group mentality, which will be bad for the outgroup though. If people grow up with the "right" memes, humans can develop into caring invididuals whose moral sphere doesn't just include the family or the fellow citizens, but also the whole world and non-human sentient beings.

So there is rudimentary motivation for altruism in most humans, but it really depends how it is fostered.

In general, humans are rather terrible at being ethical. And that's to be expected since moral intuitions are a product of evolution, and evolution doesn't "care" about anything besides copying succes. People can't rely on moral intuitions, they should use some rationality. There are many cognitive biases in that regard, for instance, humans will donate more money to save one specific child than they would donate to save several children, if they are just presented stories and pictures.

Or people will donate to art exhibitions, or (a bit less bad) to random charities, instead of the most effective ones, which results in their contributions being thousands of times less effective than they could be.

Or people will refuse to take "evil" jobs (like banker) that give a lot of money, even though if they don't take the jobs, someone else will (who is likely to be less altruistic and would do even more harm in the job, so by not taking the evil job people are actually causing *harm*), and even though money earned and then donated to the most cost-efficient causes can make the world significantly better. Instead, people think the most ethical careers are NGO workers, doctors or teachers, even though replaceability holds there as well -- if they don't do it, someone else will; and even though the impact is small compared to effective donations anyway. And replaceability doesn't hold for donations, if I don't donate, no one else will do it for me either.

When people talk about ethics, they often mean boring stuff that hardly has much impact on the world. "Was it wrong that I broke up with my boyfriend that way" -- Well I don't know, but it's definitely orders of magnitude less wrong than causing demand for hundreds of factory-farmed animals over one's lifetime, or not saving lives and life quality if one has the means to do it at little cost to oneself. Ethics should be about the *whole picture*, and about *making the world a better place*. Everything else is childish reliance to arbitrary (in the sense that we just happen to have these arbitrary intuitions) "rules". The consequentialist critique to deontology is that it's "rule worship". Morality without god is possible, but it is difficult, counterintuitive, and demanding. What one definitely doesn't need god for, though, is for justification of morality. Plato showed this BCE in "Eutyphro": http://www.philosophyofreligion.info...yphro-dilemma/

[Clovis]

I suppose morality began its more structured history when civilizations itself began, popping up in the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia etc. etc.

In modern times morality is becoming very absurd. After reading the Millenium trilogy, I couldn't get over the consciosious egotistism of the author Larsson, who seems convinced he's dawning light on the unequality of the sexes, in the 21st century none-the-less!?

In McCarthy's 'Bloof Meridian', the crafty conclusion convicts everyone who dares believe in anything they see or hear on this earth of being wicked beyond compare.

I guess my cynical belief is that morality is inseparable from ego, but what do I know?

[cafolini]

I suppose morality began its more structured history when civilizations itself began, popping up in the Indus Valley and Mesopotamia etc. etc.

In modern times morality is becoming very absurd. After reading the Millenium trilogy, I couldn't get over the consciosious egotistism of the author Larsson, who seems convinced he's dawning light on the unequality of the sexes, in the 21st century none-the-less!?

In McCarthy's 'Bloof Meridian', the crafty conclusion convicts everyone who dares believe in anything they see or hear on this earth of being wicked beyond compare.

I guess my cynical belief is that morality is inseparable from ego, but what do I know?

Deep enough, morality comes with the equipment. It is a sense of good or bad that allows individuals do what's most convenient to them. When they think about how they can help each other, they produce social morality. But morality is intrinsic to life, not inherent. It would be impossible for any individual life to come about without the ability to determine his/her good or bad. Of course, social morality is a compromise, and partly inherent.

[Umbreon]

Where or when (before or after religion) morality came about is a historical question - one that I'll avoid wading into. However, I will say that morality has its uses. As many have mentioned already, morality has uses for societies and communities; i.e. morality is useful for any political or social arrangement of more than one person. It's likely that the earliest humans recognized the advantages of working together as opposed to alone and without the restraining forces of morality I can't see any community survive or function productively.