Right and Wrong Subjective?

[mtlhddoc2]

If religion were really the marker of right and wrong, or morals. There would not be debate over the death penalty and abortion that goes on between Christians. When 2 Catholics cannot agree on either point, how, then, does religion actually play a part in determining morality? I am an athiest and am against both the death penalty and abortion. I have a similar set of morals as is professed by the bible, yet many religious people do not adhere to these same morals. If religion TRULY taught morals, there would be one voice on homosexuality and it would be loud and dominant. But tehre is not.

Morality (or "right and wrong") comes from a variety of sources. I do not believe you are born with morals, but you are born with the ability to feel various emotions, such as compassion and love and contempt and hate. Religion, in some cases, can foster these emotions into powerful tools. Look at Mother Theresa, for example. She was a tool of compassion carved by her belief system. Then look at Iran's Ayatollah Khomeini. He is a tool of hate and lust for power carved by his warped view of his religion. We are all capable of going in either direction, whether carved by religion, or by experience, or by knowledge, matters not. We are who we are. Born by our upbringing, life experiences and capacity for love or hate. Some people are just born with a capacity for evil, some are born with a capacity for great good. Is it genetics? I do not profess to have that answer. Either of those could be mental disorders, or not. The rest of us fall in the middle somewhere, mostly good with a bit of evil, or mostly evil with a bit of good.

[The Jade Knight]

Darxbane:  There's a lot more to acting upon and knowing right and wrong than what is innate.  We learn so much through what we see around us, in addition to the painful experiences we have while growing up as children, that our "innate" consciences are merely consciences, and are easily silenced by experience, primal urges, and a number of other things.  However, they seem to be the pinnacle of virtue in virtually all ancient and traditional societies.

Mtlhddoc2:  Who said that "religion" (in its broadest sense, as you use it) was an absolute determinant of anything?  There is no question, demographically (and lots of statistics to back this up) that certain religious viewpoints correlate directly with other demographical trends (many representing direct moral values).  However, that correlation is not an absolute correlation.  But there is no such thing in Human Psychology/Sociology as absolute correlation.

I certainly think most of us believe that morality come from a variety of sources.  One of these is religion.  And, as I've said before, some relosophical views appear to help shape individual morality (and many other things) in different ways than others.

[Patriotic Kaz]

Jade i believe no-one disagrees with that post...only a clueless blind and deaf kretin see's it derived from one source...

[mtlhddoc2]

I guess I was not quite clear enough.

you can have identical twins, with identical upbringings, identical religions, and one will be an amoral sadistic punk and the other will be compassionate and kind. It is genetics? Possibly. Is it mental disorders? Who really knows. I think in many ways, morality is simply a choice we make each and every day. We can choose to be monogamous, or not. We can choose to be kind and let people cross the street, or we can be rude and obnoxious and cut someone off. These little battles we fight every day may be influenced by outside sources, but ultimately, morality comes down to choice. and in many cases, I would hazard a guess that no amount of religion or proper upbringing will influence those who just do not care to make the "right" choices. We all know that one person who had everything going for him/her at a young age, and then, despite all the perfect parenting, heavy church involvement, just starts screwing up their life, from a moral and legal standpoint (often those two intertwine). All our religions and upbringing give to us is a template for our choices. the rest is up to us.

[The Jade Knight]

You keep rehashing the same point, which I'm not disagreeing with.

I am simply saying (again) that relosophy has a clear impact on demographically measureable (and quantifiable) moral values.  The significance of this, in layman's terms, is that it is easier to be a moral, virtuous person, with when you have certain relosophical viewpoints.  It is harder to be a virtuous person with certain other relosophical viewpoints.

And there are a myriad of other similar sorts of relationships (one fascinating correlation is that between religious activity and education).

[darxbane]

I completely agree, Jade.  I was respondin to the implication that knowing right and wrong is innate, and therefore removes any excuse for bad behaviour, even for infants and children.  You either have to learn it, or you already know it.

To add to Knight's point, Mtlhddoc2, if it is proven that even with a strong moral upbringing (most often due to the religious beliefs of the parents), still does not prevent some people from being immoral, imagine what happens when people are not given a moral structure?  Are you saying that because something isn't 100% effective that it should be disregarded completely? 

[Patriotic Kaz]

Darxbane you just contridicted yourself you say its inate and then give reason to believe what i've been saying the entire time...right vs. wrong is a learned charateristic

[darxbane]

I did not contradict myself.  I was defending my prior post, which argued against right and wrong being known at birth.  If there is an innate moral code, it lies dormant and must be awakened through experience.

[Patriotic Kaz]

Where is the logic in that? 

[darxbane]

What do you mean?  You must be more specific than "that".

[Peter Ahlstrom]

Kaz, there are lots of things that can lie dormant until you awaken them through experience. Some people are born with athletic talents because they have the genes for it. But if they don't exercise and practice, they never get any good.

[darxbane]

And even when they do practice, the abilities may not manifest themselves right away.  The best example of this is Michael Jordan.  Maybe the best basketball player ever, yet he did not make his High School basketball team. 
Albert Einstein could not read or write until he was 10, then everything clicked (boy did it ever).

[Patriotic Kaz]

Albert Einstein was an idiot savant he had problems counting change

[Comfortable Madness]

Albert Einstein was an idiot savant he had problems counting change

You're joking right??? Please tell me your joking.

idiot savant- person who is mentally retarded in general but who displays remarkable aptitude in some limited field (usually involving memory)

Einstein was in no way mentally retarded and was a wizard in multiple fields including physics, science, mathematics, and philosophy.

[Peter Ahlstrom]

He wasn't a full-blown idiot savant, but his brain was weird.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Einstein%27s_brain