Can a person have morals

Could this variance not be due to the fact that religions vary from region to region?

 

NO

Examine morality at is base:

To kill another human being is wrong?
Right?

Yet murder happens daily the world over

Does that point to a lack of or decline in morality worldwide?

 

still sexuality is a very complex thing. with it comes pair bonding and the need for stability. also, parental instincts start to manifest themselves. is this purely cultural? do other social animals need to learn these things?

 

As a young person develops, once life stops being about following instinctual impulses ("I want food," "I want this toy," "I want my parents to let me have my way"), they develop the capacity to become more self-aware, and aware of others. From there they make judgements about the interactions of others ("that kid should stop bullying my friend," "my mom is mean to my dad," "I don't want to trash this guy's yard while he's away; that would be wrong"). This is where the conscience, or lack thereof, comes in.

Assuming parental role models determine it all doesn't add up. I know of specific individuals who had miserable childhoods and parents (especially fathers) who should be beaten, burned and shot, in that order... yet they turned out to be responsible and honorable adults with a strong sense of personal integrity, without a religion to define it for them. And of course most of us know of parents who raised three different kids, all in the same way, and one of the them turned out to be Hell on Wheels despite the parents' best efforts.

Conscience is a personality trait, like introversion/extroversion; it exists in varying degrees in each person. Evil and immorality, in our modern sense of the word, ultimately boils down to a low or non-existent conscience.

 

Though I think it really is part nature (genetic) & part nurture. We are social creatures, & society is beneficial for us. And there are other social animals as well. Perhaps they are without the level of reasoning power that humans have; but they do have "rules" that they live by.

Maybe because acting morally isn't all fear-motivated. Maybe because in addition to learning to act as moral members of a society that benefits all of us, we also develop real emotional attachments and love for others outside ourselves.

I think sociopaths have no conscience because they feel no real emotional attachments to anyone, have no empathy for others.

I don't happen to think "natural selection" is a reliable explanation for all of evolution. Sometimes shit just happens. And sometimes it's good, sometimes it's bad.

I disagree with the whole "born in sin" concept. I think we start out with certain tendencies, both positive & negative; & how we grow up shapes that into what we become. MOST of the time, at least.

From what I understand, sociopaths seem to be conscienceless from earliest childhood. I don't think that's a natural state for people. It's a mistake, a negative mutation.

 

Morality is the product of reason


Only rational man has the capacity to reason

 

That explains some of the posts around here then.

 

only if you define it that way.

 

Other social animals often times find it perfectly acceptible to kill off rivals. Lions for example live in groups but the top male will kill the offspring of rival males. Certainly you can not equate the "working together" displayed by animals and human morality.

 

yeah, that whole killing the offspring of the displaced king thing is so weird. humans would NEVER do that.


here's the bigger picture -- if you believe humans are the result of evolution, then consciousness itself must be a natural result of evolution. morality, even if it is purely a conscious effort, would still be the result of evolution since the thing that created it was itself created by evolutionary forces. morality seems minor compared to consciousness.