The Golden Rule rules.

 

I generally try to stay away from anything an organized religion tries to tell me, and I've found that the Golden Rule does pretty well as a catchall guide to my life. However, I can't escape the fact that it came from the Bible (Matthew IIRC). Guess I can't dismiss Christianity entirely .

 

Hey guys, I'm glad we stayed civilized on the topic, and you've all given me things to think about, especially in preparing my presentation on the subject.

While the topic can continue, I just wanted to thank everyone for their input.

 

Not only do I believe one can have morals without religion, I also believe one can have beliefs without religion. I think too often people who believe in a certain religion or follow the default Judeo-Christian tradition in this country assume that people who do not espouse their beliefs do not have beliefs at all. Look, I am an atheist, but I have morals and I also have beliefs.

Peter

 

i dont follow religion. but i do believe in morality.

and immoral is different from evil..
evil is being evil to your neighbor while
immoral is being dirty

 

Actually it comes from the Hammarabi Code along with the Ten Commandments.

This code was developed as a civil code thousands of years prior to the time of Christ and was not based upon a religion.

 

I like your scenario better. Notice how quiet everyone has gotten.

Since bank robbery can be considered a very serious offence both criminally AND morally, I would have thought that a better question would be, if you found a wallet containing $5000 in the street, where there was no one around to see you pick it up, and also in the wallet was the driving licence and business card of the wallet's owner. Would you call the person and return their wallet with the money in?

That, I would have thought, would be a much bigger moral dilema than whether or not to rob a bank. [/QUOTE]

 

[QUOTE]Originally posted by MyBad

 

Answer - No

Before there was organised religion people still knew that murdering someone, stealing something they had no rights to etc. was wrong and should be punished. You have an inbuild sence of what is right and wrong which society then moulds by association with peers and what it shows through the media.

 

Our legislators decide what is legal and what is illegal. This is a different distinction than between what is right and what is wrong, both are different distinctions than between what is good and what is bad, and all three are different distinctions than between what is moral and what is immoral.

As a simple example, an act (in the US) can be legal and moral (buying a computer), legal and immoral (adultery), illegal and moral (smoking marijuana, at least in some people's opinion), or illegal and immoral (vandalism). You don't have to agree with my examples to get the point: legal vs. illegal is a different distinction from moral vs. immoral. You can amuse yourself by coming up with examples that show that the right vs. wrong and good vs. bad are different distinctions as well.

People here have said that cavemen could have morals, but do we really know that cavemen didn't have religion?

It's interesting to note that animals (apes, in particular) have demonstrated a fundamental understanding of fairness; one could argue that this constitutes some type of moral code.