morality

What should the rules be and what should they be based on? Who and what should be considered? How do you assign a 'moral value' to something or a 'moral cost' to a decision? In another thread I wrote: Should ethics even have rules? Should it be like mathematics and be internally...

Here is a summary of an interesting new study that reveals that Atheists thought immoral, even by fellow atheists. And it revealed that "atheists are broadly perceived as potentially morally depraved and dangerous." The study measured the attitudes of more than 3,000 people in 13 countries on...

An Awareness Campaign This was a topic I had attempted to talk about at SkeptiCamp NYC 2016 (http://skepticampnyc.org/). However, things ran late, and a large chunk of my time was cut off. Although I managed to get out most of my main points, in a rather hurried manner, I figured I would...

I've spent a decent amount of time over the last few years learning about religious argumentation through debates, lectures, and other formats and there's something on my mind at present which I can't wrap my head around: objective morality. Now, what's most commonly done (in my experience) is...

For SkeptiCamp NYC 2013, I will be participating in a debate about whether or not objective moral truths exist. Can science answer normative questions? (I say "Yes". But, that's not the point of this thread.... At least, not yet.) My opponent belongs to a branch of moral theory called Error...

Here's the hypothetical: You are a healthy American male in your twenties. You have traveled back in time to 1943 in an undetectable way - you fit right in, all your papers are in order, etc. You cannot return to the present or do any further time jumping in any direction. Whatever effect...

http://www.nd.edu/~wcarbona/Haidt%202001.pdf Are our feelings and intuitions about particular behaviours a better guide for what acts we ought to prohibit or condemn than rationally evaluating whether there was any harm from those acts?

"But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason? Take any action allow'd to be vicious: Wilful murder, for instance. Examine it in all lights, and see if you can find that matter of fact, or real existence, which...

Can you imagine anything more depraved than this? For those who don't want to click the link, a young couple (21 and 18) who were caught on CCTV having sex in a lift turned out to be brother and sister. Ick!

Most people would probably lie to a murderer looking for his next victim and deny knowing where the innocent person was. But what about other situations? I just finished reading Sissela Bok's Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life. Bok tackles her subject from the angle of how people...

If there's no god and there's no rules or consequences to life what does it matter what you do in life? If good and bad are merely subjective terms why don't Atheists do whatever they want whenever they want? Do Atheists live by morals and ethics they have inherited from Theists? In...

I'm back, for a short time anyway, and surprise, surprise, I'm talking about Norman Geisler and Frank Turek's book "I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist". That is the book I mention in my New Testament Evidence thread in the History forum and in the Materialism thread now in the Religion...

I have heard the argument that nonbelievers (atheists in particular) have no morality because they do not believe that god watches over them, or something like that. (Yes, there ARE the atrocities in the Old Testament and whatnot, but that is a bit of an ad hominem tu quoque fallacy). Are...

In another thread I said morality is either derived from biology or the only other option is some kind of magical source. Does morality stem from a magic sky man sprinkling pixie dust in the eyes of newborns? Do we pull it out of thin air? It was said this is a false dichotomy. So I'd like to...

This is an idea that occurred to me reading and commenting on the slavery thread. The only time you would really need the Bible to justify anything is if you wanted to do something immoral. You don't need a Bible to justify being nice to people, not owning slaves, not engaging in sex acts with...

An interesting article at the NY Times http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/ Here are some quotes that may spark interest

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ph7jb4humhE&feature=related she says she would have told Nazis if she was hiding Jews in her basement.

I just finished watching this debate between William Lane Craig and Shelly Kagan on the topic "Is God Necessary for Morality?" I have seen a lot of debates with Craig and I think this is probably the only debate where his opponent outperformed him. Kagan does this by arguing that objective...

What's the more ethical profession? Becoming a prostitute or becoming a soldier? ETA: To add some context: an acquaintance thinks that prostitution is an immoral way to make money. I then noted that joining the military is too because both prostitutes and soldiers sell their bodies.

I don't remember much about the stories I used to read in the old 10 cent comics but I do remember Supermans cape sometimes looked like angels wings and once I remember this. In a Superboy comic some humanoid aliens with antennae and weird eyes were on the ma and Pa kent farm. Mrs. Kent said...

The objective morality argument for God really gets to me sometimes. It's not that it is a good argument and it is fairly easily answered, but the answers always seem dissatisfying to me. I am sure everyone knows the argument, but I will state it briefly. (1) Objective morality can only exist if...

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?hp

I'd like to make this thread the database of different pieces of evidence that support the fact that nature has no sense of moral, so that when we're discussing nature as it is, we are less eager to project human morality on it. Clearly, these examples illustrate better than anything else, how...

A common topic of discussion here are questions of morality. What living things is it right to kill for food? At what stage is it wrong to terminate a pregnancy? Should all humans have a right to health care? But I think that right, wrong, should and ought are all meaningless or at least...

Why do theists and deists think that belief in god is a virtue? I have discussed this with some family members who still believe, but haven't received an adequate answer. This forum may not be the best place to ask this question. It appears that most members are atheists or agnostics. But there...

http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/2010/03/30/2010-03-

This story brightened up my Monday morning. http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/091019/entertainment/portugal_literature_religion

I was just thinking of how to violate the 3 laws of robotics. This was probably already thought of as I have had minimal exposure to Isaac Asimov's works, unfortunately. Here they are.... http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Laws_of_Robotics Now I want to say there are 2 codes humans go...

To put pro-lifers and pro-choicers on equal footing, I have this little thought experiment. Suppose we have Star Trek technology. A pregnant woman can go in for an abortion, to have the embryo or fetus immediately teleported out of the woman into a large fluid filled incubator designed to...

This is not a poll so no Planet X option. So here is the question; should a person's morality be judged by their actions, thoughts or inaction? Here is the scenario: A Mother beats her child every day(use whatever threshold for excessive you want) for being naughty but mom believes this is...