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[Knight of Fools]

Any society that wants to succeed needs some set of moral beliefs, and those beliefs usually come from religious sources - Or coincide with them.  Without any morals, we have no laws, and with no laws, everybody is killing you for your sandwich.  So religion has been a pretty important anchor for developing societies.  Science can grow from a lack of morals, like the things we learned from experiments in Nazi Germany, but we don't want to kill people off just to learn something from it.  We aren't playing a video game, after all.

So removing morality from science is a bad thing.  The morality of a society is gathered from religion (Or is formed into a religion, depending on the society and your point of view).  The religion puts the fear of God into people along with the fear of the law, so scientists aren't grabbing people off the streets and pumping them full of different chemicals.

I'm not suggesting that that's what a society would degrade into if morality were completely ignored - People who want the ability to experiment on human subjects are definitely few and far between.  I'm just thinking out loud.

[Criptfeind]

We should have a thread where we argue just using famous quotes

Yes.

[Urist is dead tome]

Any society that wants to succeed needs some set of moral beliefs, and those beliefs usually come from religious sources - Or coincide with them.  Without any morals, we have no laws, and with no laws, everybody is killing you for your sandwich.  So religion has been a pretty important anchor for developing societies.  Science can grow from a lack of morals, like the things we learned from experiments in Nazi Germany, but we don't want to kill people off just to learn something from it.  We aren't playing a video game, after all.

So removing morality from science is a bad thing.  The morality of a society is gathered from religion (Or is formed into a religion, depending on the society and your point of view).  The religion puts the fear of God into people along with the fear of the law, so scientists aren't grabbing people off the streets and pumping them full of different chemicals.

I'm not suggesting that that's what a society would degrade into if morality were completely ignored - People who want the ability to experiment on human subjects are definitely few and far between.  I'm just thinking out loud.

I would say that if a nation were effectively locked off and left for several generations and they had no moral code then society would definitely degrade a significant amount.

[Earthquake Damage]

Without any morals, we have no laws

I'm not convinced.  The powerful could still establish rules for the weak, or something like that.  The elite, even if it's composed entirely of brutes and their charismatic leaders (the leader may also be a brute ), still have an incentive to e.g. monopolize violence to their benefit.  Even simple tribe- or band-level social structures can still have laws, even if those laws don't serve a noble/moral purpose.

Hell, even benevolent laws can arise in the absence of morality if the benefit of cooperation is relatively high.  "Defend the group and the group will defend you", for example.

Hmm.  I suppose all this raises an important question:  What is a law?  In other words, at what point do we call it law.

[Urist is dead tome]

Without any morals, we have no laws

I'm not convinced.  The powerful could still establish rules for the weak, or something like that.  The elite, even if it's composed entirely of brutes and their charismatic leaders (the leader may also be a brute ), still have an incentive to e.g. monopolize violence to their benefit.  Even simple tribe- or band-level social structures can still have laws, even if those laws don't serve a noble/moral purpose.

You can still be a tyrant without laws, all you gotta do is strong arm people when you need something.

[CoughDrop]

There has been a lot of debate about this in the atheist community.

I think there is no denying that natural empathy has a strong stem into morality. I think it is culture and religion that twists this into the 'don't kill people, but kill those outside the tribe'. I'm not saying that no culture is better than what we have, but I think it can be greatly improved upon.

I'm no expert, but I would be surprised to see differently.

[Criptfeind]

Well.

Culture being able to be approved upon is interesting, because each person has their own leanings.

Not everyone is going to be happy with the same cultures.

It most likely does not help that we seem to be on the tail end of a culture shift right now. That probably makes no one happy.

[Urist is dead tome]

Well.

Culture being able to be approved upon is interesting, because each person has their own leanings.

Not everyone is going to be happy with the same cultures.

It most likely does not help that we seem to be on the tail end of a culture shift right now. That probably makes no one happy.

If be "we" you mean America then that's nothing new. America drastically changes its culture every decade or so. Nothing new.

[Criptfeind]

Yes. But the world as a whole is changing much faster then it used to. What used to take hundreds of years now is only several. I do not know if we are going to start a spin of culture that we never get out of, or if we are going to soon find a culture for the world that can last.

It will be quite interesting to watch the next 50 years.

[Urist is dead tome]

This spin has been going on awhile. It really took off in, I would say, the Forties. But its going faster now. Thanks to the internet, etc.

[ChairmanPoo]

.  Science can grow from a lack of morals, like the things we learned from experiments in Nazi Germany

You'd be surprised how little was learned from that. For the most part concentration camp experiments answered more to the sadistic whims of the organizers than to scientific rigor.

[Vector]

I think it is culture and religion that twists this into the 'don't kill people, but kill those outside the tribe'.

And I believe that it's negative circumstances that twist it in that way, not the base culture or religion itself.

We cannot blame religion and culture for desperation.

[CoughDrop]

I think it is culture and religion that twists this into the 'don't kill people, but kill those outside the tribe'.

And I believe that it's negative circumstances that twist it in that way, not the base culture or religion itself.

We cannot blame religion and culture for desperation.

I agree, but the negativity plants itself within the culture and makes it 'ok' for future generations. It seems these negative circumstances are what actually starts the cycle.

[Vector]

I agree, but the negativity plants itself within the culture and makes it 'ok' for future generations. It seems these negative circumstances are what actually starts the cycle.

That's sensible.

Then why are we blaming religion, when what is to blame is our insufficient methodology for coping with disaster?

[ECrownofFire]

Religion is just a convenient means to an end. Religious organizations hold power, and people want to use that power. Religion is also an easy way to connect and get a bunch of like-minded people together under one banner. It's one thing to say that Bob, Smith, and Joe all dislike X, but it's another to say that this group of Y religion of Z members dislikes X.