Are Christian Morals Superior?

[technolud]

Kindness I suppose involves trying to avoid causing distress to people, being pleasant to them, making them laugh,praising them where they deserve it. It is an attitude of mind not a rigid prescription. A general air of benevolence which I cultivate but no big deal if I have an off day.

And of course your touching faith that people will all find their way to this  universal touchstone of truth if unencumbeted by religious dogma is itself as non- evidence based and inherently improbable as theism itself. It bears out my earlier comment that some atheists having rejected god just substitute another form of mystical mumbo- jumbo instead.

It seems your willing to cut yourself a lot more slack about your beliefs then you allow others.

[En_Route]

Kindness I suppose involves trying to avoid causing distress to people, being pleasant to them, making them laugh,praising them where they deserve it. It is an attitude of mind not a rigid prescription. A general air of benevolence which I cultivate but no big deal if I have an off day.

And of course your touching faith that people will all find their way to this  universal touchstone of truth if unencumbered by religious dogma is itself as non- evidence based and inherently improbable as theism itself. It bears out my earlier comment that some atheists having rejected god just substitute another form of mystical mumbo- jumbo instead.

It seems your willing to cut yourself a lot more slack about your beliefs then you allow others.

Your beliefs seem to me to be just Utopian assertions without anything to back them up.

[Firebird]

"The basis of it is the need to work together as a society and species to prosper". Apart from the fact that this formulation is so vague (eg what does "prosper" denote?) that it is impossible to translate meaningfully into a basis for making decisions, who said that I have to work for the long-term benefit of the species?
I wouldn't throw the coffee in the clerk's face because my purely personal philosophy is to demonstrate compassion and kindness to other people. That's part of my personal mission statement if you like. But I don't refrain because it is "wrong" in any objective sense. It's just not what I do and doesn't fit with how I have decided to lead my life and what works for me. If somebody else threw coffee in the clerk's face I wouldn't call it wrong. 

It's not impossible at all. The US Constitution gives everyone the right to "Life, Libert, and the Pursuit of Happiness" as the basis for its rules. That's not any more vague than the idea of humans prospering as a species, and its served as the basis of a very effective document of governing. The whole point of the Constitution, or any other laws/Constitutions in other countries, is for society to work together and support each other so that everyone is able to feed themselves, live their lives with freedom and without the fear that they'll be cheated out of their money by the banks, etc.
As far as your response to the clerk and someone else throwing coffee in her face, that's a bit disturbing, I must admit. Do you really feel we as a species and society would benefit by saying it's perfectly ok to do something like that? Because if so, it's a regression from the progress we've made over the last few thousand years.
Would you, as that clerk, say "Ok, you had every right to give me third degree burns"?

[En_Route]

"The basis of it is the need to work together as a society and species to prosper". Apart from the fact that this formulation is so vague (eg what does "prosper" denote?) that it is impossible to translate meaningfully into a basis for making decisions, who said that I have to work for the long-term benefit of the species?
I wouldn't throw the coffee in the clerk's face because my purely personal philosophy is to demonstrate compassion and kindness to other people. That's part of my personal mission statement if you like. But I don't refrain because it is "wrong" in any objective sense. It's just not what I do and doesn't fit with how I have decided to lead my life and what works for me. If somebody else threw coffee in the clerk's face I wouldn't call it wrong. 

It's not impossible at all. The US Constitution gives everyone the right to "Life, Libert, and the Pursuit of Happiness" as the basis for its rules. That's not any more vague than the idea of humans prospering as a species, and its served as the basis of a very effective document of governing. The whole point of the Constitution, or any other laws/Constitutions in other countries, is for society to work together and support each other so that everyone is able to feed themselves, live their lives with freedom and without the fear that they'll be cheated out of their money by the banks, etc.
As far as your response to the clerk and someone else throwing coffee in her face, that's a bit disturbing, I must admit. Do you really feel we as a species and society would benefit by saying it's perfectly ok to do something like that? Because if so, it's a regression from the progress we've made over the last few thousand years.
Would you, as that clerk, say "Ok, you had every right to give me third degree burns"?

Well, the glaring inequalities of wealth in the US coupled with its long history of social intolerance rather undercut the grandiose claims you make for its constitution.But that is a by the by. Let's accept that the toleration of random violence is not beneficial to society as a whole. We would expect laws against it in order to maximise our personal safety. You argue that it is also morally "wrong" as an issue of fact, so that the perpetrator of such violence is  objectively culpable. The question is "Who says?". The answer is that all moral normsare socially constructed and culturally determined. There are some prohibitions which are well-nigh universal, such as that against murder (though even then there are qualifications  and exceptions eg when it is state-sponsored). That doesn't make them "true" ,merely that they are hardwired into us because such taboos were presumably adaptive from an evolutionary perspective. So if I don't care less about the future prospects for the species,that's my privilege. Who are you or anyone else to tell me that I should? Having rejected the myth of god,you are now playing God,setting out your commandments based on a premise that you have decided should be the absolute yardstick by which to judge others.

[Sandra Craft]

Who are you or anyone else to tell me that I should? Having rejected the myth of god,you are now playing God,setting out your commandments based on a premise that you have decided should be the absolute yardstick by which to judge others.

No one can tell you what you should or should not care about, that's impossible.  But what you should or should not do, that's part of how society functions and personally, I wouldn't care to live in a society that had no concern for punishing detrimental actions and rewarding beneficial ones (i.e., determining and regulating "morality"). 

In the example of throwing hot coffee into someone's face, I think this is where the "push me/pull you" of a social contract comes into play.  It's detrimental to a person to have 3rd degree burns and the social contract says "I won't do harmful things to you, and you won't do them to me" and when that contract gets broken, that's when the law steps in.  Leaving decisions about such things as coffee flinging up to individuals is completely unacceptable to me -- I might be willing to trust some people, but I'm not willing to trust everyone.

Of course the decision about what's beneficial and what's detrimental is arbitrary, and there's never going to be complete agreement over every single point and there's always going to be fighting about it and laws made, un-made, and re-made but I don't think that's people playing god, that's just part of the human condition.  And again, I wouldn't care to live in a society that was not locked in this struggle.

[Firebird]

Agreed, BooksCatsEtc.
Yes En_Route, the US has definitely not lived up to all of its ideals; I'll be the first to agree with that. But the ideals are there and we strive to live up to them, however imperfectly, and that's better than your idea of removing all sense of morality, in my opinion. That's not "playing God", because I never proclaimed I or anyone else knows every answer, and because I don't believe in absolute morality either. But I do believe in relative morality, and the ability of a democratic country to somehow find that line.
If you don't care about the future prospects for the species, that's certainly your right, and I don't presume to take that right away from you. But it is wholly appropriate to take away your right to do harm to others merely because you feel that way. Yes, I know you'll say that's an ambiguous concept that can be exploited. But that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Better to struggle to find that line than say there's no line and allow people to throw the coffee in the clerk's face.

[technolud]

Here! Here!

[Stevil]

If you don't care about the future prospects for the species, that's certainly your right

Here is an unlikely hypothetical, but lets just throw it out there and see what people think.

A disease hits and kills almost all the people in the world.
50 people are left.
They form a society and create some laws.
Just by coincidence all of these 50 people are gay.
Some are women, some are men.

If they all continue to be gay, and true to their gayness they have relationships with people from the same sex, they are not interested in having sex with people from the opposite sex, lets say that the thought of heterosexual sex disgusts them.

If they live life true to their nature the human species will peter out because no-one will have any babies.
Let's just assume that no-one is interested in using a turkey baster.

So is it immoral for them to let the human species die out?

[markmcdaniel]

I have found all of the foregoing to be of interest. I would like to propose a working  definition of morality or at least immorality. At it simplest morality lies in not hurting other people unnecessarily. As an example i submit the following. It is immoral to steal in order to profit yourself, but, if you are starving it is not immoral to steal food in order to feed yourself.

In regard to the original question Christian morality is not superior simply because there is nothing unique about it. Murder, theft, adultery, etc. are considered immoral worldwide and cross culturally. The definitions of what constitutes the above will very, but, will be similar and Cristian definitions are not superior nor terribly different.

[The Magic Pudding]

If you don't care about the future prospects for the species, that's certainly your right

Here is an unlikely hypothetical, but lets just throw it out there and see what people think.

A disease hits and kills almost all the people in the world.
50 people are left.
They form a society and create some laws.
Just by coincidence all of these 50 people are gay.
Some are women, some are men.

If they all continue to be gay, and true to their gayness they have relationships with people from the same sex, they are not interested in having sex with people from the opposite sex, lets say that the thought of heterosexual sex disgusts them.

If they live life true to their nature the human species will peter out because no-one will have any babies.
Let's just assume that no-one is interested in using a turkey baster.

So is it immoral for them to let the human species die out?

On the face of it not participating in the specie's propagation shouldn't be immoral.
If the fifty people included some old people and it was agreed the young should care for the old, a moral principle could be established.  The current young foresee they will be old one day and it is agreed that offspring should be produced to care for them in old age.  The young pay for their future care by expending effort on a new generation.  The wilfully childless could be seen as cheating the social pact and hence immoral. 

[technolud]

I have found all of the foregoing to be of interest. I would like to propose a working  definition of morality or at least immorality. At it simplest morality lies in not hurting other people unnecessarily. As an example i submit the following. It is immoral to steal in order to profit yourself, but, if you are starving it is not immoral to steal food in order to feed yourself.

Exactly.  For the pupose of our discussion one could even tweak the definition to include "theist morality" which presupposes absolute "right and wrong" ten commandmant type stuff, and relative morality, which follows along your definition or that of others on this thread who have suggested morality is about a set of rules which allows people to live together in a society without acting like barbarians.

I think the original question Ashera was asking was really reffering to this second definition, from the original post:

So, I was wondering out of those here who operate by a moral code that is good (what most consider good...not murdering, not committing adultery, giving to the poor, etc..

Which by the way doesn't sound so very different the En_Routes statement about how he chooses to live his life.

Quote
Kindness I suppose involves trying to avoid causing distress to people, being pleasant to them, making them laugh,praising them where they deserve it. It is an attitude of mind not a rigid prescription. A general air of benevolence which I cultivate but no big deal if I have an off day.

We really have two different discussion going on here, at cross purposes to some extent.  The first disscussion is addressing Ashera's original questions "Are Christian morals superior" and the second is addressing the argument that there is no "morality".  Any attempt by the first group to narrow or specify the definition of morality (sort of a spherical cow in a vacuum type of morality I guess) have ended up being dissmissed as hubris or mumbo-jumbo by the theist morality folks which just takes away from the ablility to discuss the original question.

[En_Route]

Who are you or anyone else to tell me that I should? Having rejected the myth of god,you are now playing God,setting out your commandments based on a premise that you have decided should be the absolute yardstick by which to judge others.

No one can tell you what you should or should not care about, that's impossible.  But what you should or should not do, that's part of how society functions and personally, I wouldn't care to live in a society that had no concern for punishing detrimental actions and rewarding beneficial ones (i.e., determining and regulating "morality"). 

With respect, I think  you are conflating law and morality. There is no mysterious social contract which the law underwrites. The law is shaped by many cultural, social, political and in some cars religious factors. Like you, I prefer to live in a society which seeks to deter random acts of violence. Apart from people who enjoy inflicting random acts of violence, who wouldn't?

In the example of throwing hot coffee into someone's face, I think this is where the "push me/pull you" of a social contract comes into play.  It's detrimental to a person to have 3rd degree burns and the social contract says "I won't do harmful things to you, and you won't do them to me" and when that contract gets broken, that's when the law steps in.  Leaving decisions about such things as coffee flinging up to individuals is completely unacceptable to me -- I might be willing to trust some people, but I'm not willing to trust everyone.

Of course the decision about what's beneficial and what's detrimental is arbitrary, and there's never going to be complete agreement over every single point and there's always going to be fighting about it and laws made, un-made, and re-made but I don't think that's people playing god, that's just part of the human condition.  And again, I wouldn't care to live in a society that was not locked in this struggle.

[En_Route]

Agreed, BooksCatsEtc.
Yes En_Route, the US has definitely not lived up to all of its ideals; I'll be the first to agree with that. But the ideals are there and we strive to live up to them, however imperfectly, and that's better than your idea of removing all sense of morality, in my opinion. That's not "playing God", because I never proclaimed I or anyone else knows every answer, and because I don't believe in absolute morality either. But I do believe in relative morality, and the ability of a democratic country to somehow find that line.
If you don't care about the future prospects for the species, that's certainly your right, and I don't presume to take that right away from you. But it is wholly appropriate to take away your right to do harm to others merely because you feel that way. Yes, I know you'll say that's an ambiguous concept that can be exploited. But that's no reason to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Better to struggle to find that line than say there's no line and allow people to throw the coffee in the clerk's face.

As I have said in my previous post, Laws against random violence make life safer and more pleasant for the great majority and pragmatically most of us will be in favour of them. Bit I don't have to label such violence as immoral to favour such a law.

[En_Route]

I have found all of the foregoing to be of interest. I would like to propose a working  definition of morality or at least immorality. At it simplest morality lies in not hurting other people unnecessarily. As an example i submit the following. It is immoral to steal in order to profit yourself, but, if you are starving it is not immoral to steal food in order to feed yourself.

In regard to the original question Christian morality is not superior simply because there is nothing unique about it. Murder, theft, adultery, etc. are considered immoral worldwide and cross culturally. The definitions of what constitutes the above will very, but, will be similar and Cristian definitions are not superior nor terribly different.

I still don.t really get it why you have to propose a basis for morality. Why should there be one? And what is the basis for yours? Why should I pay any notice to it? As I've noted before, even the seemingly universal prohibitions turn out to have exceptions and qualifications, and o the extent that they can be regarded as universal this merely means that they are presumably evolutionarily adaptive.

[Sandra Craft]

Bit I don't have to label such violence as immoral to favour such a law.

So, is it only the sematics you have an issue with?