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Debate:Can any man live without some code of morality? (view source)
Revision as of 23:47, May 14, 2007
, 23:47, May 14, 2007→Yes
Morlity can be seen as something like money. Money, really, does not exist. You cannot hold 'money' - you can hold an object of known value, but that is not money. You can hold currency - but what is it but paper and ink, or a piece of metal? Is money held in a bank, where it is nothing but bits in a computer? Money doesn't exist, and yet its still possible to buy things with it. Because, so long as people believe in it, it '''does''' exist - its existance comes only from that belief. Were everyone to suddenly stop accepting money tomorrow, money would simply disappear and all that currency return to being worthless paper. And morality, in the same way, does have a real existance - so long as enough people believe that it does, and are willing to act on that belief. - [[User:Suricou|Suricou]]
Morlity can be seen as something like money. Money, really, does not exist. You cannot hold 'money' - you can hold an object of known value, but that is not money. You can hold currency - but what is it but paper and ink, or a piece of metal? Is money held in a bank, where it is nothing but bits in a computer? Money doesn't exist, and yet its still possible to buy things with it. Because, so long as people believe in it, it '''does''' exist - its existance comes only from that belief. Were everyone to suddenly stop accepting money tomorrow, money would simply disappear and all that currency return to being worthless paper. And morality, in the same way, does have a real existance - so long as enough people believe that it does, and are willing to act on that belief. - [[User:Suricou|Suricou]]
I am an atheist. If there are no gods then there can be no absolute right and wrong. Without gods where could absolute values come from? If there are no absolute rights and wrongs there can be no morality because morality (in my view) cannot be a relative concept. What use is morality if mine can be fundamentally different to yours and neither is superior? That is not what I understand morality to mean. In the end, if one is an atheist, the best you can do is to put it down to a matter of taste. Isn't that all that's left? It is not to my taste to torture babies for fun (and I hope it's not to your taste either). I can think that my taste is better than yours but I can't prove it. Religious people regard that as a totally unsatisfactory state of affairs and they may be right. But that is not an argument for the existence of gods. Maybe the universe is just unsatisfactory in some ways. --[[User:Horace|Horace]] 19:47, 14 May 2007 (EDT)