Morality Part 2

While most of this is material I wrote in a comment on Part 1 of this series, I thought it was important to include it here, because it really starts to get at the heart of morality. It was argued that atheistic morality stems from our experience of pain and suffering, as well as our recognition of our own mortality, i.e. death.

However, I'm not sure what role these things play in regard to morality. I believe that morality is essential a human creation, but I'm not fully convinced it is exclusively a by-product of our evolution. To me, and this is as far as I can tell, and by no means my absolute certainty on the subject, morality is a human invention, in the sense that is the agreed upon rules that society puts in place in order to create a better world. For example, I would prefer to keep my life and avoid being murdered. And, for the most part (only kidding) I have no problem letting everyone else live their life and refraining from killing them. If enough people agree upon these conventions, then it becomes part of morality, and murder becomes immoral. However, it is not the majority that makes it part of morality. It is the application of reason and rational thought to these conventions which makes them moral. People who do choose to commit murder are either mentally ill and unable to comprehend the social system in place, or are circumventing the system, almost always for some personal gain, i.e. killing someone in anger, or for the purpose of stealing things, etc. By doing so, they are choosing to remove themselves from the system, which voids their rights to the same things, at least in my opinion, but that's a whole other argument. What lets us conclude that these acts are immoral is that, when rationally examined, we would agree that the action was wrong, i.e. we would not want to live in a system where such actions are morally permissible, for our own benefit, as well as the collaborative benefit of society.

Although, in some sense, there is an evolutionary value to morality. I think for the most part, simple ethical issues, such as "don't kill and you won't be killed, don't steal and you won't be stolen from, don't lie and you won't be lied to" overall contribute to the betterment of society, which in turns leads to the continuation of our genes and species. However, what allows us to make this judgment of what is "better" or "good" is our ability for rational thought, which is also part of what sets us apart from other animals.

Overall, I'm not fully convinced that our recognition of our own mortality and death have any influence over a moral structure. Even if there was no pain in the world, I think there would still be right and wrong, good and bad. Pain and suffering are only indicators of those things, however, they are not the only indicators. Can anyone present a rational, reasoned argument, supported by demonstrable evidence, that they would want to live in a system where murder is morally permissible? I don't believe that is it possible, although feel free to give it a shot.

Morality is simply a system, put in place by humans, which sets up rules which strive to create the best possible outcome for the benefit of all those involved. This doesn't mean that all moral questions are easily answered. There are multiple avenues to guide the creation of such a system, religion being one of them. Religion always claims some sort of special, divine importance of their moral system, which causes its believers to close their eyes to any alternative. For example, Immanuel
Kant's Categorical Imperative seems especially appealing: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." This probably sounds familiar, as it is the basis of the Golden Rule. As basic and simple as it seems, the closer you examine it, the more reasonable it seems.