What compels you to act morally or ethically?

[BeHereNow]

I think the thread title is pretty self-explanatory.

For myself, I guess it would be an innate sense that I follow. It's hard to say why, really - not to sound haughty, but I do strive for fairness and justice. But really, it's hard to pinpoint a direct motivation for following my set of ethics.

I'd like to hear what you all have to say.

[rdalin]

I think the thread title is pretty self-explanatory.

For myself, I guess it would be an innate sense that I follow. It's hard to say why, really - not to sound haughty, but I do strive for fairness and justice. But really, it's hard to pinpoint a direct motivation for following my set of ethics.

I'd like to hear what you all have to say.The same as for anyone else, I think - my conscience.

[Ghettochild]

i dont think conscience, instinctive survival. monkey B is part of group A. Monkey B finds food and eats it, survives, doesnt mate, dies. Things like dharing is for the better of humanity. I think its clear you guys... we need to eat more monkeys.:teeth:

[kofh2u]

i dont think conscience, instinctive survival. monkey B is part of group A. Monkey B finds food and eats it, survives, doesnt mate, dies. Things like dharing is for the better of humanity. I think its clear you guys... we need to eat more monkeys.:teeth:


Self survival is a very strong instinct.

When threatened, we tend to react on that same level of response. It is called downshifting by the Glaser bred of Reality Therapists.

Insight into this can come from a review of our god-given sense of fear. We might say, "the fear of God is the beginning of all knowledge."

Downshifting is like a football scrimmage out of control. The opposition has broken through! "Quick," our ego yells, "what's my next move?"

In the congregation of all the "mental coaches" within, one responds, a favorite one. A dominant one. A leader in our mind, one used to taking over, inspite of the wisdom of taking time for patient reflection and consideration from of all the team players. We do not glorify and defer to the wisest counselor among these players. We, instinctively, respond.

These other members of our psyche are the seven "godlike" entities referred to by Jesus in the Book of Matthew. Individually, they can lead us astray.

We are familiar with them, roses by other names, that is all that is different:

1) Satan = Libido
2) Lucifer = Id
3) Baalzebub = Self
4) Mammon = Ego
5) False Prophet = Superego
6) False Shepherd = Harmony Principle
7) Devil = Anima/animus

And, of course,
8) The Holy Spirit = Conscience

As far as I know, you claim to be a theist and therefore are not allowed to post in the Naturalism section. You can either be a theist or a nontheist, you cannot be both.

[BeHereNow]

Thanks for the replies. Keep em comin :)

[Ghettochild]

lol, nice kofh2u, i go out of my way to write a simplistic response...

[kofh2u]

lol, nice kofh2u, i go out of my way to write a simplistic response...

Hey, ghettoman...
hi.

Thankz.
I know lol is complimentary, but I really don't know exactly what it means.

Yes. Everyone uses the bible to tell other people about good and bad behavior, and to recommend behavior to other people.

Nevertheless they act deaf in spite of ears, and blind in spite of eyes.

They realize that the "Kingdom of God is within."

Still, they find it difficult to move away from ancient expressions like Satan, and talk about the Libido.
Libidinal urges which they and their teenagers feel. They talk about abstinance, recommending it.

Its a 16 year stretch for heaven's sake!

Kids are expected to imprison their LIBIDO... not for Jesus... but for the economic beast! Wait until college and a job and a guy from the right family and.... $,...

Hey. Adults recommend waiting, even excluding the sin of spilling one's seed in the ground (masterbation). The wait now is from 13 to 28. That's 15 YEARS! (the average age of first weddings is now age 28)

I mean, they're setting the kids up for failure, and that's is an understatement.

And get this sanctimonious crap:
While we all PRETEND everyone is waiting... guess what?

Who do we blame? The girl and her doctor, of course.

That Satan is in our mind, our Libido, you'd think we could all reason together and make sense, right? And, yeah, Satan is out there, too, in society. The Muslims see Him... the Big American Satan, right on our own TV and movies.

Clear? Simple? Any kid would get the idea? Hmmmm.... not if we keep pretending Satan is red, has horns, and needs to "possess us" like from some dark alley.

[Ghettochild]

personallt i think that satan, or at least the idea of him, is born from the understanding of libido.

[Anitra]

What compels you to act morally or ethically?

There's a good question. :) I spent quite a bit of time trying to develop a convincing case for an ethical system that was based on reason alone. The starting premises of any such system, however, cannot themselves be justified by reason alone. You have to start with some axioms that are accepted "just because." The only real justification you can give for those axioms is "That's what I feel is right."

There is a lot of basic agreement on fundamental ethics among all times and all cultures, though. There are some axioms that are almost universally considered obvious: life is good; creating and producing is good; stealing is bad. Fairness and equity seem axiomatic: one of the first things a child says is, "No fair!"

A good case can be made that ethical behavior is pro-social, pro-survival behavior, and that anyone without basic broken wiring is born predisposed to pro-social, pro-survival behavior because the ones who weren't tended to not survive to breed. We are social animals. Anyone who acted like a complete ring-tailed snot most likely got his head bashed in or his butt kicked out into the jungle to starve alone. If he was a big, strong ring-tailed snot then the group would gang up on 'im. He'd have to sleep some time.

We feel a need to contribute, to help others: because members who were seen as completely useless probably wouldn't get fed, or might end up in the stewpot themselves. Or wake up one morning to find the whole tribe moved with no forwarding address.

We are curious, and feel strongly about truth versus falsity, admire honesty and scorn dishonesty, because accurate information is of survival value. Your survival depends not only on you having accurate information to base your decisions on, but on everybody around you having accurate information, because their decisions affect your survival, too.

Cooperation is as useful a survival strategy as competition, and often more so. We group together in societies because we have found we could individually survive better that way. No group of naked apes sat down and wrote a social contract, and no primitive genius came up with game theory and figured out that altruism was a smart deal in the long run. But apes who helped each other freely and willingly ended up surviving better and raising more offspring who went on to survive better and raise more offspring.

In tough survival conditions, everybody needs everybody. You guard your brother's back because you need him for your own survival and that of your family. You don't beat on your women and children, take away all the plants and grubs they've foraged and eat them yourself, because the next time you return from the hunt empty-handed, they may have moved to someone else's cave, along with all their forage. You share the meat from the hunt, or the fruit of the foraging, equitably enough so that everybody stays a functional part of the group.

Some anti-social behaviors, like rape, are successful in reproduction often enough that the willingness to resort to them remains in the gene-pool. But they are rare. Pro-social, pro-survival dispositions predominate because those are the ones that lead to most reproductive success.

Ethical values are emotional, and tied to survival. We just feel it in our gut that something is right or wrong. Not everyone analyzes it.

Pain and pleasure are emotional, tied to survival. What aids our survival gives us pleasure. What harms it gives us pain.

In individuals without basic broken wiring, doing something that benefits ourselves, or others, or the group, all bring a feeling of pleasure. Seeing others hurt, seeing the group hurt, feels painful. Our bodies know, even when we've intellectually forgotten it, that what aids the survival of others of our group also aids us, and what harms the survival of others of our group also harms us.

We all evaluate evidence by the values and beliefs we've already accepted, though. What we regard as "pro-survival" depends greatly on what we want to survive. What we regard as "pro-social" depends greatly on what social group we identify with. We each form a vision of what we want our life and our environment to be like (or what we think they *have* to be like) and we are always working toward that, consciously or not. In spite of fundamental similarities, we can still end up with conflicting views of right and wrong. But in spite of conflicting views, we have enough basic similarities to communicate with each other and resolve our conflicts.

From a religious point of view, I believe there is one holy universal living God in Whom we live and move and have our being, and Who desires the good of all, and God's going to get God's way eventually. This gives me faith to work for good, to look for the good in all people, to be open to learning from all sources because all truth and good comes from God, and to strive for win/win conflict resolutions.

But a completely secular view can evoke the same things. All things work like systems, and all systems have a completely natural tendency to seek a balance of maximum good for all agents in the system. A pantheist, a polytheist, an atheist can all -- and often do -- also have faith in good, take the responsibility for working toward good, see good in each other, be willing to learn, and seek win/win conflict resolution.

We are all living in the same reality, no matter how we view it.

This is a nontheist only area.

[kofh2u]

What compels you to act morally or ethically?

There's a good question. :)

1) "That's what I feel is right."

2) basic agreement on fundamental ethics among all times and all cultures

3) ethical behavior is pro-social, pro-survival behavior]

4) We feel a need to contribute, to help others

5) having accurate information, because their decisions affect your survival, too.

6) Cooperation is as useful a survival strategy

7) game theory and figured out that altruism was a smart deal in the long run. everybody needs everybody.

8) Pain and pleasure are emotional, tied to survival. What aids our survival gives us pleasure. What harms it gives us pain.

9) What we regard as "pro-social" depends greatly on what social group we identify with.

10) From a religious point of view, I believe there is one holy universal living God in Whom we live and move and have our being, and Who desires the good of all,

11) to strive for win/win conflict resolutions.



I would add this twelveth to your list of positive recommendations preached, taught , encouraged, promoted, lip serviced....

12) The Golden Rule has a wisdom so brief that every culture has been able to bring it to the attention of its members.

BUT, anitra, what CAUSES us, or rather, prevents us from actually accommodating any of these recomendations? I mean as a society.

Is part of the issue understated?
That there seems to be nothing, nothing but personal conscience, that is motivating such acting/action on the part of mankind?

On the other hand, we CAN NOT DENY that one motivator, one obvious and clearly observable motivator, even empirically provable motivator is precipitating much, too much, human action.

It is the negative behavior of self-serving, selfish, self interest, is it not?

This is Beelzebub, the ruler of our pocketbook, for one thing. This SELF, inside our mind, ourself, myself, one's self, THE HUMAN ARCHETYPICAL PATTERN WE CALL Self. Self is the basis for "the invisible, Godlike, hand of economics" identified in Adam Smith's, Wealth of the Nations.

Here we see the essence of the "beast" of Revelation which emerged after 1000 years of the Dark Ages of Christian rike and non-economic monoasticism.

The Rennaisance returned this psychological outlook of SELF to the Western Culture.

Along with this economic reconstitution came the resurgence of sexual excess, identifiably the collective satanic Libidinal expression of our society.
Collective Western Libido, our HUMAN ARCHETYPICAL PATTERN of sexual mores, is evidenced in the accusations of Islam, that we ARE the Great Satan, are we not?


Does SELF, selfpcenteredness, selfishness, self-interest make people act the way they do? Or, is it the long list of 12 ideals?

[Anitra]

12) The Golden Rule has a wisdom so brief that every culture has been able to bring it to the attention of its members.

Yes. We all live in a common reality. What is wise is wise, universally.

This is why I am not anxious about evangelizing, convincing other people of what I see as the truth. I know that many other Christians consider evangelizing to be one of the requirements of faith. I consider it to demonstrate a lack of faith. You can observe it in action: when a millennialist prophecy fails, the group that pushed it begins evangelizing *more*, to shore up their own doubts.

If God is in reality, if what we believe God tells us is wise and true and good and just, then it can be observed and proven to be wise and true and good and just in reality, with no appeal to the authority of God. We do not have to convince anyone to listen to *us* -- we just have to convince them to look at reality, and think.

I am, myself, more concerned with helping people learn to observe clearly and think clearly, than in teaching them what to observe and what to think.

what CAUSES us, or rather, prevents us from actually accommodating any of these recommendations? I mean as a society.

But we do accommodate them, to a large degree. We don't do it perfectly. But the word "perfect" should, in my opinion, be taken out of the human language and shot in its little pink arse. We are always learning and growing. We can go from a not-so-good condition to a better condition. But as soon as we achieve any aspiration, our standards re-adjust; we raise our sights, and what we used to long for as wonderful is now intolerable, and we must do better.

This is how human creativity works. We are always dissatisfied. we can always envision greater than now exists, better than now exists, and we are always striving toward it, and we never quite get there because if we ever achieve a dream the dream then gets bigger.

We are animals with aspirations.

But if we set aside our emotional anxiety over things not being as good as we feel they *must* be, it is clear that the good really does outweigh the bad. If we had no destructive tendencies, we would undoubtedly be better off than we are now. But if our creative, cooperative, constructive tendencies did not outweigh the negatives, we would not be as well off as we are. We probably wouldn't be alive, as a species.

If we were really the corrupt, evil, selfish, cruel brutes that some characterize humans as, we'd have bashed each other to death over the meat of our first kill.

The fact that we are so upset at human evil is one of the demonstrations that we have never grown accustomed to it; that we are, indeed, more often likely to act ethically.

Frankly, the greatest human evils seem to be done by people who think they are righting a great evil. If each of us simply lived as well as we could, and treated the people around us kindly, we would a have a better world than any social crusader has ever dreamed of creating. It is the anxiety to keep *other* people from doing evil to us and ours that usually drives people to do evil. How ironic is *that*?

Does SELF, self-centeredness, selfishness, self-interest make people act the way they do?

I do not think that serving one's own self-interest is the root of evil, but rather seeing one's own self-interests as opposed to that of others, instead of complementary; a part of a whole.

Serving our self-interest does not make us do evil. Valuing ourselves, enjoying ourselves, being comfortable in our own skin -- that includes enjoying and being comfortable with our sexuality -- is the beginning of good, not the beginning of evil. When we care for and esteem ourselves, we have a natural care and esteem for others. If we are alienated from any part of ourselves, we tend to project that upon others and persecute them for it.

Mystics of all traditions tend to describe the ecstatic experience as "being at one", as "all is one." This ecstatic experience of being caught up in life, caught up in the flow of creativity, isn't isolated to religious contemplatives; it can be felt by a mother nursing, by an athlete running, by a farmer or an engineer or an artist or a poet or a dancer or a cook or a gardener. Experiencing being "caught up in the flow" of life and identifying as part of a greater group affects how people act, afterward.

This is what I see as "salvation" -- being reconciled within ourselves, integrated, being a whole; being reconciled to the rest of the whole, integrated, experiencing ourselves as part of a whole. I have found, personally, that unconditionally accepting myself as I was, faults and all, was not surrendering my faults, but the first step in overcoming them. What I am not ashamed of, I do not have to defend, and can easily change. I try to apply that to how I regard others. If I want the world to change, I have to love it unconditionally as it is now.

I recommend a book by James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Identifying ourselves as competing groups is so basic to human psychology that when experimenters took a group selected to be highly similar, allowed to mingle and experience that they were highly similar, and divided them into two groups by a public flip of a coin, the test subjects all rated members of their group as more attractive, smarter, nicer, and in all ways better than members of the other group. "In Group/Out Group" bias is *that* ingrained in us. But experimenters also found that one thing could break down bias as quickly as it could be created. When competing groups work together on a common goal, especially if it is a survival goal, equally basic psychology kicks in; we identify ourselves as all of a common group, and begin treating each other with intra-group cooperative ethics (let's benefit both of us) instead of inter-group competitive ethics (let's benefit me & mine by taking all your bananas).

There is another interesting book, very small, called Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics by Jane Jacobs. Jacob points out that all animals, including humans, will gain resources by taking; but humans are the only animals that gain resources by trade. The advance of what we call "civilization" is the advance of systems of commerce over systems of taking, of trading for mutual advantage instead of fighting for advantage of one over the other.

I would say that Adam Smith is greatly misrepresented by both liberals and conservatives. Adam Smith pointed out that equity and ethics were essential ingredients for a truly free market that would serve "the wealth of nations." If we forget our common good, forget that we are parts of a whole and the good of each of us is important, forget the ethics engaged by that point of view, do not enforce equity and fairness -- then special interests will act to amass wealth to themselves and dominate the market, and it will no longer be a free market, nor work for the good of all.

I do not, myself, think that commerce is the root of all evil. I think Jane Jacobs makes a good case for commerce being the foundation of the concept of equal rights and universal justice. I think that a free market serves a free society. I wish we had one. But without an ethic of universal equal rights and equal justice, without the enforcement of equity and of ethics for the public good, a market system yields the evils you speak of -- because it divides people against each other, sets us against each other, engaging the ethics of competition instead of the ethics of cooperation.

[EvoUK]

You might be interested in this debate on the internet. An atheist who owns a site sometimes shows his email debates (having an atheist website, I suppose you have to put up with the inevitable theist) for all to see. This one is very interesting, and might answer one or two questions- provided you are willing to read it. To save time, you may just wish to read the responses, at it includes all the relevent points, and none of the irrelevent stuff.

http://www.alabamaatheist.org/awareness/debate/debate006.htm

I don't agree with everything he says, but the skeleton is obvious- ethics/morals are a product of society, nothing more.

[Anitra]

ethics/morals are a product of society, nothing more.

I'll follow the link, thanks. And I'll probably argue with the guy. :) I'll post one question here -- where do you think "society" comes from?

[EvoUK]

where do you think "society" comes from?

There are many types of society,depending on the size involved etc. Rather an odd question really, it's pretty self-explanatory.

A colony or community of organisms, usually of the same species

http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=society


1a) The totality of social relationships among humans.
b) A group of humans broadly distinguished from other groups by mutual interests, participation in characteristic relationships, shared institutions, and a common culture.
c) The institutions and culture of a distinct self-perpetuating group.
2) An organization or association of persons engaged in a common profession, activity, or interest: a folklore society; a society of bird watchers.

[kofh2u]

12) The Golden Rule has a wisdom so brief that every culture has been able to bring it to the attention of its members.

Yes. We all live in a common reality. What is wise is wise, universally.

This is why I am not anxious about evangelizing, convincing other people of what I see as the truth. I know that many other Christians consider evangelizing to be one of the requirements of faith. I consider it to demonstrate a lack of faith. You can observe it in action: when a millennialist prophecy fails, the group that pushed it begins evangelizing *more*, to shore up their own doubts.

If God is in reality, if what we believe God tells us is wise and true and good and just, then it can be observed and proven to be wise and true and good and just in reality, with no appeal to the authority of God. We do not have to convince anyone to listen to *us* -- we just have to convince them to look at reality, and think.

I am, myself, more concerned with helping people learn to observe clearly and think clearly, than in teaching them what to observe and what to think.

what CAUSES us, or rather, prevents us from actually accommodating any of these recommendations? I mean as a society.

But we do accommodate them, to a large degree. We don't do it perfectly. But the word "perfect" should, in my opinion, be taken out of the human language and shot in its little pink arse. We are always learning and growing. We can go from a not-so-good condition to a better condition. But as soon as we achieve any aspiration, our standards re-adjust; we raise our sights, and what we used to long for as wonderful is now intolerable, and we must do better.

This is how human creativity works. We are always dissatisfied. we can always envision greater than now exists, better than now exists, and we are always striving toward it, and we never quite get there because if we ever achieve a dream the dream then gets bigger.

We are animals with aspirations.

But if we set aside our emotional anxiety over things not being as good as we feel they *must* be, it is clear that the good really does outweigh the bad. If we had no destructive tendencies, we would undoubtedly be better off than we are now. But if our creative, cooperative, constructive tendencies did not outweigh the negatives, we would not be as well off as we are. We probably wouldn't be alive, as a species.

If we were really the corrupt, evil, selfish, cruel brutes that some characterize humans as, we'd have bashed each other to death over the meat of our first kill.

The fact that we are so upset at human evil is one of the demonstrations that we have never grown accustomed to it; that we are, indeed, more often likely to act ethically.

Frankly, the greatest human evils seem to be done by people who think they are righting a great evil. If each of us simply lived as well as we could, and treated the people around us kindly, we would a have a better world than any social crusader has ever dreamed of creating. It is the anxiety to keep *other* people from doing evil to us and ours that usually drives people to do evil. How ironic is *that*?

Does SELF, self-centeredness, selfishness, self-interest make people act the way they do?

I do not think that serving one's own self-interest is the root of evil, but rather seeing one's own self-interests as opposed to that of others, instead of complementary; a part of a whole.

Serving our self-interest does not make us do evil. Valuing ourselves, enjoying ourselves, being comfortable in our own skin -- that includes enjoying and being comfortable with our sexuality -- is the beginning of good, not the beginning of evil. When we care for and esteem ourselves, we have a natural care and esteem for others. If we are alienated from any part of ourselves, we tend to project that upon others and persecute them for it.

Mystics of all traditions tend to describe the ecstatic experience as "being at one", as "all is one." This ecstatic experience of being caught up in life, caught up in the flow of creativity, isn't isolated to religious contemplatives; it can be felt by a mother nursing, by an athlete running, by a farmer or an engineer or an artist or a poet or a dancer or a cook or a gardener. Experiencing being "caught up in the flow" of life and identifying as part of a greater group affects how people act, afterward.

This is what I see as "salvation" -- being reconciled within ourselves, integrated, being a whole; being reconciled to the rest of the whole, integrated, experiencing ourselves as part of a whole. I have found, personally, that unconditionally accepting myself as I was, faults and all, was not surrendering my faults, but the first step in overcoming them. What I am not ashamed of, I do not have to defend, and can easily change. I try to apply that to how I regard others. If I want the world to change, I have to love it unconditionally as it is now.

I recommend a book by James Waller, Becoming Evil: How Ordinary People Commit Genocide and Mass Killing. Identifying ourselves as competing groups is so basic to human psychology that when experimenters took a group selected to be highly similar, allowed to mingle and experience that they were highly similar, and divided them into two groups by a public flip of a coin, the test subjects all rated members of their group as more attractive, smarter, nicer, and in all ways better than members of the other group. "In Group/Out Group" bias is *that* ingrained in us. But experimenters also found that one thing could break down bias as quickly as it could be created. When competing groups work together on a common goal, especially if it is a survival goal, equally basic psychology kicks in; we identify ourselves as all of a common group, and begin treating each other with intra-group cooperative ethics (let's benefit both of us) instead of inter-group competitive ethics (let's benefit me & mine by taking all your bananas).

There is another interesting book, very small, called Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics by Jane Jacobs. Jacob points out that all animals, including humans, will gain resources by taking; but humans are the only animals that gain resources by trade. The advance of what we call "civilization" is the advance of systems of commerce over systems of taking, of trading for mutual advantage instead of fighting for advantage of one over the other.

I would say that Adam Smith is greatly misrepresented by both liberals and conservatives. Adam Smith pointed out that equity and ethics were essential ingredients for a truly free market that would serve "the wealth of nations." If we forget our common good, forget that we are parts of a whole and the good of each of us is important, forget the ethics engaged by that point of view, do not enforce equity and fairness -- then special interests will act to amass wealth to themselves and dominate the market, and it will no longer be a free market, nor work for the good of all.

I do not, myself, think that commerce is the root of all evil. I think Jane Jacobs makes a good case for commerce being the foundation of the concept of equal rights and universal justice. I think that a free market serves a free society. I wish we had one. But without an ethic of universal equal rights and equal justice, without the enforcement of equity and of ethics for the public good, a market system yields the evils you speak of -- because it divides people against each other, sets us against each other, engaging the ethics of competition instead of the ethics of cooperation.


You are an asset to this site and our community of thinking people. You are informed, reflective, and a Communitarian.

You are idealistic, a healthy sane attribute. But, you are also myoptic in your world view.

Yes, we, the world, have been growing in the right direction, getting better at seeing ourselves, evermore we are closer and closer to one another. Commerce and trade is not inherent bad, it is actually good. Sex is not baf, in fact it is good.

What is bad is the misdirection of productive human effort. Materialism is essentially related to our sexual mores in a subtle paganism that goes both unfecognized and unexamined.

Scripture serves the purpose of focusing attention on these invisible sets of social constructs AND providing the forum for POPULAR discussion and a general understanding where ig will CHANGE us by changing our institutions.

I rely upon Korbinski, "Semantics," for evidence that such a masdive docial evolution is possible simple through attacking the arguments upon which these instituions are founded. I also rely upon Jesus who has the faith of 3 billion people yied to what be says about these institutions.

Consider:

Rev. 16:19 And WESTERN RELIGION was divided into JUDAISM, CHRISTIANITY, AND ISLAM, and the DENOMINATIONS of THESE ORGANIZED RELIGIONS fell: and great SOCIAL INSTITUTIONS came to remembrance IN MENTAL REFLECTION, to give unto CIVILIZATION the cup of the wine of the fierceness of his SOCIAL COMMENTARY.

Rev. 16:20 And every ISOLATED SECRET SOCIETY fled away, and the FOUNDATIONS FOR SOCIAL CONTRACT were not found.

Rev. 16:21 And there fell upon CIVILIZATION a great hail out of
COMMENTARY, every OBSERVATION about the weight of a talent: and men DENIED THE SCRIPTURES because of THEY WERE FOUNDATION FOR THE COMMENTS; for the CRITICISMS thereof was exceeding great.

[Jaltus]

Do you people even read the forum rules? This is a NONTHEIST ONLY area, hence the name Naturalism. Please pay attention to the forum guildlines when posting. While you probably came here from the active threads page, please pay attention as to which area you are in. All of your posts will be edited out. If you want to respond, take it up in comparative religions or apologetics.

[kofh2u]

I think the thread title is pretty self-explanatory.

For myself, I guess it would be an innate sense that I follow. It's hard to say why, really - not to sound haughty, but I do strive for fairness and justice. But really, it's hard to pinpoint a direct motivation for following my set of ethics.

I'd like to hear what you all have to say.


I answer you in secular terminology, without any illusion to theological doctrine.

We all are subject to four states of mind depending upon the circumstances of our physical and mental environment.

Let us symbolize tge the hsppy acceptable state with a smiling face.

But, we could experience an old grumpy state like the tough old Ox must learn to endure.

A third condition of mind we often find makes us fky off the handle, as if an Eagle ready to descend upon the forces against us, we are in some degree of anger, we are mad.

Last, the only other condition, one insisting that we act strong as a Lion, we are afraid.

These for rationale' are the foundation of Reality Therapy.

Ox = Sad
Eagle = Mad
Lion = afraid
Face of man smiling = Happy

Want to hear more secular psychology?

David Judah Layb

[EvoUK]

Mate, you're a theist. You therefore can't post in the naturalism forums, no matter how you phrase it- just like I couldn't post in the theist forums no matter how I phrased it, simply because I'm an atheist.

[kofh2u]

Mate, you're a theist. You therefore can't post in the naturalism forums, no matter how you phrase it- just like I couldn't post in the theist forums no matter how I phrased it, simply because I'm an atheist.


Ok.

I do the rules everywhere.

How do we talk if you are banned "there" and me, here?

Plus, I don't know if I fit in exactly since one space is square, the other round, and I oblong...

I think Jesus sort if was oblong, ...
he definitely was not with the theists in the way theism was defined then, pagan or Jew. Yet, he certainly wasn't faithless compared to the sinners he seemed to perfer.

I didn't understand this rule 'til now. Thanks.

I'll look for something tgat Tweb has to accommodate a full bible faithful, like me, and an a-theist.
soory

[C. D. Ward]

I'd like to hear what you all have to say.
My own two cents? Rational self-interest.

[Ghettochild]

aye there's the rub...