Talk:Secular morality

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I think this article should be merged into a broader article morality and religion, although it might have potential if such an article was so large that it needed to use summary style for this issue. Richard001 (talk) 08:57, 16 October 2008 (UTC)

On that note, it might make sense to merge this with the article Secular ethics. They seem similar.Mathmitch7 (talk) 20:45, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Methods of expansion

On the first side of the argument, the information needs to be expanded. There are some people who argue using certain indicators that the non-religious are simple less moral in general. End stop. Even if the non-religiou themselves profess to believe in morality. There are some studies indicating that religious people contribute more in time and money to charities than the non-religious do cited in this line of argument.

That's all tangential to the main topic, however, which is whether or not morality can have meaning if it's not considered to be objective and supernatural but is instead created by naturalistic emotions coupled with simple reasoning. This is a very common religious argument, and it can be expanded further using all kind of analogies, anecdotes, contrasts, and so on.

On the other side, the essential rejoinder is that (a)the religious have cherry-picked and cafeteria picked their notions of spiritual morality to be more or less no different than secular ethics, so what's the point in all this? [The practical, public policy implications of the two moral sets are the same]. (b)There should be no reason to ask 'why' or 'how' a moral conscience comes into being, we should just obey it anyway-- it's as inherently non-nonsensical as asking 'why' or 'how' we experience the desire to breathe. Hitchens makes the point that we should just assume that a innate moral code exists in everyone and proceed from there, not questioning where the assumption comes from.

This should be expanded to include newer ideas based on evolutionary psychology-- such as memes-- as to exactly how the mental impulses to do good things evolved over time. Some would argue, taking a bit of a social Darwinist view, that since the people today with certain moral ideas have outlasted and outlived those in the past without those moral ideas having evolved in their brains-- we can view ourselves as superior. Superior = Winning the game, so to speak. This would answer the question posed by the religious as to why one evolutionary impulse should be obeyed verses the other- because one is stronger.

Standing above all of this is the idea that morality is a fantasy. This comes from two viewpoints-- the hedonistic/materialistic 'life-is-what-you-make-it' group and then the more pluralistic, 'all-is-one' group. Both ideas need expansion. The latter more importantly, since many in the Eastern religious tradition would argue that binary good/evil distinctions do not exist but all morality is a matter of shades of gray or multiple truths co-existing. Of course, this mindset is highly distinct from the former group, which is personified well by Camus.

All in all, much work needs to be done. Cousin Kevin (talk) 02:39, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

A large part of the argument as well ought to look at Immanuel Kant's ideas of absolute good and of the universal categorical imperative. He's certainly have a gigantic influence in how modern people think of good verses evil. Cousin Kevin (talk) 03:13, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I deleted a sentence in the leded that violates WP:OR and needs to be supported by a citation due to its contentious nature. Please refrain from adding anything that would contribute to an editors point of view and list only information cited by sources in this article, which is sure to be contentious. Also, it would not be hard to find citable views that support this statement (so this could easily be readded with a statement), but be careful about throwing this article into a POV state at the start. I'll keep an eye on this article and may contribute. It seems a decent addition, but as noted needs a lot of work.

Consider the work "How Good People Make Tough Choices" by Rushworth M. Kidder, which offers some good information on this subject. It's couched within the framework of ethics, but some material is applicable.

I suggest that the best way to avoid POV claims on this article is by starting, at the outset, to consider the postions of non-monotheistic religions. Buddhism and Hinduism (for example) do not define sin and morality in terms of a God and within the framework of the bible. E.g. Buddhists look to the intent behind actions and one action might be moral under one set of circumstances and immoral under another. To adhere to WP:WORLDVIEW, this article will have to address not only atheists, but non-monotheistic religions. Better to do it at the outset. A focus on monotheism will create an unbalanced article with limited usefulness-except for those who wish to argue that you must be religious to be moral. Airborne84 (talk) 14:31, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

NPOV

It's subtle, not blatant. It just needs work. Comment:

Lede. Defines the subject as addressing the question of whether religion is necessary for moral behavior. This is probably a notable topic, but should be sourced. Lede's don't always need a source, but this one should have one. Another way to define the topic might be "...addresses how morality is defined without religion" or something along those lines.

POV issues:

1. Two paragrahs stating how religious leaders state religion must be present for morality to be present.

2. A paragraph with irrelevant attacks on religious leaders (e.g. by Dawkins). The last half of the last sentence is relevant. This line of thought should be extracted and expanded. The rest of the paragraph isn't needed at present. If this article was greatly expanded, it might be useful as background material.

3. Hitchens quote. This one's relevant.

4. Paragraph on nihilism and related topics. This is relevant also, but is not a balance to the religious assertions. There are atheists and agnostics that have beliefs about morality (and ethics).

Again, this isn't a blatant POV issue, it's borderline. It just seems to favor religious positions with slightly undue weight. How to fix? Add some info on how non-religious folks base and define their morals. That serves as a balance to accusations by religious leaders that there cannot be morals without religion (an idea with which I'm sure many athiests would disagree). There's a lot more that this article needs, but that will address the immediate issue. Airborne84 (talk) 05:06, 16 April 2010 (UTC)

I honestly cant see how you can have an article like this and possibly expect neutral POV. If a religious thinks you are evil and wicked, no POV or neutrality will change that belief. There are no studies that ive seen which indicate anything but atheists acting *more* moral than religious folks, in the long run. This includes (In the US) the huge number of christians in prison, compared to atheists. Research done by Denise Golumbaski (I think thats right.) showed less than 1% to maybe 2% of the prison population being atheist, drastically fewer in percentage between the two sides. At the same time, the only "sources" that refute these stories are biased webpages who do not cite sources. As such, a Neutral point of view would have to report that one side seems to just be making things up. It would be better to point out that, AND that the same religious group has a very long history of such twistings. As far as I can tell, thats as close to Neutral as this page can get without validating manifested ideas. 74.128.56.194 (talk) 20:59, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Well if there are far more Christians than atheists in the US they would make up a bigger % of the prison population and as you'd see in documentaries a lot of people who used to be atheist become religious in jail so that pushes the % of religious inmates higher. 86.45.226.161 (talk) 03:37, 12 April 2017 (UTC)

Philosophy needed

This article needs to cover the treatment of the subject by professional philosophers - too much mention of Dawkins et al. who are amateurs in the subject. Ben Finn (talk) 18:53, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

I guess that depends on how you define "amateur." Regardless, Dawkins is a noted publisher in this area. Questions about whether his information and conclusions are informed or reasonable belong in a forum outside Wikipedia.

However, I agree that more information provided by others is warranted. --Airborne84 (talk) 19:51, 3 January 2011 (UTC)

Merge with Ethics and religion?

Why not merge this article into Ethics and religion? Thus we can avoid the risk of POV forking. Mange01 (talk) 22:37, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

An interesting idea, but I think it's ok:

1. It's notable. This topic is specifically discussed in many, if not most, books on morality/ethics.

2. It might grow into an article of a size that would require splitting anyway. There's plenty of material on this. It's just not all here yet.

3. Not sure a POV fork is an issue since there are two sides that can be, and are, represented in the article.

Just my thoughts. --Airborne84 (talk) 02:13, 20 July 2011 (UTC)

Leopold and Loeb

A few Christian groups, (Focus on the Family being the most notable) have been using the following excerpt from the trial when Clarence Darrow was making arguments to the judge during sentencing: "This terrible crime was inherent in his organism, and it came from some ancestor... Is any blame attached because somebody took Nietzsche's philosophy seriously and fashioned his life upon it?... It is hardly fair to hang a 19-year-old boy for the philosophy that was taught him at the university?"

It's been used to argue that objective morality cannot exist if our ultimate authority is our own genes. Is this considered noteworthy in the discussion, given the high-profile organization using it? Atari25 (talk) 22:02, 31 July 2011 (UTC)

If the source meets the requirements at WP:RS, I'd say it could be included. It's a rather nuanced aspect of this topic right now, but there's no reason why a finished article (might be years) couldn't include ideas such as the above. If added, it would be worthwhile (IMO) to present both sides of the discussion—what the Christian groups argue, as well as counterpoints offered by other reliable sources. --Airborne84 (talk) 00:35, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Merges

There are possibilites to merge this article into other articles (as noted in sections above). I wouldn't support such a move since there's plenty of material for this article and the others mentioned. In a few years, I suspect that they will grow (I actually plan to contribute more—just haven't had much time).

On a side note, I find it interesting that the article "Morality and Religion" is only a redirect to "Ethics in Religion". Morality and ethics are two different things. Whether they should be considered two different things or whether the nuances make much sense to the average Wikipedia reader doesn't change the fact that there is a vast body of literature out there on both topics. There is also plenty of literature that discusses the differences between the two—and if it makes sense to differentiate between the two.

In that light, I suspect that these articles will become more fully developed in the long-term. Merging them now will just cause them to be split back out later. Given that, I'd support leaving as is. Merging "Morality and Religion" with "Morality without Religion" might make sense eventually, when the "Morality and Religion" article exists as more than a redirect. —Airborne84 (talk) 21:04, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Name change

I propose changing the name to "Secular morals". This would be more in line with the name of the article on Secular ethics.

The issue that might result is that there could then be proposals to merge the article with Secular ethics. I don't see a huge issue with that though, because the content of the article should drive a merge like that, and the same proposal could be made about this article and Secular Ethics now. The question is really if morals and ethics are distinct enough to merit their own separate articles. Many authors make no distinction between morals and ethics, but some do. So, I don't see a problem with keeping separate articles, at least for now.

I welcome other editors to weigh in on the proposed name change. --Airborne84 (talk) 14:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

In the absence of any objections (and since I concur with Airborne84's reasoning), I've executed this move. Yunshui 雲‍水 05:04, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I support merging with Secular ethics. Both articles are written about philosophy and can be merged.--Taranet (talk) 06:47, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

Afterlife (e.g. heaven or hell)

I'm glad there is reference to belief in an afterlife (avoidance of hell) as religious motivation for being good. It is a most important aspect of religion in general.Joseph Meisenhelder (talk) 14:04, 22 March 2013 (UTC)