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"'Without religion, how would you stop yourself from raping and killing all you want?' I already do all the raping and killing I want. That number is ZERO because I don't want to rape or kill!" - Penn Gillette.
With or without Religion we seem to, as a species, not inherently think raping and killing is wrong considering all of the raping and killing that goes on.
My point is all documented human groups had a spiritual belief structure so evidence suggests that belief structure was required for a consistent, easy to communicate, "moral code" that exists today.
Go back 10,000 years if you want to see what "inherent human morals" look like.
People who are only moral because they fear going to hell scare the piss out of me.
I agree.
Morality is inherent in mankind, even if many folks have the will to defy it or lack it altogether.
Religion emerged as a product of humanity’s profound drive for survival. The concept of death as a finite existence is inherently unacceptable to the brain’s survival mechanisms. Consequently, we developed religion and spirituality as coping mechanisms to address this existential dilemma.
Even animals have some kind of morality
I'd say morality came first and people invented religion to justify the moral frameworks they already had. Cultures invented gods and ascribed their culture's shared moral views to their gods
I would argue that morality came before religion or spirituality, and therefore does not require either of them to exist.
Feel free to argue that whenever you are ready.
I see no need to do this.
Then I don't see why you are wasting your time and mine.
Never a waste of time to speak truth.
I would argue that morality came before religion or spirituality, and therefore does not require either of them to exist.
My argument is that a “unified morality” can only be the result of a Spiritual or Religious belief structure due to the subjective nature of morality, the need for it to be easily communicated and enforced, and the need for a “bigger than me” idea to connect the species to in order to follow.
I support this by the fact that the evidence we have of Human civilization, and precivilization humans, demonstrates a spiritual belief structure in all documented groups.
This is not to say that morality in the modern age requires either Spirituality or Religion, because it doesn’t due to the thousands of years of “debate”, but that the formation of these things were necessary to bring our species together into larger groups because there is no inherent moral code in humans, and we are simply animals who need to be taught everything to survive by our elders and peers.
I do not believe in a “God” and I am not arguing that one is required for morality to exist, but I am saying that spirituality is the precursor to the idea of “morality” and required for “morality” to form in the first place.
Never a waste of time to speak truth.
The arrogance on you is absurd. Last chance to make a point month old account.
They just did.
Ethical frameworks exist that don't rely on religion or spirituality. Utilitarianism, kantism, etc..
Incorrect
I am open to hearing your point of view, and answering questions about mine.
Naw, we don't do sea lioning around here.
What is sea lioning?
I also disagree. All you need is to say "I don't want/like that" and to understand that something could be lost or suffered to yourself or others, given a particular scenario. That can then be used to create a system of morality where the majority are in agreement with each aspect.
Oh and empathy. That's pretty critical!
I'd say that spirituality and religion is then formed off the back of and alongside general or universal moral beliefs and that many aspects cannot exist without morals in the first place.
Where did you learn your moral code from and how far back in your history do I have to go to find a religious believer?
Do you have an example of a documented civilization that did not have some form of Religious or spiritual belief structure that guided their moral codes?
Some came from religious teaching, but mostly I got my moral code from my peers and personal experience. I very much start with treating others as I'd be happy/like to be treated. If you follow that principal to start with then most other morals fall into place.
Not sure what you're getting at about how far back you have to go but perhaps I can head off that discussion by saying that most morals can exist in the absence of religion and spirituality.
Re your second question. No. And I doubt anyone has, but that's because morals form a part of religious beliefs. As I discussed, morals first then religion based morals after.
Religion or spirituality of some form or another has existed for as long as we have any detailed information on any societies. The main problem with this discussion is that spiritual, religious and plain moral beliefs long predate any written language system so we can't refer to any solid evidence.
If you start with "I don't like that" as a simplistic moral, then that predates any language as well and therefore spirtuality or religion.
Some came from religious teaching, but mostly I got my moral code from my peers and personal experience. I very much start with treating others as I’d be happy/like to be treated. If you follow that principal to start with then most other morals fall into place.
My point is your peers, the books you have read, your parents, grand parents, etc have all been influenced in some way by Religious moral codes. One does not require it in modern times, but there was a point where it was necessary to define "morality" and unify the population under an exact moral code, and spirituality and Religion were necessary to spread and encode that morality in the greater population.
This is why all Evidence we have suggests humans have always been inclined to be spiritual or Religious through out history.
Not sure what you’re getting at about how far back you have to go but perhaps I can head off that discussion by saying that most morals can exist in the absence of religion and spirituality.
Morals can now exist in the absence of Religion and spirituality, my point is that wasn't always the case, and all evidence we have suggests spiritual practices are a driving factor in our ability to form larger groups because all the information we have suggests spiritual belief in those populations.
Religion or spirituality of some form or another has existed for as long as we have any detailed information on any societies. The main problem with this discussion is that spiritual, religious and plain moral beliefs long predate any written language system so we can’t refer to any solid evidence.
The verbal histories we have intact also demonstrate longstanding spiritual beliefs. If all evidence suggests that some form of spirituality was required for our species to agree on "morality" and form larger groups than I see no point arguing about things we don't have evidence for.
If you start with “I don’t like that” as a simplistic moral, then that predates any language as well and therefore spirtuality or religion.
"Like" is subjective, and if I cannot communicate with you whether or not I like something we have no way of moving forward. When we can communicate, and we disagree, then what?
Morality is subjective at the end of the day. Not everyone believes the same things are wrong that you do. If this is the case now, imagine what "debate" was like before communication and what would be required to instill consistency in the morality of the population.
Haha, I thought you'd say that! Well no, given how widspread and old religion and spiritually is that's not possible for anyone but a child raised by wolves to say it hasn't been an influence!
My centre point of discussion is to look back before, wayyyy before any of these ideas could be cultivated. I feel that you are starting somewhere at a point where these morals are in the process of being developed and refined, if in early days, so your arguments are somewhat self supporting (happy to be corrected, just the impression I'm getting).
You say there's no point in discussing what cannot be proven with evidence...well that makes this whole discussion somewhat defunct then unfortunately!! I'd already written the below so I'll leave it should you wish to discuss further despite this :)
You say it was necessary for formation of larger social groups etc but...I go back to my basic starting point of "I don't like.." As you say there needs to be discussion, development and unity of belief for it to become a recognisable, repeatable, lasting moral system. But that just demonstrates my point that basic, individualistic morals came first then once complex language started to develop then shared likes and dislikes become more prevalent. Imagine what it was like before? Just take a look at chimpanzees.
The developement of shared beliefs, religious or otherwise, will no doubt have occurred simultaneously. Overlapping, replacing and morphing over millions of generations. Some ideas being discarded/diminished as other new ones arose - e.g. that great 1 in 1000 year volcano eruption replacing the end of the 20 year flood occurance, to use my natural disaster example again.
But "I don't like..." is still the starting point for pretty much any discussion about morals as far as I believe.
I get where you're coming from. I used to think the same thing. I don't anymore and I would urge you to look more into subjective vs objective morality. Alex O'Connor has some really good thoughts on the matter.
I would urge you to look at the fact that every documented human group we have evidence from had a spiritual belief structure, and that it is safe to assume that a spiritual belief system was required for our species to form larger groups and bigger populations.
This does not argue the existence of God, just our species constant and persistent belief that something supernatural is behind that shit. Which also happens to be the driver of early scientific study.
If you assumed I was Religious based on my post I also urge you to check your bigotry.
I think the issue here is horse before cart
Humans as a species have a need to explain the world around us. Unfortunately the thought process before the codified use of science was "i don't know there for god"
This means the spiritual system was in place was in place before morality.
This spiritually was bent around what was acceptable at the time. Slavery capital punishment polygamy etc. All of which are more or less moral based on nothing more than where you live
This sounds like you agree with me.
Not really your arguing unless I'm misunderstanding you your basically arguing coronation = causation
We are now in a time where spirituality is not built in (terms and conditions apply) but morality still exist.
Hell I'd argue in this day and age societal spirituality is harmful to morality
We are in a time now where morality does not require spirituality or religion. My point is that it was required to get our species to the point we are at now by unifying a "moral code", and all evidence we have supports that idea.
I am not arguing for religion or spirituality in the modern age, I am saying it served a purpose.
Again causality vs coronation
There is nothing to say if by some quirk of faight (yeh i know what I'm saying but roll with it) something akin to the scientific method was the norm in place of i dunno there for God. We would still come up with societal norms or morality.
If that were true, why has no documented civilization or precivilization existed without an element of spirituality or religion in their history?
The point is Spirituality came first, and based on evidence, was needed for humans to form groups larger than a small family unit as a way to unify "morals".
"What if we had science instead" is a moot point because we have Science now and proved early humans wrong.
First of your twisting my words i never said it were true
Humans are dumb as fuck. They see patterns where there is none and make up reasons just to make the world make sense. Like I keep repeating your arguing coronation equestrian causation this is simply not true.
While you seemed on the level you tipped your hand I guess were done here
I sincerely do not believe you understand English well enough to understand what I am saying, and I do not have the ability to explain it any better than I already have.
If you are hung up on the whole "God" thing, know it isn't about that.
I feel a lot of the people disagreeing here are making assumptions about your beliefs, missing the point, and then simply refuting you to refute you without providing explaination. I think this is a fair and interesting premise. I disagree with it and will ecplain why, though do note I am not invested enough to specifically look anything up so if I say something inaccurate, please evaluate if the logic falls apart or not.
I think the first part of your main justifications has been hard to refute. Most, if not all societies we have known have had religion or spirituality. However, I think your following conclusion, "those societies must have then used morality based on those religions", is where the flaw is. I think most societies had religion as a form of a "God of the gaps" and used it to explain phenomena they couldn't. I would say that is the main reason they did have it. However, that doesn't yet mean they didn't use it for morality. To see that, I'd ask you to look at Greek and Roman mythology, or as known to them, religion. Now I believe, Zeus turning into a swan and doing Zeus things doesn't have a moral (or not a useful one, it's mainly that Zeus is an asshole).. Likewise, Aphrodite turning Arachne into a spider didn't really inform some Greek moral of don't be too pretty, just showed Aphrodite is, for lack of a better word, a fucking jealous bitch. Let's similarly look at Norse mythology. Loki makes Fenrir and tries to kill other gods and generally does shenanigans. There's not really a moral attached to that, he kinda just does shit cus he's a hit of a dick.
My main point here is that while these religions existed, they did so to explain phenomena or were then essentially fanfic extensions of the reasons/personifications of those phenomena, and often were not the basis for morality of a culture (but very well likely were themselves molded by a cultures morality in a reversal of causation). Because Greece, Roman, and Norse cultures were more secular, they could therefore have stories without morals that just had assholery abound. Because the time around the formation of the Christian church was more tyrannical (now I'm guessing), the bible had much more heavy handed morals (ten commandments, 7 deadly sins etc).
I hope that was a better argument for disagreement. And, I don't think your premise was as outlandish as so many others are making it out to be, despite my disagreement.
I sincerely do not think you understand my point if you are only willing to think as far back as Classical Greece, while also demonstrating a pretty ignorant understanding of Greek, Roman, or Norse culture. I would highly recommend reading up on the history of all those people before trying to use their belief structures in argument.
My point is 100% of all documented groups of people had spirituality and religious practices in their history, and a unified idea of "morality" cannot exist without those precursors.
You are operating under the impression that humans 10,000 years ago had access to even a fraction of the education and time to reflect and think you have.
Classical Greece was just one of my examples. My main point is that, even if all documented groups had spirituality and religious practices (which I don't refute), is that you have not convinced me of the cause and effect between morality and spirituality in human society.
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I do believe people did not need a modern formal education or a ton of free time to reflect and think at a high level. If that belief is an issue, then we fundamentally disagree on that point.
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You continue to state that all societies have documented spiritual and religious practices, and I apologize that I didn't make it clear enough that I understood you meant all societies and that I was only using a few societies as an example, but you have not stated why that means spirituality caused morality or needed to have caused morality. Genuinely, could you explain to me how it is implausible that any moral principals found in those religions were the product of societal morals of the time and not the other way around? Even if morals are subjective, religious interpretation is also subjective. As far as meanins to humans and structure goes, neither is more objective than the other in my opinion. Or maybe morals are more objective if we assume they were developed as guided by survival of the species rather than as guided by religion.
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If you want to ignore everything else, here's as simple a summary of my question as possible: Why do you insist religion -> morals? Why can it not be morals -> religion?
Either your argument is that morality is somehow "god given" through religion, in which case I have to ask, which god? Which religion? There's a lot of those around or no longer around, with different nuances of morality, contradicting that idea.
Or each civilization developed religion and incorporated their respectove ideas about morality, but then morality necessarily precedes religiosity.
Either way, doesn't make sense.
Besides, the idea that a fear of god is necessary to make people "moral" is ridiculous. If you would commit immoral atrocities if you didn't believe in god, then I'm sorry, that makes you a bad person; but don't project that unto other people.
Empathy is sufficient for morality, while god, arguably, is an amoral monster.
Cheers, a moral atheist
Either your argument is that morality is somehow “god given” through religion, in which case I have to ask, which god? Which religion? There’s a lot of those around or no longer around, with different nuances of morality, contradicting that idea.
That supports my idea. It doesn't contradict it.
All evidence we have demonstrates spirituality has existed in our species as long as we have existed in groups. This leads me to believe that spirituality was a catalyst to a unified morality that took a very long time to agree on, and we still don't agree on it.
Or each civilization developed religion and incorporated their respectove ideas about morality, but then morality necessarily precedes religiosity.
Spirituality predates recorded civilization. It is also observable in other animals.
Either way, doesn’t make sense.
Probably because you are assuming I am religious, when I am simply referring to our historical evidence.
Besides, the idea that a fear of god is necessary to make people “moral” is ridiculous. If you would commit immoral atrocities if you didn’t believe in god, then I’m sorry, that makes you a bad person; but don’t project that unto other people.
Who taught you your morals?
I also agree with you, but we are speaking about precivilization humans so do not be offended for them. They didn't know any better and it was either believe the rock brings a good hunt or starve in the wilderness alone.
Empathy is sufficient for morality, while god, arguably, is an amoral monster.
Empathy is not inherent, or it wouldn't need to be taught.
God cannot exist based on all evidence we have on the subject.
Cheers, a moral atheist
Thank your Religious ancestors and ancient humans for debating all of these ideas over thousands of years so you can quickly come to the conclusion that God cannot possibly exist.
Cheers, someone who thinks atheists are as annoying as theists, and just as prone to being human.
All evidence we have demonstrates morality has existed in our species as long as we have existed in groups. This leads me to believe that morality was a catalyst to a ~~unified~~ diverse spirituality ~~that took a very long time to agree on,~~ and we still don't agree on it.
See, it's the same when you swap them around. When both morality and spirituality exist throughout all of written history, how can you make any claim of causality? I think spirituality is a natural extension of morality, as people began to establish collective morals, spirituality and ritual can be used to spread and reinforce ideas.
And the idea that empathy isn't inherent is wildly ignorant. Mirror neurons are a fundamental part of our brains, suggesting empathy is taught is like claiming taste is. People are taught what to do with their empathy. Whether to embrace it or ignore it. Hell, look at any of the hundreds of examples of empathy in animals. It's not even exclusive to vertebrates, much less civilization.
Does an Elephant have morals?
Given they mourn their dead, I think there is evidence that they do. If they can value a life, then there must be some framework within which that value stems from.
If we're willing to agree on that, then the follow-up question would be, "do elephants have supernatural or religious beliefs?", as you claim that's required for morals.
What do you even mean by "precursor"?
One that precedes and indicates, suggests, or announces someone or something to come.
I didn't ask for the dictionary definition, I asked what you meant by using it in the context you used it.
That is what I meant in the context I am using it in. When you say words you assume the person listening understands the definition of the word in order to understand the over all statement in context.
That is how words work.
Now do you have a point to make about my very clear statement, or do you want to go start a fight elsewhere?
Okay, so you're just stringing together big words to try and sound smarter than you are, because "precursor of spirituality and religion" is a nonsense phrase.
Okay, so you’re just stringing together big words to try and sound smarter than you are, because “precursor of spirituality and religion” is a nonsense phrase.
Whatever you say buddy. Have fun being angry at a thought.
this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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