Anything that requires religious justification is not moral.

By not moral i mean amoral, not necessarily immoral.

By religious justification i mean the belief that it is required by religous dogma, text, tradition, or code.

So if you have to justify something with religion it is either without morality or it is immoral. If you give to a charity that helps children suffering from cancer, that needs no justification. Lessening the suffering of children is an altruistic act in and of itself.

If you justify eating crackers and drinking wine at church with religion it really makes no difference. The act of consuming those things is not moral or immoral. It's benign.

If you justify beating your wife with religion than you are attempting to make an immoral act moral by saying your god commanded it.

Now how exactly do we define a moral or immoral act in a reasonable way?

 

I suppose what you're trying to say is that the religious justification doesn't change anything, not that beliefs required by religion, like "don't kill" lacks moral dimension.

 

Morality differs from ethics in that it assumes itself built on an objective base where ethics is built on logic. Not that logic isn't objective in its own way, but by simply changing the priorities (individualistic or utilitarian for example) ethical behavior becomes a matter of subjective judgement.

I think common sense works pretty well here. If a person is acting out of an unfair bias it's likely their action is unethical. No amount of moral justification or even long convoluted ethical rationalizing can absolve them.

My personal guide to morality is based on causing harm to others. The more an action is beneficial (to everyone) the more moral it is, the more an action is harmful the greater its immorality. No action is perfectly on one side or another, so the vast majority of actions fall into a grey area, but direct intentional harm is usually obvious.

 

Religion is irrelevant to it. Not killing others is moral regardless of religion or lack there of. Religion didn't teach us that either.

Religion in this moral position adds nothing except for justification fir something that didn't need justification.

 

If say that is what morality is based on in general. If you base it on other things you ate not as morally correct as a person that bases it on harm caused to others.

 

It's, "self evident". Don't make it seem harder than it is. Knowledge of good and evil, and wisdom to know the difference. Again it's, "self evident". A man beating his wife is of evil and wrong, the man's religion is irrelevant. Even such a man, knows this. And according to most physicians, wife beaters do it in a way now, that hides the marks. If not, I would assume he would force the wife to not go anywhere until the healing is finished. Thus the wanting of him to hide the marks, is evidence he knows it's wrong.

 

Right, I agree. The only things justified by religion are immoral acts, or amoral acts.

It is self evident. No religion required.

 

The truth is not a religion. It's the truth, or just the way it is.

 

The topic of this thread is that religion isn't truth. Thanks for agreeing

 

The God of Abraham/Israel, and Jesus is truth. They are not a religion. Unfortunately for the unfaithful, it's just the way it is, or as you like to say, "no religion required".

I can believe that red is blue, but that does not make it true.

 

re·li·gion
rəˈlijən/
noun
the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.

So you don't believe God is a god? Or you don't worship God? You also don't believe it is a superhuman or more human controlling power?

So are you saying that for "believers" it is the way it isn't?

For everyone it is just the way it is. It can't be the way it isn't.

Is there some point to this?

Religion isn't necessary for morality. It's in many cases the antithesis of it.

 

No, I do not worship what is the definition of religion. I worship the only God, one of love, mercy, forgiveness, and JUSTICE. Everything that mankind has strived to get, and is yet to obtain them all.

 

Worshiping a god is a religion. That is what the word religion means. I'm not telling you to worship the word or its common meaning. I'm saying by worshiping a god that you believe is greater than humans you are absolutely in a religion. That is what it means.

You can assert that your religion is truth, it doesn't mean it isn't a religion.

No one cares.

 

Your headline is very thought provoking.. Thank you.

 

Well thank you, that is exactly what i shoot for.

 

Some women like to be beaten as a physical sign to indicate how devoted they are to their husbands. They insist on severe beatings to show the world how much they love their husbands.

People tolerate what they value even if others consider it cruelty because it's part of who they are. All behavior reflects group norms and actually serve to enhance group cohesion. Would you kill your baby if its first tooth came out of the wrong jaw? Some people do. Other people like to cut off baby boys' foreskins as a sign of their devotion to their imaginary deity. Both practices ensure group cohesion.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/a...eaten-scarred-thorns-prove-resilient-are.html

 

Morality is doctrines of right and wrong. If religion justifies something, then to that religious person the act is right. Just because the source is subjective or some written text does not mean it's not a question of morals.

I suggest a standard of universally preferred behavior. It's the most equitable way to enforce morality through law without forcing anyone to act against their own code.

 

I would see ethics as more a subset of morality. Ethics, as you say, is often based on logic, and it's also related more to motive and specific activities. One might follow religious principles as one's source of morality, and follow certain ethical codes when it comes to profession and organized activities.

Why would "unfair bias" be unethical and how would you logically defend that assertion such that anyone having an unfair (which seems rather broad) bias is acting in way that's wrong? It seems to me that it's entirely subjective. You think it's wrong, others may not.

What constitutes "harm"?

 

If one's code is immoral there is no justification.

- - - Updated - - -

Not in a rational reasonable world.

 

Sometimes it is best to define morality by showing how bad immorality is,
as always it's the underlying important message that should be considered not the act itself.

 

According to the Bible the more God loves a person the more severe God beats the crap out of him.

Hebrews 12:6 (TLB) = "For when he punishes you, it proves that he loves you. When he whips you, it proves you are really his child.”

Have you gotten a good beating lately? If not, God doesn't love you. It's biblical.

 

Good catch. 'Unfair' is very general, but I used it to distinguish it from common bias. Bias already assumes a shade of unfairness by definition, but I tend to see bias towards ones own family or against people who have directly wronged them as being natural, or fair bias. So unfair bias is bias against groups (political, racial, class, sex etc) that have little direct contact with the biased person. Its unfair because it judges individuals with no real information about them, just assumptions about their group. So actions based on those biases are likely to be unethical because they either benefit or damage individuals without cause.

Harm is also general. This is why I tried to emphasize that most actions would fall into a grey area. Harm is intentionally committing an action which causes suffering, loss, or damage to another person.

So buying a four dollar shirt that was produced by an impoverished worker in india who died in a factory collapse due to underfunded working conditions could be construed as supporting a system of exploitation, (you intentionally bought the shirt right?), but its not within most peoples power to understand the consequences of every single action they take.

OTOH--- If a person directly hurts someone else its usually obvious. Its directed at an individual. It causes suffering, loss or injury to them as a direct result of the other persons action.

I guess I have to mention inaction too... Inaction is much more complicated because the factors are much less objective. If the action is not harmful to oneself, and withholding the action is done with foreknowledge and intent, then the results of inaction constitute a harm.

So when a man walks up to me on a blistering hot day and ask for a drink of water, assuming I have access to water and its not difficult to produce it, and I refuse to give him water, it constitutes a harm. The extent of the harm depends on the mans need (is he near collapse from dehydration?) and his ability to provide for himself (are we the only water available?), but the refusal constitutes a harm nonetheless.

 

How would you know?

 

Because it's immoral. Morality isn't rocket science. And just because it's subjective doesn't mean it is so incredibly reletive it has no real meaning.

Let's look at it this way. Is it moral to sacrifice every third girl born to appease the gods of rainfall? Obviously not. Though the appeasement of some god was the justification for the immoral act. You can translate that to anything, killing witches, killing homos, so on. It is objectively immoral to kill somebody to appease a god. If your religion calls for that is a piece of (*)(*)(*)(*). But we'll chase this rabbit a little further. Religion A says that it's the one true religion, and those who don't agree and practice this religion upset the gods and the gods punish the people. That makes it a special interest for practitioners of religion A to convert non religion A followers by peacful means or bloodshed.

This is the fundamental mechanism for any religious atrocity from the spanish inquisition to the salem witchcraft trials to the acts of isis today.

That is a dangerous thought process, it seeks to justify immorality. Add on top of that that religion is a business first and foremost.

 

I see the boundary that separates an action from an immoral action to be harm. Without a harm being committed I see no justification to label an action immoral. Where things become highly subjective is what constitutes harm? I have my own litmus test that asks if an action harms someone physically, psychologically, or does material harm.

A big problem I have with religion is that religion often labels harmless action as immoral.