# morals



## stringmusic (Oct 8, 2010)

got this from a friend,

When dealing with the objectivity of moral values one must look at the differences between mere human instinct and morality.  Everyone knows what it feels like to be prompted by instinct…for instance a mother’s love for her child, or the sexual instinct, or the instinct to eat.  Also many people including myself often feel a desire to help someone if they are in need…and I do believe that this is the herd instinct.  However, feeling a desire to help and felling that you ought to help whether you want to or not is a completely different thing.  Suppose that you hear a cry from a man in danger.  You will probably feel 2 desires…one a desire to give help(due to herd instinct) and another to keep out of danger(due to the instinct of personal preservation.)  But at that moment you will feel a desire within you, in addition to the two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing which judges between two instincts cannot itself be either of them.  You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you to play one note and not another note, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard.  The moral law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.  



Another way of looking at it is that if the moral law was merely one of our instincts developed by the evolutionary process then we ought to be able to point to what impulses were always good and what impulses were always bad.  But this is not possible.  It is a mistake to think that the impulse for mother love or patriotism is always good and the sexual instinct and the fighting instinct are bad.  We may have to suppress our fighting instinct more often than our love for a child but there are times when a mother’s love needs to be suppressed because it may be damaging to the child or it may lead to unfairness toward other people’s children.  What I am trying to say is that there are really no right or wrong instincts.  Think once again of the piano, it doesn’t have right and wrong notes.  Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another.  The Moral Law is not any one instinct or a set of instincts: it is something which makes a kind of tune(the tune we call goodness) by directing the instincts.



The evolutionary process cannot develop something in us that will make us feel like we ought or ought not to do something.  God has written his moral law on our hearts for a reason.  It is the tune that leads to life.  A person that chooses to not follow the tune and instead follows their impulses whenever they arise is like a person who tries to play guitar for the first time…what they play ends up sounding terrible not only to them but to everyone around them.


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## earl (Oct 8, 2010)

I am sure some one with a musical background may read this differently than I do.
Your reference to all notes are correct at one time or another is one that I must disagree with . The mother with no love for a child is a bad note . A pedophile is a bad note . A husband who beats his wife and kids is a bad note .  You get my drift . And Christians play these notes also, not just heathens .
The only thing that keeps these notes from being played is the restraints their peers put on them. Whether it's the first or 100th time the notes have been played .


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## stringmusic (Oct 8, 2010)

earl said:


> I am sure some one with a musical background may read this differently than I do.
> Your reference to all notes are correct at one time or another is one that I must disagree with . The mother with no love for a child is a bad note . A pedophile is a bad note . A husband who beats his wife and kids is a bad note .  You get my drift . And Christians play these notes also, not just heathens .
> The only thing that keeps these notes from being played is the restraints their peers put on them. Whether it's the first or 100th time the notes have been played .



a pedophile is using his sexual instinct at the wrong time, thats the bad note, the pedohile is a person, a person is not an instinct, therefor not a note at all. This same principal applies to all the examples that you gave.

And its VERY obvious that Christians are not perfect, that horse is decaying

For whatever reason guys that dont believe that morals came from God continually say that the people around them (i.e peers) have something to do with their morals, please answer the question as to where these peers got their morals. How did they know to tell people to not be a pedophile,to love their child, or to stop beating their wife and kids? From what concrete right and wrong thing did this come from?


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## Tim L (Oct 8, 2010)

Well I don't understand what this thread is all about; gets into musical notes, pedofiles, and horses..but if we are talking about morals being all shot to Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ----Edited to Remove Profanity ----; well I just read where the reigning Miss "Ms. Kentucky" has been stripped of her crown.  Seems she went on a rampage one night last week, stabbed a service station attendent and then robbed a pharmacy....What has happen to this nations morals!! And I didn't even know there was still such a thing as a service station attendent!  As Larry Munson used to say, just get the picture (i.e. just imagine what just happened)....a beauty queen, not just any beauty queen but the reigning Miss Kentucky goes berserk one night; stabbs the gas station guy, then robs a drug store...Talk about bad morals!


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## ted_BSR (Oct 8, 2010)

I think this thread is about the fact that morals come from a higher power, not, people, society, or cultures.


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## earl (Oct 8, 2010)

No , they come from people,society , and cultures. You are not born with morals , you learn them. Place a child in any diverse or ordinary surrounding , and that is where they develop their morals. A child raised by wolves will have the morals of wolves .


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## TTom (Oct 8, 2010)

More on this line? OK we get it YOU think that the philosophers dating back to Plato and before who had no contact, no relationship with the Judeo Christian God, still got their morals from a God they didn't believe in or know exited. Instead of the sources they gave for the morals their societies developed.

The Morals to the stories in Greek, Sumerian, Hindu, Buddhist and all those other traditions, those moral lesson, the reason for the story in the first place are attributed to a God they knew nothing about, instead of the gods they knew and worshiped.

Truth is Morals come from mythic stories, they are called morals because they came from The Morals of the stories.


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## ted_BSR (Oct 8, 2010)

Right is right, wrong is wrong, pretty much sums it up.
Go'in hunting in the morning, good night to all.


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## earl (Oct 9, 2010)

That couldn't be further from the truth ted. Depends on where you are .


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## Six million dollar ham (Oct 9, 2010)

Rouster said:


> well I just read where the reigning Miss "Ms. Kentucky" has been stripped of her crown.  Seems she went on a rampage one night last week, stabbed a service station attendent and then robbed a pharmacy....What has happen to this nations morals!! And I didn't even know there was still such a thing as a service station attendent!  As Larry Munson used to say, just get the picture (i.e. just imagine what just happened)....a beauty queen, not just any beauty queen but the reigning Miss Kentucky goes berserk one night; stabbs the gas station guy, then robs a drug store...Talk about bad morals!



When did a nation ever have collective morals?  That's her morals.  From what I've read, and it was Miss Kentucky Latina, she was under the influence of some substance.


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## Tim L (Oct 9, 2010)

All I can say is good gawd almighty...A beauty queen goes ape crap, stabs, plunders, and robs, pretty much goes postal, and yall all but say it's alright, that nothing is immoral about it..


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## Six million dollar ham (Oct 9, 2010)

Rouster said:


> All I can say is good gawd almighty...A beauty queen goes ape crap, stabs, plunders, and robs, pretty much goes postal, and yall all but say it's alright, that nothing is immoral about it..



Didn't say it's alright.  All I said was that because one person gets stoned and flips out (allegedly) it doesn't mean the nation is guilty of something.


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## Tim L (Oct 9, 2010)

Six million dollar ham said:


> Didn't say it's alright.  All I said was that because one person gets stoned and flips out (allegedly) it doesn't mean the nation is guilty of something.



Thanks for bringing that up....there is a lesson to be learned here about morals and what can happen when women are allowed to come and go as they please without a man to first tell her it's alright. At first I thought you were alittle harsh, but you do have a point; whatever her nationalty, it was immoral for her to have done what she did; I don't care if she was so drunk she couldn't stagger out of her house..


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## ted_BSR (Oct 9, 2010)

earl said:


> That couldn't be further from the truth ted. Depends on where you are .



Thank goodness the deer hunting forum is picking up.  See you in January.


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## pnome (Oct 11, 2010)

stringmusic said:


> got this from a friend,
> 
> When dealing with the objectivity of moral values one must look at the differences between mere human instinct and morality.  Everyone knows what it feels like to be prompted by instinct…for instance a mother’s love for her child, or the sexual instinct, or the instinct to eat.  Also many people including myself often feel a desire to help someone if they are in need…and I do believe that this is the herd instinct.  However, feeling a desire to help and felling that you ought to help whether you want to or not is a completely different thing.  Suppose that you hear a cry from a man in danger.  You will probably feel 2 desires…one a desire to give help(due to herd instinct) and another to keep out of danger(due to the instinct of personal preservation.)  But at that moment you will feel a desire within you, in addition to the two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing which judges between two instincts cannot itself be either of them.  You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you to play one note and not another note, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard.  The moral law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
> 
> ...



That 3rd thing is the level of empathy you feel toward the other person.  If it was your daughter, would you hesitate to try to save her for fear of your own life?  How about your friend?  How about a friend of a friend?  How about if it was Osama Bin Laden?


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## holton27596 (Oct 11, 2010)

look up social equity/exchange theory. It does a far better job of explaining "morals" and why people do what they do than any higher power.


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## ted_BSR (Oct 14, 2010)

holton27596 said:


> look up social equity/exchange theory. It does a far better job of explaining "morals" and why people do what they do than any higher power.



Yeah, NO, that is ridiculous psychobabble crud.  Well documented but WRONG WRONG WRONG.


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## holton27596 (Oct 15, 2010)

So you're saying the "golden rule" is wrong? Because that is pretty much what social exchange theory boils down to.


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## ted_BSR (Oct 15, 2010)

holton27596 said:


> So you're saying the "golden rule" is wrong? Because that is pretty much what social exchange theory boils down to.



He who has the gold makes the rules?  Maybe in Econ 1100.


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## Six million dollar ham (Oct 23, 2010)

Rouster said:


> well I just read where the reigning Miss "Ms. Kentucky" has been stripped of her crown.  Seems she went on a rampage one night last week, stabbed a service station attendent and then robbed a pharmacy....What has happen to this nations morals!! And I didn't even know there was still such a thing as a service station attendent!  As Larry Munson used to say, just get the picture (i.e. just imagine what just happened)....a beauty queen, not just any beauty queen but the reigning Miss Kentucky goes berserk one night; stabbs the gas station guy, then robs a drug store...Talk about bad morals!



Found a little update on your girl here...she spoke with a news crew in Kentucky recently.  Really   owned up to her _alleged _actions.
-I've never had to deal with anything like this
-I can learn from this and the best thing is to move on
-It wasn't me
-It was really unfortunate
-That's not what happened

Link


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## Tim L (Oct 25, 2010)

Six million dollar ham said:


> Found a little update on your girl here...she spoke with a news crew in Kentucky recently.  Really   owned up to her _alleged _actions.
> -I've never had to deal with anything like this
> -I can learn from this and the best thing is to move on
> -It wasn't me
> ...



Well after doing alittle research on google, I will admit she isn't too hard on the eyes and is not exactly a skank...We are know that good looking wimen can get away with things that a homely woman cannot....But with all that said, just because she was having a bad day, did she have to go apecrap on the c-store guy and the pharmacy clerk?  Before I would have said not, but now I'm willing to give here the benifit of the................................nah she shouldn't go apecrap on folks.....and it doesn't excuse her that she stabbed with a pen and not a knife..


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