Logical & Critical Thinking

with Professor Logic

What is Morality and Where Does Morality Come From?

April 12, 2011

what-is-morality-and-where-does-morality-come-fromWhere does morality come from? To find the answer we can first examine where people once believed morality came from. We will look at the logic structures of both ancient and modern beliefs concerning morality and try to come to a logical conclusion. We will also try to figure out what morality is or at least make an attempt to describe the highest probability for what morality is composed of.

What is Morality?

Morality is the belief or recognition that certain behaviors are either “good” or “bad”. Some morals are very easy to accept and only the fringes of society might question or reject them. These people on the fringes may be good or bad, the mere act of rejecting a socially accepted moral of the time is in no way an  indicator of the persons goodness.

Morality Context Examples

As an example, few would promote murdering little children, there are however a few humans that would do this with no moral qualms. In this case most people consider this bad and evil. In another time slavery was accepted and helping slaves was “immoral” by societies standards. Now, however, helping slaves is a good and moral act in our modern perception. A different example is patriotism, it is often thought of as a good trait, but there are people that question such blind faith.

Moral Overlap and Contradiction

Some morals are harder to accept because they contradict or overlap with other morals. These types of moral situations are at the heart of the greatest debates of our time. Let us take abortion for example, this is an extremely heated topic and you will find that the morality of women’s rights conflicts with babies rights. In cases like these there are usually logical and compelling arguments on both sides in extremes while major ethical and moral dilemas occur in the “gray areas”.

Where does Morality Come From?

demon-god-what-is-moralityMorality, God, and the Devil

The existence of god is not within the scope of this article but we will touch on some questions and philosophical concepts involving a god and morals.

Many people used to and still do believe that morality comes from a god. Some also believe that only good morals are from god and bad morals are from demons, devils, or a singular satan type character. There are deeper logic structures which will call us to question the function of this belief.

If we get our morals from a god, are they moral because a god says they are or because a god is bound by them? This question is the Euthyphro dilema. If a thing is moral because a god says a thing is moral then this god could say that slavery is moral and it would then be good. If god cannot say this then this god is bound by outside moral laws. This would beg the question, where did these morals come from that are conveyed by god? This also brings into question the scope of human reality and philosophical concepts of time.

Animal Social Orders

morality-exists-in-wolvesFrom what I can best gather through my experience and sense data is that morality is a complex structure to maintain social cohesion and enhance survivability among social creatures. It is present in wolf packs and even among savage reptilian crocodiles. Really most anywhere you find social orders of animals you will find acceptable and unacceptable behaviors. For example it is unacceptable for a small crocodile to take food from a larger one, or it is unacceptable for a subordinate wolf to mate over the Alpha wolf. If these things happen then there will be consequences, the smaller crocodile or subordinate wolf will be physically attacked. As with humans if you steal something other humans will try to give you consequences.

So there could be a divine origin to morality but it would likely be involved with genetics and social structures rather than just external lectures. I think it’s important to just realize that morals are a part of genetics and are more complex in higher order mammal social structures.

My Stance on Morality

From the above discussions I think it is safe to assume that the moralities in human society are inherent and internal within us. What I mean is that the mechanism that creates morality is built into our genetics. Morals are subject to a wide range of applications and extremes and some societal moralities can be created from lies and false beliefs. They are subject to change and most are not absolute. What was once moral, for example slavery, is no longer moral today and thus we move on toward a more civil and moral human society.

Helpful Links on Morality

  • Grungeflannel1990

    Interesting to note that the basic theory of morals is written by an immoral person.

  • MaxD

    I thought this website was called logical-critical-thinking this just seems like a bunch of crap someone pulled out their butts to degrade any belief in a God. If he had logic he’d know no law controls God because God MADE the law… just by that sentence I read I can already tell he made this up.

    • Osato

      I Just feel you read it wrong and got offended and of course he made this up its a theoretical notion from his mind and he was simply Saying God would have to e bound by his goodness in order to make a good law so in turn is God but a concept or is he a being because what I get from this is if he is a being he his bound by his qualities but how can God be bound if he is all powerful and that is what makes me afraid to think the answer to life is made even more complex because if he is but a concept created by man then who gave man this intellect unless God is an infinite loop of logic

  • Jeff Carlisle

       Animals do not use any type of moral judgement to make descisions, they use only instinct, and they need no more than that and learned behavior. The “big dog” disciplines the smaller one, who learns to avoid pain, simple and logical.
       The human animal is the same with an important advantage of logic. We have no less instinct, no less need to use learned behavior, we balance them with logic, or reason.

    • Clement

      The use of the terms ‘simple & logical’, alone defies your argument that animals do not use moral judgement. For moral judgement is an intellectual and logical process based in our cognitive functions.
      I think they do.

  • Owrang Moshtael

    Where do I start this article is wrong on so many levels. There is a lack of understanding what morality actually is, the animal examples are just ridicilous. I think God WII NOT (rather than CANNOT) say raping is a good thing.

    • N_todd84

      Has many times throughout the bible

  • Sheep_86

    YOU sir are the devil. This is the kind of gibberish that will make you burn in hell. Repent now or burn the eternal abyss. 

  • SeanL

    What the hell is he talking about?! God raping and killing babies? This does not make any logical sense and certainly doesn’t answer the question of where do morals come from.

  • Paul Tran

    The examples of wolves and crocodiles are just silly and totally untrue. In the animal kingdom the leader of the pack is constantly challenged by younger members and unless it can maintain its dominance through brute force & power it will be defeated. There’s no inherent morality in the animal kingdom at all. Just look at homosexuality or incest or matricide etc … that goes on continually in the animal kingdom, are we so base that we begin to compare ourselves with other animals ?

  • Dbandsg
  • Galabon

    Was this written by a five year old?

  • http://www.facebook.com/davidpetersonharvey David Peterson Harvey

    It would have been for the best to leave the simplified argument about God out of the discussion. It’s a more complicated subject and one best avoided by the anti-theist in other pursuits. It undermines the purpose of your site, to get people to learn and use logical and critical thinking, because minds who are indoctrinated into modern conservative and fundamentalist Christian beliefs will shut down every thing you have to say from that point forward.

    So, is this site about logic and critical thinking or damning religion? Because I know theologians who could, within the rules of sound logic, rip your over-simplified argument to shreds. Better to stick to your site’s primarly purpose and lose that text from this article.

    • josephleon9

      Hey David, thanks for the response and advice. I took your critique about the content of the article revised the section about religion. I think you are right when you said that the existence of a deity is not within the scope of this article.

      I tried to remove the topic on divinity as an origin of morals. Instead I pose the idea that regardless of divine origin or not, that morals are still linked to genetics. The believer or non believer can adjust the reasoning behind this on their own.

  • Drock

    Animals that steal food from alpha males or larger organisms is a sign of survival instinct, not an indication of predisposed morality. Animals natural instincts are to survive and reproduce. Challenging animals stronger than them could almost be considered suicide. One’s will to survive is stronger than one’s will to stay moral.

    • josephleon9

      You discount the fact that there might be hundreds of times a smaller animals brain computes the urge to steal the food with the consequences of possible retaliation before it eventually tries to take the food. The equation is more complex as the animal’s strength comes closer to the alpha. Look at humanity and all the people constantly assessing what they can take. Think about from the lowly street thief to the full blown dictator.

  • awsesome face

    David Peterson Harvey i agree what with that dude says, other people on this site juse seem like jesus freaks

    • Alpha

      something tells me you are some gay faggot who likes to search shit you don’t like and comment shit you dont even understand yourself. I can only imagine you on your porn websites..

  • iHOPEcatholicsDIE

    ya i hate Catholics i hope they fucking burn like niggers and jews, MERICA

    • Alpha

      Wow you are so uneducated. I really do hope your parents don’t take away your TV time or putting you in a time out for being a snotty little bitch who thinks life is “unmeaningful” hopefully you dont commit sucide for being gay.

  • Donnie Smithers

    The number of butthurt, closed minded christian comments below is amusing to me. The God argument actually makes a pretty good point as to the logic behind any religion-based morals: They are simply that! Morals believed and conceived by the Mud-People founders of modern religion. Take pre-marital sex for example; No sin is any worse than any other sin, so by religious standards, anyone who “defies” this idea is a sinner who is as frowned upon in the eyes of God as someone who rapes and kills babies. BUT in modern society, who is it that gets ousted and shamed? Is it all of the sluts and horn dogs out there whose sins are equal to that of Child Murderers? Obviously one type of sexual immorality is less frowned upon by the groups which claim equality between all negative acts (disagreeing with this statement admits that something in a religious doctrine is false, thus further negating the relevance of said doctrine). Furthermore, you all realise if there IS in fact a God, that the concepts of Child murder, pre-marital sex, torture, etc. ALL COME FROM HIM. Again disagreeing with this defies logic and makes your beliefs look silly.

    The point I’m trying to make is, the majority of the negative responses below are nothing more than closed minded defenses of religious individuals whose beliefs and “truths” have been questioned by simple human logic (the fact that human logic alone is enough to challenge the existence of God should be proof enough that something’s not right). You CANT talk about morality without talking about God; the two go hand in hand.

    • Toyona

      nicely said …i strongly agree with the last point

    • Kevin

      simple logic, let’s use some. The Bible does not say premarital sex is worse than rape or murder. All sins are bad, murder would definitely be one of the worse though. What it says about premarital sex is that it’s a sin against yourself. If there is a God, do all these bad things come from him? No, they really don’t. If there is a God that created us with free will, then us choosing to do evil things does not take away from his morality or goodness. That’s like saying kids who are bad and immoral must also have immoral parents who taught them all those immoral things. That’s absurd. I don’t see how disagreeing with that defies logic. I didn’t read the comments below, and based on yours, I won’t read them. I don’t like the lack of logic either, may it be from theists or atheists, but please be a little more respectful. Can we not just argue without trying to make each other look like fools? What are we, like seven?

      • Osato

        But God is a supreme and all powerful creator with a choice of what he makes is he not? Human parents cannot choose the outcome of the child…

    • Alpha

      Something tells me you are some very educated yet spoiled little snot nosed kid. sorry just HAD TO GET THAT OUT OF MY SYSTEM. well said

      • Alpha

        well said if i do say so myself*

        DONT YOU THINK I WAS TALKING TO YOU, you little fucker :D

  • Kevin

    I wish we could have such a discussion without insulting each other. Anyways. If we get morals from God, is it because a God says they are or because he is bounded by them? While I believe that’s still besides the point, I will try to answer that question, and since you assume a lot in your post, then i will do the same. If there is a God that created us, and is moral and good, then it follows logically that he would want us to be moral and good too. He would therefore gives us moral values that are consistent with his nature, goodness. He cannot tell us to do something that is not moral, that doesn’t mean he is bound by them. Assuming he is a mighty all powerful God, there is nothing stopping him from doing what he wants, He will not do it because he is bound by them per se, but out of goodness, period. But you guys say morality is defined as the well being of conscious creatures a lot. Good argument, but the problem with that is if there really is no God, then these moral values will crumble with the rest of the world and the human race will destroy itself. That’s not very hard to predict, It’s pretty obvious.
    Please respect other people’s right to disagree with you. I personally could careless whether or not someone believes in God. What bothers me is when people think they are geniuses and every believer is an idiot.

    • josephleon9

      Hey Kevin, right you are about the aggressiveness of the article in regards to god as an origin for morality. This may be the truth or it may not and really this shouldn’t even be in the scope of the article. The main point is that morals are present in animals and highly linked to genetics. I rewrote the section on god and will likely continue to revise the article till it better fulfills a logical argument that morals are in the genes. Which is a position that doesn’t discount or promote the existence of a god.

  • http://www.facebook.com/mijaba Michael Bath

    if a moral is temporary then it is opinion— that’s not morality. morals must be permanent and unchanging or they are temporary.

  • rburton

    To those dissatisfied with the author’s account of God’s role in morality:

    The author is putting forward the Euthyphro dilemma: a philosophical tradition older than Christianity itself. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euthyphro_dilemma if you’d like a better understanding of what the author was trying to convey.

    • 66Scorpio

      It’s is a silly question if you take into consideration the development of monotheistic theology over the last 2500 years. If, by definiton, God is omnipotent then whatever God says carries the day. Where God or various gods are creatures of the universe themselves, perhaps products of a demiurge and therefore subject to the natural laws of the universe thus created, then those gods would be subject to the same laws and would likely enforce them as such.

  • yade wirawan

    To day, i see almost all human around the world have no morality. At least, just have litle morality. Global warming can proof it. I thought, animals still have moralty. Why ?, because as far as human still kill animal to earn but animals commonly is never thinking to eat humans. Human is the true animal of all animals. It`s to difficult to describe it. Human`s brain ability ( logic ), must use to protect everything weaker than human such as animas or between human each other. Because of it, all criminal must be punished and all kind of animal may not earn the other animal. If a lion want to kill a rabbit, human must punish the suck lion. So, all human must be vegetarian. All lions and all tigers must learn to eat grass. That was the essensial of morality.

  • Dave Stewart

    you use faulty logic with your example of “god saying raping and killing a 2 year old is a good thing…..” That would be like saying I have a ball. Can god make the inside of the ball the outside at the same time it is the inside? No – well then there must not be a god. God made laws and operates within them whether it is “what is the inside or what is the outside or in your example good or bad. You making up insane situations and ascribing them to god and then declaring well then there must be no god is simply faulty logic based on an already false assumption. I’m perfectly fine with you trying to use logic to disprove god but don’t use flawed logic.

  • Good Topic

    If anyone is looking for a educated and logical perspective on the topic of morality in society. i would suggest a reading of C.S. Lewis’ “The Abolition of Man.” This was written in an agnostic viewpoint of society, around the 1930′s, and the future view of children raised in public school with a degraded sense of morality and where we, as a society would end up.

  • 66Scorpio

    Morality cannot be within our genetics. Our genes are chemicals; chemicals do not have morals. Right and wrong themselves have no physical characteristics that can be empirically tested or proven. If good and evil are “real” then they obviously exist outside of the physical universe. Otherwise, they are just illusions created by the chemical reactions between our ears.

  • saj

    Sorry but this article makes no real sense. Why do we have to understand what God’s morals are? If he gave us a set of morals then why does he have to be bound by them? If I created a piece of Artificial Intelligence and gave it rules to abide by then that is that, it will never understand me and my complexity Your rational is strange and your line of questioning is even more peculiar.

    • Osato

      Read my reply above

  • SOlomon

    Very good. just finished reading and its a great piece

  • Dartanion

    The question is really nature vs nurture is it not? Are we born with an innate set of morals that is inherrant with being human or do we learn what is right and wrong entirely from external influences? Obviously the answer to this question is entirely subective and dependant upon the beliefs with which you were brought up. However, this in itself is quite and ironic concept; if you were brought up being taught you had a sense of morality from birth then is that not an external influence in your ‘nurture’ dictating what morality is? But of course, the counter argument being that if a hard wired set of morals existed, you were always going to have a sense of morality regardless of external teaching; as I said, it’s entirely subective and you can’t disprove religion.

    However, I personally believe srongly that a sense of morality is founded in the society in which we grew up. Morality is obviously a sense of right and wrong; however what is right and wrong is decided upon by the general acceptances of a population. Whether religious or not, a group of say 20 people from the same culture can stand next to one another and assess an action and decide if it was immoral or moral as a majority. Afterall, 12 people are asked to do it as members of a jury every day and a majority of 10 must be established for conviction in the U.K. However, I believe that if you took 20 people from say America and another 20 from an African nomadic tribe, you’d find entirely different verdicts in some cases presented to them. As an analogy, just as there is a gun culture in America and not one in the U.K, I believe the senses of morality change with the society.

    Having expressed where morality’s orgins lie, it must be asked, what actually is it? A previous comment talked of humanity’s advantage in having reason, I entirely agree. We are set apart to be a dominant race through our ability for inginuity and logial thought process. I think that morality is founded upon reason; the ability to assess a situation and decide whether or not it is right or wrong based on -as has been previously mentioned – what we have previously been taught in our lives.

    There are two sides to the human psyche; the side of rationality and reason and the more bestial, instinctive side of our animalistic and needs desires. The rationality is dominant throughout most of our lives. Rationality and reason are what allows us to have the structure of a progressive society that we do and have done in the past and is also the subsequent basis for our sense of morality. Our sense of morality is in my mind, entirely based upon the values of the society in which we grew.

  • angel barrera

    thank you i’ve been debating with my friend that thinks atheists have no morals because they don’t believe in “GOD” that they have no book to tell them what is right or wrong but it a mental and sociological its just whats right or wrong now i can tell him what i have been saying this whole time.

    • josephleon9

      Thanks for the compliments. Your friend is downright wrong about atheists not having morals. If atheists had no morals they would kill and steal anything they wanted on a whim. Atheists obviously do not do this so they have morals without belief.

      I would argue to your friend that regardless of divine origin or not that morals are in the genetics. Even if morals are in the genetics this wouldn’t discount the existence of a god but it also wouldn’t promote the existence of a god.

      It’s important that your friend realize that argument of morals and where they come from isn’t contingent on the argument of a god existing. I would also be gentle with your friend and try and instill logic principles into the argument rather than a god’s existence.