excreationist

GeoTheo:
I think you subconsciously think that your parent's divorce and the breakup of the family was a bad thing. Maybe you subconsciously blame a lot of it on the morality of your parents - particularly on that of your mother.
Your mother's attitudes seem fairly unusual and eventually there was a divorce, which was bad so your subconscious logic could tell you that liberal morality is bad.
And when you did things like be sexual promiscuous or drink alcohol or even think about it, you subconsciously triggered off negative feelings that were linked to your mother and her liberal friends. This vague negative feeling would have been interpreted as guilt or your God-given conscience. Also, you said your parents stopped walking around nude and your mother stopped smoking in front of you, etc... you could have subconsciously interpreted that as them becoming ashamed of those things. (nudity, smoking, etc) This would reinforce your hunches that those things are "bad".
It sounds like you might like you Dad more and feel more distanced from your Mum. Also, as far as sexual things go, your mother repressed it at an early age, making you feel guilty about it - taking away those magazines... and having the pastor talk to you about it might have made you feel humiliated about it.
Your mother's use of psychic readings, etc, probably would cause you to lose respect for her as far as religious matters are concerned.

[ October 29, 2002: Message edited by: excreationist ]</p>

himynameisPwn

Geo, regardless of God telling you sex, homosexuality, etc. is wrong, why as an atheist would it be wrong? It doesn't hurt anyone. If thats what you mean by immorality I will accept those accusations guilty as charged, we are sexual beings, evolved from animals, sexual repression is bad.

If however, you also assume that I would condone murder because there is no reason not to, then I say your conclusions are faulty. Generally, anything that doesn't harm another human being, is fine, because it promotes the growth of society, and I think that the more you go out of your way to help people, the more it comes back at you, and visa versa if you hurt people.

Why is sex, homosexuality, etc wrong?

Why do you think a conscience comes from god despite evidence to the contrary? While I feel bad when I hurt someone, I know I wouldn't feel bad if I had sex before marriage. I guess god forgot to form part of my conscience, yet he did form enough to help me know that murder is bad.

GeoTheo

What is the "evidence" that the conscience is through social conditioning? I think it is merely an opinion. My experience is that people know right and wrong instinctively even if they can't justify it.

Asha'man

If conscience is acquired from social conditioning, then it should be possible for different societies to produce different conditioning, right? What may be acceptable in one part of the world is unacceptable elsewhere.

So, do all societies have the same standards? Don’t some societies still accept racial discrimination, polygamy, slavery, treating women as property, and dozens of other things that you and I find unacceptable?

GeoTheo

Would it not be possible for people to go against their conscience in any culture? I have at various times gone against my conscience due to peer pressure.

Hobbs

You are not the measure of all things. The fact that your conscience tells you that, say, slavery is wrong, does not mean that the writers of the Bible who condoned slavery must have been going against their consciences which actually were telling them that slavery is wrong. Do you really think that one side or the other of the affirmative action debate, or the euthanasia debate, or the [insert random current moral debate] debate is faking it, or is going against their consciences, or does not sincerely believe that their position on the issue is better than their opponents' position?

Sure, in some or even many instances large groups of people, even an entire society, may for some reason or another go against their consciences. But for this issue not to be a problem for you, that would have to be true in every case. Just one case in which different peoples' consciences sincerely disagree is a problem for your position.

excreationist

The reason why they mightn't be able to justify it is because it involves *intuitive reasoning*. i.e. languageless reasoning. This is the kind of reasoning that animals and young toddlers do. This kind of reasoning can be simulated on computers using <a href="http://directory.google.com/Top/Computers/Artificial_Intelligence/Neural_Networks/?il=1" target="_blank">artificial neural networks</a>. Basically a lot of things are "learnt" by the neural network, then it can generate answers. What it does is learn the patterns and apply the patterns. e.g. it can be shown many examples of male and female faces and then be made to classify new faces.
They are too complicated to understand properly since the patterns are smeared across many neurons, but we can approximately see what's going on.

As I said earlier, I think we have some natural desires - e.g. the desire for coherence (so that the world makes sense [religion can help]), the desire for connectedness/belonging (this would also motivate empathy and altruism [and religion]) and the desire to avoid bodily pain (and through empathy - the desire that others avoid bodily pain too), etc.

Then as a newborn baby and toddler, we seek those pleasures (and other pleasures) and avoid pains. We work out strategies to maximize our pleasure and/or minimize our pain... but some people naturally need more newness - or less newness - or are more sensitive to pain... it is an individual thing as to what pleasure or pain outweighs which...

I think their experiences through life, particularly ones early in life, including those as a baby, shape their specific problem solving strategies and phobias, fetishes, etc. e.g. some experiences might cause a toddler to grow up to be homophobic, etc. In my last post I talked a bit about how negative emotions (from divorce) can be unconsciously associated with possibly unrelated things (like alcohol, etc).

GeoTheo

Keep going Excreationist when you get to the "evidence" part and leave the realm of opinion I will stop you.

himynameisPwn

Geotheo, the evidence is that two people can sincerely disagree about whats morally correct. In fact, I'd say that the conscience doesn't exist, it is just your social conditioning, there is no section of the brain accurately labeled conscience thats hard coded to know right from wrong. So, I'd say it should be the basic assumption that a conscience is your personal upbringing applied to your life.

Theres also mountains of other evidences:
-Statistics from prisons(how many of the people in prison for violent crimes come from broken families)
-Other cultures(how other cultures see things as normal that we consider immoral, and visa versa)

Just because you can claim everyone should know whats right or wrong doesn't make it correct. The fact is, my hypothesis may be an opinion, but opinions should still be based on fact. No where in the definition of opinion does it say any sort of fact or evidence is not allowed. Provide evidence for your claim.

excreationist

<a href="http://annex.ncwc.edu/multimedia/StudentsSP02/1070.htm" target="_blank">Childhood Trauma & Serial Killers</a>
That article talks about many different things such as the kids being abused or neglected as kids and babies and during pregnancy. It is about the specific case of serial killers where they don't have a conscience as far as brutal killing goes - in fact, they feel compelled to do it...

From the article:
I think this is talking about parents and other people shaping the morality of a child. Perhaps their cruelty to animals initially started with them being a little cruel to the cat (which is very common) as a toddler... in most cases, the parent would say to the toddler "be nice to the cat, ok?" After a while the toddler would associate cruelty to the cat - and other animals/people with disapproval from others. They can even identify with other people and think that this disapproval is coming from themselves (their conscience).

So I'm saying that things that toddlers are taught shape their personality. Usually toddlers learn the right generalized morals... e.g. a toddler might be told off for wrecking their book and for drawing on a wall with crayon (and given alternative activities) - eventually they would be able to infer that wrecking many things is bad. e.g. once they know that a class of objects is "important" then they'd know that they need to be careful with it, etc. (like ceramic plates, expensive flowers, watches, the VCR, etc)

Anyway, I think our conscience is part nature part nurture. Do you think conscience is entirely nature (we're just born with it)?

BTW, in Christianity, it is a great sin to not love the true God. Jesus said that the "law" (God's commandments) could be summarized as follows: "Love the Lord with all your heart, mind, soul, and strength - and love your neighbour as yourself."

Do you think God's laws are written on people's hearts - i.e. our conscience is from the Christian God?

According to <a href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?passage=DEUT+13:6-18&language=english&version=NIV&showfn=on&showxref =on" target="_blank">Deuteronomy 13:6-18</a>, worshipping other gods was a very serious offence in God's eyes...

So do you think people from all the other religions feel guilty when they worship their "false" gods? Many of them, particularly centuries ago, wouldn't have even heard of the "true" God. If they do feel naturally guilty from their conscience in the same way that they might feel guilty for murder or stealing then it seems that the conscience comes from God - otherwise it seems that it is neutral as far as God is concerned and could have evolved in a godless world.

Hopefully I've explained a bit more why I think that our conscience is partly (but not entirely) shaped by our upbringing.