Can (MAN-MADE) institutions govern man?

Outside the realm of God, should morals exist and if so, what would be the basis and on what authority?

I see that you have decided to read this article. I would like you think about the above two questions as you go through the writ. Though it’s rather long, I promise not to bore you.

I have always wondered:

'What are the origins of the human conscience?'

Is conscience an innate entity, that is are we born with it or is it acquired/ learned? Because I am from the school of thought that holds the view that man is born a blank slate, I choose to believe that just like language the human conscious is a learned faculty. It (conscience) is the collective teachings that a society deems acceptable behavior and instills these in its children.  Though it pains me to include this school of thought, I shall nevertheless touch on it since I assume most of you will identify with it.

There exists pseudo-Scientific field that will argue that morality, and to some degree conscience, are a result of millions and millions of years of evolution and that the morality we have as things stand is innate. These people believe that morality comes from empathy and altruism. Somehow infants are born with these human qualities just as the linguist Noam Chomsky believed that there is special faculty in human beings that enables us to learn language. This particular biological device he termed Language Acquisition Device (LAD) located in our brains. Enough with academic crap, I promised not to bore you and I intent to keep my word. Let’s delve into real life issues.

Not so long ago Slavery was considered to be moral by those who practiced it. The Scramble for Africa is a wonderful example we can use to uproot this fallacy. If enslavement of the entire continent of Africa was a moral undertaking a few centuries ago, how have the Western civilization suddenly shifted its moral campus and say slavery is despicable? Is evolution this fast that under a few centuries we can go to?

Slavery is wrong from slavery is acceptable

The father of evolution Charles Darwin himself said "Nature does not Jump”, how would we then explain this amazing leap? Yes, in evolutionary terms this would be considered quite a gargantuan leap.

Here is a scenario:

The Chinese eat Dog, Some Africans eat bats, some people just eat ordinary meat and some are vegetarians. The Africans and the vegetarian are most likely to say it is immoral for the Chinese to slay and eat dogs. They would say it is an abomination. The Chinese of course may see absolutely nothing wrong with eating dog meat. It is their way of life. This applies to the Africans too; Bat meat may be their very way of life and see nothing immoral about consuming bats. To the vegetarian all this people are despicable. Now ask yourself, who is wrong and who is right? Is there even a right and wrong to begin with? As Friedrich Nietzsche has eloquently stated,

'You have your way. I have my way. And, as for the right way, the correct way and the only way, it does not exist. "

I am of the opinion that there should not be moral absolutes, the ones that exist are there merely on arbitrary terms. They are arbitrary creations of our subjective selves. Right and wrong I would venture to say were created whimsically. Amazing how it has crept up on us because it became the basis of the very rules we live by in this era. Is there a standard of what moral behavior should be?

A man's conscience is shaped by the society he is brought up in. It is therefore composed of what another man considers to be good or bad moral behavior. We are not born with the ability to distinguish right from wrong nor it is a God given entity, but we acquire it. What can be deduced from this is that the human conscience is therefore an artificial entity. It is man-made, made for man and it is made to control the very same man. Society therefore dictates what should and what shouldn’t be moral, what should be right and what should be wrong. It is then passed on, not in the form of DNA but via social interactions. Morality therefore is unnatural. If there were no human interference and we were left to fend for ourselves in complete isolation, then you would see nature in its truest form. This, what we have here is artificialized existence. It is edited, altered and compromised with human presence.

http://www.news24.com/MyNews24/Thoughts-of-a-sober-mind-20150310

Quote:

That's rights!!!

No, wait... that's wrong!

No, wait....




Nietzsche was sure he was right when he said there is no right or wrong and anyone who thought otherwise was sure to be wrong. 

No wonder his mind collapsed at the sight of a suffering horse ( a wrong).i

Quote:

http://8ch.net/pol/res/1562439.html#1570451

Phil Robertson uses 'rape story' to denounce atheists

So what he's effectively saying is that the only thing keeping him from being a rapist and a murderer is his belief in a god? The HUGE flaw in Robertson's "reasoning" is that he does not believe that people are capable of being moral and ethical without being terrified into it by threats of a vengeful god and a horrifying hell. He equates lack of belief in god with lack of belief in right and wrong.

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/decapitate_her_head_off_phil_robertsons_vile_message_to_atheists/#comments

“Decapitate her head off”: Phil Robertson’s vile message to atheists

"You're the one who says there is no God, there's no right, there's no wrong, so we're just having fun"

At the Vero Beach Prayer Breakfast on Friday morning, Phil Robertson waxed on uninterrupted about some kind of grotesque fantasy situation in which a family of atheists is bound, gagged and raped. That the “Duck Dynasty” clan leader has a national platform upon which to spew bullshit is basically an indictment of our whole society, but that is perhaps beside the point.

“I’ll make a bet with you,” Robertson said in the talk which was later broadcast on Christian conservative radio host Rick Wiles’ program, “Trunews.” “Two guys break into an atheist’s home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him.

“Then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them, and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him,” he said, “and then they can look at him and say, ‘Isn’t it great that I don’t have to worry about being judged? Isn’t it great that there’s nothing wrong with this? There’s no right or wrong, now, is it dude?”

“But you’re the one who says there is no God, there’s no right, there’s no wrong, so we’re just having fun. We’re sick in the head, have a nice day.”

So Robertson is argued that no atheist has ever had something bad happen? Or that no Christian has ever had something bad happen and questioned the existence of a God that might allow something like that? Would a benevolent God allow Robertson to spend eternity unpunished?

http://www.salon.com/2015/03/24/decapitate_her_head_off_phil_robertsons_vile_message_to_atheists/

Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson uses child rape to criticize atheists

Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson gives shocking speech at a religious meeting using rape, murder, child rape and castration to criticize atheists

Atheists are the latest group that controversial Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson has decided to train in his cross hairs.

At a Florida prayer meeting last week, the 68-year-old used a very graphic and brutal story about murder, castration and child rape to explain the inherent problems with non-believers.

In his lucrative second career as a Christian speaker, Robertson used the hypothetical situation to illustrate whether or those who don't believe in God can know right from wrong.

The story begins with Robertson challenging his audience to make a bet with him: 'Two guys break into an atheist's home. He has a little atheist wife and two little atheist daughters. Two guys break into his home and tie him up in a chair and gag him.'

With the unsettling scene set, Robertson carried on with his morality tale.

'Then they take his two daughters in front of him and rape both of them and then shoot them, and they take his wife and then decapitate her head off in front of him and then they can look at him and say, 'Isn't it great that I don't have to worry about being judged? Isn't it great that there's nothing wrong with this?'' Robertson said. 'There's no right or wrong, now, is it dude?''

To finish off his point and leave his audience in no doubt about his point, Robertson then took relish in describing a castration.

'Then you take a sharp knife and take his manhood and hold it in front of him and say, 'Wouldn't it be something if there was something wrong with this? But you're the one who says there is no God, there's no right, there's no wrong, so we're just having fun. We're sick in the head, have a nice day.'

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3011807/Duck-Dynasty-s-Phil-Robertson-gives-shocking-speech-religious-meeting-using-rape-murder-child-rape-castration-criticize-atheists.html

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Mar 13^th, 2015 at 10:26pm:

It sent him mad and no wonder.

"Nietzsche claims (repeatedly) that there is no objective right and wrong in matters of morality".

Is that right or wrong?

This is why Kierkegaard is much wiser even if not as thrilling to read.  He tells you to take a stand even if (even as) it requires a leap of faith. That way you know where you are (and can do no other). With Nietzsche, you are lost, like a schizophrenic who wants to be simultaneously in and out of the room, or as Kafka put it,"like a Cossack dance between the two houses, whereby the Cossack goes on scraping and throwing aside the earth with the heels of his boots until his grave is dug out under him."

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Mar 30^th, 2015 at 6:14am:



Make a stand on what moral ground? Why is it important to make a stand if the moral ground of your stand is completely arbitrary?

What is the moral ground of his advice to 'make a stand'? Does it have a right or wrong grounding?

Postmodern Trendoid III wrote on Mar 30^th, 2015 at 7:00pm:



For someone who was big on the re-valuation of all values, Nietzsche was startingly anachronistic. He wanted to re-valuate all values along the lines of Bronze Age, archaic Greece (he was a professor of classics by 24, after all). His idea on the eternal recurrence may have been a ruse to cover what he would have seen as anachronism.


The 'potential creators' who stepped forward give him no credit at all.

Nietzsche brought German up to par with French as a language of philosophy with a poetic, creative heart. Beyond that, the value of what he wrote is in your ability to creatively abandon it.
You repay Nietzsche poorly, as he said, if you remain merely his pupil.

If you grow up with empathy, then you will be unlikely to require instruction from society.
This where true (IMO) consciousness and conscience develops.

The bible states "Do unto others...", however, without the ability to, and the habit of putting this into practice, those words are pointless. Especially when there are so many conflicting actions within biblical instruction that themselves render those words pointless.

A baby will inherently know how to suckle and it will want to learn how to walk and talk without outside instruction. It will respond well to encouragement without conscious thought, and it will communicate it's needs via crying.
To achieve empathy as an adult, I am of the opinion that they must be taught at a young age how to share and how to imagine themselves in the shoes of others. Without this skill, they will find it difficult to function and find personal freedom within society.

I am of the opinion that the vast majority of tools required for personal freedom are developed at a young age. By 'personal freedom', I mean living by one's own judgments and desires.

People are inherently selfish I agree; we generally assume ourselves to be that little more deserving than the next person. However, to covet all personal wants and desires and to constantly require stimulation via unconscious actions will not bring about a long term feeling of freedom IMO. Especially when you're locked up 

issuevoter wrote on Apr 6^th, 2015 at 8:51pm:


Academics abandoned truth back in the 1960s. Now we have "narratives", "discourses" or "power structures".