For those who do not believe that we were created by "God"? what explains the fact that all of us have what is known as a "Moral Compass",a conscience that signals us ,red flag so to speak, when we act a certain way.Were we born with it,is it in-built,is learned?We know that animals have instincts,but they have no moral compass.If we are not a product of someone's creation and we evolved where did this Moral Compass,conscience come from?
Blueblades
Moral Compass (conscience)?
by Blueblades 4 Replies latest jw friends
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Blueblades
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Nathan Natas
Show me this "moral compass."
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Satanus
We know that animals have instincts,but they have no moral compass
How do you know that they don't have something like a conscience? They could just be set to different standards than ours. I remember reading an article in discover mag, by a woman who studied dogs. She said that when one female dog would act in a way that the dominant male dog thought was silly, he would knock her down.
Female sparrows listen carefully to the singing of their male. If it's not up to the quality of the songs of other males, she will sneak off for a quickie w a better singer. Then return to her own nest, as if nothing happened. I could give other examples of this kind of thing among insects, even.
Another subject is instincts in humans, that would be animal instincts, since we are genetically 95-98% animal. Here is a list of some animal instincts that drive us:
Male: sex, aggression, competition, materialism, showing off with cars, money, peforming music etc, to get women,
Female: have kids, look out for the home interests, get a good provider/protector, protect the children, look pretty, extract commitments from males
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logansrun
My opinion is that the moral "laws" (if there really is such a thing) come from the natural laws. Our conscinence is a by-product of these laws and our expanded cereberal cortex through billions of years of evolution. Do some reading...E.O. Wilson's "Sociobiology" is a good start. You're not the first to ask these questions.
B
I love the "so there MUST be a God!" blank check that people endorse whenever something they don't understand comes into their mind.
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Satanus
Our societal laws (civil laws) descend from the desire of people to live in security. Cave guys didn't like coming home after a hard days hunting to find someone else had taken posession of their cave and woman, so ownership laws were invented and enforced. Most of our civil laws are based on keeping order. Settling things in court is sanctioned. Settling things by means of duels was outlawed a couple of hundred yrs ago. A lot of our moral traditions are based on laws like this.
BTW, moses copied verbatim quite a few laws from hamurrabi, twenty or thirty, i believe.
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