i believe that morality came from God. God gave the first order of morality to Adam and Eve not to eat the forbidden fruit (God is teaching them to control their curiosity and preventing them to be gluttons). Our actions are not predetermined, that’s for sure. Would God know Adam and Eve would disobey him? that’s why He gave his warnings to them that they’d die.

They are "What is it to act (or choose) freely?", and "What is it to be morally responsible for one's actions (or choices)?" They're closely connected questions because freedom is necessary for moral responsibility.

Vague question. freedom from what? From God? from society? Coz as far as im concerned the world wants to be free from God, from God’s laws and commandments – God’s chastisement. But what we don’t see is that man is attached or is not free from society’s norms. Society dictates that pre marital sex is hot, that smoking pot is cool, that you may divorce if fell out of love, that virginity is not a big deal anymore. Let’s take pre marital sex as an example in God’s law – it is totally prohibited. Why? To preserve us; To keep us away from STD’s, to avoid us from getting hurt emotionally, physically, psychologically. God wants to keep us pure from earthly urges. Looking at society’s point of view , the motto goes like this “every body’s doing it , so it ok. “

I was unaware that animals formed society and had values. The only species that posseses anything similar to culture are Bonobo Chimpanzee's, and even their pseudo-culture's are extremely limited. As for values, values are ideological in nature, animals don't hold ideological belief's.

You can post it a third and fourth time if you want, not replying to your statement dosn't ncessarily mean I don't understand it, rather, I choose to ignore it because it isn't a valid reply, like clpo pointed out.

As for definig culture as a creation of ideas, you couldn't be farther off. What makes humans truly unique, even beyond rational though, is the fact that unlike every other living being, we don't function primarily on an instinctual level. Through the evolutive process human beings have reached a level of development that has made us culture dependant for survival. This effectively negates biological evolution's continuation in our species.
Evolutive process take place when the significant advantages that an individual posses are transmited to his descendancy. In a culture reliant species like ours, having longer legs or fingers, or being a little more resistant to cold, doesn't necessarily mean that you will f*ck more. Procreation is now determined by cultural issues, such as social status, openess, religious and ideological affiliation. Thus we effectively evolve on a cultural level, but not on a biological level.

That was somewhat off topic.

Morality is a product of culture, to make things more simple, do you think that the worlds' nearly 4.5 billion non christians are inmoral because they don't follow a set of moral values wich you believe are predefined, and thus universal?

I'm not really sure what you mean.

Other religons, too. There are gods just as old as Yahweh, and religons older than Judaism. They all had morality, although different, since the rest of the gods and Yahweh were sort of at odds (in my humble opinion).

Thank you, Torin.

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I'll post it for you a second time speed...maybe, just maybve you'll understand this time.

By continually repeating that post, you're effectively dismissing any attempts to disprove you without even bothering to counter them on their content. See, according to the Christian viewpoint, morality was created by some higher being. But not everyone agrees with the Christian viewpoint, therefore any arguments against your stance that morality was not created by society must logically be out of context. If we were to argue within the context, we must agree that humans did not create morality since the context does not allow any differing opinions. In other words, there is no possible way to prove that humans created morality within the Christian context.

Unless, perhaps, one was to say that since men wrote the Bible and the idea of morality is put forth primarily in the Bible, humans did create morality. You could argue that God gave humans the idea of morality, but that argument cannot be backed up by fact (how would you prove God inspired the Bible?), whereas mine can (how would a book be written if not by men?).

But even that is outside the context, since it denies that God inspired the Bible, which is a key tenet of the Christian faith. So my original point (that any arguments against God-created morality must be out of context of Christianity) still stands.

nicely put shade, never heard it put that way.

I'll post it for you a second time speed...maybe, just maybve you'll understand this time.

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You can argue this point out of context (christian terms) and prove me wrong all day but it won't make a world of difference. What i wrote above are my opinions based on the bible's teachings and all stay within the Christian context of how we view God, it is not meant to disprove anyone athiests views of God because it cannot. This is precisely why debating religion is a huge merry-go-round. Although each side can disprove each others case within their context, they cannot disprove the others arguements outside of their context. Be that as it may, have at it if you like because i know someone will say something anyway.

I'm not seriously entering this conversation, since it's been proved I can and will be ignored, but I will speak on behalf of the animals. They have society and culture and values, although not huge civilizations like "we" do. Morality does not come with intelligence, which is what animals lack; it comes with wisdom, and they have an advantage over us. They understand something about the world that we could never grasp. Humanity has a hole, and that's one of the reasons we have to create civilizations that span for leagues and years. Creation of culture is just a creation of ideas, an interpretation of the already-existing morals.

No, you're wrong, morality was non existant before the development of human cultures.
Morality is a purely human concept, and yes, we did create it if that's how you want to phrase it.
There are no predefined values that are noteworthy, or necessary to respect. Values are defined based on cultural issues. During the neolithic period, before humans developed complexed writing(note that schematic writing and drawing allready existed and was used as a descriptive form of comunication), moral values of human tribes wouldn't consider it it bad to kill a weakling member of the tribe if it was for the survival of the rest.
If you were to travel to the middle ages all human relations would seem barbaric in nature, but that was because the lack of cultural development, and lack of knowledge on their own race, kept humans from developing deep empathy. Historical accounts from the epoch detail the coldness present in practically all human relations. Life expectancy was much lower, and the general consciousness of a person was much more self centered than it is now.

Thus, morality is a cultural product, and is subject to constant change based on cultural circumstances. Remember, a few hundred years ago stoning people to death was okay.

wrong, humans have shaped morality, not created it.

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because the bible lines out what moral responsibility is and some of those morals have rolled off in to secular society.

morality is a derivation of christianity? morality is determined by culture, modern european culture is built largely on religion, but in no way is it solely reliant on biblical guidelines. Morality derives from empathy for other forms of life, one's ability to feel empathy for others derives from culture, and is subject to variation due to a series of factors, notably, political alignement, economic situation, gender, age, etc...

So I'll just step out of the conversation because people can't seem to grasp my musings. Or they're ingoring my completely. I think too much about odd things for you people it seems.

stupid edit button doesn't work =P

I wanted to add a little about your example. Your quantum example pretty much contradicted your latter statement that the world is deterministic.

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There is no cause as to why the photon goes through or is reflected as your image, the event is entirely random as far as scientists have known.

In a deterministic world everything must have a cause, and as you have pointed out we have discovered otherwise, there are many things that we cannot explain or put a cause to it's actions. However, we do have laws of nature but these laws are regarded more as restrictions on a non-determministic world. Humans have free will because freewill itself is impossible to explain or derive. Humans have moral responsibility in this respect.

Interesting stuff Julse7, but if what you are saying is true that God is calculating all human permutations then you are essentially saying that God is responsible for all of the actions on this planet which i cannot believe. God would have not allowed the Holocaust to happen or for Pol Pot to kill millions of Vietnamese or any other human atrocities that have occured in our past. Humans have moral responsibility. Both Christians and non-Christians have moral responsibility because the bible lines out what moral responsibility is and some of those morals have rolled off in to secular society.

Thanks for bringing up this contradiction, I get your point. It was precisely this issue that I was thinking about after a church sermon afew days back.

There are two concepts raised here, which are 1)determinism (god determines our destiny) 2) moral responsibility

Just a point put from the perspective of quantum mechanics with regards to determinism. I read a little about this topic and am sure no expert at it, but here's my two-cent's worth:

Let's say you have to choose between drinking coffee or orange juice. Suppose your choice is governed by a quantum event, such as that of photons hitting a piece of glass - the photon either goes through the glass or it does not. There is no cause as to why the photon goes through or is reflected as your image, the event is entirely random as far as scientists have known. According to quantum mechanics, even if the quantum event had transpired into your choice of drinking coffee in your observable universe, there still exists another parallel universe where you chose to drink orage juice. That is to say, two versions of yourself now exist - in one universe you drink coffee and in another you drink orange juice.

If, to bring this one step further, all our choices were governed by quantum events (this may be possible since our brain operates on the atomic level), by right every single resultant "permutation" of us will exist.

So, perhaps God is playing cheat. He does not need to settle for only one permutation of ourselves, in fact he just needs to consider every single possible verion of ourselves, which is our "predetermined destiny". God does not need to determine our destiny.. he just calculates.

However no matter whether our choices are random or not, we still do not have freewill. We do not possess the power to make a choice. I do not see how humans can have moral responsibility, since the world is still deterministic.

(sorry if this is confusing, i have not integrated the ideas well.)

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Its like everything is caused by something else. Even scientifically, its getting harder to prove that something happens for no reason.

True, but I think somethings are more random, so to speak, than others, such as if the person was just sitting on the couch and then thought it would be fun to tell you your sausage was your old cat (even if it really wasn't). But then, someone could say that was caused by their boredom and strange sense of humor.

The funny thing, though, is some people call that determinism. Everything we do is simply a long chain of causes and effects, so all our actions or thoughts are caused (and determined) by previous actions or thoughts.

But that's something else entirely.

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Instead of controlling us directly, perhaps he has a script that we are bound to follow. It's not direct control, but it's not freedom either.

Well, I dunno, if we are bound to follow something then that would be direct control. Unless, we have some way of getting out of it. I do agree with what you said about the future being mutable though. There are so many factors that cause someone to make a decision and what not. Whether or not they are completely random is another issue. Randomness kind of a vague concept. Like you may see that person running into the kitchen as being random, but they ran into the kitchen on purpose because they figured out that it was really made out of your cat and they probably didn't want you to eat it. Its like everything is caused by something else. Even scientifically, its getting harder to prove that something happens for no reason.

So I don't know, the whole predetermination thing is still kind of a mystery to me. There might be something in the Bible about it, but its been a while since I opened the thing up.

What if the way predestination worked was time isn't a straight line? What if time was happening all around us, every moment of our lives, our past lives, our future lives? What if time was everywhere? And God knows what's going to happen, because somewhere (which is, right here) it is happening?

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If it were predetermination, then God would have to have taken every single person "by the strings" and control all of our actions then press the rewind button and let it all play out.

Not necessarily. God could be more of a movie director than a puppeteer. Instead of controlling us directly, perhaps he has a script that we are bound to follow. It's not direct control, but it's not freedom either.

The future is mutable, so I don't see how anyone can foresee it as it really will happen. Psychics, if they can actually see the future, see what might happen, not necessarily what will happen because people do random things. For instance, before choosing to eat the sausage, someone could run into the kitchen and tell you that it's not sausage, but your pet cat which you thought ran away, which causes you to either choose the eggs or lose your appetite altogether. Completely random, and something that no one can foresee unless it was determined beforehand.

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What do you mean "to a certain degree"? The thing I'm trying to say is that if God knows what we're going to do at all, that means we will end up doing it. Say you're deciding whether to have eggs or sausage in the morning. God knows you will pick the sausage, yet you still wonder which you should have. You pick the sausage, thinking you made a free choice. But since God knew you were going to eat sausage before you came into this situation, you were predetermined to make that choice no matter what. It is an illusion of free will, not true free will. Get what I mean?

I know what you are trying to say. But it still doesn't mean we did not have a choice. In your example you say that God knows that I will pick the sausage. But this still does not mean that I did not make the choice. I am the one who picks the sausage. God does not force me to do it. There is a difference between God knowing what we will choose to do and God making us do something. This may seem like predetermination, but it is not. If it were predetermination, then God would have to have taken every single person "by the strings" and control all of our actions then press the rewind button and let it all play out. Its like the concept of a psychic. Say someone can see into the future and know what you are going to do. Does this mean that you did not have a choice in what you did? The psychic didn't cause you to do anything, they just knew you were going to do it.