Quote:
Originally Posted by Pokerlogist
After reading this thread I get the impression that some people might think it is unnecessary to teach children that lying, cheating, stealing, harming others, disrespecting parents, dishonesty, and adultery are wrong. Some people seem to think that these morals will simply arise naturally in people from DNA, genetic empathy, or from simple reasoning, or that all morality is relative anyway so why bother?. I do not agree at all. Moral teaching of the above rules by parents or other authoritative figures is very necessary. You can argue that there is no need to bring God/religion into it, but society is much better off if those sort of moral rules are explicitly taught to children and teenagers. There is a good portion of people who will act horribly if they were not educated this way.
You don't need a concept of morality to dislike lying, cheating, stealing, harming others etc. This is an example of how humans have a hard time accepting that others don't have to behave the way they want. You prefer a society where people don't do these things, so you try to come up with a justification as to why they can't do them (it's wrong, you shouldn't).
Regardless, you can still teach children not to lie, and it should be fairly obvious to them why people don't like that. It's probably better that way, because then you don't get silly moral absolutes ingrained in their heads - the idea that you can never lie, or all lying is wrong. Most dishonesty is fairly trivial ("no, your bum does not look big in that"). In fact, lying can often be necessary or even a positive behaviour, hence the term "white lie".
The real problem people have with letting go of morality, is what if others don't want to behave in the ways you like? Without morality, you no longer have an excuse to drag these people over the coals and demonize them. It's hard for people to grasp the idea that, murderers for example, are not actually evil scum who are acting against some divine laws, but just people who are behaving in a way you really hate.
Without the concept of morality, there'd be a lot less anger in the world, and people would calmly work to try and change things they didn't like. Also, keep in mind that it's the exact same concept that people use to justify throwing acid in the faces of women, to abuse homosexuals etc. In their system of morality, that is "right" and the people they're abusing are "wrong" and "bad".
Last edited by Kimbo's Beard; 10-24-2011 at 04:55 AM.