]If guilt is the punishment and contentment is the reward, what biological fracture dictates the line between punishment and reward? What life lesson has imprinted that difference on your consciousness? How do you know when to feel guilt?
I guess these issues would be difficult for those that just had a rulebook but really its not rocket science, my dad explained it when I was a child:
We expect from others what we know is in our on hearts and minds. You don't lie because liars live in a world of liars where they are suspicious that everyone is like them. Thieves live in a world of thieves, the greedy live in a world of people wanting to take things from them, etc.
The key to morality is empathy and making your world and the world of others one that you would want to live in. You don't rape the sedated patient because you would really be acquiescing to being raped yourself if you were ever sedated - even if it never actually happened from that moment on you are living in a world of rapists. You don't deliberately hurt others without justification because you are really just ultimately hurting yourself. You help others because you then will perceive yourself to be in a world where you can expect help.
Look at it from the other side - if all human religions really are made up and it could be proven to you would you suddenly go out and kill, rape, and steal? Hopefully not. There are totally secular reasons for the religious 'moralities' generally and they wouldn't go away even if all the gods died right now.
No, the need to believe in something after death is just the result of an innate mental defect in how we process information. An animal that contemplates the end of its life starts asking silly questions like 'what's the point?' so we irrationally need, some desperately need, to think our lives will not end and accomodate this need.
Just as we irrationally are biased to remember a positive reinforcement more than a negative one, we are prone to want to think we are eternal. Both love of religion and gambling are vices that derive from mental defects and that's why there will always be churches and casinos.
Slashdot Mirror
I guess these issues would be difficult for those that just had a rulebook but really its not rocket science, my dad explained it when I was a child:
We expect from others what we know is in our on hearts and minds. You don't lie because liars live in a world of liars where they are suspicious that everyone is like them. Thieves live in a world of thieves, the greedy live in a world of people wanting to take things from them, etc.
The key to morality is empathy and making your world and the world of others one that you would want to live in. You don't rape the sedated patient because you would really be acquiescing to being raped yourself if you were ever sedated - even if it never actually happened from that moment on you are living in a world of rapists. You don't deliberately hurt others without justification because you are really just ultimately hurting yourself. You help others because you then will perceive yourself to be in a world where you can expect help.
Look at it from the other side - if all human religions really are made up and it could be proven to you would you suddenly go out and kill, rape, and steal? Hopefully not. There are totally secular reasons for the religious 'moralities' generally and they wouldn't go away even if all the gods died right now.No, the need to believe in something after death is just the result of an innate mental defect in how we process information. An animal that contemplates the end of its life starts asking silly questions like 'what's the point?' so we irrationally need, some desperately need, to think our lives will not end and accomodate this need.
Just as we irrationally are biased to remember a positive reinforcement more than a negative one, we are prone to want to think we are eternal. Both love of religion and gambling are vices that derive from mental defects and that's why there will always be churches and casinos.