Improvement in morality comes from a constant feedback loop of evaluating benefits and harms. This inherently requires that we be grounded in reality rather than dogma or other preconceptions.
To the religious, by contrast, morality is immutable, it never improves. Only compliance with the moral code is capable of improvement. And only an invisible being is capable of judging compliance. And he's not talking.
Yeah, it's nuts.
excellent answer, and from an Eragon fan?
Mine come from within and haven't changed and I haven't broken them. there is a line drawn in the sand in my mind that would make me untrue to myself if I stepped over them even with my flaws.
Well, I don't think man is by nature social, rather nature forced man to be social to avoid death. It is therefore not something that man by nature is inclined to, rather man is compelled by nature to be social. Nature provides this end only negatively. Man conquers nature because it compels him to do so and the result is freedom and responsibility.
Loosely based on Aristotle, also pointed at by Hobbs & Nietzsche.
The foundation for morals, it seems to me, rests on the twin pillars reciprocity and empathy. From the former we obtain our sense of justice, and from the latter our higher emotions. We observe these behaviors in other primates, and it stands to reason that evolution would have conferred a survival advantage to bands of hominids, just as it does today in troops of apes. Of one thing we may be certain, we don't derive our morals from a book.