Morality

[piercehawkeye45]

Originally Posted by henry quirk

What is the source of morality?

From people (I'm going to avoid the neurological explanation). I'll explain in the following fashion.

100 people with their own unique moral code come together to form a community. After dealing with each other, the 100 individuals had to update their own moral code to survive, fit in, and keep a stable society. Eventually, the moral codes of the 100 individuals become more and more similar until you could make generalizations about the society's moral code (keep in mind that everyone's moral code was still unique, and everyone's differed in different ways, but they were close enough that they could agree on many key issues to guarantee the survival of the community).

Now children are born and they are influenced from the morals of the community and their parents. As the children grow older, they keep their childhood moral influences, to varying degrees, while updating their individual moral code for various reasons (free thinking, environmental influences, and the change of the generalized "society morals).

Morals come from people and represent our reaction to our environment. Our moral code is how we interact with our society and environment.

What makes one behavior 'right' or 'good' and another 'wrong' or 'evil'?'

There is no clear answer to this one. Usually someone is evil when they go against the moral code of an individual. That can include people that are going against the moral code for sadistic pleasure, people that are forced to break society's moral code for whatever reason, or people that have a different perspective of what is right or wrong.