How do YOU determine "right" from "wrong"? What is the basis for your morality?

Question

I would like to hear from as many different beliefs as possible on this question, including the athiests/agnostics. What delineates "right action" from "wrong action" for you? Is it the legal code? A moral code from a religion (please specify)? Your personal feelings? How do YOU know "right" from "wrong"?

Answer 1

Common sense is how I determine right from wrong. I am an Atheist and do not feel you need god or the bible to be a moral person.


Now, see, I answered your question will a real answer. I did not resort to calling it nonsense or stupid. Maybe this will help you be a bigger person in the future.

Answer 2

I am a Christian, however I don't feel that the definition of right or wrong should involve religon. I study AI, and this question is critical to its development.

An action is right or wrong based on its consequences.

An action is right, to an individual or group, if it causes a total long term positive benefit to the individual or group that executes the action.

By long term, I mean, as long as the individual or group exists.

I need to sum the benefit over time, and if that number if positive, then the action is right, and if it's negative, then it's wrong.

An action's benefit is the same as its happiness.

To being religion into the picture, I believe that because God loves us, and is all knowing, He knows what actions will cause the greatest long term happiness, and he gives us commandments to help guild us in that direction. Like any organization that is striving for happiness of its members, laws must be enacted so that the group's happiness can be related to individual's happiness. This causes the "right" decisions of its members to also be the “right” decisions of the group.

Answer 3

For me, it is about my conscious- I have always felt sick when I know I am doing something wrong, so I know it is wrong that way. However, i didn't learn what is right and wrong simply from that...

I was also raised a christian, and I learned some of them from there. There is a distinct possiblity that I wouldn't have issues with people taking more than one lover if I had been raised differntly. Or that i wouldn't have issues with Nudism, or anything that is different.

While I do try my hardest to see things from other peoples points of veiws, there are things that I still veiw as wrong, based on my upbringing.

But I also define what is right and what is wrong by the consequences my actions will have on my life, and the lives of the people I love, and on those that I do not even know. If it is something tath will ahve a severely negative impact on anyones world, then I try not to do it, because it is wrong.

Answer 4

through this, i've got seen some Christians (particularly youthful ones) so ridiculously committed to their father and mom that they do no longer pick to believe that it truly is ethical to disagree with them, even while the father and mom are incorrect or flat out risky or risky. i hit upon this style of blind obedience creepy. wish: nice straw guy. Morals may well be absolute or no longer (and that i've got a tendency to think of they're a splash extra diffused than any style of show crucial view--the only many Christians take--might have them be), yet that does no longer recommend *every person* thinks morals might desire to rely on a custom. you're conflating custom with evolution, yet custom is a style of close by deal and humanity as an entire isn't. hence, we are in a position to assert that express cultural practices are immoral without resorting to claiming that a god gave us our morality. C'mon! Your view of "morals *might desire to* come from God" has been ineffective considering a minimum of Nietzsche, and your declare that in the time of any different case something is permissable is passe.

Answer 5

If you are not a sociopath, you are born with a conscience. It doesn't take a lot of smarts to know that you should treat other people like you want to be treated, because most people would clean your clock if you did otherwise. Nothing teaches a lesson better than a punch in the nose. Face it, the 10 commandments are not rocket science. It wouldn't take long in a society to figure those things out on your own.

Answer 6

The beginnings of our determination of right and wrong begin in Childhood. My parents were free thinkers. My father a champion of human rights, a man much like Aticus Finch, so I learned of justice. My mother cared for the sick and suffering, so I learned empathy. My family fought in every American war beginning with the American Revolution so I learned Patriotism. We, our family read together, like Thomas Paine and newspapers from the time I was around eight. We discussed morality, sex and politics, history, and formed our beliefs about right and wrong from plain and simple facts, not from fear of mthyological beings or the promise of rewards. We learned reason and common sense.

Most important, we were raised with love, we saw the love my parents shared for 50 years and their parents before them. So I knew of fidelity. I have been married to the love of my life for 25 years, so I know passion and love. And I have children so the circle of love is complete.
No commandments , no bible, no divorces, no felons, nothing but a great family, love of country and a good work ethic.

Answer 7

Here goes, you asked for it! ;)
This is how I see it: We spend every slit second of our lives trying to get love. Sure how we go about getting it can change at any given moment, but we are always trying. Why? Because nothing else feels better and we all want to feel the best we possibly can. We do what makes us feel the best, since love does, it rules our lives. It is our eternal motivation. The first beginning and the last end. Life would not exist without it. If something makes you feel love you want it. By doing something that makes you feel good, you give yourself love. Giving genuine love is an action that makes you feel good about yourself, thus giving yourself love again. Sometimes we go to uncomfortable lengths to get it but we're still trying to reach that same end. (For example: Someone just said something that made you feel ugly. You don't like feeling ugly. It doesn't make you feel good. You want to feel good all the time. So you do something that gets rid of that feeling. Maybe you decided to stop talking to that person so it doesn't happen again. Maybe you really miss that person. But, maybe it makes you feel even more better knowing it won't happen again. Either way you picked the option that makes you happier, giving yourself love once more, even if it wasn't as much as you had hoped for or wasn't exactly how you liked to do it.) You see, every action eventually leads to giving ourselves love, sometimes even if it does seem a long way off. We're always looking for the source of the most love. If you want love from someone he's got to feel like your a good source, because he wants it just as much as you do. So we have a good reason for giving love if we think we can get it in return.

My point? Since we are always trying to get love we base all our actions on trying to get it. Thus deciding what we feel is "Right" and "Wrong".

Sounds kind of selfish doesn't it? Well deep down inside we all know it is. Maybe that's why God basically tells us to come to Him first, so that someday we can see it the way He does and start genuinely loving instead of this selfish tainted love.

Guess I need to get better at following HIS "Rights" and "Wrongs".

Well that's what I think of it. Take it or leave it. Thanks for the challenge!

Answer 8

Its rather interesting that you emphasize the word 'you' in this question. Yes, humans diverge greatly on issues of morality, but the overwhelming majority of humans, no matter where they are born (nor how remote their tribe), no matter what language they speak (even if they don't have a written language) still seem to agree on at least a core nugget of a few principles. No self-sustaining nation honors cowardice, for example.

Answer 9

In my case, it's the consideration whether I am hurting a person unnecessarily. Obviously, if I am, that's wrong. And I added "unnecessarily" because sometimes, it is necessary to hurt a person (usually to avoid a greater harm). This is the case of an operation. A doctor is definitely hurting your body, but that's to heal you, and often to save your life. So that is morally right, whereas if the same doctor were fighting with you for your watch, and he hurt you to rob you, then the same action is wrong.

BTW, I guess you've noticed, but I'm an unbeliever.

Answer 10

How i distinguish "right" from "wrong" is simple I think, would I like it if some one else did that to/for me?

Belief in god is not needed to be moral, nor are morals needed to believe in god.

I have no religious affiliation, I'm not atheist, I choose not to be in a religion as I feel no good can come from one.