Atheists, if morals come from "common sense"...?

Question

how can one person decide their common sense is more valuable than anyone elses?
How can we imprison criminals if they were acting according to their own common sense?

((I am an atheist, but I feel this idea needs development))

Answer 1

I don't think that morals necessarily come from common sense. I think that what people meant was that morals like "don't kill anyone" are common sense.

Morality, I think, comes from our need to be social creatures. We must, therefore, establish codes of conduct that limit behavior to what is good for the group and the individual. This is probably better defined as ethics, but it is what establishes the base for most morality.

Answer 2

Morals don't come from common sense.

They come from good parenting/friends/the environment/etc. Some boy growing up with wolves wouldn't have much of a developed sense of morality; there has to be some sort of influential thing that has shown the person what's right vs. what's wrong. Now, what common sense does tell us is that most of the things that are deemed illegal are most likely in the "bad" catagory. :)

Answer 3

Since when did laws and punishment have much to do with morality?

Was it moral for people to own slaves? But it was legal.

Society elects people to write the rules. If society does not like those rules, then they elect different people who will change them.

Is the death penalty 'common sense"? Is it moral? Americans as a whole seem to think it is. Europeans do not.

No one person decides the laws. Once they are decided everyone has to live by them, or accept the consequences.

Answer 4

The term "common sense" is in many ways inadequate. Most people say common sense to dictate an intuitive feeling we all (should) have. However, it can also be taken to mean something that we, as a whole, have decided upon. It is "common sense" not to put your hand in fire, but also "common sense" to respect property rights. One is intuitive, one is strictly social. In the first sense we see the moral heavy lifting of common sense, prohibitions against murder, rape and the like. But where morality becomes convoluted, thats where the second sense comes in. Is slavery right or wrong. Well common sense says it is, but it hasn't always. Common sense, in this sense, is a sort of Moral Zeitgeist, a social distinction that evolves over time. We say that serial killers are wrong, by common sense, but we know that objectively due to both our intuition (1st sense) and our societal ideas (2nd sense). Since it violates both senses of Common Sense, we can say that it's just about as close to being "Objectively" wrong as anything can be. That said sociopath disagrees is a moot point, he is over ruled by the fact that his brain is miswired and he is unable to participate in either manifestation of common sense. His intuition is misfiring (1st sense) and he is a social misanthrope, (2nd sense) so he is not governed by morality. This sounds like arrogance, but it is just the recognition that things CAN in fact, be objectively morally wrong (or agreed upon by so many people so as to make calling it "subjective" or "relative" a moot point). This is the common sense approach to morality.

Answer 5

I think it refers more to the common sense of the community, whether a city, state, or country, to determine morals. In addition, I think that's we have such a hard time defining morals. We all have a different conception. I think it's immoral to discriminate against someone based on what gender they sleep with, others feel homosexuality is immoral. Morality and legality are two different issues, by the way.

Answer 6

Common sense isn't common. Laws that govern the land we inhabit together are. Morals are your sense of right and wrong as perceived within your community. In our country, we think that people should be free to date and marry whomever they choose, but in other countries it may be the fathers right to choose a husband for his daughter, and she has to live with that decision. Put bluntly, morals are in all reality relative to your environment, but if there are laws in place that all are bound to honor by virtue of being part of and reaping the benefits of a society, then within that society are bound to honor those laws, regardless of your personal morals.

Answer 7

How did 'don't kill' become common sense? How did the society come to the point where killing was wrong? How does society govern morality?

Isn't there a need to have a common morality to form a society? So where did the common morality come from? From your parents? Where did they get their moral code, from their parents? So whose parents were the first to establish the moral code used by a given society?

Answer 8

Morals don't actually exist independently - they're agreed upon by the vast majority and therefore accepted. The same applies to things like languages and money - they really mean nothing, but only mean something because so many people agree upon them.

This is why a lot of morals are obviously not absolute, like homosexuality and religions, because there is not a general consensus, while things like "Don't steal" have been generally agreed upon.

Answer 9

This is actually a very good question. I am a Christian and I believe that God gave us the knowledge to know what is right and what is wrong ( Moral Law ). It is just that without God's standard we are left with human opinions about it.

I read this somewhere here and it made sense to me.

Answer 10

Criminals are punished because they BREAK THE LAW and VIOLATE people's RIGHTS, not because of their morals. You can't legislate morality.

Morals come from society. Slavery was once considered moral in the USA, now it's not. It's obviously condoned by the Bible. It used to be morally acceptable to beat your wife - now it's not. That, too, is condoned by the Bible.

God repeatedly COMMANDS his followers to kidnap, enslave, torture, rape, forcibly abort, and kill people. Clearly, morals do NOT come from God. Most Christians haven't READ the ENTIRE Bible, so they have no idea what it REALLY says.