Morality

What is morality anyway?
A set of rules that exist in order to make it easier for humans to live and to be happy.
The kind of morality people accept as being correct is certainly relative. It forms via ``memetic evolution``. A belief survives and thrives if it is beneficial to the people who hold it. And as conditions change certain beliefs become more or less beneficial to have. But the question:

Is there an objective morality, whether it is inborn, of divine origin, or to be discovered by intellectual efforts?

is yet to be answered.
But I will be trying that question in this latest little rant of mine.

First off is morality innate? Yes and no. People are born with an innate ability to tell right from wrong, and want to punish wrong and reward good. This is an evolutionary adaptation we have developed as a result of our community lives. Cavemen who were mean to other cavemen were exiled from the tribe and eaten by saber-tooth tigers. And obviously the opposite, nice cavemen were valuable to their communities and were treated better.

Of course just this innate morality is worthless, and even harmful, without our intellect.

If we see someone being harmed we feel a need to protect them and punish their attackers. But if we know this person is being punished we do not, however, feel the same way about them.

So we need to use our intellects to determine what is moral and what is n`t and that we cant ``just follow our hearts`` because what feels right is n`t always right, and what feels wrong is n`t always wrong. When people really are doing something wrong they either think it`s right, or are not thinking about right and wrong (usually blinded by rage, or grief)

So if we decide to create a social morality with punishments and rewards for antisocial and pro-social behaviors respectively, as we have an innate predisposition to do, we must give these rules a firm basis, make them into law. We have to compensate for the fact that people can be biased, and to try and make these laws as consistent as possible, and make sure people are judged by these laws and not by mobs.

And that is what has traditionally been done. And social moralities have certainly made their fair share of blunders. So, we need to decide which moralities are moral.

Well good news is, there are only two criteria by which we can see which moralities are moral. Both have to be fulfilled in order for the morality to be accepted as correct

Determine whether the claims it is founded on are factually correct.
Determine whether it is consistent (That it never contradicts itself)

Almost all moral codes are consistent, but are wrong because they are founded on false assumptions.
For instance, Hitler wan`t wrong because he was inconsistent, but because all the people he murdered were not ``untermensch`` Germany didn`t need to ``Expand or die``