Do no harm...it's quite easy, really.

I'm sure if you look closely at religion, you'll see that its morality is more subjective than nonbelievers'.

Morality is individual/personal and subjective.

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" Without religion, what keeps morality from being completely subjective? (Please note:. This is not an argument FOR religion, but I have always wondered how a society derives an object morality without religion."

Yes, it's an excellent question. Perhaps the key term is "completely". All soicieties have normative constraints and while these constraints vary from location to location there appears to be certain limitations that seem common for most societies, such as the probition against murder, stealing, and so on.

I think morality is relative up to a point, but that there are some human species contraints that appear to span multiple cultures.

Morality is entirely separate from religion. Religious leaders claim that morality can't exist without religion-- but that is just a ploy that has fooled people for thousands of years.

The basics of morality are generally agreed upon: be kind to others, don't kill, don't steal, keep your word. And even those can be subjective: I wouldn't want police investigators to be hampered with having to tell the truth all the time, for instance.

With religion, morality is subjective, such as how it presents itself as the only path to true morality.

Really, which is better? Taking the religious path, with its own subjective, predigested spoon fed version of a moral life, or someone finding their own path, and doing right because it's the right thing to do?

I never equated religion with morality. It's difficult for me to understand how anyone who has read the Bioble could do so. There are some pretty screwed up examples of morality in that book. The "Do No Harm" mindset is about as moral as anyone needs to be. It pretty much covers everything.

Somehow atheists/agnostics know the differnce between right and wrong-lol. Love your dog.

'Moraility - principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior'. Assuming there is a God, morality comes from it. Absent that, it has to be an innate characteristic of a collaborative species working together to survive. It is simple as that. What you can't do, is assume there is a God because of morality. "There is nothing good nor bad, it's thinking that makes it so" - Wm Shakesphere.

Morality pre-dates Religion, so the question is backwards. Morality appears to change with time, but it is religion, moving their rules, as people exert the real morality. Example, slavery was "moral" under all religions, until machines made the work cheaper without slaves. Then the underlying real morality came back, and slavery was abolished (sort of) even though ir is till in all the religious texts. A three year old knows right from wrong, then learns to lie and distort this under religious tutelage. We all should know women are half of our species and are equal, as are we all, but religion is about control, so women are subjegated and owned. That is not moral. If you DON'T listen to the men in dresses, and allow your morality to be heard, there is no problem.

Hello, hello...

I would highly recommend Matt Dillahunty's breakdown of morality. His you tube show, the atheist experience has a cast that brilliantly disassembles the need to use religion as a means of morality. In fact, he makes substantial claims for the opposite

I had an image then of a child falling over and crying with a cut knee and I odnt know anyone who wouldn't comfort them - (Well unless they were glued ot their mobile at teh time) I was once on a CND train going to a demo when we got derailed - people got off the train in the middle of a field dazed and some with cuts and everyone who wasnt wounded automatically helped found sweets and shared them tore up petticoats to tie round cuts. My friend had a whole pack of rescue remedy on her and she was so kind that others followed suit, And I have experienced this sort of community spirit many times in my life - People on the whole are great whenever they are called upon to give of kindness.

Empathy I would have thought .

Maybe the best way to look at this problem is to notice that many social animals have their own set of mores. Read up on chimpanzee behavior as well as other apes who are social. When any species form a social group, rules develop to make sure the group survives. To get people on board, the group will have authority figures, and later a lot of those guidelines were codified into religion. Religious laws are equally subjective and subject to constant revision and change. Those religions that attempt to live as they imagine God wanted them to as described in their holy books are a danger to our modern society, and I need not point out those pbvious examples. So in short, there is religious laws are equally subjective and changeable. We can even eat meat on Fridays now, as God has changed his mind but too bad for all those wgho wasted their whole life obeying that law.

Morality is already 100% subjective even WITH religion.

If it were objective, or even intersubjective, then religions wouldn't so massively disagree on what is allowed or not, what is correct to believe or not. It's just a false claim that religious morality is in any way objective. Even the allegedly essential backing authority for religious morality (god) is not demonstrable to exist or even well-defined.

Christians often tell me that without god, my moral conviction that, say, murder is wrong is "just my personal opinion". As if their objection to murder is anything but that.

Looking at things more generally, NOTHING is 100% objective. There is only degrees of certainty. What we know, we know with enough certainty to have practical utility. It is not necessary to be 100% sure of anything, including morality.

The only morality ANYONE including a religious person has, is societal morality. That is just an emergent property of organic interactions between persons. The first time two or more people had to coexist or cooperate, morality was born.

Yes, that morality is mutable -- it evolves and changes. Good example: our attitudes toward and beliefs about indentured servitude / slavery, race, sexual propriety, marriage and a host of other issues. This is a FEATURE, not a bug. If societal morality where not able to flex with changing levels of awareness and shifting requirements, it would not be nearly so useful.

The objective of societal morality is a sustainable society that is the sort of civil, peaceful, stable society that most of us prefer to live in. It is guided not by some sort of externally bestowed rule set, but by a constant assessment of harms vs benefits of various actions, guided by a set of constantly refined principles (empathy, compassion, respect). The enforcement mechanisms are a combination of laws / penal codes, social reciprocity or the threat of withholding same, and various informal taboos and customs.

All religion does is take this societal morality for itself, add a few bells and whistles, and then claims to be the originator and protector of, and essential to, it. It's all sleight-of-hand.

When you stop to think of it, religious morality cannot differ much from societal morality, or society will consider the religion to be ... wait for it ... IMMORAL. So we can predict that if religion does not really have its own separate, superior morality, its morality will, contrary to claims, change.

And sure enough that's exactly what it does. It changes reluctantly, and the change is a trailing edge phenomenon, but it does change. It can take just a generation (typically more like 2 to 4 generations) -- for example, most modern fundamentalists wear the same clothes, watch the same entertainments as the rest of us, and have even gone so far as to rationalize sexual improprieties in elected officials in exchange for temporal power. Whereas they used to think skirts shorter than ankle length, listening to radio or going to movies, or unchaperoned dating and public display of affection to be wicked and licentious.

Catholics in many ways are a little slower on the uptake -- they just in the past 20 years admitted they were wrong to sanction Galileo, for example -- but their morality changes too. Pope Francis is pushing them to the left as we speak.

By simply being concerned with the needs and welfare of others. By really truely listening to others. By getting together and as a group deciding. This happens anyway with politics and religion both but those given representative rights seem to keep forgetting they work for the majority, not themselves. This is where it goes wrong. This is the real issue, personal wants over the needs of others. Take care of your needs... (not desires and wants but absolute needs) but not by stepping on those of others. That is complicated and difficult and most don't want to put that kind of effort into daily living.

If find religion just tries to control with punishment and rewards. If the the threat of hell is all that makes you a good person the you are lacking, also if you feel you can be a bad person and just ask forforgiveness, then you are a really bad person!

If you are a "Good person" due to your relegion then you are not truly a good person, A good person is good to others cause they just intrinsicly are.

Upringing most parents start off with please and thankyou ( or in childspeak maybe peas and fankoo) When children are older and get into fights with other children parents step in as peacekeepers and moralists. I never had a religion my parents never had a religion and so how do YOU think I picked up manners, morals and a fair code to live by?

Morality is a social construct, not a religious one. Society disctates what’s right and wrong.

Morality is just a word. It's meaning is subjective and changes from place to place, culture to culture, and over time. Slavery was once not only morally acceptable, but condoned by God, the "arbiter" of morality. Over time it has become morally repugnant. Same with child marriage, genital mutilation, even the oppression based on race, gender, and/or social class. There are/where primitive tribes with no concept of personal property and so no "theft". Once you define the word you can usually objectively determine if an action does not does not fit within the parameters of the word. For example, if morality means to not cause harm to another living thing, than swatting a fly is immoral, but not performing CPR is morally acceptable. If morality is preserving human life then not preforming CPR is bad, but so is allowing someone with stage 4 cancer decline treatment and die on their own terms. If morality is limiting human suffering, then having kids could be seen as immoral, but euthenising anyone with any form of chronic pain, even if against their will, could be acceptable.

...Not sure where I was going with that, but it was a dark place...

All morality is completely subjective. This is a good thing

I read a lot of animal behavior, and it seems that most, if not all, social animals have something that resembles morality. Probably the best summary of the research in popular science at this time would be "The Bonobo and the Atheist."

But humans, dogs, wolves, most other primates, prairie dogs, and even ravens have a sense of fairness. And what is morality but a fairness doctrine writ large?

There is an excellent free course on EdX.org called "Justice" by a Harvard professor whose name currently escapes me. He goes through the Western moral thinkers that underpin our modern assumptions on morality (and politics, economics, etc.)

As an atheist who hadn't read those thinkers in a couple decades, I came away with this conclusion: Cultures believe in gods because we're scared of what it would mean if there were not one.

I found that in the stickiest of dilemmas, the thinkers dropped back to 'because natural law.' 'Natural Law' ironically means 'God's' law in those writings. Natural Law in my book holds in tension both the interconnectedness of all things and that the strong survive. It's beautiful but messy, the natural world.

Instinctively, I think people are just naturally moral. Well I think we don't need religion to teach us right from wrong. Besides the most pious person always turns out to be the biggest sinner.