I consider the laws of the land that I must abide by to be the moral code. Generally, you try for win-win in any situation involving someone else. if there is nobody else involved, there's nothing possibly immoral that can be done.
But it's okay to eat animals... Okay, gotcha. This doesn't apply to lessor beings, because our arrogance allows us to have more right to destroy their life.
Evolution tells us that the animals at the top of the food chain eat those below. And we're at the top. We can't stop being animals.
We don't always come out the same, for instance Eastoff posted an article about this Mullah that raped a 10 year old girl in the mosque. Hell I could knock his arse off without remorse and never consider it murder.
If you're really interested in a scientific view on morality, try taking a look at The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris, neuroscientist and philosopher.
One departure point is that the irreligious (who think about these things) would likely argue that there's no such thing as "objective morality"...objective good and evil. The religious would likely argue that there is objective good and evil and it's defined by a god.
I can see we are going to disagree. The struggles today are all about rights and what is a right, what is not. There really should be no question here.
I've looked into this after his debate with William Lane Craig. It is well thought out and there are a lot of good ideas. But it still has many holes.. It's the closest answer for the naturalist's view.
in genesis, god never mentions eating meat does he? just that we rule over them. maybe killing animals is a sin? did jesus eat meat?
In this country, slapping your wife in the face and leaving a mark is illegal (defined immoral), yet you can do it in China without prosecution. So are the people in China wrong? How about when certain "country-view" leaders will do ethic cleansing. Since it is the "Country Law", is that still considered "moral"?
Certainly could be. But I wasn't raised that way and not one single atheist I know was raised with that view. So either nurture is more powerful than making that type of reasoning, or there is something in our genetics that makes us believe murder is wrong. Or both. I could see evolutionary reasons for us to have the emotions and thought patterns that make the bulk of us believe murder is wrong. But there have been many cases where people receive an injury to the limbic system in the brain and become violent people as a result. So that's why I say there is a genetic component to our shared morality that murder is wrong, even though one could rationalize a more nihilistic approach.
