ORIGINS OF MORALITY
When a child is born there is no data or information in its brain relating to morality or other aspects of life. The only information that there is is the genetic information of the parents.
As is commonly believed, the child may have received information via the parents, culture or from a heavenly source. This is all fallacious. As the child is growing up it will absorb tenets of the morality from its parents and as it ages, by the community it resides in at large.
The biblical Ten commandments are ten good ideas for a community and for a family too. Yet those commandments are usually only at the beck and call of the religious community. And isolated from more primitive societies such as those living on a desert island, for example. And that is where the mistake is made: It has been recorded throughout ancient history that most communities and societies abide by some form of the Biblical Ten commandments. Here we can ask why? In practically all societies: Rape, Murder, theft, respect for parents and indeed the whole gamut is accepted as the code of conduct for most communities. This information is transposed to the children and becomes part of their moral make-up or code. The child no longer has a biblical base yet follows those that abide by these tenets of morality unconsciously. Those tenets become imbedded into the mind of the child and community and is often seen as the origins of morality. These natural laws are pervasive throughout mankind and does not emanate from the Bible or other westernised sources but emerged in Primitive man as a matter of expedience in the face of self-inflicted extinction. Early philosophers had assumed that primitive people were controlled by an automatic obedience to custom with little need to moral choice.
Some early anthropologists indeed held that primitive were essentially non-moral in their way of life, but it has since been made clear that all persons have moral concepts and rules governing their behaviour.
In many respects the rules of primitive morality accord fairly closely with those observed in a sophisticated civilised society. But while no human group approves, for example, of indiscriminate lying, cheating or stealing, Societies differ in their reasons for approval and in their definition of the conditions under which lying or stealing is forgivable or tolerable or even demanded.
It has been shown that all human societies have some standard of right and wrong and are sensitive to judgements in such terms. Moreover, behind the variations is some real measure of uniformity.
Mankind mainly uses these natural laws to maintain the hierarchy in the social structure and to prevent that structure from disintegrating and the final demise of the society or community.
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