Believers, do you base your morality on divine revelation? Enlightened self-interest?

[Htom Sirveaux]

A mixture of the two? Some other foundation?

I'm very interested in how other liberal believers think about morality and its philosophical basis.

(Cross-posted in the Religion forum)

[stone space]

1. Not a "believer", but I do find this question interesting, and want to bookmark it...

...for the future, so that I do come back to answer it, and don't forget to come back to it, like I usually do.

[hrmjustin]

2. Scripture, tradition, and reason are the three-legged stole for the Anglican faith and it is how I

get my morality now. Also my parents are moral people and gavr me a good moral compass.

[stone space]

3. Philosophy of Non-violence (David McReynolds)

THE UNIQUENESS OF BEING

There is one remarkable line from the Gita that is central to nonviolence: "Of all the world's wonders, which is the most wonderful? . . . That no man, though he sees others dying all around him, believes that he himself will die."

Death is a given. Our own life is supremely important to us - our only experience of consciousness - yet we must come to terms with its inevitable end. At least for those of us who are atheists, there is no afterlife. Part of what makes nonviolence so powerful is its respect for the unique nature of every person. Not one of us has existed before, or will exist again. Each of us contains a kind of "private universe" of experience. It is good to live, good to experience life, good to enjoy that experience, good to rejoice in the wonders of life. All the more urgent, if we are here but once, and briefly, to feel entitled to experience the delights.

It is this extraordinary uniqueness of being that makes the pacifist so absolutely unwilling to destroy another person, for with each death a universe ends, and can never be replaced. How wonderfully we are made, how different from one another. To respect and understand the uniqueness of each person may make it possible also to sense what we have in common, even if what we have in common is only the certainty of our own end. Yet we must be reconciled with the fact that we must die. What we do not have to do is kill - that alone is our choice.

We come in different sizes, shapes, sexes, colors, each of us bearing different cultural and family memories. Nonviolence is about a society in which, far from having people conform to some standard, each person is able to realize, during his or her life, their greatest potential.

http://www.avrusta.nu/Reynolds.pdf

[Cleita]

4. A nun in catechism class a long time ago said the ultimate moral

measure would be your conscience. In moral dilemmas it would be the ultimate guide. It has pretty much worked for me all these years. However, I don't know what Sister's advice would have been to psychopaths and others who seem to have been born without a conscience.

[No Vested Interest]

5. As I recall, the measure has always been a

"correctly-formed" conscience.
That's the hard part - getting a young human being to adulthood with the knowledge and ability to make the hard choices.
Some of it comes "naturally - "natural law"; most of life's choices are more nuanced.

[el_bryanto]

6. Empathy for others is key. See others as individuals rather than as categories. nt

[goldent]

7. Empathy for others is the "golden rule" in some many words

and I think this is the basis for most of my morality. In addition to this is observing how others behave and emulating what I feel is best.

[Az]

8. Mirror neurons

Take a look at mirror neurons. A relatively recent discovery in neurology. These neurons are at the core of our empathy. They basically trigger whenever we see someone else doing or experiencing something. They then present to our brain as though it was happening to us. Initially probably a method of learning it also creates a sense of connection as we learn to see ourselves in others. The upshot of this is you find a biological cause behind the golden rule, karma, we are all one, being one with the universe. All these faiths find this central aspect of our humanity. We are both greedy and altruistic. Self centered and compassionate. Which ever side of our nature we encourage is the side that grows.