Religion Isn't the Guide to Morality
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- Date Submitted: 04/27/2014 11:15 PM
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English 1102
Paper #1
Dispute common beliefs
Religion Isn’t the Guide to Morality
A sign of a good person is doing good for the sake of doing good. Someone might like doing good things to get a warm fuzzy feeling inside or wish to help someone in need so someone can breathe easier. Although doing good is fine and dandy but it doesn’t do much good to one’s character a means to and end. A commonly held belief is that religion dictates morality, the ultimate prize is deliverance and eternal bliss. It’s as if life is only to prove whether you deserve damnation or salvation. The path to learning about morality’s origin is a long one and it starts in the brain.
Morality is cultivated from the superego from Freud’s structural theory of the psyche. Once defined as feelings of guilt and conscience now means illuminating the connection between psychic health and moral action (basically guidance from parents, educators, role-models, etc…). As Freud says it, "when we were little children we knew these higher natures, we admired them and feared them; and later we took them into ourselves" (The Ego and the Id, Sigmund Freud, 1923). The optimum emotion hear is fear. Fear of punishment was the moral guide that came about from fear and intimidation. Furthermore to integrating the values of parental figures, the superego is shapes to fit the culture queues. In a primitive act of incorporation a child will absorb the values of their society, unable to discern those right from wrong. In other words, the child also assumes ideologies that are crooked, such as racism, homophobia or sexism.
An authentic moral sense does not come from fear of punishment. This, rather, ignites a psychological process called "identification with the aggressor” where the child takes in and copies unfriendly behavior acted on them by their guardians or other caretakers.
A real moral sense emerges not from external demands, but from within. Traits such as kindness, empathy, compassion, and pity...
Paper #1
Dispute common beliefs
Religion Isn’t the Guide to Morality
A sign of a good person is doing good for the sake of doing good. Someone might like doing good things to get a warm fuzzy feeling inside or wish to help someone in need so someone can breathe easier. Although doing good is fine and dandy but it doesn’t do much good to one’s character a means to and end. A commonly held belief is that religion dictates morality, the ultimate prize is deliverance and eternal bliss. It’s as if life is only to prove whether you deserve damnation or salvation. The path to learning about morality’s origin is a long one and it starts in the brain.
Morality is cultivated from the superego from Freud’s structural theory of the psyche. Once defined as feelings of guilt and conscience now means illuminating the connection between psychic health and moral action (basically guidance from parents, educators, role-models, etc…). As Freud says it, "when we were little children we knew these higher natures, we admired them and feared them; and later we took them into ourselves" (The Ego and the Id, Sigmund Freud, 1923). The optimum emotion hear is fear. Fear of punishment was the moral guide that came about from fear and intimidation. Furthermore to integrating the values of parental figures, the superego is shapes to fit the culture queues. In a primitive act of incorporation a child will absorb the values of their society, unable to discern those right from wrong. In other words, the child also assumes ideologies that are crooked, such as racism, homophobia or sexism.
An authentic moral sense does not come from fear of punishment. This, rather, ignites a psychological process called "identification with the aggressor” where the child takes in and copies unfriendly behavior acted on them by their guardians or other caretakers.
A real moral sense emerges not from external demands, but from within. Traits such as kindness, empathy, compassion, and pity...