Inspiration for a Natural World-View
The Morality Project
The Bright’s Net Reality about Morality Project (I prefer to simply call it “The Morality Project”) is a plan to establish a public understanding about morality and it’s natural origins – as opposed to the supernatural origins believed by people who don’t have the time or resources to otherwise grasp the concept. The complete project outline can be viewed here.
To break down this project roughly into two phases:
- Declaring and verifying through scientific evidence, statements on morality from a natural perspective.
- Disseminating that information understandably to the public.
Obviously, many of us have already been able to grasp the idea of morality not as a supernatural effect, but as an effect from nature. After all, we owe nothing to a force greater than ourselves, and we are still not depressive criminals. The critical thinker in us may look at the potential positive outcome of The Morality Project with doubt. Lets face it, the public –at least those we aim to reach– has not proven to be the most receptive to evidence.
However, the importance of an ambitious project should never be overshadowed by the doubts of it’s proposers. Consider the stereotyping that is associated with words like atheist, agnostic, non-believer, etc… These are by definition negative words, and the associated stereotype with all of them is immorality. Morality has long been associated with words like faith, worship, and belief… but this is also a stereotype. That is not to say that the religiously faithful are mostly immoral, but I am saying morality is not the effect of ANY belief system. There are good people who do good things, and bad people who do bad things. Morality needs to be associated with only one word, truth. Using science, the only tool devised by man to understand the nature of the universe, that is precisely what The Morality Project is doing.
Become involved with Reality About Morality. You can do this by following their progress online and taking part by educating others. If this is beyond you right now, take the first steps into a natural world-view. Light that invigorating spark by reading an author like Carl Sagan or Daniel Dennet.
What do you think? How can Brights express naturalist ideas, such as morality, to a public that is obsessed with TV shows like Ghost Hunters?
November 25, 2009 - 4:58 PM
Indeed, the naturalistic evaluation is roundly better than the tired old dogmas.
See http://skeptically.org/hhor/id15.html
Religion is tied to immorality (violence, promiscuity, etc.). Nonbelief is not.
November 25, 2009 - 6:44 PM
Thanks for the link.
“Paul found that secular societies have lower rates of violence and teenage pregnancy than societies where many people profess belief in God.”
I’d be interested in knowing how The Brights intend to disseminate naturalistic ideas to a public that is obsessed with TV shows like Ghost Hunters (I’ll update this blog to ask that question for new readers).