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Originally Posted by Freebase Dali
I don't agree with the statement that those who behave morally are doing so exclusively because of some sort of fear for retribution, in this life or the next.
I'm an atheist, and I truly don't believe there is any judgement in the "next life" or any karmic underpinning to our actions beyond cause and effect. However, I don't go around murdering and raping and being a monster out of fear of prison.
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That's the fictional narrative that your conscious mind creates to explain the subconscious desires and inclinations that we all act on. You can test it by asking yourself if you've ever done anything for which you could be arrested and sent to prison. If the answer is yes, then you don't abstain from activities out of fear of going to prison.
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I don't know "why" I'm not a monster, but if we were to speculate, no matter what you take off the table, the simple fact of the matter is that we would not have survived as a species if we did not evolve some sort of base moral code.
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We could have evolved any type of moral code or none at all and the results wouldn't be appreciably different in terms of survival. Psychopaths have survived quite admirably.
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So in absence of any other evidence, you can say with certainty that there is a very high likelihood that it's just a part of us as a successful human race. Most of us just don't go around killing, raping and drowning kittens because we don't want to, not because we want to but don't want to end up in a prison cell or a fiery pit.
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It's not fear of hell either. It's a subconscious feeling that once the deed is done it has a price attached to it. It cannot be unwritten. Nothing more than that.
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To have that sort of outlook is hugely cynical and flies in the face of all the evidence we see on a daily basis that the majority of us do actually care about others... and not because we think we'll get a medal at the end of the race.
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Cynical it is. The scientific finding that we don't have any idea why we do what we do and believe what we believe and must make up narratives to explain is about as cynical as it gets. But it has been proven. Do we actually care about others and why?