Morality must be taught to a child, if he is raised to believe that killing puppies is okay then he will never question this, he will grow up believing that this is true and a normal thing to do.
Morality is a learnt experience, feeling compassion for another living being or inanimate object is something which requires the correct environment to foster AND the correct environment to remain possible.
I have learnt from my father that if you are in constant pain (in his case back pain) you will quickly lose your morality, you will do anything to end the pain, even ruin 3 lives and start on ruining a 4th, or 5th. There is no morality left.
Power corrupts too.
Btw there was a scientific study done recently which had supposed proof that when you gain too much influence over others you tend to become blind to others suffering.
Personal Opinion:
This I believe is because in an uninhibited environment (spoilt), everyone will ultimatley want to continue to let others suffer. This is why you see so many fathers being abusive people to not only their own children but their spouses too. It is a flaw in our minds which we havent yet evolved to correct/fix yet. We are still evolving, we are not perfect yet!
The first sign is extreme levels of selfishness.
Onto another but similar topic, when you use occam's razor on religion, it ends up becoming a factor of our own perception of the world, we as a human being require a large chunk of our minds inorder to perceive the world in an accurate and logical way, if we are missing a piece of our minds or if there is a physical disorder of our minds we will end up perceiving the outside world in a different way.
This also goes towards the belief structure of religion, religion has us believe that there is an invisible man somewhere up there in the clouds dictating all of our lives like a director in a movie, this is something which only a distorted mind can believe IMHO.
Once you clear the human mind of any and all beliefs, any and all fears, any and all deck-of-cards lies (lies that have been stacked ontop of other lies, over a long period), and once you have cleared the mind of distortions of the world around you most people will come to the realization that there isnt a second set of eyeballs looking down through the clouds, and a person whom has only recently just discarded the religious belief structure will take a very long time to shake off the shackles of other peoples influence and control, but it can happen, I did it when I was 12.
The fact of the matter is, if you could convince a religious person that armageddon is occuring, then you could get them to run out into a street full of fast cars, but most religious people arent that gullible, they dont even believe it themselves that armageddon is here or that it is occuring right now, back deep in their minds, a place where all the secrets are kept (where that chior boy's privates reside) is where they truly live, this is where religious people live, and no your not a pedo just because you are religious, I'm not saying this, because they are too afraid of the consequences from breaking the rules. and as soon as someone reaches this point, they are lying to themselves (and to god) and they continue to place one lie upon another lie to the point that their head is filled with nothing but delusions and lies and half truths and dirty filthy thoughts. This is what creates criminal behavour, delusions about what another person is (example: an object instead of a human being.)
This is why rapists exist, not because of religion but because of lies and delusions and combining those thoughts with extreme levels of sexual drive then combined with a great soul-crushing sense of lonelyness, then bitterness and finally hate.
They use the hate and sexual drive to capture a potential victim, they use the sexual desire to follow through with it, and then use the lies and delusions to say to themselves repeatedly "its okay, this feels alright to do because my emotions make it feel alright". and then once the deed is done they are back to "normal", ie what you and us feel like all of the time.
The intense levels of emotions which a rapist goes through isnt something that you or I can easily control, especially if you have brain damage to deal with or other mental health issues. So saying that rape is something which merely can be controlled is like saying that you can cure cancer with bottled water. It is a complex equasion and there is a great deal of factors involved which makes an ordinary person into someone who would want to rape. Underlying mental health issues are just ONE of them. Things which a father or authority figure say to a child also influence a persons behaviour a great deal, this is why you will find a child who has grown up in a horrible home with a criminal father, the child then has the tendencies to commit crimes.
Religion can do this aswell, just have a look at buddhism, most of its followers are passive, but if you push them far enough they will fight back, Buddhist monks have gone through endless suffering, and so have the Jewish people, both religious dogmas are a form of control, but it is only one part of the equasion of influence over somebody else.
I know this sounds trollish but this is coming from personal experience with religious people. and I know drug pushers who take care of their kids better than religious people, so dont tell me that religion is a good way to level the playing field on morality.
On the contrary, the reason why I have never married, especially into a religion, is because religious groups tend to (IMHO) be a choke point and a magnet for the worst people that I have ever met, people who have serious mental health problems with deep seated emotional issues, where they lash out at complete strangers just to make themselves feel better.
An abusive home regardless of wether or not it was a religious home, is going to end up creating a child which will suffer for the rest of their lives, not only in monetary terms but in psychological terms aswell, these children do not grow up believing that you should get a job, get a car and find a girlfriend, these children grow up with PTSD and are relieving their traumatic experiences every day, sometimes multiple times per day, just when they are doing ordinary things like shopping and laundry, or cooking, or talking to their friends.
What goes through the mind of an abused victim is quite different from normal, their mind is filled with adrenaline and testosterone, they are constantly stuck in a fight or flight mode and dont come down from it until they fall asleep. This is what my mind was like ages 9to15.
If religion to me were a form of morals and guidance, a place that I could trust, religion would never allow these things to occur in the home, instead, in the form of fundamentalist religion, they are actually fostering it and protecting this kind of abuse against children from occuring from outside influences like the police.
Edited by Layberinthius, 22 August 2013 - 03:21 AM.