moralityAs an atheist, I’ve often been asked by religious friends where I get my moral compass. Obviously, a certain amount of moral values were instilled in me by my parents and family, but if I really think back to my childhood, I feel that TV shows, movies, and books may have had a lot to do with how I grew up.
I even feel like I can pinpoint where I learned about certain concepts, and grew to respect certain values. For example:
These influences run from when I was a small child all the way through to adulthood, and many of these shows/movies/books still have an effect on me today.
So, if religious folks claim that their moral values are rooted in faith, is is possible/likely that an atheists moral values come from media, in addition to family/etc?
I’d be interested in hearing about both anecdotal evidence or scientific/sociological studies on the matter.
Star Trek, for me. In all its incarnations.
After all, we take our morality from the same sources theists do. They just think that source is god, but we know that is not true.
Morality comes from the environment and society.
Since most of morality is imprinted in the early years, I would guess that parents are mostly responsible for educating children and passing on a moral sense.
Typically my answer is Logic. If you take self interest to the logical conclusion, it looks the same as most other moralities. Only short-sighted selfishness becomes amoral.
But, Your idea about TV has given me a better answer.
I get my morality from LeVar Burton.
In my formative years, I consumed much of LeVar’s TV programming. Including:
So I would have to say that, as far as both my morals and interests go, LeVar created me. At least when you talk about things I got from TV.
To be blunt, a non-believer can not only learn morals from books, TV shows, and movies, but a non-believer can even learn morals from religious books, TV shows, and movies.
So as others have suggested the answer is a likely yes. That said, I don't have any citations because the type of experimental study that would need to be done to demonstrate this really well would never pass internal review boards.
Nonetheless, you have an assumption in your question that is potentially false: it may not be that all moral values are learned. This is a popular sentiment among many social scientists (especially after the post-modern revolution), but it may be false.
There is some work by Jonathan Haidt that argues that the core values of morality are innate. And other work by John Mikhail arguing that this moral system consists of something like a universal moral grammar, in the sense that language has a universal grammar.
Plus there's a good deal of apparent moral behavior in the animal world, and good explanations for some kinds of altruism even among humans. Radiolab just did a fantastic episode (and follow up short episode, see their website) on this.
If morality is in any part innate, then clearly at least that part of morality exists among both atheists and theists.
NOTE: I am not saying that any of these innate moral values are true, or objectively accurate ethical values, that jump would be what is called the naturalistic fallacy. For example, violence may be selected for by evolution in the same way that certain moral values are, that doesn't make violence an objectively accurate ethical value. Rather these moral values may exist innately and that is all I am suggesting.
The human animal has evolved to be a successful participant in modern society and part of this is understanding the difference between what is right (i.e. what is of benefit to society) and what is wrong (what damages society). Even babies show an appreciation of the difference between right & wrong (http://www.physorg.com/news192693376.html).
Some theists claim that this ability is the morality derived from a slavish belief in an invisible man, others say it’s from an elephant-god, etc. Those capable of rational thought understand that it’s simply a part of the success story of the evolution of man.
In other words, all humans (with the obvious exceptions of sociopaths) have an innate moral compass that has as its goal the success of the species, not the selfish saving of the individual’s soul.
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