They are only "religious portions" IF you truly believe them to be handed down by God. Since I'm not handicapped by that belief, I'm more willing to believe that man, himself, wrote those commandments and simply credited God for them.

Another thing I can't quite grasp is how you feel that "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not steal" are "religious" portions. Why do people get so uptight about religion? I've been married to a Christian for over 40 years and we've never fought over our beliefs. To date, nobody has tried to lock me up, cut off my head or burn me at the stake, for my lack of faith.

Am I missing something?

I agree in practice. Some people will insist of being treated fairly but will try to get away with everything

A good example is the drivers in Las Vegas. They drive like maniacs, cutting people off all the time. But if you cut them off, they get belligerent.

anthropologists are not philosophers...morality is not a question of majority opinion...

That is actually a good rule of thumb for mutually cooperative behavior, but it won’t work when dealing with people who want to cheat you or otherwise harm you. I think it’s better to employ your postulate when dealing with people who share your viewpoint, and seek to minimize any transactions with people who don’t.

How about just treating people like u want them to treat you

I could postulate that “treat others as you want to be treated” pretty much covers it all. Not based on reason, so people here might not like it, but I think people would treat each other better than now

"group loyalty" ????

I can't even.

Just saying “people have the wrong idea based on incorrect translations” does nothing to address my objections. Why should the ten commandments be considered an integrated moral code? Who (or what philosophy) is their source? Who created the list and put it in order, and for what purpose? How can the first commandment, in particular, be interpreted in any way other than the command of a deity? (“I am the LORD your God . . . You shall have no other gods before me.”) How does this first commandment (and the two or three that follow) even qualify for inclusion in a rational moral code? It is not “prejudice” to expect rational answers to these questions, especially when the ten commandments are so intimately tied to the religious beliefs and practices of those who supposedly “mistranslated” them. Take away the religious justification and we would not be having this discussion, since most people would not even know that the ten commandments exist.

Heck no! All Ten Commandments. They are a good set of rules. Hard to do maybe but something to aim at!

I just explained why people have the wrong idea based on incorrect translations and you go right back to that invalid translation as Proof? . In Hebrew they are not commandments they are things that are put in order...not random. And you you argue based on the incorrect translation that they are random and commandments/edicts therefore they are not based on reason. Obviously you did not read what I wrote and invented your own rules about what counts as reason based on your own prejudice.

A moral code based on the ten commandments does not “work”. For one thing, they were supposedly handed down by a deity, so they were in fact edicts, not a list of suggestions. For another, the ten commandments were presented as a package, so one cannot throw out the first three and call the rest a “moral code that works”. A moral code is just that – a code of conduct – and in order to be valid, it must have a rational basis. Otherwise it is just a random set of prescriptions for “proper” behavior, without any justification other than that the code happens to correspond to the religious and cultural beliefs of those that uphold it.

Here again is the mis-translation of Hebrew that leads to incorrect interpretations. The correct translation of Devarim is Things/Realities. !0 things that were put in order (Tzivah). Order not commandment. We confuse the two words in translations. So no we don't need a new morality we just need to get over rejecting the one that works because people are told that Religion is bad and that religion is about believing in some GOD commanding us with a club in one hand if we don't obey. It's more like the 10 principles of highly successful cultures. Read and learn or you will sucked into following what is invalid (Pesel - we translated as Idols) or go making images of Zeus and sun or son gods and other false stories that rulers make up to justify keeping themselves in power by Divine "Right"..

All the ten commandments are "religious portions". That's because they are allegedly commandments from God - no other justifications are necessary. We need a set of morals that are derived from and based upon a rational philosophy, not a theocratic edict.

I don't see how anything in this study beats the original 10 Commandments (minus the religious portions).
Why, exactly, do we need a NEW set of morals? I'm not seeing it.

That would be today’s postmodernism applied to Marxism.

The anti-Objectivist Manifesto!

That article demonstrates how badly people need Ayn Rand.

Of course morality is universal: it is philosophical.
But its purpose is to sustain/enhance individual lives, not the collective good.
With that so well-demonstrated by Rand, it is absurd to even hypothesize that morality is “fundamentally driven to promote cooperative behavior” – for the collective/common good. This is pure altruism- self-sacrifice.

The list of 7 rules is unreasonably mixed; e.g. property rights are essential and a fundamental individual right (despite the nonsense spewed by the likes of Pigliucci), but fairness is an irrational standard. The result of living rationally for oneself is living rationally/cooperatively with others. But the latter should never be one’s moral purpose.

A yup!

The collectivists try to make an immoral argument moral by basing it on an immoral premise and demanding that everything after that be interpreted to prove the argument while claiming to 'love the poor'.
When there is a difference between what humans have or control (own) it exists because not only of the differences in what humans are capable of but more importantly what they choose. The inequalities never go away even when the collectivists are in charge, they are rearranged by the use of violence when the collectivists rule and the order is rearranged morally when people can choose to be objectivists. Objectivists do not rule, they simply choose for themselves what they desire and let others do the same. Interesting how the altruist philosophy of morality was slipped in using the word reciprocity. While on the face of the word it means that if I give you something I get something in return which sounds like free market capitalism paying close attention to the follow up argument one realizes that what is meant in this case is if I am given something I have to give it back to keep it in the loop because I cannot come into possession of any property at any time which leads to the question of who would do anything if at any moment the crowd could demand everything you have to be 'returned' to them.

And who determines that by what standard. Venturing down that path is a very slippery slope. The phrase" can hardly not be the latter", where is the evidence for that?

I do not need them. If that costs me my job, then I am starting my own business (which I am doing anyway).

I think the underlying assumption(s) in treating someone the way you want to be treated is first: that you aren't insane and wish yourself harm and second: that you aren't openly seeking to defy reality. If that's how you are defining "civilized" I'm right there with you.

Well, it's treating others the way You would want to be treated but either way...the way you would like to be treated may be unacceptable to someone else and the way someone else would like to be treated just may be offensive to you.

So you really can't have something so open ended...got to be a hard and fast reasonable rule.
Unlike the demoncrapic mobs, you have to have an agreement on how we interact with each other and within civilizations such that it is civilized.
...and yea...we need a proper definition of what it is to be civilized too.

"I would rather, as Roark says, "not think of" them.
": Careful, in this day and age you'll be considered a Racist or a Sexist or a [their choice]-ist, if you don't actively support their agenda. They'll have your job!

The study cited in this article I posted recently disproves Pigliucci's assertion that those with a disproportionate share of wealth have attained it by exploiting others. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post...