Most of us have a concept of what is good, and what is bad. We apply these concepts to a code of ethics on how to get along in life and interact with others, which is generally called our morals.
However where do these concepts that lay down the foundation for good and bad come from? One could argue that physical experience would play a large part in this. Do something that caused us pain would deter us from doing something again, and doing something that provided us pleasure would encourage us to do it again. However there are many things that don't fall into that way of thinking. Things that can be pleasurable, but are causing us harm, and things that are painful that are good for us. So physical experience would play a weak link at best, and could very likely lead us astray of what is good for us.
Government would be another logical place to look for what gives us our sense of good and bad. However governments differ, and an action that one government might see as good; another might see as being terrible. Also what is seen as good and bad within a society the government manages can change, and that can be reflected in changes in laws. However it is possible that what an individual sees as being good and bad will differ from the rest of the government and society that he or she is a part of. Obviously something must have caused this difference to occur, and the individual must be pulling from another source to determine what is good and bad.
While governments can provide rules for a society to maintain itself, they do not provide us with a measure of what is good and bad for the individual. Religions are generally centered around providing an individual with a guide for what is good and bad. The beliefs of the religion and the practice can vary drastically from one religion to another; however the ideas of what is good and bad are usually very much the same between them.
If all religions pulled from the same source, all religions would be the same. The same beliefs, the same practices. However we only seem to find that they are similar with certain things. From this we can infer that while all religions differ at least slightly, there must also have been a common thread between all of them when they were created. A common thread that somehow transcends both space and time since the religions did not start all at the same time or same place, but at many different places and many different times throughout history.
Government can not provide us with what we need to know since it puts the good of society before the good of the individual. Physical experience can be misleading, and life experience can not be the answer since everyone has different lives, yet what we consider to be good seems to be very similar no matter our backgrounds. And while religions provide us with guidelines for what is good and bad which do not differ, they claim different sources for how those guidelines were founded. As such they do not explain the source of good and bad, but merely formalize it.
Having looked at all other options, we are forced to look for something within ourselves for the answer. Since this common thread of what lets us know what is good and what is bad seems to have existed throughout history, which is the only way that we could explain the beliefs on the definitions of what is good and bad of the religions being so similar; it must be something that is both part of each individual, yet at the same time transcends its existence.
There are only two things that fit this description. The first is our genetic code, which has remained largely unchanged since written history began (there are differences from person to person, but what makes a person a person genetically has not changed much). The other is less definable in terms of science, but has generally been referred to throughout history as the soul.
The question I present you with is which of these two items, our genetic code, or our soul is responsible for what we see as good, and why. Or is there an additional option that the argument did not cover? This is for my psy paper I need a little more to make the required amount of pages. Help a guy out? Also tell me if its any good.
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