jjjjjjjjj wrote:
if the criterion for moral wrong is that the person feels bad afterwards, then you open up all categories of action to moral worth, given, of course, that one does not feel wrong about x. my question was what makes sex morally wrong? and you provide no answer other than a repetition of the claim.
Okay, fine. What makes anything wrong then?
Take act X. I'm not going to say what act X is. It could be donating $1,000,000 to cancer research, or it could be killing someone. It's just an act.
Now lets say that for a given time period, Y percent of the population thinks that act X is morally acceptable, and is even a good deed. (100-Y) percent finds the act repugnant, and thinks X is a bad deed.
For an outside observer looking onto this society, how can he objectively say whether or not act X is moral or immoral?
Well, if you're religious, then what is moral and immoral is specified by religious codes, and you can use that religion to determine whether act X is good or bad.
If you're not religious, then you have nothing to reference to tell you whether X is good or bad other than what your "gut feeling" is telling you -- we'll say it is some sensation in your brain that is there because you evolved that way.
So it comes down to either: what percentage of the population has a religion telling them that premarital sex is wrong, or what percentage of the population evolved such that their brain is causing them an undesirable "guilty" feeling?
My point is that either way:
1) Most people on earth (> 90%) *claim* to be religious, and they are ignoring their religion and doing something that is wrong.
-OR-
2) I *think* that most people are born with brains that evolved to give them a "guilty" feeling after premartial sex, and they try to rationalize away this feeling.