Morality for Skeptics.

INTRODUCTION. Traditional morality is a set of rules and beliefs about appropriate social behaviour, which have evolved to facilitate and improve social life. Most people feel that morality is somehow more than this. They think it's not merely something that's developed in response to human needs, but that it's true in itself, a sort of law of nature, like the laws of Physics and Chemistry. This attitude is often generated and sustained by religious belief, …

…rights, and in matters which affect me personally. But I can't deceive myself into believing that those feelings are based on absolute truths and facts of nature. On the contrary, I accept that traditional morality is nothing more than a set of guidelines which have evolved to enable us to live in a community as effectively as possible, and that my intense moral feelings are only the outcome of my own personal background and history.