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You assume because I believe differently than you that I'm Atheist? Hmm... Telling.

You are also cherry picking. Is that a typical ploy?

I'll do the honour of posting the whole definition. Pat attention to the adjective... Heck, I'll even bolden it for you.

And as I said before... Only if you can't rely the ones you're given already!

What's with your persecution complex?

I just don't think so in this case. Evolution of the brain and the definitions you hold so dear has reinforced it.
.

I could probably assume you ran this past a debating team, and you decided to play something similar to chess. There are other sites for role playng games, and I would appreciate it if you would just admit that you were incorrect about the definition of one word and its proper usage in a sentence. You do not have to agree with any of my other premises. Of course, the definition of that word is critical to the premise.

I would say that this debate is not just a little chess game, but is a defining issue of our time. I would say that, but nobody really reads this crap anyway.

This another ad-hominem attack. You say I am a cherry picker, and provide no evidence of cherries of picking.

A Recent Study Finds Theists Are More Ethical Than Atheists

Sir, you previously refused to even consider that your definition and usage were flawed, and refused access to a dictionary. Now you post a definition without a source. I will assume you cherry picked it, and left out the source becaues it is one those "reader contributed" definitions, like Wiki or another "open source"

More ad-hominem.

They use the word "set" and "discipline." So, I still say, as I said on the last page, isn't it a lot easier to admit that you need a set of rule to call your ethics or morals. It not only clarifies your set of rules, but it allows you to reflect on things like hypocrisy. Sure, you can duck the set and accuse Christian ministers of being hypocrites, right?

The rest of your post lacks a certain quality of readability, so you might wish to clarify it. Are saying that I am wrong because the word "morals" has evolved to mean something different since open sources allow people like you to contribute new and "progrssive" definitions?

People work harder when boss is watching, study better when teacher is lurking around, run faster when coach trains besides them etc.

Rules are made for folks who haven't learned how to use their own common sense.

If Theists act more ethical solely because they think God is watching, they are less MORAL than someone who does it out of kindness.

I disagree. Societies make all sorts of rules that fail the test of "common sense". And definitely fail the test of "the Golden Rule".

The study didn't say that the ONLY reason for ethical action by Theists was "God is watching". I t said that they acted more ethically when reminded that "god is watching" or reminded of the presence or existence of God.

I'm not persecuting anyone

Now get off of it. It is obvious to all but the blind. He's talking of morals as in figuring out right and wrong... Not what is in stories.

"No, but it is covered in the operations manual for tactical excercises. It is best to aquaint yourself with the equipment and maintain it properly. When the battle is not real intense you can leave it in normal mode, but if your position is challenged, you switch it to full-auto and lay down a barrage of indisputable fire."~gottalight

You don't need a book, but if you have morals, you should be able to recite the rules verbatim according to the proper dictionary definition of the word.

And if it helps the issue get resolved, "moral" is definitely used in the sense of behaviour by me (the OP), the reporter, and the author of the study. I have no idea what the bickering about "moral" as in "a story" is all about, but it's very clear that was not the meaning of "moral" as used in the OP.

"I pleaded with the enemy to cease-fire."

Cease-fires aren't given to happening from pleading, but from negotiation. Negotiation that has no consequences or enforcement has no teeth.

Does the end justify the means? In other words, are there moral lapses so great as to justify other moral lapses? Is consistency of any import?

Ethically, a Theist would say that character dictates a certain behavior standard regardless of the behavior of others. An Atheist does this only based on moral and/or personal exigency.

I am more of a Philosopher than most Theists and most Athiests. I would rather dictate my own morals, than to listen to parrots who repeat the dictations of others.

So, I still say, as I said on the last page, isn't it a lot easier to admit that you need a set of rule to call your ethics or morals. It not only clarifies your set of rules, but it allows you to reflect on things like hypocrisy.

How can you dictate your own morals when you believe that we should be following "set" morals?

Something seems to be missing. Am I mistaken?

Here is the article:
http://www.psych.ubc.ca/~azim/norenzayanshariff2008.pdf
Of course, it also indicates that children being told that "Princess Alice" was watching them were more likely to follow instructions.
Interesting article, and of course the journalistic interpretation is much more sensational than the actual article.

In the classic “Good Samaritan” experiment (22), for example, researchers staged an anonymous situation modeled after the Biblical parable—a man was lying on a
sidewalk appearing to be sick and in need of assistance (Fig. 1). Participants varying in religiousness were led to pass by this victim (actually a research confederate) on their way to complete their participation in a study. Unobtrusively recorded offers of help showed no relation with religiosity in this anonymous context (22). Only a situational variable—whether participants were told to rush or take their time—produced differences in helping rates.

In one study (23), researchers compared levels of cooperation and coordination between secular and religious kibbutzim in Israel. In this economic game, two members of the same kibbutz who remained anonymous to each other were given access to an envelope with a certain amount of money. Each participant simultaneously decided
how much money to withdraw from the envelope and keep. Players only kept the money they requested if the sum of the requests did not exceed the total amount in the envelope. If it did, the players received nothing. The results showed that, controlling for relevant predictors, systematically less money was withdrawn in the religious kibbutzim than in the secular ones (23).
...
In the kibbutzim study, highly religious men, who engaged in daily and communal prayer, took the least money,

In one experiment, for example, participants were given the option of volunteering to raise money for a sick child who could not pay his medical bills (24). Participants in one condition were led to believe that they would certainly be called upon if they volunteered. In another, participants could volunteer although told that they were unlikely to be called upon. In the latter condition, participants could reap the social benefits of feeling (or appearing) helpful without the cost of the actual altruistic act. Only in the latter situation was a link between religiosity and volunteering evident. Many studies have corroborated that religiosity predicts prosocial behavior primarily when the prosocial act could promote a positive image for the participant, either in his or her own eyes or in the eyes of observers (2).

In one such experiment (25), university students who were randomly assigned to a condition in which they were casually told that the ghost of a dead student had been spotted in the experimental room, cheated less on a rigged computer task.

A different study conceptually replicated this effect— temporary, unconscious activation of God concepts lowered rates of cheating (26). Moreover, among those in the control condition, religiosity as an individual difference measure did not predict levels of cheating.

In another experiment, children were explicitly instructed not to look inside a box, and then left alone in the room with it (25). Those who were previously told that a fictional supernatural agent — PrincessAlice — was watching were significantly less likely to peek inside the forbidden box.

Attitudinal surveys show that religious individuals are perceived to be more trustworthy and more cooperative (31). From behavioral evidence, ethnographic examples such as the spread of Islam in Africa, which preceded the flourishing of wide-scale trade among Muslim converts (32), and the trade networks of Medieval Jewish Maghrebi merchants (33) are consistent with this idea.

Controlling for relevant sociodemographic variables, “strict” Protestant (e.g., Mormon) and Jewish denominations (Orthodox) show higher levels of church and synagogue attendance and more monetary contributions to their religious communities (despite lower average income levels) than less strict ones (Methodist and Reform, respectively) (30).

One systematic attempt to do so examined religious and secular communes in 19th-century America, whose survival de-pended upon solving the collective action problem. Religious communes were found to outlast those motivated by secular ideologies, such as socialism (Fig. 3) (29). A further quantitative analysis of 83 of these religious and secular communes (34) for which more detailed records are available found that religious communes imposed more than twice as many costly requirements (including food taboos and fasts, constraints on material possessions, marriage, sex, and communication with the outside world) than secular ones. This difference emerged for each of the 22 categories of costly requirements examined. Importantly for costly religious signaling, the number of costly requirements predicted religious commune longevity (R2 = 0.38) after the study controlled for population size and income and the year the commune was founded, although the number of costly requirements did not predict longevity for secular communes. Finally, religious ideology was no longer a predictor of commune longevity, once the number of costly requirements was statistically controlled, which suggests that the survival advantage of religious communes was due to the greater costly commitment of their members, rather than other aspects of religious ideology.

However, these findings are correlational, making causal conclusions premature. They collectively imply, but do not definitively demonstrate, that the greater longevity of religious communes with costlier requirements was due to greater intragroup cooperation and trust levels, which have not been measured directly. These results also imply that greater costly commitment is at best a partial explanation as to why religious communes outlasted secular ones. Other aspects of religion that might promote greater community stability are open for investigation.

The few relevant laboratory studies corroborate that there is an empirical association between religion and trusting behavior. Trust can be operationalized as a costly investment in a person or entity, with the future expectation of return. In one well-researched laboratory game of trust (35), participants were randomly assigned to be a proposer (truster) or a responder (trustee). In the first step, the proposer decides how much money to forward to the responder, which gets multiplied. In the second step, the responder decides how much money to send back to the proposer. By transferring money to the responder, the proposer stands to gain, but only if the responder can be trusted to reciprocate. In a variation of this trust experiment (36), researchers measured individual differences in the religiosity of the proposer and the responder. In addition, in some trials, proposers knew about the level of religiosity of the responder in an anonymous context. Results indicated that more money was forwarded to responders perceived to be religious, and this was particularly true for religious proposers. Furthermore, religious responders were more likely to reciprocate the proposer’s offer than less religious responders.

From large village settlements at the dawn of agriculture to modern metropolises today, human beings are capable of living in extraordinarily large cooperative groups. However, extrapolating from cross-species comparisons of neocortex size, it has been estimated that human group sizes cannot exceed 150 individuals before groups divide or collapse (37). Although this specific number has been disputed (38), and whereas some Pleistocene foragers possibly lived in large villages, it is apparent that the size of human settlements since the end of the Pleistocene far exceed the limitations that kin-based and reciprocity-based altruism place on group size. Cultural evolution, driven by between-group competition for resources and habitats, has favored large groups. However, large groups, which until recently lacked institutionalized social monitoring mechanisms, are vulnerable to collapse because of high rates of freeloading (13). If unwavering and pervasive belief in moralizing gods buffered against such freeloading, then belief in such gods should be more likely in larger human groups where the threat of freeloading is most acute. Because there is considerable variability in the cultural distribution of morally concerned deities, researchers could measure whether this variability correlates with group size across cultures. In a quantitative cross cultural analysis of the 186 societies in the Standard Cross-Cultural Sample, this prediction was confirmed. The larger the group size, the more likely the group culturally sanctioned deities who are directly concerned about human morality (39). Although most cultures in the world do not promote morally concerned deities, those that do tend to have disproportionately larger populations. As a consequence, the majority of religious adherents in the world worship moralizing gods.

Similarly, controlling for the cultural diffusion of moralizing Gods via Christian and Muslim missionary activity, society size, population size, and societal inequality, moralizing gods are more likely in societies with high water scarcity—where the threat to group survival, and the need to minimize freeloading, is also pronounced (40).

Being kind to one another is a no-brainer. The notion that you need a god of some kind to make a rule for it is rediculous to me (and to most Humanists).

And to 99% of theists.

Most religious people don't ever wonder why the Sun rises in the East instead of the West. They also don't wonder why their religion says anything, including why their religions say that they should be good to one another. Some theists are interested in analysis of their religion. I am such a person. I believe that most religious books say to be good to one another, to include those situations in which you wouldn't normally do that, but should do anyway.

An example is that it has been asked: Why does the Bible say "Honour your father and your mother?" The normal way of children is to show greater respect for their mother, not their father, because their mother shows them the most affection. So why divert from the normal mode of behaviour? The answer given is that the Bible is telling us to honour our father FIRST, precisely because your nature is NOT to honour your father as much, and so you must make a special effort to show respect for your father more than your mother, to compensate for that, so they are shown respect equally. A similar rule is stated about helping your friend, that if someone you like and someone you hate both need help, say both are drowning and need saving, you have to help the person you hate FIRST. This is against what is natural. But it is required, to balance out our desire to help our friends first, in order to give everyone the same help.

People with ADD should not attempt to debate. I apologize for calling you an idiot. I am very sorry about your illness.

I need a set of rules.
I write one.

It is NOT immoral to be curious. It is NOT immoral to peek in a box just because someone told you not to. This is the type of stuff I hated as a child and it's the stuff I can't stand today. Being human is NOT immoral!!

See, now I just want to call you an angry little man with no debating skills... You are doing yourself no favours with your continued insults.

You don't need a book, but if you have morals, you should be able to recite the rules verbatim according to the proper dictionary definition of the word

You mean that you are not diseased? Are you really an idiot?

You are correct... Here's the first insult.

Were you offended by an implied lack of memory skills?

Are you too poor to own a book?

Did the National Society of Athiest Humanists forget to give you a book?

Do you not have enough paper to write your own rules?

I am not able to comprehend the statement you quoted as any form of insult.

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