How do you determine which moral teachings or values are most relevant to you, and how do they
play a role in your decision-making process?
I'm by no means a moral relativist, but I'm also not convinced a moral law has been handed down
to mankind from on high. It's more complicated than that. There appears to be some sort of moral
law written into the fabric of the universe, just like there's physical laws written into the
fabric of the universe. Now gravity has always been, and we can experience the effects of it,
and we've even created formulas to predict how it behaves and have figured out ways to fight
against it and use it to our advantage via stuff like launching rocket ships to the moon. These
are physical laws we have intuited and discovered. I suspect the moral laws are similar, we can
intuit it because we find when we behave certain ways, we get certain results. And we can
observe in others, when they behave certain ways, they get similar results. And because we have
the written word, we can look at other cultures across time and notice that when they act
certain ways, they also get similar results, and in doing so, we can start to create theories as
to the best ways to live to get the results we want, and it seems like these observations get
codified into religion and philosophy and thoughts on how to live the best life. Now my best
life may not look the same as someone else's best life, so we all pick and choose the things we
follow to try to get the results we want. And I believe their are certain moral teachings that
create the life and society I want. So, I read the great thinkers, and I consider their points,
and I listen to the philosophers, and study the historians, and keeping in mind what kind of
life I find most meaningful, and take the moral teachings that have proven to create the kind of
life I want. So how do they play a role in my decision-making? I suppose it's very much on an
unconscious level unless I put in the effort to think about why I'm thinking what I'm thinking,
which I do from time to time, but most of the time, I'm making my decisions from a deep rooted
belief structure I've honed over years of meditation and thought and practice, and it's just
sort of become the air I breathe in every decision I make.