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| The Secular Morality Development Website |
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The purpose of this website is to stimulate debate on secular morality and
ultimately contribute towards the development and wide acceptance of a secular
moral code that is helpful, memorable, practical and independent of any religion.
Everyday we are faced with situations where we need to make
judgements quickly. A code that we have understood and accepted can help
us do this in a timely fashion and we would all feel much happier if we could
rely on other people making similar judgements to our own. The promise of such
"codes for living by", in a world which often appears chaotic and dangerous, is
one of the main things that religions offer. The fact is, however, that
religions frequently disagree with each other on what these should be and that
even their own codes are often self-contradictory. The conflicts which result
are a danger to all of us and mean that morality cannot be left to the religions.
Over the centuries, there have been many attempts to define a secular
morality. Some claim success but most find that the attempt bogs down in sterile
philosophical debate. To attempt to solve this problem here may seem ambitious to
the point of arrogance but there may be reasons for optimism. There has been a
tendency for those seeking secular moral codes to set themselves very high standards
of completeness and consistency resulting in codes that do not exactly slip off the
tongue. Meanwhile religions happily proclaim their rules for living, unrestrained
by any need to justify themselves because they claim knowledge of some absolute
truth. This allows them to declare simple rules, e.g. the Ten Commandments, that
are readily understood and memorable. There is no reason why we should not learn
from religions while avoiding their failings.
"The Triax"
is an example of what can be done if we take a more pragmatic approach.
It is unlikely that much progress will be made if a debate on such a wide subject
is not structured. This site therefore offers a set of steps that may lead somewhere
and invites contributions under the structure's headings (see
"Current Structure"
).
We hope you will respond to the challenge.
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The Triax symbol is a registered design.
This site was last updated on 15 October 2009
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