this post was submitted on 04 Jul 2025
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Showerthoughts

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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.

Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:

Rules

  1. All posts must be showerthoughts
  2. The entire showerthought must be in the title
  3. No politics
    • If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
    • A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
  4. Posts must be original/unique
  5. Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct and the TOS

If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.

Whats it like to be a mod? Reports just show up as messages in your Lemmy inbox, and if a different mod has already addressed the report, the message goes away and you never worry about it.

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[–] Tattorack@lemmy.world 12 points 6 days ago (1 children)

I've heard this bullshit so many times...

What we call "morality" is simply put to words those behaviours that has made us a successful species. We are a communal species, one of our greatest strengths being the delegation and specialisation of tasks; all working together. Everything we've built, everything we've achieved, can be attributed to that feature of our species.

Now, imagine how far we'd get if every individual in our species acted "amorally".

Morality is a product of evolution.

[–] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 0 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago) (1 children)

"Without the precursor of gender roles, there can be no morality."

"Without the precursor of tradition there can be no morality."

"Without the precursor of >insert social structure< there can be no morality."

Some of our social structures have things to say about morality. Sometimes they're saying"love your neighbor as yourself," and sometimes they're saying "burn that city to the ground and keep all of the preteen girls as sex slaves." Just because religion and spirituality have things to say about morality doesn't necessarily mean that they're worth listening too, and it doesn't mean we couldn't have developed a system of morality in their absence.

Without religion and spirituality, we may have developed a better, more universal system of morality, rather than the patchwork of haphazard and contradictory traditions we currently enjoy. We'll never know, because religion was created early in our history, and for the rest of eternity, we get to listen to asinine armchair theologians tell us "without religion, there would be no real morality."

[–] Arkouda@lemmy.ca -1 points 6 days ago (1 children)

and it doesn’t mean we couldn’t have developed a system of morality in their absence.

The fact is we have no evidence to suggest our species has ever developed a system of morality without spirituality. Just because we may have been able to, evidence clearly demonstrates a trend of that either not working or not being an idea for precivilization humans.

Without religion and spirituality, we may have developed a better, more universal system of morality, rather than the patchwork of haphazard and contradictory traditions we currently enjoy. We’ll never know, because religion was created early in our history, and for the rest of eternity, we get to listen to asinine armchair theologians tell us “without religion, there would be no real morality.”

I am not arguing that religion is good. I am saying it was a means to an end, and we can point to all evidence we have and see that. Regardless of how you feel about it, not a single culture developed a moral system without first developing a spiritual one that we have evidence of.

[–] blackstampede@sh.itjust.works 2 points 5 days ago

I hate to throw out this old chestnut, but "correlation does not equal causation." Just because religion existed in one form or another in almost every single culture, does not mean it's necessary for morality. As I mentioned previously, lots of social structures existed in early societies that had things to say about morality. That doesn't mean they were necessary precursors.

[–] fubbernuckin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 34 points 1 week ago (10 children)
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[–] Kolanaki@pawb.social 31 points 1 week ago (3 children)

"'Without religion, how would you stop yourself from raping and killing all you want?' I already do all the raping and killing I want. That number is ZERO because I don't want to rape or kill!" - Penn Gillette.

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[–] RagingSnarkasm@lemmy.world 26 points 1 week ago (1 children)

People who are only moral because they fear going to hell scare the piss out of me.

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[–] Redfox8@mander.xyz 26 points 1 week ago (19 children)

I also disagree. All you need is to say "I don't want/like that" and to understand that something could be lost or suffered to yourself or others, given a particular scenario. That can then be used to create a system of morality where the majority are in agreement with each aspect.

Oh and empathy. That's pretty critical!

I'd say that spirituality and religion is then formed off the back of and alongside general or universal moral beliefs and that many aspects cannot exist without morals in the first place.

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[–] Fletcher@lemmy.today 19 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

I would argue that morality came before religion or spirituality, and therefore does not require either of them to exist.

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[–] lath@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago (3 children)
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[–] moshankey@lemmy.world 10 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I have neither spirituality nor religion and I consider myself a rather moral person. Neither of those did anything for me and I do not look at any religiosity I may have been taught as a child as a reason for my morals. Live and let live works pretty well for me. Always has and I’m almost 60. So no, I don’t agree with your point.

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[–] rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world 9 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (7 children)

It doesn't serve us well to murder our own communities. It doesn't serve us well to cause conflict and strife among ourselves when external circumstances are tough enough.

Living on the steppe or on the savannah would have been extremely tough, and I believe that pragmatism would have naturally lead to a sort of morality -- don't steal from, harm, kill, antagonise other people in your group or you're putting the entire group at risk.

It doesn't have to be spiritual or religious!

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[–] Outwit1294@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago

Even animals have some kind of morality

[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 8 points 1 week ago

I'd say morality came first and people invented religion to justify the moral frameworks they already had. Cultures invented gods and ascribed their culture's shared moral views to their gods

[–] FreshParsnip@lemmy.ca 6 points 1 week ago

Ethical frameworks exist that don't rely on religion or spirituality. Utilitarianism, kantism, etc..

[–] lerba@sopuli.xyz 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (5 children)

I'm not sure if I understand the statement properly, but I appreciate the challenge here. Why precursor?

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[–] november@lemmy.vg 5 points 1 week ago (5 children)

What do you even mean by "precursor"?

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