Can you be good without God?

[MennoSota]

Another god? Show me one, period, that "can be proved to have come to earth, displayed his deity and arose from the dead to physically eat with humans again."

Without gods, there is no sin.

Yeshua, Jesus, fulfills your first request.

In your second statement you can add..."Without God, there is no meaning or purpose."

 

[Dave Ellis]

Yeshua, Jesus, fulfills your first request.

No he didn't.... Jesus wasn't real.

 

[bhsmte]

Yeshua, Jesus, fulfills your first request.

In your second statement you can add..."Without God, there is no meaning or purpose."

Maybe for you.

 

[Ed1wolf]

You can be good without the Christian god.

I am, most days.

How do you know what good is?

 

[Hikarifuru]

A: No, you cannot. God is the definition of good and in order to be good without God you'd have to have good coming from outside of itself, a logical impossibility. God is the source of good and therefore everything that God proclaims and does is good by definition. Nothing morally good can come from any source outside of God and therefore nothing can be morally good unless God defines it as such. Human beings do not define what moral goodness is; God does.

God knows the true difference between good and evil because God is, by definition, the most intelligent being that there is. Everyone else is of less intelligence, so we should trust what God says about good and evil above everyone else.

Thoughts?

My thoughts are that this is nonsense, that a person is the definition of good is what is illogical. I think that to say god himself is the definition of right and wrong and that we cannot know what is right or wrong without god is sociopathic, because this provides that right and wrong are meaningless in general and unless god weighs in on it then it can't be right or wrong.


Humans cry, laugh, weep, feel happiness, sadness, pain and anger with or without god. Moral systems are a part of who we are, they are a basic part of humanity and gods did not give that to us. Religions got their morality from humans, not the other way around.

The question that without god we cannot have morality is not providing that gods grant morality, but rather that the moral system that values god is the right moral system to have.

 

[Hikarifuru]

Nonsense. The idea of a supreme being--any such entity, even in theory--does not in any way require magic to be a part of it. But if you don't want to entertain ideas other than your own, even in a friendly discussion about the nature of good works, I'm willing to exit.

I think it does, because by definition these beings are free from and outside all the rules and so are rightly called magical.

 

[Hikarifuru]

How do you know what good is?

By what you want and don't want, you have no choice in having a moral system or not. You're going to want and not want things, you're going to have a moral system.

The idea that some moral systems are better than others is not relevant.

 

[Hikarifuru]

I for one would think that if a god did exist he would have no way to say what is right or wrong for humans, because he is not human and has never experienced humanity and has no idea what humans go through and has no experience with the struggles and needs that demonstrate morality, his omniscience is not relevant or logical but it actually further separates him from humanity, it's only another reason why he has no right to determine morality because has no experience being a human.

The fact that the god would have desires means that he would have a moral system regardless (just like humans always will), but I would not value his moral system at all because he'd have no idea what it's like to be me, the claim that he would be omniscient only further separates us because he doesn't know what it's like not have that knowledge.

Some people who believe in Jesus think that god became a human, but not really, he was a special human with all his godly powers and understanding and resources that promised to destroy people that didn't like him. His experience on the cross was not a struggle for him, it was him getting exactly what he wanted and exactly what he made happen to himself, it was selfish self mutilation because he wanted the cross. Jesus is not relevant either.

 

[Hikarifuru]

I also think that it's an ignorant pipe-dream to say morality cannot exist without god.

There has never been a human who lacked a moral system, there has never been a Christian who did not have a moral system until they met god and no Christian will suddenly lack a moral system if they stop believing in god. Religious people who say this are just ignorant and irresponsible and have never really thought this through. They never lacked morality, their moral simply changed when they began to trust god to make decisions for them.

 

[Larniavc]

How do you know what good is?

I'm a psychotherapist so my working days are spent helping people improve the quality of their lives by making positive changes for themselves.

I would go out on a limb and say that a reasonable person would say that is good.

 

[Ed1wolf]

I'm a psychotherapist so my working days are spent helping people improve the quality of their lives by making positive changes for themselves.

I would go out on a limb and say that a reasonable person would say that is good.

How do you know what an improvement is or positive changes are? Stalin thought killing the aristorcracy and intelligentsia were improvements and positive. Since both your patients and Stalins feelings are from the same source, chemicals produced by evolution, then how do you know one is wrong and the other is right? And you may say that one destroyed humans and the other would not, but evolution does not favor one species over another so wanting to destroy part of one species can not be "wrong" according to evolution. Evolution and nature just tell us the way things are not the way they ought to be.

 

[Achilles6129]

My thoughts are that this is nonsense, that a person is the definition of good is what is illogical. I think that to say god himself is the definition of right and wrong and that we cannot know what is right or wrong without god is sociopathic, because this provides that right and wrong are meaningless in general and unless god weighs in on it then it can't be right or wrong.

So what is good and evil, then? And how do you prove it?

 

[MennoSota]

No he didn't.... Jesus wasn't real.

All serious scholars, including most atheist scholars, disagree with you.

 

[Achilles6129]

I'm a psychotherapist so my working days are spent helping people improve the quality of their lives by making positive changes for themselves.

I would go out on a limb and say that a reasonable person would say that is good.

So what's the definition of good? And what's the definition of evil?

 

[MennoSota]

Maybe for you.

You are free to be wrong.

 

[MennoSota]

My thoughts are that this is nonsense, that a person is the definition of good is what is illogical. I think that to say god himself is the definition of right and wrong and that we cannot know what is right or wrong without god is sociopathic, because this provides that right and wrong are meaningless in general and unless god weighs in on it then it can't be right or wrong.


Humans cry, laugh, weep, feel happiness, sadness, pain and anger with or without god. Moral systems are a part of who we are, they are a basic part of humanity and gods did not give that to us. Religions got their morality from humans, not the other way around.

The question that without god we cannot have morality is not providing that gods grant morality, but rather that the moral system that values god is the right moral system to have.

The Bible says that God placed eternity in our hearts. We have been provided a sense of right and wrong by our Creator.

 

[MennoSota]

By what you want and don't want, you have no choice in having a moral system or not. You're going to want and not want things, you're going to have a moral system.

The idea that some moral systems are better than others is not relevant.

There is only God's moral system that is relevant. All others are cheap imitations.

 

[MennoSota]

I for one would think that if a god did exist he would have no way to say what is right or wrong for humans, because he is not human and has never experienced humanity and has no idea what humans go through and has no experience with the struggles and needs that demonstrate morality, his omniscience is not relevant or logical but it actually further separates him from humanity, it's only another reason why he has no right to determine morality because has no experience being a human.

The fact that the god would have desires means that he would have a moral system regardless (just like humans always will), but I would not value his moral system at all because he'd have no idea what it's like to be me, the claim that he would be omniscient only further separates us because he doesn't know what it's like not have that knowledge.

Some people who believe in Jesus think that god became a human, but not really, he was a special human with all his godly powers and understanding and resources that promised to destroy people that didn't like him. His experience on the cross was not a struggle for him, it was him getting exactly what he wanted and exactly what he made happen to himself, it was selfish self mutilation because he wanted the cross. Jesus is not relevant either.

Yeshua, Jesus, is human and is relevant. It's your rejection of truth that is irrelevant.

 

[Achilles6129]

The Bible says that God placed eternity in our hearts. We have been provided a sense of right and wrong by our Creator.

I would agree that man cannot know good and evil apart from God. However, I am not so sure at all that this knowledge is internal to a natural human being. I think that would contradict common sense (theologically) and also contradict a great deal of Scripture. But that's really not the point of this thread and it also drifts into apologetics.

 

[MennoSota]

So what is good and evil, then? And how do you prove it?

Good and evil are defined by God, in His word. Yeshua, Jesus, is proof.