Does lack of religion make people immoral?

[IzzyPop]

God never said slavery was right. Just because some Christians had them didn't make it right...the same way at one time more than one wife was an acceptable practice...didn't make it morally right.

Except where God told his followers to take slaves. And where he made a bunch of rules on the proper and ethical treatment of slaves instead of just forbidding slavery. Cause, you know, shellfish and poly-cotton blends! Those are abominations. Owning another human being, not so much

 

[Woden84]

Yup totally true. Which is why Sweden, Denmark, and Norway (the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th least religious countries according to gallup) are consistently rated as being some of the countries with the highest living standards.

 

[quatona]

Does lack of religion make people immoral?

I´m sure that if applying your moral ideas I am a completely immoral person. I´m just wondering whether my lack of belief in gods is the reason or the effect of this fact.

 

[Roseluck]

no way...

Morality is set in stone for the Christian and is as unchanging as God.

For an individual Christian; yes. But the same applies to all people. Morality is very much on an individual basis and the mere construction of morality has many factors that go into it. Culture, family, mental state, life experiences, and yes, maybe religion.

 

[keith99]

Except where God told his followers to take slaves. And where he made a bunch of rules on the proper and ethical treatment of slaves instead of just forbidding slavery. Cause, you know, shellfish and poly-cotton blends! Those are abominations. Owning another human being, not so much

Well the shellfish part makes sense. It was like eating something grown in a sewer, rather dangerous.

 

[Upisoft]

The problem with atheist governments is they do horrible things to try to get where they think they want to go. Since they don't appeal to a higher authority than themselves they go on power trips where they use their power in a paranoid way to kill everyone they think threatens their power. Religious groups don't do that because they have a little faith in God to protect them. That is probably very simplified but I think Alexander Solzhenitsyn would agree with me.

You again got it wrong. It is not atheist government, it is a government that eradicated the church because they wanted all the power for themselves. In fact many of them were religious, but they didn't want the power in the hands of the church.

Why I say they were religious? There are facts. Many of them, including political leaders from USSR were coming in Bulgaria to consult with well known blind Christian prophetess Vanga. The head of my state was very close to her and he regularly visited her.

Non religious people would not have faith in prophecies.

 

[Paradoxum]

Did communism not become a religion?

In my thread I didn't say that all people who believe in God are immoral, but that those who believe in God in a religious way and raise belief above morality open the way to moral abuse.

 

[Upisoft]

Did communism not become a religion?

Kind of maybe. There was one truth. There was cult of personality. We were forced to join different organizations that used to brainwash children. No talk against the leaders were allowed (sort of blasphemy). Economics was planned, but when there was no toilet paper in the store you were not supposed to talk against the planning, it was supposedly not capable of mistakes.

 

[mdancin4theLord]

Yes, sure, the Crusades and the Roman Catholic Inquisitio Haereticae Pravitatis were highly moral too.

The Crusades were an attempt on the part of Christians to recover territory that had been taken from them my Islamic armies. They fought to defend themselves from foreign conquests while Muslims fought to continue conquering Christian lands. European Christians had good reason to be concerned about foreign conquest. Islamic armies had been turned back from conquering what is now France at the Battle of Tours. Had islamic armies won that battle, the entire history of Western Civilization would have been radically altered.

The Spanish Inquisition...it is bacially on a global scale a myth that was concocted by the political enemies of Spain....and religion. If you look at the total number of people who were executed by Roman Catholic inquisitors for heresy....it amounts to about two thousand. Sounds like a lot, right? The fact is these two thousands lives taken happened over a period of 350 years.

You should also have brought up the witch trials in Salem...suprised you didnt. This is one of the best examples of religiously motivated violence in America. Just how many people were killed in those trials? Thousands....hundreds? Did you know that fewer than twenty five died. In fact nineteen were sentenced to death and the rest died while captive.

So is Christianity responsible for the most of the evil in world hardly. It is an error in proportion claiming that these examples inflicted in the name of Christianity comes anywhere close to what godless regimes headed by men like Hitler, STalin and Mao have done.

 

[hollyda]

The excuses people make should surprise me, but they don't, anymore.

 

[selfinflikted]

The excuses people make should surprise me, but they don't, anymore.

I shouldn't be surprised, but I am. Repeatedly.

 

[Cabal]

The Crusades were an attempt on the part of Christians to recover territory that had been taken from them my Islamic armies. They fought to defend themselves from foreign conquests while Muslims fought to continue conquering Christian lands. European Christians had good reason to be concerned about foreign conquest. Islamic armies had been turned back from conquering what is now France at the Battle of Tours. Had islamic armies won that battle, the entire history of Western Civilization would have been radically altered.

Three centuries prior to the Crusades. Hardly a pressing threat at that time.

 

[mdancin4theLord]

Does the lack of religion make people immoral?

First of all Christianity is about the relationship one has with God...not about anything else especially man made rules.

So a Christians morals come from God no place else. No friend, teacher, society dictates what is moral for a Christian....God does. It is stated in the Word...what is right and wrong...what is moral and what is immoral.

I would ask someone without a God belief what and where does the source for their beliefs come from?

An orderly society is dependent on a generally accepted morality. In my opinion there can be no such morality without religion and faith in God.

I was reading the other day something that an atheist named John D. Steinrucken wrote in a 2010 article for American Thinker. It was titled "Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity."

Archived-Articles: Secularism's Ongoing Debt to Christianity

"Rational thought may provide better answers to many of life's riddles than does faith alone. However, it is rational to conclude that religious faith has made possible the advancement of Western civilization. That is, the glue that has held Western civilization together over the centuries is the Judeo-Christian tradition. To the extent that the West loses its religious faith in favor of non-judgmental secularism, then to the same extent, it loses that which holds all else together.


Succinctly put: Western civilization's survival, including the survival of open secular thought, depends on the continuance within our society of the Judeo-Christian tradition.

Although I am a secularist (atheist, if you will), I accept that the great majority of people would be morally and spiritually lost without religion. Can anyone seriously argue that crime and debauchery are not held in check by religion? Is it not comforting to live in a community where the rule of law and fairness are respected? Would such be likely if Christianity were not there to provide a moral compass to the great majority? Do we secularists not benefit out of all proportion from a morally responsible society?

An orderly society is dependent on a generally accepted morality. There can be no such morality without religion. Has there ever been a more perfect and concise moral code than the one Moses brought down from the mountain?

Those who doubt the effect of religion on morality should seriously ask the question: Just what are the immutable moral laws of secularism? Be prepared to answer, if you are honest, that such laws simply do not exist! The best answer we can ever hear from secularists to this question is a hodgepodge of strained relativist talk of situational ethics. They can cite no overriding authority other than that of fashion. For the great majority in the West, it is the Judeo-Christian tradition which offers a template assuring a life of inner peace toward the world at large -- a peace which translates to a workable liberal society.

For the majority of a culture's population, religious tradition is inextricably woven into their self-awareness. It gives them their identity. It is why those of religious faith are more socially stable and experience less difficulty in forming and maintaining binding attachments than do we secularists.

Secularism has never offered the people a practical substitute for religion. From the time of the philosopheswith their certainties in 1789, the rationally thought-through utopias of those who think themselves the elite of the world, when actually put to the test, have not merely come to naught. Attempts during those two centuries to put into practice utopian visions have caused huge sufferings. But they, the clever ones, never look back. In their conceit, they delude themselves that next time they are sure to get it right. They create justifications for their fantasies by rewriting the histories.

We secularists should recognize that we owe much to the religionists, that we are not threatened by them, that we should grant to them their world. Why should we be exercised over a Christmas Crèche in front of the county court house? It is appropriately symbolic of Christianity's benign but essential role as guarantor of our political and legal systems -- that is, of a moral force independent of and transcendent to the political. And what harm will come to a child who hears prayer in the schoolroom? I daresay harm is far more likely to come in those places where prayer is not heard.

The fact is, we secularists gain much from living in a world in which excesses are held in check by religion. Religion gives society a secure and orderly environment within which we secularists can safely play out our creativities. Free and creative secularism seems to me to function best when within the stable milieu provided by Christianity.

If the elitists of our Western civilization want to survive, then it is incumbent upon them to see to the preservation of the hoary, time-honored faith of the great majority of the people. This means that our elitists should see that their most valued vested interest is the preservation within our culture of Christianity and Judaism. It is not critical that they themselves believe, only that they should publicly hold in high esteem the institutions of Christianity and Judaism, and to respect those who do believe and to encourage and to give leeway to those who, in truth, will be foremost in the trenches defending us against those who would have us all bow down to a different and unaccommodating faith."



I admire this atheists honesty. He is a believer in that the power of religion forms morality and preserves stable societies....yet he rejects God.

 

[TheSpanishBananaRoman]

I heard Norway is %70 Atheist and I heard from surveys it's the best place to live in the world. Probably execpt the fact that it's freezing cold though. Former Russia and China just happen to be starving atheists.

 

[Autumnleaf]

I heard Norway is %70 Atheist and I heard from surveys it's the best place to live in the world. Probably execpt the fact that it's freezing cold though. Former Russia and China just happen to be starving atheists.

So we should focus on Norway and pay no attention to the starving Russians and Chinese behind the curtain.

 

[Desk trauma]

So we should focus on Norway and pay no attention to the starving Russians and Chinese behind the curtain.

No, you should make the distinction as to what the problem was, marxism not atheism.

 

[jpcedotal]

The lack of Jesus Christ in every decision for both the Christian and the Non-Christian makes folks immoral...

 

[hollyda]

The lack of Jesus Christ in every decision for both the Christian and the Non-Christian makes folks immoral...

Then I must be a monster.

 

[jpcedotal]

Then I must be a monster.

No matter how "good" you believe your life is now, it is nothing compared to what God has in store for you...if you would just give His Son a chance.

 

[hollyda]

No matter how "good" you believe your life is now, it is nothing compared to what God has in store for you...if you would just give His Son a chance.

Conversion through fear. Nice.

Question: how many chances do I need to give him? I seem to remember giving him plenty when I was a Christian. Though I'm betting I'll get told I didn't do it right.