Does morality exist without God?

[AGODBELIEVERlove1stfaith2]

morals r principles which we need to be safe and live n learn in this lifetime

I have to say, that while it is nice to fall back on the argument that Morality is a reflection of God's commands, when we put into practice and apply even the most fundamental aspects of Logic to the statement we see that it's just ridiculous and becomes a falicious closed loop.

 

[rjc34]

morals r principles which we need to be safe and live n learn in this lifetime

Right, and they have nothing to do with any gods.

 

[AGODBELIEVERlove1stfaith2]

one day


every knee will bow

n tongue shall confess

 

[SithDoughnut]

one day


every knee will bow

n tongue shall confess

God is much more interesting when he has his crazy dictator thing going on.

 

[3sigma]

What I find disturbing about Christians who claim that morality comes only from their God is that they are admitting that without their God to tell them right from wrong, they wouldn’t be able to determine it for themselves. In other words, they have no innate sense of morals.

 

[Upisoft]

What I find disturbing about Christians who claim that morality comes only from their God is that they are admitting that without their God to tell them right from wrong, they wouldn’t be able to determine it for themselves. In other words, they have no innate sense of morals.

Apparently they don't know that morality without society does not exist. They either worship a deity without morality, if they believe there are no other gods (society). Or they worship a deity which morals include extermination of every other being in its own society.

 

[DigiDigi]

Of coarse there will be morality without God. As long as an individual has a functional brain then they are able to make decisions and judge right from wrong through the work of their brain in the frontal lobe area where all of our thought processing is located.

Regardless of what your religious identity, you will undoubtedly have a set of morals whether it be orthodox or unorthodox morals.

 

[Mling]

What I find disturbing about Christians who claim that morality comes only from their God is that they are admitting that without their God to tell them right from wrong, they wouldn’t be able to determine it for themselves. In other words, they have no innate sense of morals.

I do give *some* of those people the credit of thinking that they actually do have an innate moral sense, but they are assuming that it comes from their god. Honestly, as much as some religious people say "without God, I'd be out murdering, stealing, raping and living it up," belief in a god or gods, doesn't seem particularly effective at stopping people who actually do want to do those things. Oodles of people commit all sorts of crimes or hurtful acts while believing in some sort of god. Many commit them because of their feelings about what that god is like (people who harass people going into Planned Parenthood, or men who abuse their wives because they think being the head of the family means they can/must control everybody with an iron fist, suicide bombers....)

I think, what people who say and believe that are actually experiencing is that they see the appeal in committing various crimes, but they also feel moral constraint--which they assume comes from their god. But just because they assume it, doesn't mean it's actually true, even for them--lots of atheists or people with a secular moral system also see the appeal of various crimes or hurtful acts, and don't commit them, simply because they are wrong. I'm pretty sure that if people who believe all morality comes from a god were to, somehow, stop believing in any god tomorrow, they might go through a period of being shaken up and maybe doing some weird or bad things, but they'd then learn to recognize that feeling of morality in themselves, without needing to attribute it to any god.

Fortunately, most people don't snap from hardcore theist to hardcore atheist overnight, so most don't go through the really lost stage of being blind to moral sensibilities that I would guess would happen, if somebody did lose their faith all in one go.

 

[david_x]

Would be a strange thing to say that it does not exist without God. God is moral after all, isn't He? If He is moral it would seem to imply that there is something outside of Himself to measure Him with.

 

[DigiDigi]

Would be a strange thing to say that it does not exist without God. God is moral after all, isn't He? If He is moral it would seem to imply that there is something outside of Himself to measure Him with.

The Christian God is described as simply infinite. So according to this description, God is indeed the concept of morality, for it is everything. Although I must say that the doctrine of free will states that we humans have the power of reason, which supports individualism/humanism, therefore God cannot be our reasoning capability. If he were to decide everything for us, then we might as well label ourselves as simple puppets and disregard our true nature.

Another point that I must make is that when speaking of mysticism, we cannot use empirical terms with the philosophies and mystical perspectives. We cannot assume that mystical exists nor exists at all, rather we must just use logic only to speak of mystical matters such as deities and angels, etc. In other words, we cannot measure God because we have absolute no knowledge about him. We cannot measure what we lack knowledge about, there is no method of measuring the paranormal, unless your Bill Murray.

 

[SonOfTheWest]

Religion is an attachment to morality. And really tends to be much more about bare proscriptive and subscriptive behavior. It's morality itself. Morality I think is purely a function of the intersection of intelligence and sociology.

 

[david_x]

The Christian God is described as simply infinite. So according to this description, God is indeed the concept of morality, for it is everything. Although I must say that the doctrine of free will states that we humans have the power of reason, which supports individualism/humanism, therefore God cannot be our reasoning capability. If he were to decide everything for us, then we might as well label ourselves as simple puppets and disregard our true nature.

Another point that I must make is that when speaking of mysticism, we cannot use empirical terms with the philosophies and mystical perspectives. We cannot assume that mystical exists nor exists at all, rather we must just use logic only to speak of mystical matters such as deities and angels, etc. In other words, we cannot measure God because we have absolute no knowledge about him. We cannot measure what we lack knowledge about, there is no method of measuring the paranormal, unless your Bill Murray.

Infinite does not mean that God is everything. For instance God is not the earth we stand on or the computers we type at.

 

[SithDoughnut]

...

 

[chris4243]

That's like saying that 1-10 is infinite because the number line doesn't include the other numbers. If God is not something, then he cannot by definition be infinite. You can't have infinity plus a finite quantity.

wazzat? The even numbers are infinite even though they don't include the odd numbers, the numbers excluding 1-10 are infinite even though they exclude those numbers, there's an uncountably infinite number of real numbers in 1-10 (ie, more numbers than there are integers).

 

[SithDoughnut]

wazzat? The even numbers are infinite even though they don't include the odd numbers, the numbers excluding 1-10 are infinite even though they exclude those numbers, there's an uncountably infinite number of real numbers in 1-10 (ie, more numbers than there are integers).

My brain wasn't working when I wrote the earlier post.

 

[Upisoft]

I have related question to the topic. If you are a Christian where do you get your morality? From the Bible or directly from your communication with God? Is there other option I have not listed? And what of them is the correct option and why?

 

[Mling]

I have related question to the topic. If you are a Christian where do you get your morality? From the Bible or directly from your communication with God? Is there other option I have not listed? And what of them is the correct option and why?

While I'm not Christian now, I was for most of my life, and I struggled a lot with this question toward the end. The bottom line answer is that, as a Christian, I got my morality the same way I get it now: by empathizing with people and trying to logically figure out responses to our messed up world that would do real good.

For a long time, I considered the redundancy of any god in this system to be a major strength: God's rules and instructions weren't arbitrary, and they weren't good simply because they came from God--they were given specifically because they were what was best for the world, and given at carefully measured intervals to do the most good. Over time, though, the realization that I could figure out morality for myself pushed God further into the background, as did the realization that what looked like expert timing on God's part was really just ideas taking off because the world was ripe for them.

 

[Dancing Sky]

The God character in the Bible doesn't seem to be a very moral entity, it could learn a thing or two from humans.

 

[Upisoft]

The bottom line answer is that, as a Christian, I got my morality the same way I get it now: by empathizing with people and trying to logically figure out responses to our messed up world that would do real good.

I know how people who don't hold a belief about a God think. But I want to know how a Christian, who is currently believing thinks about this and what is their justification to think so.

For a long time, I considered the redundancy of any god in this system to be a major strength: God's rules and instructions weren't arbitrary, and they weren't good simply because they came from God--they were given specifically because they were what was best for the world, and given at carefully measured intervals to do the most good. Over time, though, the realization that I could figure out morality for myself pushed God further into the background, as did the realization that what looked like expert timing on God's part was really just ideas taking off because the world was ripe for them.

I see. I myself have never believed in anything that can be described as religious belief. The questions I was asking myself were. If one does not have morality within themselves, how they will understand the moral lessons from the book they chose to read? I imagined myself laughing madly at or experience joy about any mass-murder story in the Bible. At the end I decided that I must have morality, because I don't find any of it funny or pleasing.
The same could be said about logic. One can find logic inside the Bible and never exit that loop. However to understand that logic, one should already have the logic within. And logic within me said that what I read is illogical.

So, for me, to become a Christian it means I have to destroy my own morality and logic and substitute them for those from the book. I have not found any other explanation for doing so, other than having for myself eternal life (dubiously good thing). So, I had to destroy my relationship with the world around, get some questionable morality rules, only for my benefit. The next question was "is that moral"? You may guess what was the answer.

 

[Mling]

I know how people who don't hold a belief about a God think. But I want to know how a Christian, who is currently believing thinks about this and what is their justification to think so.

Well...pretend it's 5 years ago? That's the same answer I would have given when I was Christian--it's how I thought then, even though I then took an extra step to try to make it fit a Christian mold.

I see. I myself have never believed in anything that can be described as religious belief. The questions I was asking myself were. If one does not have morality within themselves, how they will understand the moral lessons from the book they chose to read? I imagined myself laughing madly at or experience joy about any mass-murder story in the Bible. At the end I decided that I must have morality, because I don't find any of it funny or pleasing.
The same could be said about logic. One can find logic inside the Bible and never exit that loop. However to understand that logic, one should already have the logic within. And logic within me said that what I read is illogical.

So, for me, to become a Christian it means I have to destroy my own morality and logic and substitute them for those from the book. I have not found any other explanation for doing so, other than having for myself eternal life (dubiously good thing). So, I had to destroy my relationship with the world around, get some questionable morality rules, only for my benefit. The next question was "is that moral"? You may guess what was the answer.

Having been inside the mindset, and now being out of it, and having spoken to a lot of Christians both from the inside and outside, I'd say that a lot of Christians do use their own intrinsic sense of morality, based on empathy, but they often deny that they are doing it--even denying it to themselves. I say I tried to take an extra step, once I'd decided what was right, to justify that decision in light of a Christian mindset. But I was especially thoughtful, self aware, and philosophical. A lot of people do it in a less deliberate way, by instinctively getting their own lens of morality in between the Bible and their brain. That is, say they read a story where God commands genocide, they don't then walk away thinking that genocide is ok. They either completely distance themself from the story, to such a degree that they don't notice that God commanded genocide, or it doesn't occur to them that those people were real people and not just characters in a book, or they read the story as being so representative of a different time and culture that it has no parallel at all today.

I remember, shortly after 9/11, my church, rather innocently I think (my church was definitely on the left-leaning, peace and love end of the spectrum) had a reading from one of the several places in the OT where the Israelites rely on their faith in God and, thus, are able to massacre a city. My mom whispered to me that she really didn't like stories being taught where people are able to slaughter their enemy because of their faith in God--it's exactly what terrorists think. It had never occurred to me to consider the flip side like that. You know, so many of the stories we have about the ancient world involve wars and killing...if you want to, you can consider that part of the Bible just a backdrop to messages about how relying in God makes you strong, and how God is a faithful protector and whatnot, without ever considering the fact that you're talking about genocide or human sacrifice.

In short--people do approach the Bible with pre-conceived ideas that, say, fidelity is good and love is good, and mass slaughter is usually bad...but they often don't realize they are doing that. They stay blind to the parts of the Bible that say God helps you slaughter babies, only notice the parts where God fits their preconceived ideas about what is good, and then turn it around and think that they are forming those ideas about what is good by extrapolating them from what they see in the Bible.