Theists often claim that God is necessary to be the source of morality, that without God, {Quote Jan} We have morals because of the influence of religion. When that goes, all morals will go out of the window (a show of morals may prevail in afluent societies). We will become pure animals in human form. The survival of the fittest, the Darwinian ideal.* {End quote}. But for a morality to be objective/binding/necessary does not require a God. Here's why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vyd6om8IC4M&feature=relmfu * No quote mining, full quote- I said: She said: And then I found this video debunking the Theist's argument for God by morality. Hence I started this thread. This may have come up many times before, but I would like this thread to develop into a healthy discussion on morality. So, what do you think?
There are morals in most religious texts, but there are also the codifications of the ignorance and prejudices of those who wrote them. Most of the important morals we learn in Kindergarden long before we understand the concept of the devine(often before we can even speak). The Golden Rule, properly applied, covers all of the important ones(ie if I don't want to be hit, I should refrain from hitting. Feel free to substitute stolen from, murdered, slandered, disrespected... for hit, it's pretty universal). A much more moral philosophy can be constructed WITHOUT religious prejudices than with one, IMHO.
If morals can consist of a set moral code, and can predict all future situations, determining the proper course of action in every circumstance, I have yet to see one.
Hammurabi gave them their commandments, not God. Morality springs from an enemy idolater, not divine revelation.
It is easy to say we don't need God for morals after the basis for morality is already there to be copied and extrapolated. This is like saying we don't need Albert Einstein for relativity, since the book is already in the system to copy and modify. I suppose the little child doesn't need the parents after the logistics of the house is all set up by the parents. If we started with a blank sheet of paper and zero knowledge of the past, the new morality may not end up the same way. The moral codes could come out based on self interest and not the best interests of all. Back at the time of Christ there were problems with doctrines of men based on self interests of those in power at the expense of the little guy. Political based law or moral codes tend to favor only part of the population and those in power. It is used to maintain and consolidate power. To get a moral code that includes all and benefits the entire group you can't depend on special interests groups to decide, since they will slant the code in their own favor. The atheist may not want Creationism taught in schools. How does that benefit all in terms of morality? I agree this would be better for atheism. Something or someone would need to take the highest ground, even at their own personal expense, to define what is the best for all, even if it may even restrict their own interests. I am not sure of you can depend on humans to do this or humans to make sure it is enforced, since work arounds are already in the system. The concept of God creates a big guy at the top to set it straight so even the big human guy has to follow since he is a peon like all the rest. Take away God and the humans peon think he is god and therefore exempt. Other can pay him to get their own exemptions, etc.
It does good because it prevents the misinformation of a nation whose people, two generations ago, claimed the first step ever taken by our species on another celestial body. If the progess and development is to continue, things like creationism needs to go.
This works under the assumption people are stupid and need to be spoon fed, since they can't think for themselves and come to the truth, if given multiple choices. This is liberalism and the nanny state mentality, taking away choices so they can gain power. It is like an over protective mother preventing all other influences to make use she remains the center of control. I project differently and work under the assumption you need to give people choices so they can learn to think and stand on their own two feet and come to the truth on their own. We don't need more dependency, but more independency and self reliance. If alternate choices make you insecure you are dependent and not very self reliant. The Catholic church does not restrict members from learning science. Unlike liberalism and atheism, it is not trying to control behavior to the same extend by eliminating alternate choices. You can learn biology in Catholic Universities. It more masculine or like dad who want the child to grow up into a man by living in reality, and not mother who wants her child to remain a dependent child. That is liberalism. An analogy is mother says, don't go near the water or you will drown. We need to protect baby from the pond, even if he likes the water. Mother knows best for baby. Dad says, junior likes to play in the water, he can't be a baby forever. If he becomes your baby forever, he will miss a chance at his own life, as a man.
Heaven is the object heathen's don't sin to obtain. I'll give you a hint, they don't see it, so they go by nature and do what they want to do (i.e. lie, cheat, steal, murder). The question no longer stands. Why does God refuse to show his face? If God looked down on us with eyes in the sky we could see and feel then heathens would go about their day, refusing their nature, this is not perfect, one must over come. God is a reward for morality, but it only works if one has faith.
We DON'T need Albert Einstein for the theory of relativity...even if he hadn't thought of it, someone else could have. No one is saying that the morality we have has not been influenced by religion, which is more to your point, but rather that, had religion never existed, it is possible that some other system of morality would have developed. Just as wolves and gorillas have a social structure that has rules (rather "conventions") of interactions which govern their social structure, so too do humans. A subset of those rules we refer to as "ethics" and the people who adhere to those rules assiduously, we refer to as "moral." Suppose, hypothetically, that God does not exist. Do you imagine humans would live in a state of uncaring anarchy, where taking lives and stealing and other immoral acts are not thought of as a problem? That's hard to accept, because our social organization would have vanished, and that would have led to humanity's extinction. A plausible explanation is that we evolved a rough sense of fairness and a desire to generally conform to local conventions. From those two various ethical systems grew adapting to different places, times and circumstances. They caught on locally because our social hardwiring makes us prone to accepting and internalizing the rules we are raised under, which then propagate as social memes. For God to have been "necessary" for morality to exist it means more than "God actually is the source of our morality" but rather "without God, there could be no morality of any sort." As there is clearly a path for such a thing to develop without God, God is not necessary for it. What book do you think the Native Americans got their morals from? Do you imagine they lived with no sense of morality prior to the arrival of Europeans?
They look at nature and try to live in a parallel way. Books are for those who can't infer from direct observations. This allows them to memorize even if they don;t really understand. What the concept and belief in God brought to the table was an abstraction that is above all, so even humans in the highest positions can't stack the deck in their favor. You can still get strict morality without god, but it will be stacked to benefit the new human Stalin. His atheist country was more strict than the religious freedom democracies after the break-up of the Soviet Union. As a social analogy, the parents, especially the father was the law of the house. The break up of the family reduced the influence of the father. This is especially bad in the inner cities. Are the laws of the inner city more moral before or after the loss of the father? Do the gang leaders set rules to benefit all gangs? What happens to the good kids and how much influence do they have in the streets? The rules of the godless are very strict and can lead to a beating or even death for wearing the wrong color. The god concept, is like big brother, watching and counting, even when you are being sneaky enough not to have cameras on you. You can fool humans but not god (as the concept goes). If the gangs know the cops are watching they will pretend being good. Once eyes are off, they get back to business. But God, the concept is always watching so even the pretend become conditioned. If the cops camped out in the inner city near a gang, and act like the father pointing the legal way, the gang can't function properly and gang leader laws (human) are replaced by a different code that is above them. They are all below the law and learn how to live in that place.
Man knows little of morality. Funny that it is still up for debate 5,000 years later. Its simple. Love thy father, love thy neighbour. Thou shall not steal, nor murder. Thou shall not covet thy neighbour. Thou shall not bare false witness, nor idol of anything that is above or below fore you do not know. Above all love thy Love, fore she is grand.
Oh, you have a lady friend over for the trip too, eh? SHE? Idols? Jeslous Gods? Raped daughters and incest? Firstborn killed? MORAL?
This is silly, as there is no Stalin who "sets" the morals the world, or even of an atheist nation. Morality is not and never has been anywhere solely determined by a single man for his own benefit. Morals arise the same exact way that "etiquette" arises, through mutual interaction and agreement on what's proper, with the resulting conventions of "good social manners" then be passed down as a meme to subsequent generations (who along the way using the inherited meme as a basis but make additional adjustments based on their own mutual interaction and agreement). Humans have both a desire to cooperate (as we're social animals, and would not have as good odds of surviving without cooperation) as well as an innate sense of fairness that can be demonstrated even in infants. The latter predisposition makes it all but impossible for any one man to come in and "resent" morality to his own liking, since any moral system, to be accepted, will need to meet certain criteria of fairness. Further, any such system will have to lead to a stable society, or else the conventions will fail. Further still, even if somehow a dictator were to establish such a regime, individuals would continue to adapt the rules on an ongoing basis, deviating them from the set the dictator imposed. What you are suggesting is like saying that a Stalin-figure could come in and change everyone's use of language from their default language to something like Newspeak, and that people would (in the real world) adapt to it. Language is a common endeavor that develops in a similalry memetic way. In ancient human (hunter-gatherer) populations there is some evidence that individuals who made attempts at self-aggrandizement were punished for that type of behavior (there were no "chiefs" then, but rather a community of equals, see, for example, this book or this one ), I think that would include at attempt to establish unfair ethical conventions that benefit oneself at the expense of others in the group. There are plenty of works tat explain a mechanism by which morality (as we know it) could have developed naturalistically without the need for a god to create it. Even if those accounts are, in fact, inaccurate descriptions of history because, in reality, God actually made morality, they still make a good case that morality could exist independently of God, and thus God is not "necessary" for morality to exist.
