Morality without God

If your morals are of justice - it is probably possible to live morally without belief in God.

If your morals are of seeking the perfect good/truth/beauty by practicing justice and mercy - it is impossible without belief in God.
 
Flavus Aquila said:
If your morals are of justice - it is probably possible to live morally without belief in God.

If your morals are of seeking the perfect good/truth/beauty by practicing justice and mercy - it is impossible without belief in God.
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My morals are of the latter, and I do not believe in god.
 
I still think that most of the distinctions here come from differences in our fundamental views about the nature of reality.
 
I feel that you can have it both ways. Moral when need to be. And amoral when you need to be. Both would be ways to protect yourself depending on your situation. Around a bunch of christian fundies and you quickly become moral or get burned at the stake. Too good the world consumes you too just like a flame. The way I see it God created both choose your path. And burn either way....
 
In the late 18th century British Empiricist Jeremy Bentham coined the phrase "Implied Social Contract" which went along with the belief in the common good of all. Legally, you cannot prove this concept. Certainly you don't have to believe in God to be moral, and I don't think this thread is about religion at all. Even Savages have moral beliefs of some kind, in the Social sense, but the elevation of this idea to a more refined point might well be what seperates us from being Savages ourselves.
 
The fact that we know what morality is, is my reason for believing; that there is a reason for morality being there, a God, or in the very least, a Goodness.

I won't be frequenting this thread. If you want to get a hold of me, send me a message.
 
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I dont see why you couldnt be.
 
Darwin without survival?
April said:
Moral persons are culturally acceptable, and it would increase your own chances of survival if you help others and are good to them.
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Makes me ask how do we learn this supposed desire to survive, because many complex organisms and societies don't have it, or at least not as some topmost priority that is supposed to be the fundamental explanation for every motivation of theirs. Could we keep the observations of Darwin about the process of evolution, without turning them into social dogma implying inherent purpose towards fulfillment of this process? I'm afraid otherwise we assume every raindrop's inherent purpose is to become part of the ocean; and we could call evil drops those who fall on the roof and cause corrosion, instead of going to the ocean, like good drops.

In other words, I feel we don't have to turn Darwin into our modern religion either. (:

p.s. Don't get me wrong, I have nothing against survival, it's great and all; I just don't see the reason for it to be the foundation of morality. The reasoning is supposed to go like this: So I'm here, because my ancestors survived, going back to some amoeba, all of them survived - hence, my purpose in life is to survive too (is it?), and I should be moral as part of this purpose. In fact, I don't think any of my ancestors have given much thought about survival either; it just so happened that they survived. Darwin hasn't claimed that my ancestors have been dedicated to survival either, he just ascertained that it happened. This could happen without being their purpose, in any way.

I'd rather infer morality from the complexity of organism-to-organism interaction, taking care of the young (due to their complex physical needs requiring assistance), which trains strong sense of empathy towards others of similar kind. Now, our modern view is to call that again a survival goal - I think that's deceptive. The mothers don't do it to survive or their species to survive; so there's cross-species empathy too, even to very distant species; even to non-living objects sometimes. It's rather something which converged out of chaos and neural complexity, the sense of empathy has been carried from generation to generation. It doesn't have a conscious purpose, and it doesn't grow by itself, it's just being trained regularly. (and fortunately!)
 
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Shai Gar said:
Lets look at the arguments by turning it on its head.

Can you be an immoral person with belief in god.
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P: you are a moral person
Q: you believe in God

The thread asks whether "P and not-Q" is possible. You're saying that "not-P and Q" implies "P and not-Q".... and there's simply no relationship. "Does it happen that when I am outside, I always have an umbrella?" "Well, if you are inside and don't have an umbrella, then you must always have one when outside."

This is not logically sound.

To the OP: of course you can. Sorry I don't have anything insightful to add... but a quick look around will tell you that there are a lot of helpful, decent people who don't believe in God. I mostly just wanted the pleasure of telling an ENTP they were being illogical :p. I think you would generate a bit more controversy if you asked whether God's existence were necessary for morality, rather than whether belief in God's existence were necessary for it. My guess is that there would be a fair few christians around who would say "probably not true" to the first, and "quite clearly true" to the second.
 
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April said:
Do you think it's possible for a person to be truly good and helpful to others without believing in God? And if so, from where would their sense of ethics derive?

I think it's in a lot of ways, logical to be moral. Moral persons are culturally acceptable, and it would increase your own chances of survival if you help others and are good to them. Maybe one could say our need to help is based on survival instincts - our ancestors in the past who were more community-oriented rather than self-oriented would've probably had a better chance of living and propagating their genes.

Thoughts?
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Some will argue your morals are from nature - evolution, others, like Nietzsche would say that golden rule type morality, is slave morality, destructive to life, and originated from religion.

Sure atheists can be moral people, pretty much anyone can be, albeit I would say absent some kind of God, or God-like ultimate reality, there's no reason for it, other than he or she approves of that behavior or feels like it. That said, its certainly motive enough. But even taking into account survival, or feelings, absent the above I don't see anything that would give a reason anyone else ought to act a certain way.

Edit: On the other hand, you could take the virtue ethics approach, and focus on morality in terms of self-development, perhaps towards some moral social ideal... although that can vary from culture to culture.
 
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I think in a lot of cases logical morality would be more universal than religious morality. Not saying this is necessarily the case with all religion, but with logical morality there is no divine sense of entitlement and there is no degradation of a person morally because of their religion.

I have experienced a good amount of pain in my life, I don't feel particularly inclined to make anyone else go through any of that.

Morality is the last thing things on my list that I would hope to learn from God.
 
*frowns*

I think several here are conflating the question of whether being good is possible with the issue of whether people who don't believe in God can behave in a way that would be considered good if a God exists.

In short, I agree with the conclusion, but not the premises.
 
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You don't need God to have morals. In the words of the great athiest Ayn Rand:

"Morality, to you, is a phantom scarecrow made of duty, of boredom, of punishment, of pain...and pleasure, to you, is a liquor-soggy brain, a mindless slut, the stupor of a moron who stakes his cash on some animal's race, since pleasure cannot be moral."

Such a classic quote.
 
Jack said:
Some will argue your morals are from nature - evolution, others, like Nietzsche would say that golden rule type morality, is slave morality, destructive to life, and originated from religion.

Sure atheists can be moral people, pretty much anyone can be, albeit I would say absent some kind of God, or God-like ultimate reality, there's no reason for it, other than he or she approves of that behavior or feels like it. That said, its certainly motive enough. But even taking into account survival, or feelings, absent the above I don't see anything that would give a reason anyone else ought to act a certain way.
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You need something universally true, such as existence, and not wanting to impede on anything else's existence unnecessarily.

I think, in a lot of cases, Buddhism does pretty well at morality without a God. Of course, teaching someone to actually analyze a situation and fully understand it tends to be helpful. :)

But yea, religion has that safety net of God always watching even if your logic fails.
 
You need something universally true, such as existence, and not wanting to impede on anything else's existence unnecessarily.
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Hey, my entertainment is necessary too. :m155:

But I'm not sure... when comparing the idea that there is purpose, or meaning in treating others well, versus merely acknowledging that we have characteristics in common, such as our wispy consciousness. I think the former is a stronger basis as it would be more of a universal motivation for right actions, a reason one ought to do something. (although once we bring a particular religion into the mix though, it invites a lot of theological baggage).

thoughts?
 
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