I have a lot of respect for believers, and I'm often in awe of religious monuments or what has been accomplished by many believers.
Dostoyevsky wrote: "If God didn't exist, everything would be permissible. "
I have to say that when it comes to the existence and God, I'm profoundly Camusian. And personally, I don't think I can do anything because I don't believe in God.
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6 mo
My grandmother, who was a believer but unfortunately passed away, liked to tease me by telling me that next to the good Lord there would be an atheist 😅😂
I'm an atheist, do you think that makes me a person without ethics and morals?
No, being an atheist does not mean that you are absent - as an individual - ethics and morals. Apply that at a broad cultural level and the issue becomes more problematic. As G. K. Chesterton said, “When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
Not for nothing were the states behind the Iron Curtain officially atheist. It allowed them to define right and wrong - and they did so. They did not look outside the human condition for the definition of right and wrong. Rather, they appropriated that power to themselves - with predictable consequences to follow.
The reason why the individual is not impacted in quite the same way is that the individual is the unconscious heir to intellectual and moral traditions of which he or she may not even be aware. Thus, you mentioned that your grandmother was a believer. She was, and growing up in her family and in her country you were, the heir of moral and cultural beliefs dating back eons. These impact you and shape who you are. Hence, your grandmother's remark to you.
Indeed, even your atheism is really nothing but an inheritance of your culture and your time. Religion is not an absolute assurance of freedom from man's failings and thus Europe - the center of religious wars for much of post-Roman Europe, particularly with the onset of the Protestant Reformation - has become more and more atheist.
Europe thus thrives on the cultural and moral inheritance of the religions that it has formally rejected. Yet where it consciously attempted to displace religion and establish a "new morality," the result was Fascism, National Socialism and Communism. Man's attempt to remake man in man's image. Man won't believe in "nothing, they will believe in anything."
So you are not a person without ethics or morals - at least in my experience of you. However, your morals are founded in an an unself-conscious awareness of an intellectual and moral tradition in which you were raised. That is not without its' risks - see also the ideologies, called not without reason, "secular religions" above - but it does not make you automatically a monster.
As noted, for you as an individual, it is not necessarily a flaw. For broader cultures, however, as history shows, it poses substantial risks.
Love others as you love yourself. Sacrifice for others. Forgiveness. An ethic of tolerance. I could go on. After all, most of Western civilization takes its ethical and philosophical origins from Christianity.
To be sure, human beings do not always live up to that standard. However, at the end of the day, it is a standard premised on the idea that it is set by an immortal deity and therefore man may not quibble with it.
"If ye eat of the fruit of the Tree, ye shall be as gods." This was the first sin and when men set themselves up as gods with the right and power to assert their own morality, what followed was Fascism, National Socialism, Communism and a whole host of other barbarisms.
Oh right so yes in my upbringing my parents took care to instill in me all these values , along with respect etc. But they never told me it was religious. I was often punished when I was younger if I forgot to say a simple "Hello" to someone I had just seen...
Yes, that is what I said. The ethics and morals with which your parents raised you have their origins in religious beliefs that we are all children of God and worthy of respect.
They may not have even themselves been aware of the origins of such a moral infrastructure. However, do recall that man evolved from a primitive lifeform for whom survival of the fittest was the highest "ethic" - if ethic it can be called.
To view your fellow man as something more than a mere evolutionary rival or source of food - and to instill in man the sense that it had transcendent meaning that was binding and consequential on and for the human condition - there had to be a moral infrastructure dictated as moral law by a being that transcended man.
You are the inheritor of that historic evolution. As an atheist, you have merely dispensed with the idea that such morals are transcendent.
As I noted, that is something that many individuals can do. However, for whole societies - as history amply demonstrates - that is increasingly problematic. Once the idea that man was the source of all moral law takes hold, unpleasant things often follow.
See again the most infamous examples - Fascism, National Socialism, Communism. All were ideologies that sought to replace God with some other source of moral authority - the state, race, the dialectic of History. The interpretation of these doctrines then being left to fallible creatures whose origins, again, are rooted in prevailing in the survival of the fittest. The war of all against all.
This does not mean, by any stretch, that religion can always prevail over the human condition. However, it is a force the effect of which is to attempt to put limits on human nature. Again, by making that nature subject to an authority that transcends man.
Normally people that lack em are people with out beliefs in higher power and of course there's a reason for that because when you believe in a higher power you have a different perspective and believe deeper into the right and wrongs, because you'd believe nothing slips the eyes of the higher power and the existence of natural justice and consequences in general create morals, and the more you live with the mindset, the stronger the moral mindset can get, but it's much deeper than that because everyone knows a form of right and wrong right? For example you know not to rob a store or shoot someone in the face naturally and the deep part about that is that no one really questions where that comes from, the natural knowledge of right and wrong and my answer to that would be that according to God's word we were all build in God's image, we not only share the same emotions as our creator but I believe that also came with the natural instincts of knowing the right and wrong, morals isn't just knowing the right and wrongs but also an urge and pull to obey and listen to those feelings of right and wrong, the big spiritual war, you get urges to do good but also get the urges to do bad when falling for temptation which is a form of manipulation from Satan which moves mostly through influence, I'll stop talking now cause I know I went off topic here.
@davado88 because THAT is the temptation of atheism. even huxley published it in a book despite obvious. also look at the news... people tell themselves nobody sees me so do all that crime. if schools could teach fear god, to brats it would be less crime. problem is which god.
Speaking as a Christian, of course you have ethics and morals. The difference is where you and I believe our morals and ethics come from.
As a Christian, I believe in absolutism. Absolutism claims that morality relies on universal principles (natural law, conscience). I believe that God is the ultimate source of our common morality, and that it is, therefore, as unchanging as He is. What you may believe is what is called moral relativism. Moral relativism asserts that morality is not based on any absolute standard. Rather, ethical “truths” depend on variables such as the situation, culture, one’s feelings, etc.
Except that if morality comes from God, you're just appealing to authority and that's also circular reasoning; no different in the logic that leftists use to define what a woman is
And also you'd have to prove that God exists beyond a reasonable doubt, even if we were to ignore the logical fallacies associated with "objective" morality
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No, I have far more ethics and morals than almost every religious person I have ever known. The problem with religious people is almost all of them are total hypocrites.
A bit late on this but as an atheist I would reject any assertion that we don't have ethic or morals. Church going people can be very self justifying in what they do.
I do think though going to church and being reminded not to covet your neighbors wife and not to kill him once a week was an overall beneficial to society.
For myself I take the sunshine test as my guide. Would I like to see something I had done detailed on the front page of the newspaper. (That's a little old school now).
I believe in God but I think any religion truly understands God. That being said I think this idea that you need to religious to be a moral person is ridiculous; besides there are deeply immoral things in the Bible such as slavery.
I think you are clearly a good and kind person even though you don’t believe in God so that is enough proof that you don’t need religion for morality.
I am reminded of a quote from Marcus Arelious.
“Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just they will not care how devout you have been but will welcome you based on the virtues you lived by. If there are Gods but unjust then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods then you will be gone but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones.”
My victories make you believe in me, well, the universe makes me believe in God. I believe because of what I see, because of what I feel. (...) Yes, there is a divine cause, a sovereign reason, an infinite being, this cause is the cause of causes, this reason is the creative reason of intelligence. (...) I look at nature, I admire it and I say to myself: There is a God... There is an infinite being compared to whom I, Napoleon, with all my genius, am a real nothing, a pure nothingness".
"The Catholic religion has advantages that will always make me prefer it to any other. It is one, it has never changed and it cannot change. It is not this man's religion, but the truth of the councils and popes, which goes back without interruption to Jesus Christ, its author. It has all the characteristics of a natural thing and a divine thing; it hovers above passions and vices; it is a sun that illuminates our soul with mystery and majesty. Its virtue is a hidden virtue, which lies within man like sap within trees.
And Napoleon confessed Christ's divinity in a moving way: "Superficial minds see a resemblance between Christ and the founders of empires, conquerors and gods of other religions. There is no such resemblance. There is an infinite distance between Christianity and any other religion. "The greatest minds, since the appearance of Christianity, have had faith, and a living faith, a practical faith in the mysteries and dogmas of the Gospel, not only Bossuet and Fénelon, whose state it was to preach it, but Descartes and Newton, Leibnitz and Pascal, Corneille and Racine, Charlemagne and Louis XIV".
"Science and philosophy are useless for salvation, and Jesus comes into the world only to reveal the secrets of Heaven and the laws of the mind. So he deals only with the soul, he talks only with the soul, and he brings his Gospel to the soul alone. The soul is enough for him, just as he is enough for the soul. With him, the soul has regained its sovereignty. (...) Napoleon continued: "How many years did Caesar's empire last? How long was Alexander carried by the enthusiasm of his soldiers? (...) Peoples pass, thrones crumble, and the Church remains! What is the strength that keeps this Church standing, assailed by the furious ocean of the century's anger and contempt? What is the arm that, for eighteen hundred years, has preserved it from so many storms that have threatened to engulf it? (...) Whether speaking or acting, Jesus is luminous, immutable, impassive. The sublime, it is said, is a trait of the Divinity: what name can be given to the one who unites in himself all the traits of the sublime? The greatest miracle of Christ, without question, is the reign of charity. All those who sincerely believe in him feel this admirable, supernatural, superior love.
In his final days, the Emperor's voice took on a particular accent of ironic melancholy and profound sadness: "Yes, our existence shone with all the brilliance of the diadem and sovereignty; and yours, Bertrand, reflected this brilliance as the dome of the Invalides, gilded by us, reflects the rays of the sun... But the setbacks came, the gold gradually faded... The rain of misfortune and outrages, with which I am showered every day, washes away the last bits of it. We're nothing but lead now, General Bertrand, and soon I'll be earth. Such is the destiny of great men! That of Caesar and Alexander, and we are forgotten! and the name of a conqueror, like that of an emperor, is no more than a school theme! Our exploits fall under the spell of a pedant who praises or insults us!"
And Napoleon wonders: "What a difference between Napoleon's impending destiny and that of Jesus Christ! What an abyss between my profound misery and the eternal reign of the Son of God! Before I am even dead, my work is destroyed; whereas Christ, dead for eighteen centuries, is as alive as he was at the moment of his ministry. Far from fearing death, he counted on his own. He is the only one who was more alive after his death than when he was alive. Time has not only respected Christ's work, it has enhanced it: wherever you go in the world, you'll find Jesus preached, loved and adored.
And Napoleon concluded: "On what have we based our power? On strength. Whereas Jesus Christ founded his empire on LOVE, and thousands of men would gladly give their lives for Him! Here is a conqueror who incorporates not a nation, but humanity, into himself. What a miracle... The more I think about it, the more absolutely convinced I am of the divinity of Jesus Christ."
Marcus was a Roman, and Romans liked things like orgies. Their lifestyle was part of why Rome fell. And of course there were the coocoo Emperors, like Caligula and Nero. I don't think Rome can be a poster child for morality or ethics.
@RyanEC You can surely understand God if you seek out to know Him. I recommend you read the book "The God You May Not Know", and also "The Jesus You May Not Know" by David Jeremiah. It answers what Christianity is all about and explains why Jesus died on the cross. If you never have read the Bible, then at least read these two books. It explains it all in a nutshell.
I believe in God but I see no proof of any specific religious claims.
Maybe I will read that but I have studied this subject extensively.
If I prefer any Christian perspective I would be the universal salvation perspective. Maybe you should read David Bentley Harts book That all shall be saved.
No because morals inherently are subjective and ethics is a philosophical concept. And until religious people can prove beyond a reasonable doubt their diety exists, as well as prove how morals originating from their diety logically concludes to those morals being objective, that's just BS. I forget the name of it, but it's a thought experiment in philosophy regarding so-called objective morality: if God is real and morals coming from him are objective, does that mean the morals themselves supercede him as being truly objective or they're only objective because he decides it (thus making them subjective)? I know for those that fully grasp/remember it will call me out for inaccurately paraphrasing it, so I apologize.
You're resorting to whataboutism as a deflection, and also you're misrepresenting and falsely assuming my stance on religious morality applies to historical morality; try again
It makes no difference honestly as religious people are the biggest hypocrites and often think they're better than everyone else.
You're saying if we didn't have God, there wouldn't be laws against murder and whatnot. The Latin Americans and Muslims beg to differ. They murder, then go pray and believe they'll still get into heaven, which defeats the whole purpose of having commandments in the first. Religion is more of a way to explain the unexplainable, and also to scare and control people. I think you'll like this video. It's supposed to be about false prophets, but I think it sums up religious people in general.
The problem I would say with atheism isn't that its people don't have morals or ethics, it's more about where you draw the line, or who gets to decide what's ethical or not. God is the creater of the universe, He alone knows what's best for his creation and controls their affairs. So naturally, we should play by his rules. But then when someone doesn't believe in God, ethics and morals can become quite subjective. Man cannot override God's rule. If I believe someone does something ethically or morally wrong and the person doesn't, who am I to dictate what he/she should believe? After all, we're both human beings and no one is more supreme over the other. That's why we turn to God, who's ruling is absolute and supercedes everyone else's.
People change their views, both ways. My friend went from believer when young to non-believer through his 20 and 30s maybe even 50s, to now a believer. I have always believed in God although I don’t go to church anymore.
If there is no God then it doesn’t matter if you are good and moral, that just means that since you’re being good the human species will not have as much disruption through time. But there are always some people who are not good or moral and that harms the progress of the species. But if God doesn’t exist it really does not matter if the species survives and thrives as nothing will survive the collapse of the universe even though we will, as a species, likely be long gone before then anyway. :D
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Anonymous
(45 Plus)
6 mo
No, it just makes you a person who will one day realize what they have been missing out on. But I've seen miracles and all kinds of stuff since inviting God into my life. The journey has been utterly exciting. I used to be a non believer but back then I had no idea.
No. You are entitled to your opinion. Its morals really majorly play a role when it comes to good and bad. You not believing in God isn’t good. But it’s not necessarily bad. As God can reach anyone… so at some point he will reach you. But for right now, you are growing so you will figure things out.
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Anonymous
(36-45)
6 mo
Not necessarily, but in my experience most atheists are profoundly hypocritical people who aren’t really atheists, they are just Christophobes. Their atheism and powers of criticism oddly never seem to turn against Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs, or Buddhists for their faith. Their vitriol is reserved just for the “fanatical” Christians.
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Not necessarily, but I'd have to wonder what is informing not only you, but the system of morals by which you live. That and to what the moral life is ordered.
No. If you were to draw a Venn diagram of Morals and Religion, there would be some overlap, but the there would be a large area of Morals without Religion.
but that is why they invented "new rules" how to speak , stuff we can't say, so those p. c. are "better" than so called racists. it is the same type of artificial sins.
God can't be proven beyond a reasonable doubt to exist, quoting a book doesn't make its statements correct, and even in Abrahamic faiths they give exceptions to homosexuality and abortion (i. e., being gay but not acting upon such desires, or aborting an unborn child from the result of rape, incest, and/or if it threatens the life of the mother); try again before you embarrass yourself
However, do not be one of those atheists whose use their beliefs as an excuse to not question anything at all. As if all debates are settled on the subject. I believe Sam Harris warned against this.
