If we remove God from society, don’t you think that society would come up with pretty much the same moral system (give or take some specifics)?
Humans live together, and in order that society runs smoothly, I think things like murder, theft, and adultery will always be “wrong” and charity will always be “right” because it makes society run smoother…(as I’m writing this, I’m having second thoughts about adultery always being wrong, but I’m holding onto hope!)
If you look at society today, where God isn’t as present as he used to be, the majority of people are not charitable, but they’re not necessarily uncharitable either; they just don’t care, but the charitable people are always praised in the media.
Except that which is being removed by removing God is the only plausibly ultimate reason for being moral. From then on, individuals will begin to contrive their own, less than moral, purposes.
Once those purposes begin to conflict with each other, the free-for-all starts because there is no way to arbitrate between systems in order to prioritize some over others. Survival or power, perhaps – which will boil down, in the end, to “Whose survival?”
In case you haven’t realized it yet, abortion rights and euthanasia are examples of the empowered staking out their right to determine who will or won’t survive. The change has all been very subtle and supported all along the way by egoistic rationalization – which is why it has been so very effective. Nothing like appealing to the ego to show how right it is to be egoistic.
Humans aren’t predetermined to act morally. It IS an attainable reality, however. What humans do need is an overpowering reason to be moral – one that even overwhelms their egoism. Threats of hellfire only function to keep individuals from being immoral, but that doesn’t amount to a real reason to be moral in the fullest sense. One can absolutely fear hell and still be an egomaniac – a whited sepulchre of morality.
Rational egoism only works when obviously attractive goods are at stake. There is no incentive, though, for an egoist to strive to overcome their moral limitations or their penchant for secretly holding onto their immorality. Courage isn’t a virtue in rational egoism. It puts too much on the line. Self-preservation, including maintenance of one’s support structure or tribe, is as far as egoism can go absent some other principle or motivation to move beyond oneself.
Principles, by themselves, are ineffectual. Love and metanoia are both required, both of which, by definition, have to come from outside the ego shell or from something bigger than it surreptitiously being planted inside the ego by transcendent reality. God become man – the Word and Love of God implanting Himself as a seed in the ego to eventually overpower and resurrect it to be a whole new being. He who loses his life will gain it.
The ego, like Satan, once divided against itself cannot stand - that which is infinite, eternal and necessary will prevail over that which is contingent and transient in spite of all the pretensions and delusions it might entertain bestowing upon itself the absolute power to subsist.
