If we assume God doesn't exist, where does Christian morality stand?

[JapaneseKappa]

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.

I think the only sense in which God is “the only plausible ultimate reason for being moral” is that God provides universal guaranteed enforcement. In other words, God lets you make this claim in any situation: “if you want to be rewarded instead of punished, then you should behave morally”

Other interpretations (e.g. the Rawlsian one I mentioned earlier) say that morality is a feature of rationality itself. The Rawlsian claim would be “if you want to be a member of the rational creature club, then you should behave morally.”

 

[e_c]

Rawls is taking a page out of Kant.

The Kantian revolution destroyed philosophy. History shows that the principles that drove it, including the moral element, do not hold up (and is also near the natural end of a philosophical cycle that has come about three times) and have turned the current world of philosophy into a nearly unintelligible quagmire to the point where we actually distinguish between “analytic philosophy” and “continental.”

Morality “from reason alone” is a failed experiment. It was a justifiable experiment, but it’s a failed one. Look at the actual historical lineage of where this led… One place it ends is in Marx, and why wouldn’t it? No more Alpha, no more Omega, no Arbiter, no ultimate purpose, no true human nature, only my will and my desires, the State, and material possessions. We can make contracts, have feelings about certain kinds of actions, but in the end who cares what I do if I can get what I want?

The destruction of real metaphysics leads to a moralism… From there it never works out.

And this cycle repeats. Will it happen again with the contemporary landscape? It’s so frenetic, who knows?

 

[Peter_Plato]

I think the only sense in which God is “the only plausible ultimate reason for being moral” is that God provides universal guaranteed enforcement. In other words, God lets you make this claim in any situation: “if you want to be rewarded instead of punished, then you should behave morally”

Other interpretations (e.g. the Rawlsian one I mentioned earlier) say that morality is a feature of rationality itself. The Rawlsian claim would be “if you want to be a member of the rational creature club, then you should behave morally.”

Nope.

The reason is because God provides ultimate purpose and meaning in terms of intentional teleology that matter by itself simply cannot.

Morality is an intentional enterprise which positively requires intentionality built into the fabric of existence.

No one said anything about “guaranteed enforcement.” In fact, that requirement runs contrary to the notion of obligation and responsibility wherein moral agents autonomously carry out moral actions.

Now, there may be the incidental fact that failed moral agents make themselves vulnerable to certain consequences, but that may be a simple matter of what it means to be a failed moral agent.

In fact, it could be agued that moral agents who act morally merely because they are compelled or forced to do so by fear of consequent punishment are not acting as moral agents in true any sense of the word. They are, if not failed moral agents, definitely compromised moral agents. “Enforcement,” in this sense is more like having training wheels on a bicycle. It keeps the agent from harming themselves or others, but doesn’t permit them to ride on their own as autonomous moral agents until the “training” comes off.

Guaranteed enforcement merely protects the overall moral climate and the individual from harming themselves and others, but doesn’t positively or negatively affect the formation of any true moral agents. In a sense, it acts as a scaffold to keep the agent “upright.”

Reward and punishment works for training any sentient being, but doesn’t bring about the development of uniquely moral beings. At best, it is a neutral factor which is why, I would submit, it is in place.

 

[Charlemagne_III]

Pretend that the atheist position is correct) Under this hypothosis, is Christian morality as we know it still tenable? I’m curious what everyone thinks. Are the things we consider good/evil or right/wrong now still good/evil or right/wrong under the counterfactional hypothosis?

Morality does not change, except for a relativist.

Good is good and evil is evil. We are all a sometimes sad, sometimes glad mixture of both.

The atheist simply has no firm ground upon which to base his moral vision. That doesn’t mean he can have no moral vision, or that he is exempt from condemnation for his sins or reward for his virtue.