Is Morality possible without God

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I have an atheist classmate arguing me about the existence of God, then he asks me IF morality is possible without the existence of God?
 
We only need to look back at world history to see what happens when we rely solely on human morality
 
defendermigs said:
I have an atheist classmate arguing me about the existence of God, then he asks me IF morality is possible without the existence of God?
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Reality isn’t possible without God, so on that basis, morality isn’t possible without God.

That said, can moral arguments be made in a secular fashion without direct appeal to God? Yes. And we can do that with the more hot-button, politicized issues that nowadays seems to divide across religious lines. We can look at human beings as such and determine what is fulfilling, dignified, and harmful to it, and come to all sorts of disagreements over that, but also areas of much commonality. Because we don’t need to appeal directly to God in an argument, it is possible for an atheist to find morality in a similar way as a Christian, but I do think the atheist is on shaky ground.
 
Life, or anything else, would not exist without God. So I’d say no.

I do think it’s possible not to know about God, and still a civilization can have rules governing morality. But it works much better with God than without.
 
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I think it’s possible to be a moral person without being visibly connected to God or his church, at least to an extent.

However morality like anything else, wouldn’t exist if God didn’t.
 
I know one or two humanists who have moral codes and pretty much stick to them but therien is the difference perhaps. Our religion gives us an actual code by which to live and in fact suggests we aim even higher I think. A humanist could be more…flexible shall we say.
 
What do you mean by ‘morality’ and ‘without God’?

If you mean what I think you mean, then no. It would not be possible to have morality without God, becuase the standard of morality comes from God.

I like the crooked line analogy. We consider good (morality) as a straight line, and deviation from good (immorality) as a crooked line. The only reason we know a line is crooked is by having a straight line to compare it to. The straight line represents God. The only reason we can say something is immoral is becuase there is a standard of morality which corns from God.

I hope I explained that well.
 
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oldnskeptical said:
What’s moral to you, may not be moral to me. What was moral in the past may not be moral now.
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Completely false. My knowledge of morality might be different from yours. Our ancestors knowledge of morality might be different from ours. Morality does not change.
 
According to my Moral Theology professor, yes, it is possible to be a moral person without being a religious person.

In fact, he has stated that when he was taught moral theology 50+ years ago, there was no talk of God/Jesus or any scripture.
 
That’s precisely why I’m Catholic. We need an authority that can teach us God’s morality and then we have absolute certainty. No we can’t know everything in it’s entirety that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. Not sure I follow you.
 
Ask him to define morality. Make sure you’re on the same page with that definition. You can’t answer the question if the word you’re using means one thing in one of your minds in another in the other’s. You’ll argue past each other.

This really does get into WHAT God is. God is perfect goodness and everything that is God is of God. Evil is not a thing in itself, but the negation of the good. Every imperfection in the world is a natural evil. When we use our free will to choose to destroy what is good, we engage in a moral evil and turn ourselves away from what is good, thus turning ourselves away from God.

If you view God as just this abstract rule maker who’s dictates are not based on any natural law, then morality doesn’t exist even with God existing. It is good only because God says it is, but lacks objectify. That is no different from the moral relativist position that says that there are no objective truths within the concept of good and evil. Things are or they aren’t, and as such, our sense of morality is really about related to our human capacity for empathy as well as being a social construct.

And the atheistic view is that religious rules make people follow more socially constructed rules while ignoring their empathy. As such, religious people are judged to be less moral. And this is true if we fall into the prideful sin of legalism.
 
We also come from a very strong Christian moral background. Many atheists, who claim they don’t need god to be moral, don’t take into account that pretty much all of the societal and moral norms that they ascribe to today come from a society and culture based off of thousands of years of…you guessed it, Christianity.
 
oldnskeptical said:
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chessnerd321:
That’s precisely why I’m Catholic. We need an authority that can teach us God’s morality and then we have absolute certainty. No we can’t know everything in it’s entirety that doesn’t mean we don’t know anything. Not sure I follow you.
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But to be completely truthful, you never even know how far off you are. At least not without assuming that the Catholic Church knows what’s moral and what isn’t. And the Church’s history suggests that its not always certain as to what’s moral either. So even with the Church you’re still viewing morality in shades of gray. But even humans can do that. So where’s the need of God?
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To not know a thing absolutely doesn’t mean it can’t be known partially, that we cannot increase our knowledge of it, or that there isn’t a thing to be known.

Rather than suggesting relativism, it emphasizes the need for well constructed rational arguments when debating morality.
 
Would it be ok to leave a starving child out in the snow while we feast a the warm cabin?

There are a lot of fundamental morals we share I’m sure.
 
Sure it is. I have atheist friends who are very moral people. Not all atheist are hedonists.
 
Sure it’s possible! Happens all the time. Now, I’d argue that without something numinous as a referent for good/evil, a moral atheist is … let’s just say, he’s arguably writing checks that his metaphysical bank account can’t really cover. But throughout history we’ve seen that a man can be better than his philosophy, and thank God for that.
 
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I seem to remember you saying that your philosophy was “I don’t know.”
Very convenient.
 
No. Because without God, we are cosmic dust, which means there are no consequences to our actions. In that scenario, morality as well as everything else becomes meaningless.
 
It is possible, however, whether the person realizes it or not; the source of morality is God.
The Lord Jesus Christ knows hearts; and everyone’s personal experience.
The atheist wouldn’t even exist without God; so the question doesn’t make sense,
except when in means, can a person with that view be moral.
However, the more deeply atheism is ingrained, the chance of lack of concern
for others at least in the broad sense. For example, distant starving, or the culture of death
painfully killing tens of thousands of children every single day.
Atheists tend to think these things are just arbitrary.
But it is possible. And it’s ironic that the person, if in their experience has from
God’s Impartial view mitigating circumstances for not realizing God exists and is the
source of all objective goodness and morality; the person will be eternally grateful
to God for Salvation.
We are all ‘unprofitable’ servants as Jesus Christ called us; but it is possible to believe
in goodness and morality for mitigating reasons; as a temporary substitute for God.
https://www.catholic.com/magazine/print-edition/five-ways-or-five-proofs
 
This is the case with all words though. Words are abstractions. They do not have absolute meanings and cannot have absolute meanings. Hence, it is important to enter into personal discussions with people, to get to the bottom of what you mean rather than to get hung up on whose definition of a particular word is most right.

The point is to communicate well, always to ask clarifying questions, and never to assume that because your vocabulary and sentence structure is the same, you agree, or to assume that because your vocabulary and sentence structure is different, you disagree.

Truth must eventually be understood wordlessly. It must be SEEN. The words are just arrows. When you’re talking to someone, you need to see where their arrows direct you before you start insisting the destination is wrong. And then once you figure out where their arrows are leading, you can better point out where you disagree.

In an ideal world, we’d all do this, listening to each other honestly, but often we just make hasty judgments, refuse to follow other people’s arrows, declaring them wrong, while getting mad at others for not following ours.
 
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