Morality Without Religion?

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Everstruggling

*The reason I see that society works, is that individuals make choices. Most people choose to follow the laws, either out of fear of retribution, good sense, a feeling of fair play, and yes sometimes, because they think it was what God wanted?
*

You seem to suggest a simple formula that says something about fearing the consequences of breaking a law (traffic laws for example) but says nothing, so far as I can make out, about how you get people to agree on what the laws should be that must be obeyed by all.

Are there not controversial laws? What is the basis for passing laws that are controversial (lacking in moral glue) if God and religion are excluded from the process? Don’t all laws have to be justified?
 
AnAtheist

Originally Posted by Deu 21:18-21
If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son who does not obey his father and mother and will not listen to them when they discipline him, his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him to the elders at the gate of his town. They shall say to the elders, “This son of ours is stubborn and rebellious. He will not obey us. He is a profligate and a drunkard.” Then all the men of his town shall stone him to death.

*What’s wrong here?
  1. The author was not or wrongly inspired by God.
  2. God has a strange notion of what is right.
  3. The moral assessment of that situation has changed.
  4. ?*
Well, I think this should put to rest any claim you could possibly make that you are not in this forum to debunk religion and win converts to atheism.
 
john doran:
this kind of pusillanimous biblical eisegesis is a bit beneath you, i think. it’s petty, inconsequential stuff in the end, and a bit of a waste of time.
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Yes. It is a matter of perspective. I see Christian morality from a very different point of view than you guys, no wonder I judge it differently and we won’t find any agreement here. So let’s rest that matter, you have your god-given absolute morality, than looks quite relative to me like any other morality, while I have my evolved relative morality, that looks like no worthy morality or even no morality at all to some of you.

“Da steh ich nun, ich armer Tor, und bin so klug als wie zuvor!” (Goethe, Faust I)
i think it’s more profitable to stick with the philosophy and the math and the physics…
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Agreed. The defintions there much more precise, and thus argueing is much easier.
 
AnAtheist

*So let’s rest that matter, you have your god-given absolute morality, than looks quite relative to me like any other morality, *

Ironically for you, the moral situation you cite, the one of not honoring the parents through conduct offensive to them, and anyone else … is absolute in the instance you cited. When did that Commandment change? When did any of the Commandments change? You have yet to prove that the basis of all Judeo-Christian morality is relative … all you have proven is that the consequences certain sins have changed down through the centuries. No one ever denied that consequences of sin may change from one culture to another … but the fact of the sin never changes. Dishonoring parents is sinful in the OT and in the NT and still is.

Please show where the OT and the NT prove that dishonoring parents is acceptable, or where the Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches today that it is acceptable.

Likewise, please show where any of the other nine commandments of Moses and the two commandments of Jesus have been overturned … and especially, if you can, please cite where they have been overturned in the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

You can’t.
 
**"…Relativism, letting ourselves be carried away by any wind of doctrine, appears as the only appropriate attitude for today’s times. A dictatorship of relativism is established that recognizes nothing definite and leaves only one’s own ego and one’s own desires as the final measure.” **

Pope Benedict XVI

This, it seems to me, is the most succinct analysis of what is wrong with morals today. Everybody wants to define his own morality … upon which, by the way, laws sooner or later are built.

Our Supreme Court of so-called supremely wise men in the 1960’s catered to the public sentiment of a distinct minority that abortion was not the taking of an innocent human life. These few men imposed their morality on the public at large. None of them could get beyond the end of his nose in discerning whether a fetus was human (what else could it be … a cat, a pig, a snake?). Yet a majority of the Supremes, each one realizing his supremacy (“which leaves only one’s own ego and one’s own desires as the final measure”), rather than the Supremacy of the Ten Commandments and the great law of love, nodded his head in assent to the killing of millions upon millions of the unborn.

The Supremes wove a wicked web of self-deception. Will that web ever be broken? Most likely not if religion becomes increasingly relativist and prone to the machinations of the subjective monster.
 
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nucatholic:
Looks like we have another philosophy student :). Good old Utilitarianism, and Kantian Duty Ethics…music to my over-stressed ears…and by music I mean a clanging gong while trying to sleep…I’m not burnt out at all…
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I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that studying philosophy was a bad thing. Can you explain what it was about what I said that bothered you?
 
**Everstruggling said:I’m sorry, I didn’t realize that studying philosophy was a bad thing. Can you explain what it was about what I said that bothered you?

Theology and Philosophy do not mix, such a mixture is liable to lead one into confusion and to the eclipsing of their purpose, their content, and their methods.

Christianity stepped forth as a world-view which was to replace the philosophical views of the ancient world, as standing above them. Then, having become in the fourth century the official religion of the state, it was called by the state itself to take the place of all systems of world-views . **

Sara
 
**Philosophy goes on a different path. It is chiefly interested precisely in questions of ontology: the essence of existence, the oneness of existence, the relation between the absolute principle and the world and its concrete manifestations, and so forth.

Philosophy by its nature comes from skepsis, from doubt over what our conceptions tell us; and even when coming to faith in God (in idealistic philosophy), it reasons about God “objectively,” as of an object of cold knowledge, an object which is subject to rational examination and definition, to an explanation of its essence and of its relationship as absolute existence to the world of manifestations.**
 
Sara

And this too is why philosophy alone cannot establish a moral glue that holds men together in their vision of right and wrong. Philosophy is too democratic. One philosophy is as good as another (relativism) from the secular point of view. And philosophy by itself leans toward atheism because it hates a mystery it cannot ever solve and an Intellect greater than its own.

Only after philosophy kneels to God can it begin to soar.
 
sara888 said:
Theology and Philosophy do not mix, such a mixture is liable to lead one into confusion and to the eclipsing of their purpose, their content, and their methods.

**Christianity stepped forth as a world-view which was to replace the philosophical views of the ancient world, as standing above them. Then, having become in the fourth century the official religion of the state, it was called by the state itself to take the place of all systems of world-views . **

Sara
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Okay, but the original question that started this thread was:

Gilbert

**Let’s begin with the following question to atheists/agnostics:

Do you believe that morality is a necessary spring for the public welfare?**

If so, how would you create a national consensus of right and wrong (which is needed to enforce any law) in the absence of religion?

I’m really unclear how to use theology to answer this question.
Secondly, many other people on this board are using **“rational examination and definition” **to defend their points of view, but you chose to separate me out for using philosophy. Which can only lead me to assume that there was something about my particular answer that upset you. And that is the part I still don’t understand.
 
Gilbert Keith:
(You say nothing) so far as I can make out, about how you get people to agree on what the laws should be that must be obeyed by all.

Are there not controversial laws? What is the basis for passing laws that are controversial (lacking in moral glue) if God and religion are excluded from the process? Don’t all laws have to be justified?
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I think I finally understand where the miscommunication was. Unfortunately, it was my errror. I was responding more to the title of this thread, rather than to the question as you originally posted it. I was trying to describe why a person would act ethically without recourse to divine authority, but now I see you want me to defend the authority of the state to make laws without divine authority. Hopefully, that’s right, and this will be more on topic.

If we can agree that people will follow rules for no other reason than it is in their self interest… Actually, we haven’t agreed on that have we?

If we don’t agree on that, then the rest of the argument won’t hold water. So can we agree on that premise to start with.
 
Everwrestling

*If we can agree that people will follow rules for no other reason than it is in their self interest… Actually, we haven’t agreed on that have we? *

If we don’t agree on that, then the rest of the argument won’t hold water. So can we agree on that premise to start with.

We already have a problem.

Yes, I can agree that people will follow rules that are in their self interest. But each person’s self interest is different from each other person’s self interest. So there will never be unanimity on self interest as a moral glue that holds societies together. There will never be recourse to an absolute authority to enforce moral rights and wrongs if half the people think one way and half the people think another (as we might see in the U.S. the struggle between Republicans and Democrats) over profound moral questions.

Hang in there.
 
Oops, my apologies.

When I answered Sara888’s question, I mistakenly thought that she was the one who posted the objection to my using philosophy in my answer. I realize now that it was nucatholic. My apoligies for the mix up.
 
GK:

You’re a brutal reader! Fantastic! I just reread Orthodoxy for the 4th time last week and it doesn’t ever get old. New things seem to come up everytime I read it. In the latter chapter he said that for one instant even the atheists have a God in Christ for upon the Cross God denied God. As though he rebelled against himself in order to redeem mankind. Never thought of it that way before.

We’ve evacuated last Thursday 2am. I’m working my way back to Houston at some point. Did a lot of people end up in Lubbock?

You should get in touch with Dale Ahlquist of the American Chesterton Soc. and start your own group there. We have one here in Houston led by Fr. Callum at the University of St. Thomas. The discussions are intense but lighthearted. We usually go to an English pub and do the discussion over a pint. Just how GKC would have liked it. hhaahah!!

in XT
 
Still looking for a moral glue that will hold society together in the absence of religion.

Even if religion were abolished from the world today (which we Catholics believe to be impossible) the atheists would still have to come up with a plan to hold society together with a collective sense of right and wrong and an unimpeachable source for the authority of the laws.

Don’t they?

What is their plan? Or have they ever made one?

Or do they not believe there ever will be a collective sense of right and wrong strong enough to establish law? In which case it would seem they are advocating moral anarchy. But if you have moral anarchy, would you not have anarchy in the courts … in a far more brutal form even than we have today as our country sinks into secularism?
 
AQUINAS

We have taken about 800 evacuees in the last several days. Hope you find all is well on your return. God bless.

I give a regular lecture on Chesterton to whatever club will have me. Started with the Serra Club of Lubbock and they liked it … or perhaps they liked more my get-up as Chesterton … Inverness cloak, slouch hat and cane.
 
** Gilbert said: And philosophy by itself leans toward atheism because it hates a mystery it cannot ever solve and an Intellect greater than its own.

I concur. !

Again, well said

Sara**
 
Sara

Thanks for the kudos.

Yes, I’ve noticed at my age a pattern of behavior in myself and others … that is, that the more intellectual young people become, the more vain they become about the notion that intellect is supreme. It is not, of course. Only when intellect approaches God with humility does it truly approach its natural end … Wisdom.

We have all known and marveled at those who could talk circles around us and bind us under the spell of their brilliance. Yet many of these spinners of grand theories can barely tie their own shoes or bring groceries home to the family (Karl Marx a notorious example of this … he who thought that religion got in the way of utopia).
 
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