Morality Without Religion?

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Gilbert Keith:
Suppose the atheist/agnostic dream was realized.
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It has been realized. The results were genocide, the gulags, and state-sponsored terrorism.

– Mark L. Chance.
 
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Roche42:
I think many intelligent athiests would say that one can not believe in God but still be a moral absolutist. Did not Socrates say in Plato’s Euthyphro, “is what is pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” If we try to say that right and wrong are only right and wrong because of Divine Command, we run the risk of falling into Luther’s view rejecting natural law.
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But that isn’t what Christianity says, and Socrates objection was to the paganism of his own time.

– Mark L. Chance.
 
Roche 42

I’m not sure of the religious views of many philosophers, but as far as men who separated morality from God but maintained absolute moral principles…the list could go on forever, Kant, Rawls, Fuchs, etc

Your point is well taken. However, the average atheist does not think the way the men think that you pointed to. The average atheist is a rank relativist … insisting that moral absolutes may exist, but that each person is absolutely in charge of those absolutes.

That’s relativism in the long run, a false absolutism.
 
Perhaps I should clarify?

If the atheist is an absolutist, where does he get the absolute ground for his absolutism? Is it in nature? There is a natural law in nature, which is the gound for morality for all of us, theists and atheists alike. But there are only absolute consequences from the theist’s point of view. Without absolute consequences, such as a future life with or without God, absolutes are meaningless.

And this is why the atheists’ absolutism is a charade when it comes to morality. What they are really admitting to is the natural law in their hearts that God planted there. But they are not admitting to the God who planted it.
 
Gilbert Keith:
Perhaps I should clarify?

If the atheist is an absolutist, where does he get the absolute ground for his absolutism? Is it in nature? There is a natural law in nature, which is the gound for morality for all of us, theists and atheists alike. But there are only absolute consequences from the theist’s point of view. Without absolute consequences, such as a future life with or without God, absolutes are meaningless.

And this is why the atheists’ absolutism is a charade when it comes to morality. What they are really admitting to is the natural law in their hearts that God planted there. But they are not admitting to the God who planted it.
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You’re right, there is a certain hollowness anything when you try to subtract God, that definitely includes morality.

The reason I think so many atheists are relativists is because both relativism and atheism remove responsibilities from the individual or society and require a complete abandonment of reason and logic. They each have the same cause, laziness and unwillingness to take responsibility.

It seems sometimes that so many atheists look at relativism as brilliant modern innovation masqueraded as tolerance when in reality, people have been proposing that morals are relative for thousands of years and in almost every instance, intelligent members of society reject relativism as they should.
 
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buffalo:
I don’t think you are going to get any takers on this. This is a hot potato to atheists. 🙂
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Not at all, but we had this already:
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=3333
 
**

For the Atheists:

If you can believe in dead matter creating the Universe why cannot you believe in God creating the Universe ?

Of the two theories i.e. whether dead matter created the universe or whether God created it, it appears more plausible to accept the concept of God as the creator.

A reality can be metaphysical (independent of physics or nature) and also verifiable.

Can you describe organisms for me. What are they? Who are they? Can I verify their existence?

I can neither explain them nor verify their existence by sense-experience. They are invisible by us. No one can experience their existence except by experiencing their evil work in their body**
 
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barsapp:
Morality without religion: relativism.
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Sorry, but morality with religion is relative too. Religions change over time and their morals with them.

Or do you stone your disobedient child as once required by your God? Was that right back then?
 
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sara888:
For the Atheists:

If you can believe in dead matter creating the Universe why cannot you believe in God creating the Universe ? I don’t believe that dead matter “created” anything, at least not in such a way, as your question implies.
A reality can be metaphysical (independent of physics or nature) and also verifiable.
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No, it can’t. If it is verifiable, it is physical.
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I’d like to remind the posters that this thread is not about whether God exists, but about whether or not morality can survive without religion.

Please stay focused on this theme.

Thank you,
Gilbert

AnAtheist,

but we had this already:

It doesn’t hurt to have more than one thread on the same theme, especially if you want to revisit and think through the issue again.

You were cordially invited to this thread, but not for the purpose of discouraging its existence.
 
I’d also like to remind the posters here that the culture war raging in the United States is between Christians and secularists. This war is raging because the secularists have made enormous gains in the last 50 years. Though presumably in a distinct minority, they behave as though they are running the country. And the fear many Christians have is that they just may be right. The Christian response has to be evangelization, has to be taking back the country and restoring God as the guiding force behind all our morals and our goals. Failing that, the efforts of every American from the founding fathers until now to create a decent and fair society will have been in vain.

Newcomers please read posts # 1 and # 15.
 
Anatheist

**Unfortunately, reality is not decided by logic. Even if you could rigorously prove that God **exists, it wouldn’t actually get you very far. It could be that your logical rules do not always preserve truth – that your system of logic is flawed. It could be that your premises are wrong.

It could even be that reality is not logically consistent. In the end, the only way to find out what is really going on is to observe it. Logic can merely give you an idea where or how to look; and most logical arguments about God don’t even perform that task

Verifiable truths are obtained scientifically, but they imply a reality that consists of a separate supernatural world from our physical world. The separate world is not yet directly verifiable. Its an interpretation of the experimental results much like fields and particles are an interpretation of quantum mechanics. There may be other possibilities. ****

.

Sara
 
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AnAtheist:
Sorry, but morality with religion is relative too. Religions change over time and their morals with them.
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As a see we still agree on this statement: that morality without religion means relativism.
Regarding your statement: “morality with religion is relative too”, I do not agree. In fact, one of the blames and current harsh criticism against the Church is that She “refuses” to “update” her morals. Of course, I’m taking about the Catholic Church. The main road to Atheism is Protestantism (with a stop in Modernism).
 
AnAtheist
Sorry, but morality with religion is relative too. Religions change over time and their morals with them.
***Your argument fails because you seem to think the Ten Commandments and the two great commandments of Jesus have been changed. ***
They have not. They are as absolute as they ever were.
***It is the secular atheists who have redefined morality down through the ages to suit their own personal agendas. ***
Now would you like to comment on the remarks in posts #1 and #15?
Do you believe Franklin and Washington were wrong? Why?
 
In much the same way a building will not be able to withstand a storm without a foundation, morality cannot survive the crucible without religion. Religion is the foundation of morality. Religion is what shapes and defines what is moral and right. The basics of what is moral to do and what is not may be written on every man’s heart, it is religion that builds upon those stones that are laid and raises up a fortress and protects those basic truths. Without religion, the enemy will just ravish and wound ones morals until there is nothing left.
 
Gilbert Keith:
AnAtheist,

but we had this already:

It doesn’t hurt to have more than one thread on the same theme, especially if you want to revisit and think through the issue again.

You were cordially invited to this thread, but not for the purpose of discouraging its existence.
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Of course, I just thought, you and others might read the arguments from the other thread first, before I start to repeat them all over again.

I do think, morality can survive without religion, through political ideologies or even common sense. That is possible as much as morality may die with religion.

I like Steven Weinberg’s famous quote: "With or without it [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."
 
Bogey

In much the same way a building will not be able to withstand a storm without a foundation, morality cannot survive the crucible without religion.

How right you are. Morals without religion might continue to a degree, because God has planted the natural law in our hearts and we cannot root out that law. So atheists may behave as moral people, as AnAtheist points out. The problem is that the moral foundations … religion itself, thanks and praise to the Almighty who gave us the natural law … if abandoned will result in the decline of morals through time.

We are seeing this today. As secularism grows, morals become looser and looser … relativism rears its ugly head … and before long people are arguing that what is right is wrong and what is wrong is right. Even those who go to Church may become infected by this thinking to the point where they are churched in name only, because while God is on their lips … He is no longer in their thoughts or in their hearts.

Yes, as AnAtheist says, good people do evil things. I would qualify that. They do not do evil as a matter of policy, butr rather as a result of temptation. The only people who do evil things as a matter of policy are those who believe that there are no consequences to the evils they commit because there is no God to enforce those consequences…
 
I think I am confused by the terms being used. I was under the impression that an Agnostic was someone who doubted the existence of God but was unsure as opposed to an Atheist who believes they can prove that God does not exist.

It has been my experience that everyone worships something, and that deep in every human soul is an inherent need to seek a Power Greater than themselves. I often find that people who claim they absolutely do not believe in God worship the god of science and intellect, which is worshiping that spark of human spirit inside themselves and others that cannot be defined or adequately explained outside the realm of God.

And it has been my experience that, while someone may reject the teachings of a specific religious organization, if they consider themselves a moral person their base beliefs are echoed by religion, given shape and substance by religion and cannot, therefore, stand completely outside religious beliefs.

Or, I am wrong…
 
lsk

… while someone may reject the teachings of a specific religious organization, if they consider themselves a moral person their base beliefs are echoed by religion, given shape and substance by religion and cannot, therefore, stand completely outside religious beliefs.

Absolutely!

I’ve always been puzzled by those who say that morals can be cultivated independently of religion. Has that ever happened? Has there ever been a totally atheistic society in the history of the world? I think your point is so important … that even atheists today have inherited their moral framework from the organized religions of the past. They can deny God, but they cannot deny the influence of religion over the way they behave, the way others expect them to behave, and the way they expect others to behave. The founding fathers recognized this principle and announced it constantly in their writings.

One glaring example of this is the frequent criticism by atheists of Christians who do not live up to their religion. Why would they criticize Christians who fail to do this unless they were themselves taught to admire those Christian ideals while rejecting the founder of them?
 
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