What is more important...beliefs about God or morals?

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If you were to choose between living in a society in which no one believed in God but everyone treated each other with respect and followed the basic teachings of Jesus’ moral code (love others) or a society which was only Catholic but people did not strive to follow the morals of Jesus (no offense, but like most Catholics today), which would you choose?

What is more important to you? Someone’s religious beliefs or how they actually treat others?

And as a secondary question, which would you rather have as your neighbors…a gay couple that treated everyone with respect, treated others the way they want to be treated, were extremely helpful and compassionate, volunteered at soup kitchens, etc…or a Catholic family that went to church every day but were nasty to people on a regular basis?

So, what is more important to you? How someone treats others or religious beliefs?
 
bingbang said:
If you were to choose between living in a society in which no one believed in God but everyone treated each other with respect and followed the basic teachings of Jesus’ moral code (love others) or a society which was only Catholic but people did not strive to follow the morals of Jesus (no offense, but like most Catholics today), which would you choose?

What is more important to you? Someone’s religious beliefs or how they actually treat others?

And as a secondary question, which would you rather have as your neighbors…a gay couple that treated everyone with respect, treated others the way they want to be treated, were extremely helpful and compassionate, volunteered at soup kitchens, etc…or a Catholic family that went to church every day but were nasty to people on a regular basis?

So, what is more important to you? How someone treats others or religious beliefs?
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Neither or Both.

Without a belief in God there is no anchor to hold anyone to loving others.
 
davidv said:
Neither or Both.

Without a belief in God there is no anchor to hold anyone to loving others.
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Great way to avoid the question.

So there is no such thing as an atheist that is moral? What about Buddhists? Many of them are atheists yet are extremely kind, compassionate, and follow Jesus’ moral teachings better than the GREAT majority of Catholics and Christians.

This is honestly one of the most ignorant things I have ever read on this forum…and that is saying a lot. To say that it is impossible to love others and not believe in God is completely baffling.
 
bingbang said:
Great way to avoid the question.

So there is no such thing as an atheist that is moral? What about Buddhists? Many of them are atheists yet are extremely kind, compassionate, and follow Jesus’ moral teachings better than the GREAT majority of Catholics and Christians.

This is honestly one of the most ignorant things I have ever read on this forum…and that is saying a lot. To say that it is impossible to love others and not believe in God is completely baffling.
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Since God is Love and our source for being loving, why is it so “completely baffling”.

By the way, if proclaiming me ignorant makes you a genius, go for it.
 
davidv said:
Since God is Love and our source for being loving, why is it so “completely baffling”.

By the way, if proclaiming me ignorant makes you a genius, go for it.
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I never said I was a genius. I just don’t understand how you can’t realize that atheists can be good, moral, and loving people. Do you even know any atheists? Are any of your friends atheists? They can’t be because in your world they are all evil. It is mind boggling that someone can actually believe this.

What about countries that are mostly atheists like Switzerland or Japan? Are they all evil? What about Buddhist monks? They aren’t loving?

If you want to believe that God is the source of all love, fine, I can agree on that. That makes sense. That being true does not mean that people that do not believe in God can’t love, it just means that they just do not know the source of their love.

Paul talks about Gentiles following the law without the law even being revealed to them…he suggests that everyone knows what is right and wrong in their heart and this is a God given gift. So, to believe that atheists cannot love is actually against the Bible.
 
bingbang said:
I never said I was a genius. I just don’t understand how you can’t realize that atheists can be good, moral, and loving people. Do you even know any atheists? Are any of your friends atheists? They can’t be because in your world they are all evil. It is mind boggling that someone can actually believe this.

What about countries that are mostly atheists like Switzerland or Japan? Are they all evil? What about Buddhist monks? They aren’t loving?

If you want to believe that God is the source of all love, fine, I can agree on that. That makes sense. That being true does not mean that people that do not believe in God can’t love, it just means that they just do not know the source of their love.

Paul talks about Gentiles following the law without the law even being revealed to them…he suggests that everyone knows what is right and wrong in their heart and this is a God given gift. So, to believe that atheists cannot love is actually against the Bible.
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Re bold: Did I ever claim they cannot?

Seems to me your assuming too much.
 
I am hard pressed to say this but you could be in danger of presenting a false dilemma.

It may not be either or.

There could be other factors we have not been given to consider in this examination.
 
Poor Japan.

The strong sense of family, of beauty, of nature and the seasons, of reverence for the dead. The high value placed on courtesy and respect for elders and those in authority. The acute social awareness, the high art of non-verbal communication, of intuiting one another‘s boundaries and feelings.

And: Karoshi, death by overwork in a cutthroat economy. Movies, novels, manga full of unspeakable horrors in concentrated form, marketed as an emotional outlet to offset the repression of strict social convention, standard magazine fare in cafes and barbershops, readily available to children.

If, indeed, they are lucky enought to have been born at all: Abortion is routine, and the fact that it is killing one‘s own kids is freely admitted. People bring offerings of bibs and baby clothes for the souls of their dead children to the children‘s bosatsu (saint who has earned nirvana but forgoes it until all sentient beings are saved, in order to help others on their way).

His name is Jizo. Dare we note the similarity: Jesus? He is patron of travelers, the poor, and deceased children. At a roadside Jizo shrine in Hakone, a friend translated the inscription for me: „I go unto death for you.“

St. Paul was right. The law, and to some extent even the Gospel, are intuited by humans, and this too is grace. But until grace, personally given, is also personally received in faith, it remains unrealized potential. Asking „Which is more important, belief or morals?“ is like asking, „Which is more important to nutrition, digestion or food?“
 
bingbang said:
If you were to choose between living in a society in which no one believed in God but everyone treated each other with respect and followed the basic teachings of Jesus’ moral code (love others) or a society which was only Catholic but people did not strive to follow the morals of Jesus (no offense, but like most Catholics today), which would you choose?

What is more important to you? Someone’s religious beliefs or how they actually treat others?

And as a secondary question, which would you rather have as your neighbors…a gay couple that treated everyone with respect, treated others the way they want to be treated, were extremely helpful and compassionate, volunteered at soup kitchens, etc…or a Catholic family that went to church every day but were nasty to people on a regular basis?

So, what is more important to you? How someone treats others or religious beliefs?
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You are not describing morality, but civility. Morality is not following a set of rules. That misconception came from William of Ockham. St. Thomas Aquinas defined morality as striving towards virtue. Without God, morality is impossible because certain virtues would be impossible to practice (Faith, Hope, and Justice for example). Your question makes no sense because you are misunderstanding the nature of true morality.
 
StTommyMore said:
You are not describing morality, but civility. Morality is not following a set of rules. That misconception came from William of Ockham. St. Thomas Aquinas defined morality as striving towards virtue. Without God, morality is impossible because certain virtues would be impossible to practice (Faith, Hope, and Justice for example). Your question makes no sense because you are misunderstanding the nature of true morality.
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IMO morality is how you treat others. Didn’t Jesus say that how we treat others is actually how we treat God? IMO faith has nothing to do with morality and hope and justice are things that can be practiced by atheists (though I don’t see how hope or even justice has anything to do with morality).
 
bingbang said:
IMO morality is how you treat others. Didn’t Jesus say that how we treat others is actually how we treat God? IMO faith has nothing to do with morality and hope and justice are things that can be practiced by atheists (though I don’t see how hope or even justice has anything to do with morality).
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Then you and the other posters are not going to be able to even start this discussion. When using definitions life ‘beliefs about God’ or ‘morality’, they both must be clearly defined.

I’m willing to say that I find both definitions lacking. Beliefs about God could be a completely shallow definition, the Epistle of James does a good spot on it:

James 2:19
Thou believest that there is one God. Thou dost well: the devils also believe and tremble.

There needs to be an agreement on terms before the discussion.

-Prophecy
 
In addition to the well-noted arguments above that people need to agree on definitions of terms before even attempting to argue, let me also state this:

If you have those two ‘societies’, bingbang, where did the ‘moral’ society get the morality from if not God? And, lacking an absolute morality, suppose that right now in 2010 things are all ‘kind and loving’ but at any point society decides to ‘change’. Even your ‘utopia’ I’m sure does not have every single person being treated properly; people have free will and I’m sure that they will ‘ignore’ the morals as individuals if they feel the ‘need’ just as they do today.

And suppose that the ‘faith’ society is full of people who in AD 2010 are not following their faith–does that mean that tomorrow or the next day the people can’t change? That they can’t --or aren’t–capable of discerning that, hey, look at us, we are ignoring truth and we need to start practicing what we preach. . .in which case people will be a lot better off both now and in the world to come, because in this society, ‘morality’ doesn’t change at the drop of a hat.

The first society not only has changing ‘morals’, it has people who can defy them any time.

The second society has people who can defy the teaching but the teaching doesn’t change. Truth doesn’t die.
 
bingbang said:
IMO morality is how you treat others. Didn’t Jesus say that how we treat others is actually how we treat God? IMO faith has nothing to do with morality and hope and justice are things that can be practiced by atheists (though I don’t see how hope or even justice has anything to do with morality).
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Opinion here is not the issue. I am talking about how morality was defined by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. Hope and justice are virtues, ans as morality is the pursuit of virtue, they are the object of morality. Again what you are talking about is not morality, but mere legalism and civility.
 
StTommyMore said:
Opinion here is not the issue. I am talking about how morality was defined by St. Thomas Aquinas, the Angelic Doctor. Hope and justice are virtues, ans as morality is the pursuit of virtue, they are the object of morality. Again what you are talking about is not morality, but mere legalism and civility.
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I don’t really care how Aquinas defined morality. Jesus said to treat others the way you want to be treated. THAT is morality.

Luke 6:27-28

27"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

So what kind of justice did Jesus talk about? Where does justice fit into Jesus’ system of morality?
 
bingbang said:
I don’t really care how Aquinas defined morality. Jesus said to treat others the way you want to be treated. THAT is morality.

Luke 6:27-28

27"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, 28bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.

So what kind of justice did Jesus talk about? Where does justice fit into Jesus’ system of morality?
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This discussion cannot continue. I will not engage in a discussion with one who rejects Sacred Tradition.
 
bingbang said:
lol, ok. So you accept Aquinas’ view of morality more than Jesus’?? Seems reasonable. 👍
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He can accept that a dominican priest who lived his life in study of the Gospels (particularly the Gospel of John) as well as an extensive study of morality will have more of an understanding of the morality presented by Jesus than some kid on the internet.

-Prophecy
 
Prophesy said:
He can accept that a dominican priest who lived his life in study of the Gospels (particularly the Gospel of John) as well as an extensive study of morality will have more of an understanding of the morality presented by Jesus than some kid on the internet.

-Prophecy
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So tell me what kind of justice did Jesus talk about in the gospels?
 
bingbang said:
lol, ok. So you accept Aquinas’ view of morality more than Jesus’?? Seems reasonable. 👍
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You never established Jesus’ morality. In fact Jesus never taught about theological morality. That was not why he came. Though there is a moral sense to His parables and miracles, Scriptural morality can not be boiled down to “follow the rules.” A cursory reading of Sermon on the mount indicated that true morality is not in following a set of strictures, but pursuing virtues. Your one verse proof-text does nothing to prove your point. You can prove anything by taking verses out of context.
 
bingbang said:
So tell me what kind of justice did Jesus talk about in the gospels?
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No, you tell us, you’re the one who is ‘definiing’ it by societal (social) justice, n’est-ce pas?

Does morality encompass ‘more’ than justice? What is Divine Justice? Can a law be 'civilly just", that is, legal, and yet not be morally just by Divine standards? How about laws which are found ‘just’ by one society (say the aboriginal societies in Australian, or how about the cannibals of Papau, New Guinea) that would not be found just by the U.S. Supreme Court?

Are you saying your first society is going by the 'justice" Jesus spoke of? How did they learn it if Jesus didn’t speak of it? Is ‘justice’ in the Divine sense able to be fully known without the Divine Word to explain it? If so, how?
 
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