Replacing Religious Morality

[Neo-Scholastic]

This makes a mockery of the entire idea of Christian salvation. To avoid evil for selfish reasons is repeatedly and expressly encouraged throughout the entire Bible ...

Then you have a very childish way of understanding what you read.

[Ryantology]

This makes a mockery of the entire idea of Christian salvation. To avoid evil for selfish reasons is repeatedly and expressly encouraged throughout the entire Bible ...

Then you have a very childish way of understanding what you read.

Well, Professor Smartass, why don't you attempt to explain why personal threats and promises of rewards are all over the Bible when God doesn't want you to do good for selfish reasons?

[henryp]

Is that my fault, or His? Particularly when he could have just popped his head in a window like he used to do for the old-timey folks and say "Nope, I'm real. Sorry for the confusion."

It would be your fault, because He did come into human history to "say hi".

To be fair, we have a very old second hand account of him coming to say hi. From a time when people's understanding of things was a little sketchy, and attributing things that probably should be attributed to the supernatural to the supernatural was very common.

Even if I were going the agnostic route, we both agree it's an impossible position to take. There is no 'maybe there is a God' way to live.

I cannot say that I agree, because I don't really understand what you mean. Could you expand on this idea a bit.

There's loving and serving God from a position of humility and thankfulness. (existence with God)

There's being self-serving. (existence without God)

Nothing else really makes sense since hedging your bets against eternal damnation is really just a variation on the self-serving life. (which is what I think ryantology mistakes for motivation)

I know the church line is 'you have faith.' But I think what that really boils down to is guessing. And you have to do it, because there are only two ways to live. And I'm not sure you can really believe based on a guess.

What it reminds me of, is when people get cancer. And even though the prognosis is 50/50, they fully believe they are going to live. And for some, that's just a thing they can do. But if I was told I had a 50/50 chance of living, I would think I had a 50/50 chance of living.

Is "in the event God happens to exist" I love him above all else a thing?
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The importance of the dichotomy of the two existences, is that the idea of "well you lived a good life, and were a nice person...so we'll let you into heaven anyway" goes out the window. Because if you don't believe in God and live a life with weird made up morals that sync up mostly with Christian ones, that (in our opinion) is just being silly, right?

So to restate, for many of us, we get a 15-80 year life on earth in which we must make a guess with very incomplete information that might doom us for eternity. It's a off-the-wall setup.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Well, Professor Smartass...

I rather like that. Afterall, I always say "if the shoe fits, wear it."

...explain why personal threats and promises of rewards are all over the Bible ...

What you interpret as threats are really warnings and consequences. As in, if you play with fire you will get burned. And if you follow the straight and narrow path, you will reach your destination. When you defy Divine Wisdom and ignore Divine Truth bad things happen. The irony is that when you seek reward and behave in order to avoid punishment, you deceive yourself about what it means to be good. You see falsities as truths and evils as goods.

[Ryantology]

What you interpret as threats are really warnings and consequences. As in, if you play with fire you will get burned. And if you follow the straight and narrow path, you will reach your destination. When you defy Divine Wisdom and ignore Divine Truth bad things happen. The irony is that when you seek reward and behave in order to avoid punishment, you deceive yourself about what it means to be good. You see falsities as truths and evils as goods.

I saved this gif because I knew exactly how you would respond and I knew it would be appropriate.



You know, as if hell was just some unfortunate natural phenomenon rather than a place designed specifically to punish the recalcitrant, and, in spite of God being all-knowing and all-powerful, he is simply incapable of keeping people out of it if they don't do exactly what he tells them to do, even though he totally wishes he could.

[MitchBenn]

Well, Professor Smartass...

I rather like that. Afterall, I always say "if the shoe fits, wear it."

...explain why personal threats and promises of rewards are all over the Bible ...

What you interpret as threats are really warnings and consequences. As in, if you play with fire you will get burned. And if you follow the straight and narrow path, you will reach your destination. When you defy Divine Wisdom and ignore Divine Truth bad things happen. The irony is that when you seek reward and behave in order to avoid punishment, you deceive yourself about what it means to be good. You see falsities as truths and evils as goods.

Woah woah... Is God in charge or isn't he? Does he set the rules or doesn't he?

The dire consequences of sin are not some unavoidable pre-existing circumstance which God's powerless to alter (being only able to offer suggestions as to how we can avoid such a fate), they are punishments ACTIVELY IMPOSED BY GOD. He is offering to "save" us from his own wrath, not our own depredations.

It's roughly analogous to a mugger sticking a gun in your face and saying "Quickly! Give me your phone and wallet, that I might SAVE you from being shot in the face!" Then, after you hand over the goods, saying "Behold! In my mercy, I have DELIVERED you from being shot in the face! PRAISE ME!"

[genkaus]

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I'm fairly new to atheism, coming from a few decades of Catholicism. I gave up on the belief in God based on an All-loving God and eternal damnation being unable to rationally coexist.

I suspect it's a bit of a backwards way of becoming an atheist. I had been of the CS Lewis school of believing that the only way to create an objective set of moral laws was to work from a few truths that are necessary for those laws to exist and work my way back to some higher power. Murder is wrong. How do you make that an objective statement. You assign intrinsic value to the individual humans. Where could that type of worth come from. An all-powerful being could be a source of that.

The catch now, is that by crossing off the higher power, I've essentially ended up discounting my views on morality.

So my question is, what fits in it's place.

The answer I've heard in general is 'empathy empathy empathy.' But I'm a little confused as to what makes empathy so special. It is, afterall, just an emotional reaction. What sets it apart from rage, lust, jealousy, etc...

The idea of 'I wouldn't like it if you stole my stuff so I won't steal yours' operates in such a narrow spectrum of reason. The flaws being that if I have no stuff, there is no threat to having my stuff stolen. Or if I'm powerful enough that you can't steal my stuff, then I can steal your stuff.

I suspect this is why we see 'accepted' morality go out the window as we venture further away from comfortable middle class types. Similarly, you remove the threat of lawful punishment, and it becomes open season. Streaming copyrighted video certainly isn't causing any empathy problems.

The easier (and more prevalent unfortunately) answer seems to just be nice, because being nice is nice. And don't put much thought into why. We could probably chalk it up to evolution. We've evolved into ants who follow rules because it's for the good of the nest. And as long as we don't put to much thought into it, I suppose that's enough. But we are a thoughtful species, theoretically. We can see that we've been trained to act out of our own best individual interests. And rational thinking is supposed to be what kept us from just going along and buying into the God story to begin with.

Are we just smart enough to not know there is a God, and then just replace him with feelings that were more or less imposed upon us by a few thousand years of religious dominated rule.

Interested to see what the answers to this are. During my time on the other side of this discussion, I always felt when atheists were pressed on what they believe, they quickly became uncomfortable, and tried to shift things back to why religion was stupid. Now that I've 'switched sides' there is no religious nonsense to get in the way.

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Three things:

1. I've never found the whole "objective morality needs god" argument to be persuasive in the least. I won't get into it here, but a few discussions in the philosophy forum would show why god's actual existence is not going to make religious morality any more objective or the value of human life any more intrinsic.

2. I too find empathy to be a poor replacement for religious morality. A lot of atheists seem to have a one-track mind with regards to moraity: "Morality is about how you treat others. Empathy is one of the emotions about it. So, empathy should be the basis for you morality". I find this view to be woefully inadequate.

3. My own view is that morality is about how you live your life - not just with respect to others, but yourself as well. Without going into details, the simple idea is to figure out you need to do - considering your own life and the society you live in - in order to live the way you want to.

[henryp]

Three things:

1. I've never found the whole "objective morality needs god" argument to be persuasive in the least. I won't get into it here, but a few discussions in the philosophy forum would show why god's actual existence is not going to make religious morality any more objective or the value of human life any more intrinsic.

3. My own view is that morality is about how you live your life - not just with respect to others, but yourself as well. Without going into details, the simple idea is to figure out you need to do - considering your own life and the society you live in - in order to live the way you want to.

1) I think what it's about, is that we have a conclusion that we'd like to believe about the nature of our existence, and God is the only answer that leads to the conclusion we want. Not just in morality, but meaning, and not being finite. I'm sure there are some "You're no the boss of me" cards to be played, but the idea of God having some legit authority is pretty reasonable compared to being nice cause nice is nice.

3) The funny thing about my personal 'living the way I want', is I'd prefer to believe in God. It's clearly the better way to go. The comfort of an eternal happy existence, and everybody should be nice to eachother. It's not a mistake it's so popular. It's better (minus it not being true).

The reason I bring that up, is that I'm not reverse engineering how to live anymore based on what I wish the world was. I'm trying to do so based on my new 'objective' foundation which is, I'm guessing, mostly biological.

[Doubting Thomas]

The dire consequences of sin are not some unavoidable pre-existing circumstance which God's powerless to alter (being only able to offer suggestions as to how we can avoid such a fate), they are punishments ACTIVELY IMPOSED BY GOD. He is offering to "save" us from his own wrath, not our own depredations.

It's roughly analogous to a mugger sticking a gun in your face and saying "Quickly! Give me your phone and wallet, that I might SAVE you from being shot in the face!" Then, after you hand over the goods, saying "Behold! In my mercy, I have DELIVERED you from being shot in the face! PRAISE ME!"

I've always thought a better analogy would be an abusive stalker holding a gun to a woman's head and saying, "Marry me or I'll kill you." That's what God wants, a marriage between us and him with him constantly holding the gun to our heads, and if we step out of line we're lucky he doesn't smack us around. Or in God's case, if we do something wrong he goes next door and smacks the neighbor around with a tornado.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Like Ryanology, the subsequent replies of MitchBenn and DT reflect a childish and superficial literalism about the nature of God as presented in the deeper meanings of the Holy Scriptures. Perhaps this will clear it up. God represents the highest good, or in neo-Platonic terms, “The Good”. Willing and doing good, because it is good, moves you toward the ultimate good, or God.

To do otherwise is to do what is good for the sake of some gain or benefit: to protect your reputation, avoid the sting of conscience, and/or fear of the law. To the extent that these consequences preserve civil order and cultivate ethical habits, there is some natural benefit to them. When you grasp that these incentives follow from Divine Providence, you bring your will into alignment with the will of the Lord, thereby uniting yourself with Him. This is not a “good boy” pat on the head for doing a chore, but rather the satisfaction of being in harmony with the One you love. That is Heaven. Conversely, when you do not align your will with that of the Lord, you move away from Him. Since the Lord is Divine Love and Wisdom, doing so moves you into the darkness of falsity and the cold comfort of self-love, which is Hell.

If you want to quibble, you could argue that the satisfaction I describe is a “reward” for obedience rather than a “consequence” of it. I think there is a difference, but one in which reasonable people can disagree.