Morality

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Philosophy would be my best guess. Psychology or a humanities degree could contribute to moral growth as well. Mathematics could even help. It's not going to improve everyone's moral perspective. But if one wants to improve their moral character to begin with, philosophy, sociology, mathematics, history and studies language can help. If you are puzzled by this, I'd be happy to explain myself.

So let's consider it as a testable hypothesis. We take a group of philosophy majors, a group of RNs, or a group of mechanics, a group of factory workers, a group of finance majors (groups without a college education, or at best a technical degree)

And if we evaluated their actual moral lives, their moral behaviors, such as if they are better parents, better husbands, better son’s and daughters, better members of their respective communities, more compassionate, kind.

In your view the philosophy majors would come out on top? This group contains better moral role models than the other groups?

I would disagree, that at best there’s no real difference between their actual moral lives.

But, see, if you removed the stuff about "loving as Christ loved us," you'd be left with a morality that more or less resembles that of many atheists. I appreciate that religious practice can provide a context for a believer to bring about these moral changes in his or her life (That's probably the one AND ONLY advantage it has over a purely secular morality. And the "probably" in that sentence has caveats.) It is foolish to assume that compassion and forgiveness aren't practiced by atheists. It is foolish to assume that people would never practice these virtues apart from religious dogmas. 

Even assuming these virtues did come to us purely through the Christian tradition, the truly wise person would realize that (since forgiveness and compassion are intrinsically valuable) the best thing to do is separate them from the bigoted, homophobic, and backwards nonsense which accompanies them in the teachings. You see, forgiveness and compassion can exist without bigoted nonsense.

As indicated previously I believe in a transcendent moral reality. That rightness and wrongness of things exist independently of our own minds, that moral facts exists, like the chair in front of me does. That there’s a Good, that we’re all at some level oriented to, that obligates us to do what’s right, that is it’s own moral authority, etc..

So when I say something is wrong, whether to christians, or other religious folks, or make any moral statements, it’s appeal an appeal to this reality. A external reality that isn’t purely physical, but posses in some sense mental properties as well, such a meaning and purpose.

It’s not an appeal to what society wants of them, or my subjective wishes. At worst in can be an appeal to a false belief.

I would also say that beliefs such as this, have been taken as a given for thousands of years, saturated into our moral language and beliefs, and have proven quite difficult to escape or abandon. In fact as Alsdair McIntyre argued in After Virtue, our moral philosophies that attempt to proceed with out these elements in tact, are incoherent.  

Outside of such a reality, it makes little sense to speak of objective morality, or intrinsic values, you’re primarily left with subjective moral views, moral nihilism, and extrinsic values.

Do you think that person-to-person compassion isn't something that certain atheists aim for? Do you think there aren't a plethora of Christians out there who (when you look at them head on) could care less about morality, compassion, or forgiveness?

No I think plenty of atheists try to be compassionate.

But the difference between uncompassionate or an immoral atheist, and immoral christian, is that immoral atheist can deny that they have any obligations to be moral, or to be good person, where as the uncompassionate or immoral christian can’t deny it. He may try to justify that he’s not living immorally, or uncompassionately, but he has to acknowledge his obligations to live as such. And from that it becomes a task of revealing to them, that they are lying to themselves, that they’re not living compassionately, or morally.


The difference between many atheist and believers is, that atheists fail to be able to hold moral nihilism as false, even if they don’t see themselves as moral nihilist, where as for believers the moral nihilist, is like a person who believes the earth is flat.