RE: Where do atheists get their morality from?
August 31, 2012 at 9:10 pm
(This post was last modified: August 31, 2012 at 9:13 pm by Polaris.)
(August 31, 2012 at 9:05 pm)Atom Wrote:(August 31, 2012 at 8:35 pm)padraic Wrote: Christian 'morality' is innately im-moral,also based on self interestMost of the Christians I know rarely talk about or think about hell or heaven. I know there are those who do and that is where the TV and movie stereotypes come from. Doing things wanting to avoid hell isn't a proper motivation. That's what I would call "being into works", and its pretty futile. In that regard I think we agree completely. A good person strives to be good because it is the right thing to do, not to get something.
Carrot and stick motivation. The carrot is the reward of heaven. The stick is guilt and fear of hell. The moral man does what is right for its own and FOR NO OTHER REASON.
EG The Catholic 'act of contrition' (short version) said in confession and in extremis:
Agreed. I almost don't even believe in the afterlife for how little I focus on it in my religious life.
On the rewards, I already have them and will not lose them. When I was studying Sufism, a great thinker (it's been years since I was in college so I forgot his name), stated that if he only believed to avoid Hell, he should be sent to Hell because the only reason to believe in God was to believe in God....that's how I view my faith.
(August 31, 2012 at 9:07 pm)Boccaccio Wrote:(August 31, 2012 at 8:04 pm)Polaris Wrote: They get their base morality from religion, but have learned to evolve that morality as they have been exposed to more liberal and humanist ideas and ways of thinking.If "getting their ideas from religion" (implicitly, christian) were remotely true then there would be no morality outside early christianity while christians and their antecedents would be moral exemplars compared with other peoples of the time.
Sure.
If you wish to say any religion and not only christianity, then religion is otiose.
Implicitly Gilgamesh.
Religion, according to one thinker (also don't remember his name...I don't pay much attention during Church sermons), stated that religion was key to the formation of societies by giving a common authority and means of accountability necessary for primitive humans to form city-states.
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin.
