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If you believe in God, then how to behave is simple: This life is transient and if you do good things you will spend the rest of eternity in Heaven, whereas, if you behave badly you go to Hell for eternity. If you truly believe in God, then you cannot question the morality of this because God, being perfect, could not be in error.
If you do not believe in God, then this life is still a fleeting transient moment compared to the age of the universe, but how to behave is not so clear. Since this is the one and only existence, then the only rational course is to pursue those things that serve your own ends and maximise the pleasure and happiness of your short vacation from the dark abyss of eternity.
With regard to the latter, this means that the only grounds for altruism is if you happen to be a person who enjoys putting others before yourself. If you happen to be selfish thats OK too. The only thing you need to avoid is breaking the Law, since this may take away your freedom which would diminish your existence. Apart from that, it is a free for all - a morality of ends?
I believe in God and that this life is all we have to effect society. My morality is subjective and based on personal and societal morality. I also use the objective morality of God (as I see it) to shape and better my own personal morality (as a checks adn balances). I believe in altruism and self-sacrifice. I think the difference between my views and the typical atheist (other than belief in God) is not the distance to the goal, but the standard of choice.
"There ought to be a term that would designate those who actually follow the teachings of Jesus, since the word 'Christian' has been largely divorced from those teachings, and so polluted by fundamentalists that it has come to connote their polar opposite: intolerance, vindictive hatred, and bigotry." -- Philip Stater, Huffington Post
always working on cleaning my windows- me regarding Johari
May 13, 2011 at 11:01 am (This post was last modified: May 13, 2011 at 11:01 am by Napoléon.)
(May 13, 2011 at 7:08 am)Girlysprite Wrote: First of all, religion is not a good source for morals. The reason is that the morals are not clear - they are extremely muddled. You'd think that a thing like ten rules set in stone is clear. However, the killing done by 'the holy people' continues. Just to illustrate the point; Moses came down the mountain with the first set of tablets. The people had started worshipping something else in the meantime. Moses gets angry, smashes the tablets, orders the unholy statues to be grinded, mixed with water, and the water has to be drunk. After that he orders several men to strap on swords and kill people. So mere hours after getting the first tablets (and I'll assume those had the same rules) he already breaks the 'no kill' rule.
'Yeah, but there are exceptions! People cry. Then why isn't there a clear point by point list of what those exceptions are? Some bible statements even contradict each other. You can really see that when two groups condemn each other, both using quotes from the same bible...
This is just an example. Most rules are like that. This leads to many religious people picking the rules and deciding what is good and what is not. As such, the bible is extremely shaky as a source of morals.
Now, many theists seem to wonder why people would bother behaving nice if there was no eternal glory as reward at the end. Many of them predict a tidal wave of terrible behavior as atheism gains popularity. But when we look at reality, this doesn't seem to be the case. Atheists are not 'worse' then religious people are. The reason is that humans are simply evolved to be generally nice. Why do you think that helping others feels good? It is an built-in reward system from our brains. We are evolved as a group species, and group species have to stick together and be nice. We have a 'see it from someone else's view' part in our brains. It works automatically. When you see someone suffer, you feel bad about it too. When you help someone and it makes that person happy, you feel rewarded too. You see a friend cry, you become sad. This impulse is hard to overcome and is very strong.
Interestingly, there are people who have a specific brain-defect so that this system does not work. Children like this do not return any love at all, and often hurt people on purpose. They are physically incapable of caring for others. These people are sad cases, because they can't mesh in with society at all. They can't understand how people feel, and they aren't capable of being nice to other people - seeing their cases you start to realize how deep this system goes, and how automatic it is - our day is littered with offering little pleasantries to each other.
The reason I'm nice to people is that I could not stand to see them hurt and suffering. And that is a good thing, I''m glad that I, and people in general, work like that.
^ I hate it when someone says perfectly what I was trying to put into words.
This is true, humans aren't solitary animals, we are social creatures, and therefore we have evolved the ability to be empathetic. This is good basis for human's coming up with moral codes on their own.
@ Girlysprite : you're describing selfish human morals. Even the religious ones (tho not the biblical ones). If you're aim is to be like Christ, ie perfectly moral, then the result of that aim will be better than any selfish motivation. That's the difference between secular and religious morals.
Frodo, you start describing to me what perfectly moral is first. As i said, the bible already can't make up its mind about what the best morals are.
When I was a Christian, I was annoyed with dogmatic condescending Christians. Now that I'm an atheist, I'm annoyed with dogmatic condescending atheists. Just goes to prove that people are the same, regardless of what they do or don't believe.
May 13, 2011 at 11:16 am (This post was last modified: May 13, 2011 at 11:19 am by Napoléon.)
(May 13, 2011 at 11:11 am)fr0d0 Wrote: If you're aim is to be like Christ, ie perfectly moral, then the result of that aim will be better than any selfish motivation.
Prove it. Show me a single mainly atheist country that has higher crime rates than any religious country.
*EDIT*
Not mainly atheist country, but countries with higher amounts of atheists than another
A perfect moral, Girlysprite, is what a perfectly moral entity would do. We have the ability to know what's moral and what taints our own efforts at that. Where your focus is (at any given moment) is how moral you then act.
You can't cut it like that Nappy coz you can't know where any individuals' focus is at any given time. And in my view a 'faith' is something not possible to be held by a country.
Religious morals started out as secular morals but were then twisted and contorted to best serve those who were in power to aid in the manipulation of the masses.
Our innate sense of what is right and wrong does not come from some higher supernatural source but is as a result of countless generations of evolutionary fine tuning to produce societies that work and that care for and protect each other from the harshness of the natural world.
Most, if not all of us would consider ourselves moral creatures with an inbuilt sense of what is right and wrong. If it were true that the source of this behaviour is biblical and prior to this no-one had any moral understanding or, any morals that existed were nonsensical then it would be very unlikely that the human race would have survived long enough for religion to be created in the first place.
Correction: Religion took our moral sense and improved upon it. Currently we're heading for self destruction Dar... our choices just happen to have got us where we are.
(May 13, 2011 at 11:52 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Correction: Religion took our moral sense and improved upon it. Currently we're heading for self destruction Dar... our choices just happen to have got us where we are.
Lol how are we heading for self destruction? Is the LORD going to bring down a righteous hammer?
(May 13, 2011 at 11:52 am)fr0d0 Wrote: Correction: Religion took our moral sense and improved upon it. Currently we're heading for self destruction Dar... our choices just happen to have got us where we are.
Everything is heading towards destruction. It's what you do until that day that matters.
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