Posted on 01/29/2014 4:37:11 PM PST by NYer
“”Some of the most moral people I know are atheists.””
Doubtful.
Are your atheist friends pro-Obama (70 percent of atheists).
Are they also pro-abort? Pro-homosexual marriage? Pro-fornication? Pro-cursing? Anti-going to church? Anti-prayer?
It is impossible for atheists to be moral.
Of course you can be good without god, but you’re not going to be sin free and you’re not going to be saved.
But I believe there are certain circumstances where non-believers get the ultimate proof and ascend to heaven. I seem to recall a special latin name for it but can’t find it. Been a long time. I believe it’s reserved for those that have not heard the word of god and are righteous by their own conscious.
I think the question is phrased wrong — by saying ‘no’ you are opening up the possibility of humanity being worthless*, by saying ‘yes’ you are opening the way to a “I’m a good person”**.
The best way to approach the question is how Jesus did, He said:
“If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him?”
This puts the focus on the goodness of God***, not on the goodness (or lack thereof) of mankind.
* — Humanity cannot be worthless because the living God deemed us to be worth His own life; this is irrespective of the impact of the fall upon man being made in God’s image***.
** — Romans 3:23 says “[...] all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God;”
*** — God’s image cannot but be good; it is debatable whether or not the fall destroyed or merely deformed that image which mankind bears, given that the murder of a man is a capital crime in the Noahic covenant there seems to be great evidence that it is the latter: “At the hand of every man’s brother will I require the life of man. Whoso sheddeth man’s blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made He man” (Genesis 9:5,6)
HOWEVER--my personal opinion is that, while there are times when this must be stressed, we are living in a time when it is stressed too much. The concept of Theonomic Positivism (ie, "there is nothing either right or wrong, but the arbitrary decree of G-d makes it so") is ultimately just true in its own way. In our G-dless age, when what little morality the secular world still holds to is brandished as a weapon against His authority, I think the world has heard too much of "natural law" and such things. I also think the author of the article makes G-d too much a utilitarian inspiration for good behavior than the Supreme Source of what is right and what is wrong.
And here we go again.
It is just this intrusion of the alien notion of "salvation" that has helped derail the idea of G-d's ultimate statutory authority. Everything is seen in light of "going to Heaven," whether goodness is necessary (as Catholics and Orthodox teach) or whether it is a "sign of salvation" (as many Protestants believe).
G-d could have created us as spirit beings in Heaven like the angels but chose not to. He could have not given us freewill but chose to do so. He could have not given us a list of commandments, but He chose to do so.
We were created by G-d in this world, not so much to "go to Heaven," but to transform it by keeping His Commandments on His Authority. When it comes to this, chrstianity hasn't been so conservative after all.
Please don't quote the "new testament" to "prove" anything to me. I do not accept it, and the very point of issue is whether it is from G-d (chas vechalilah!).
Sigh.
I take my soapbox out of the drawn, place it on the floor, stand on it and begin my speech.
Arguments like this are where secularist go astray because we do not challenge their assumptions correctly. They assume three things to be true which are actually false when they make a statement like this. Unfortunately many people that should know better at least partially believe the assumptions as well.
1.The first false assumption is that all religions are of equal value or are attempting to do the same thing
2. The second false assumption is that they believe the purpose of being religious is to make you a better person
3. The third false assumption is that they are assuming there is really such a thing as “good” or “moral” if there is no entity to define good or moral.
The first statement shows an utter lack of knowledge about the teachings and doctrines of various religions. The concept of “Nirvana” is a a good example of this in that it is a place where you achieve absolute nothingness; you know nothing, do nothing, experience nothing. That is a very different place conceptually from a Heaven. Indeed, Nirvana looks a lot more like a Christian Hell than a Christian Heaven. It is possible that all religion could be wrong, it is impossible that they can all be right. So saying you can be as good or moral as a religious person is meaning less if most religions are wrong or partially wrong
The second assumption is also easily seen to be false. Even in a religion like Buddhism which is the most works oriented religion you can find the object is not to do good deeds to make you a better person in the here and now but to be able to be re-incarnated into a higher form in the next life. Notice the good works are means to an end, not an end in and of themselves. To say I can do good, live morally without a Deity is beside the point because religious people are not being religious because it allows them to be better; often the reverse is true, religion helps us realize how bad they are.
The last area is a problematic one. If there is no God, there is no morality. About the best you can say is morality equals physics. For example gravity is everywhere. Its affects can be measured and predicted so it is WRONG to say I can float in the air rather walking down the stairs. But that type of universal or absolute is neither moral or immoral.
If there is no God then there is no reason other than expediency that we can say; Thou shalt not steal, kill, covet, forget your parents, work to hard, or behave unethically towards others but expediency is not the same as morality; even if doing these things can be shown to have what are widely considered to be deleterious affects upon society. This is why the left is dangerous. They place an artificial ideal above personal morality. It is OK to oppress one group to achieve the greater good. It is OK to lie cheat and steal to win an election because they’re ideology is superior and tells them they are moral people regardless of what the unenlightened would see as a crime.
Without an absolute arbiter of morality there is no should or should not but only can I get away with it. Without a moral code that comes from beyond our own experience there is no standard to measure goodness, right and wrong or righteousness. You can’t even be a subjectivist because you can have no valid scale to evaluate circumstances.
Here is what the secularist is really saying.
If all there is is what happens and there is no morality then all people are equally moral.
That is a world where Hitler, Mao, Ted Bundy and the gun wielding nut jobs at Columbine HS are just as moral as anyone else. That is the only way you can be moral in a world without moral absolutes
I put my soapbox back in the drawer and go back to work
So without God what exactly is a moral life?
Seriously, a male animal copulates with every female that will have him, is that immoral. No.
What about animals that kill each other (same species) for dominance or territory? No, that’s OK.
So, by and large, its flattering that atheists pick Christian morals, but what does that show you?
No.
But you can't be good with God either as a fallen human.
Jesus said flat out, "there is none good but God." We do our best and humbly ask His forgiveness for where we fail.
Because He is good He forgives us.
Now can you do something good without God? Yes. But that is quite different then being good.
However, you can't be saved without Him ...
It all depends on what’s true objectively.
If God doesn’t exist, you can be good, but only in a relative or subjective sense so in this scenario goodness is only a figment of your imagination.
If God exists, then without God you can be good but only in an eartly sense. Ultimately, the source of all goodness will judge you to be not good.
it depends on who is defining what “good” is.
from God’s perspective, none of us in ourselves is good. the human heart is evil. we are naturally inclined to do bad. we don’t have to teach kids to be bad, we spend a huge amont of time teaching them to be good.
for atheists with no objective moral absolutes, ‘good’ is relative and subjective, so for them, self-definijg what good isto them, they would say yes.
Being “good” especially in one’s own eyes is the biggest barrier to having a relationship with God.
And that is that, after all, G-d really does exist. Derekh 'Eretz, Dina' deMalkhuta' Dina', learning from the animals, are all ultimately valid because of G-d. If (chas vechalilah) there were no G-d, none of these would have any validity or meaning whatsoever. So even with a natural, rational, or intuited morality, the ultimate authority remains G-d, so that both "independent morality" and Theonomic Positivism both are ultimately the same thing.
This is another reason I think we need to cut out the appeals to rational or instinctual morality at this time and remind the world that without the objective existence of G-d there is no morality of any kind . . . even the kind that "makes sense" to us.
Thanks, I’m going to stick with my belief system, it has worked in my life.
I don’t really believe that anyone knows exactly what anyone must do to go anywhere.
You might believe that you know, and you may well also be right, but what it is is a belief.
I submit that one can, indeed, be moral and ethical withoug God, but only if one lives in a society that got its moral and ethical composition from its Religious foundation. The Atheist has to have some entity or background on which to determine what is moral and ethical. Religion is the only source. Philosophy in a society without a JudaeoChristian or Buddhist basis may determine the ethos of the philosopher himself and influence some of his adherents but that is a tiny group and their actual practice will be modified for survival and comfort in society as it is. Socrates could drink the hemlock. His disciples did not. If there is no Universal Source for morality, there is not measure by which to determine what is moral and one believes that what one does that appears to benefit himself is morality.
Once you remove God, The definition of good becomes fluid.
Moral by Judeo-Christian standards?
Moral according to the perennial philosophy.
Apart from a transcendent God there can be no objective morality. Only personal preference and social convention - both of which can and do change with the wind.
Why can there not be an innate human understanding of morality—whether or not individuals also transgress or rationalize otherwise?
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