Posted on 01/29/2014 4:37:11 PM PST by NYer
Atheists and agnostics like to claim that religion or belief in God isn’t necessary for living a moral life. “I can be a good person without God,” they say. Some go a step further and try to build a case for why they can be even better people without God. For example, they might claim that whereas theists are concerned about obeying religious commands that will get them into a heavenly afterlife, unbelievers are able to apply all their energies to making this world a better place.
In a certain sense, it’s correct to say that one can be a good person without God. History demonstrates this. Classical Western culture, which did not have divine revelation or formal religion, held up natural virtue as the highest goal. Confucianism lays out a sophisticated moral code without a supreme being.
That said, I think a strong case could be made that it’s both easier and more logical to live a truly moral life as a religious believer than as an unbeliever. If you ever find yourself challenged by an atheist with the “good person” argument, here are four reasons that might help your answer.
1. God Grounds the Good
What is the measure of morality? How do we know right from wrong—and thus what it means to be a “good person” rather than a “bad person”?
Without God, or something like God that is both authoritative and transcendent, we can only point to society’s definition or morality, or to our own personal code.
The problem with this? Society’s definition of morality changes, and sometimes it’s obviously wrong—think of Nazi Germany or the slave-state South. And our own personal moral codes are even more fickle, variable, and subject to error. To say, “I’m a good person because I’m living my personal moral code” is dangerously close to saying, “I’m living the way I want to live.” Is that morality?
Believers, on the other hand, have a standard outside themselves: authoritative and unchanging. God and his moral laws—whether positive laws (specific divine commandments) or the natural laws that originate with him—are the best and most reasonable basis for determining what it means to be a good person in the first place.
2. An Eternal Perspective
I mentioned before how some non-theists argue that belief in the afterlife leads to neglect of this life, but I think they have it backwards. Because believers see eternal consequences for their actions (Matt. 21:35-46), it heightens the moral drama of this world immeasurably. Just on the face of it, without any further information, who would you expect to take his moral conduct more seriously:
The person who thinks his everlasting destiny—and perhaps the destiny of others—depends on his living an upright life not only in deed but in word and thought?
Or the person who thinks that his life will end with the death of his body; that there will be neither reward nor reckoning for how he lives it? And that whatever good (or evil) he does to others will be but a momentary gesture, bringing nothing more than a flicker of comfort or annoyance in an absurd and ultimately pointless existence?
Unbelievers can try to gin up some home-cooked earthly motivation for living a moral code, even though its benefits are entirely confined to this life. But the believer’s eternal perspective so powerfully raises the stakes for being a “good person,” and thus the motivation, that it must make it easier to accomplish.
3. True Humanism
This next reason is related to the last one. A big part of morality, especially for unbelievers (who are generally less concerned about the morality of actions that don’t directly affect others), is doing good for our fellow man. Some would even say that unbelievers are nicer to other people on earth because they they’re not all preoccupied with pleasing an imaginary person in the sky.
But for an atheist, this humanistic impulse rests on pretty shaky ground. Why be nice, or good, or loving, or charitable, to other people? What’s so special about them?
Some will shrug their shoulders and say it doesn’t matter. They just think we should. It feels right. Others will try to argue that charity towards others is actually in our self-interest: either because it eventually will rebound our way like karma, or because it just makes us feel good about ourselves.
But what about when it doesn’t feel right? What if the other person is a jerk? What if being good to another clearly inconveniences us or even harms us? Why should we do it then? The unbeliever has no answer.
The believer does. Theism provides a foundation for authentic humanism. We are to love one another not only because God commands it, but because it’s just—because God made those other people, and keeps them in being, and loves them, and thereby infuses them with their own value. How can the even boldest secular humanists in history compete with that glorious vision of mankind?
4. Got Grace
If there’s a more universal constant in human experience than sin, I don’t know what it is. Believers and unbelievers all know what it’s like to know what is right but to do the opposite anyway (Rom. 7:22-23).
To what do unbelievers appeal in this unhappy circumstance? All they have is themselves—which is the problem in the first place. Yes, some extraordinary people are able to go quite far on natural virtue alone, but they’re an exception. The rest lie on analysts’ couches and crowd self-help seminars desperate for some natural key to improvement. Or they despair.
Even if there were no God, I think that even the idea of divine help is… helpful. Believing that we’re not on our own, that with enough faith and practice and perseverance we can overcome sin, because we have access to spiritual energy outside of ourselves, can only aid us in our quest to be good people.
So even if belief in God were just a moral crutch, it would be a handy and effective crutch. But most theists think it’s more than a crutch. We believe that God not only sets out the moral law and tells us to obey, but gives us the power to obey it—what we call actual grace. We’re able to transcend merely natural virtue, go beyond all that we have to give by our own power, because God gives us his power.
That power perfects our natural virtue, making us better people than we could otherwise have hoped to be. Better still, it enkindles in us supernatural virtue, moving us from being good people to a moral state nonbelievers cannot attain: holiness.
"Perennial philosophy" - what is that and what makes it objective?
Now you are back to God - if it's "innate" then its either of divine origion or just subjective desire which can and does differ from person to person. If it's just some form of Darwinian survival mechanism then it holds no authority once it is recognized as such.
Pick any church at random out of the phone book and you will find people whom regularly consider themselves members that fit your description to a T.
It’s in essence Huxley’s theory at there is a core of common ethical principles taught by virtually all religions, with the implication that they thus arise from something universal whether in Man or God.
Just, appropriately to this thread, playing Devil’s Advocate here with you.
But say it is of evolutionary cause. Innate in the way that other species have common, universal traits such that humans nearly universally recognize the same components of morality. If it leads to a persistent consensus of what is moral behavior, why would that necessarily be lacking in authority?
I see that as powerful evidence of a God, in which case this core is objective truth and a reflection of Divine law. If they are just an evolutionary survival mechanism then there is nothing objectively "good" or "bad" about them at all and I have no "moral" obligation to follow them to the extent they interfere with my enjoyment of my brief time in this world. Pragmatism is not an objective foundation for moralilty. Again, there can be no objective basis for ethics apart from a transcendent God.
But if all of society just innately ‘feels’ or ‘reasons’ that the same morals are good and right, why does there need to be some transcendent God decreeing it so—and why is such an external decree necessary?
Becasue if "everyone" "feels" this way it is either becasue a transcendent God put that feelilng there (which means consequences for disobedience) or it is merely an evolutionary survival characteristic. If it is merely an evolutionary social survival characteristic there would be no objective reason for any given individual to agree or feel bound that this feeling was "right" or "good". Why should anyone let others "feelings" interfere with maximizing their enjoyment of their very short life. If lying, stealing, killing and raping are what maximizes my enjoyment of life what would make that "wrong" regardless of how others "feel"? The big fish eat the little fish. It is what it is - whatever is, is right. Certainly "reason" can't lead to ethics because there are often very logical, rational reasons to do what others don't like in order to achieve your goals. If there is no God there there are only two laws:
1. Do as thou wilt; and
2. Avoid negitive consequences (ie. don't get caught)
But if 1) individuals internally sense the same right and wrong, 2) society altogether agrees to same, and 3) laws reinforced the same right and wrong that’s pretty overwhelming. Arguably, the first circumstance is by definition the strongest basis for people to believe what’s right—that is, they innately believe such, so don’t need any outside authority.
That is different from how you try to twist it to be that individuals experience such belief as an arbitrary choice. That is not how most people experience right and wrong—and it is also not how Huxley’s theory explains it.
That must be correct but it avoids accountability.
When has every individual in society ever "agreed to the same"? If morality is merely based on social convention there is no objective reason to accept it or follow it if inconvenient. If it is merely a "feeling" and not objective then there is no reason whatsoever not to just disregard it as a useless appendage. Which is exactly what we see happen in every society that rejects God. Why? Because without God there is no basis for any objective morality. What you are describing always leads to either anarchy or dictatorship as we have seen repeatedly throughout history. Without an acknowledgment of God, man will discard and redefine at will that internal sense of right and wrong for personal pursuits, every time.
... if men are so wicked with religion, what would they be if without it?" - Benjamin Franklin's advice to Thomas Paine regarding The Age of Reason
"Life without God is like an unsharpened pencil - it has no point." Church Sign, Hughesville Baptist Church
Again, you are missing that an internal sense of objective morality obviates the need for some external authority to decree that same morality. After all, a belief that God decrees the same morals only serves to create an internal sense of objective morality.
And I think you’re in dangerous waters claiming that only societies that believe in God as you believe God to be can be and historically have been moral. Many Buddhist cultures have been highly moral, as arguably are many current, atheistic European countries. (Yes, I realize that those who decide that pro-abortion societies aren’t moral limit the number of cultures that would be considered moral—including our own.)
Can You Be Good Without God?
Sure. All sorts of good things are done by nonbelievers.
Good enough for God?
No.
It doesn't obviate the need for some external authority it proves it. Where does that "internal sense" come from? If it is just a evolutionary appendage the it isn't objective it is merely relative and can be discarded as there is no truth behind it. Without God it isn't objectively true.
"And I think you’re in dangerous waters claiming that only societies that believe in God as you believe God to be can be and historically have been moral."
I never said anything like "as I believe in God". I merely say that without a transcendent God there is no basis for objective morality. Without a trasncendant God the word "moralilty" loses all objectivity and becomes meaningless relativism, it becomes merely personal preference or social convention.
"Many Buddhist cultures have been highly moral, as arguably are many current, atheistic European countries."
"Moral" based on what? What defines "moral" in this context? What is the standard? What makes these societies any more "moral" than Nazi Germany or the Reign of Terror in 1796 France? Apart from a transcendent God the word "moral" becomes nothing more than a relativistic social construct which can and does change with the wind.
Do you know why that is? Not ALL people attending or visiting a church are saved. You will find people there. Flawed, hypocritical people there.
BUT, they do not change or invalidate who God is, nor do they change or invalidate His word.
Statements like yours are a dime a dozen, often used to explain the excuse of not going to church or believeing in God.
Choose that at your own peril.
Look at society today, it’s ‘moral changes’ in the last 50 years and you tell me. Let that answer your question.
Now, nobody is claiming that their religious beliefs caused these people to be criminals. The point is, religion did nothing to dissuade them from it. If you're a thug who finds religion, all you get is a thug with a crucifix around his neck.
People are what they are. A decent, honest person will be decent whether he's an atheist or a born-again Christian. A thug and a crook will be a thug and crook whatever his beliefs.
I think part of Christian teaching is that we always are fallen sinners. That that is the case today doesn’t tell me especially much.
As well, today many devout, Allah-believing Muslims are, at least by my estimation, the farthest off a virtuous path of all.
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