“...No one ever satisfactorily proved to me that Morality can exist without God. Ayn Rand wasn’t able to do it. ...”
What -is- the best argument to make, to show that morality -can’t- exist without God?
I get bombarded with statements from people that ‘one can be moral, without being religious’.
“What -is- the best argument to make, to show that morality -can’t- exist without God?”
I cannot answer you. I know that I read what I could find on Ayn Rand’s “Objectivism”, in which she essentially tries to argue that it can, and was not convinced. Objective Truth, Reality, is not Morality, nor does it imply its existence as it seemed she was trying to argue. On one side of the Universe lions eat Christians and on the other side of the Universe Christians eat lions. What does it mean? Nothing.
“one can be moral, without being religious”
How can that be? Would it be by accident? A code of morality would simply be emblazoned in their heart at birth? I would probably call that a miracle, but that would just open another can of worms.
Probably, these aren’t very good arguments, but then FR is probably not the best place to ask.
OF COURSE one can be “moral without being religious.” The real question is “why one would be ‘moral’ when in truth there is no such thing as objective morality?”
Without God, all so called “morality” is mere subjectivism, and thus arbitrary. There is no reference point and in fact no scale of morality where anything can be defined as “good” or “bad” at all. What is, simply is.
It is a silly silly silly thing to define “good” as “survival” or any other element of flapdoodle that materialists try to conjure up as “good”.... Destruction, suffering and despair might easily be defined as good, or utter subjugation of others for personal peace might also and there is no standard to say “no, this is wrong.”
Yet humanity IS moral. My question is “why?” I can see only two possibilities: 1) it is utterly insane and irrational, a belief in something that cannot, by definition, exist or 2) the human race really IS in the image of God and thus cannot be anything but moral.
We are in fact constantly evaluating others behavior (and ourselves as well, though always less stringently :) ) and comparing it to a standard we “should” live up to. In fact, every argument humans have refers to an unspoken universal standard that SHOULD be binding on both of us. We may not even agree on what that is, but we are always damned sure that one exists, and argue vociferously over it.
Wnen once asks for “evidence” of God in this case, I have to smile, as the presupposition of morality itself is one of the most powerful arguments for God.
Anyway, Ayn Rand (whom I have read pretty thoroughly) is in fact what I call “Nietzsche for Dummies.” She starts with utter irrationality and moral nothingness and attempts to subjugate both by stamping her feet and yelling.
She wound up with pretty good results, but reminds me of a drunk looking for the porno parlor who stumbles into an AA meeting in the church basement instead. Wound up in the right place, but God alone knows how she got there. Logical positivism is a rational trainwreck.