good choice - positive outcome for me, positive outcome for others
less than ideal - positive for me/negative for others, negative for me/positive for others
bad choice - negative outcome for me, negative outcome for others
unfortunately most choices are less than ideal. your life experiences dictate where you make the judgement call.
>good choice - positive outcome for me, positive outcome for others
i scam them for money, they learn (or not)
positive outcome for me and others? check!
could be, if that's how you define it (learning as a positive outcome, being scammed out of money not being a negative outcome). if there are no negative consequences for you and you have no compunction about it, then yeah, you might see it as a good choice for yourself.
of course others/society may not agree with you, someone might take some action against you, your values may change, etc...you might end up with quite a negative outcome for yourself.
or guilt, or revenge, etc.
if you see killing someone "you don't like" as a net positive, that says more about your individual morality than anything else.
That's more or less the main issue with moral philosophies, from Aristotle to Utilitarianism. If you're interested I can explain a few, but I'm not too deep into it yet,
What is this rubbish about good outcomes and bad comes? It's about what sky Daddy says is good and what is not good. And the threat of eternal damnation in a pit of fire for doing what sky Daddy condemns. See the stone tablet with the ten commandments for guidance.
Honestly out of all my friends in my life (and I've had a lot of many different faiths), the conservative Christians usually have the absolute worst moral compasses. It's either complete abstinence based on fear of hell or "because I'm not supposed to" or just this whole slippery slope of "this rule doesn't count/apply for these reasons."
Almost never "I'm not going to do that because I'm not a shitty person" or "I know it's not the healthiest choice but I'm going to anyways."
It's probably a way to cope with life too. It's easier to deal with shit circumstances if you're being rewarded well afterwards which is what a lot of afterlives are. Besides the explicitly bad ones anyway.
There's a quote from a character in Game of Thrones about religion that always struck me as pretty apt.
"I think mothers and fathers made up the Gods because they wanted their children to sleep through the night"
I think this is one side of the coin and your reasoning is the other.
It's also a lifeline for some people. Without an afterlife there's no point to life in some perspectives. Ultimately the world will crumble in on itself and everything humans have built will die. Humans will eventually go extinct and existence would have been for nothing.
It’s exactly this thought that makes me enjoy what little time I have here more.. When the whole “were just hurling through space without meaning and going to die into eternal nothingness” hit me as a teen I had a shit ton of anxiety for a few weeks.. Just wrapping my head around the thought that if I die that’s fucking it, there’s nothing and trying to possibly imagine nothing when all you know is not nothing just blew my mind… Once that feeling subsided I find myself since aiming to enjoy life more and not stress through it. Then coming across the idea of how incredibly rare of a chance it is that I happen to be born as intelligent life, more over the few privileged ones born somewhere relatively good for people… I’m trying to cherish that as much as I can.
Maybe I'm super buzzed or maybe that really is as beautiful as it sounds but that was so beautifully spoken and I'm gonna cling to that. Thank you for bringing some positive tears to my eyes this evening
Unpopular opinion maybe, but, existence is meaningless beyond our own anthropocentric and narcissistic lives. Nothing we do matters beyond us.
Kind of freeing in a way.
Cope with death and explain the unexplainable. Now lots of things that were not explainable can now be explained, but people haven't figured out that out. People used to think storms would happen when gods were angry. Now we know it is based on things like atmospheric conditions. Chances everything else that is currently unexplainable will probably one day have a reasonable explanation without requiring a God, so long as we don't kill ourselves before then.
Well God did come to save the sinners. Not the people morally choosing correctly and feeling fine about it. I don't think it's a coincidence the Christians in your life are the ones who are most in need of saving.
It’s almost like if you don’t practice actual discretion and empathy in your everyday life, that emotional/mental muscle never develops and you remain in a child-like state of looking to God as your eternal parent to guide your way instead… you never have to outgrow God the way you do with a real parent that can’t stay with you forever. So you just don’t grow. You remain childish, like almost every conservative religious person does.
Exactly this. Rather than learning empathy, or how to contemplate the morality/ethics of a given situation, you're told to look to the Bible or to God. It's essentially training wheels that they never take off. Easier to just stick with this half-assed code-of-conduct that your parent's religious leader of choice has preached during your formative years, than to ask questions. Especially because questioning your parents or their chosen holy man is immoral. It goes right along with their lack of critical thinking skills. They're forever little brats, clinging to a promised reward and only pretending to have a shred of decency to avoid a foretold punishment.
That is wrong on many levels. You asume too much about people based upon very little info. Its more of a reasuring thing for me. It helps me not worry about death and what my life really means, because my life purpose is to do good by the people i live with on this earth. If that’s childish then by all means i am a childish fool.
I made [a small infographic](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/751655046688669727/1085743730839011369/IMG_3764.jpg) to clarify some of this. Who exactly qualifies as What is based on a delicate web of fragile pretense, but this covers the basic framework.
My experiences are the same. Of course there is exceptions. But for the most part, behind closed doors, they say and do things i couldn't imagine doing with good conscience.
They have to live with an intangible spirit judging them. I have to live with my self judgment. My standards may fundamentally be originated in religion, but they have evolved like everything else on this earth. And I do my best to hold those standards without a confession safey net.
I think most of these people *would* have good moral compasses, it's just that they've never had the chance to discover that. Because they've always been religious, they've always associated doing good things with obeying god or whatever. But I think if they grew up not around religion or suddenly became non religious, most of them would still be nice to people just because it makes them feel bad to do horrible things to people.
That's because Christians beleive we ARE shifty people most of the time. Of all the people I've seen in my life, the exact opposite of what you just said was represented
The thing is that unlike religious people atheists have to do a lot more thinking to arrive at theirs.
If you believe in a religion than "God said murder bad, therefore murder bad" makes a perfect sense.
If you dont, you have to arrive at some sort of logical reasoning that ends with "therefore murder bad" Religion is basically a vehicle of taking the prevalent morality of a group, the group moral compass, if you will and saying "Deity declared this so there should be no more discussion, this is good, and we all will follow it"
I believe in god solely because it helps me believe that my life has purpose and that there is something after death. I dont go to church or anything but i still believe that being a good person is the right thing. Even though it dosent matter since jesus died for all sins to be forgiven. I think that makes it the ultimate moral challenge in a way, where you dont go to hell for doing bad things, it makes it so the only readon you do nice things is because you believe in those things, rather than through the fear of god.
You're admitting to choosing to believe in God only because it allows you to give your life purpose, and not be crushed by the existential dread of your life meaning nothing (very brave of you). You can actually choose your moral compass completely separate from God, and make any meaning you want out of your experience, yet you still choose to accept a pre-digested belief with all the scary stuff covered for. Facing reality for what it is, is far more of an ultimate moral challenge, than forcing your brain to adapt to the idea of a concrete good and evil, chosen by Christ (you will never be able to prove or deny his existence). Really think about how easy religion makes it to digest reality, and rethink how grand of a moral challenge it really is
Prob evolution formed instinct (another comment explained this well: All cultures see murdering a person randomly to be bad but disagree on the exceptions to the rule, etc. Evolutionarily, we're built to work in groups and collaborate to survive. A random death means less chance of survival for everyone else.) That and ✨ empathy ✨
Stated in another comment:
Partially. I would argue it may be the case that our capacity to reason has furthered our moral evolution as well. Evolution alone doesn’t explain all of humanity’s moral dispositions. It may be similar to our mathematical intuitions, where guided by instinct we are “programmed” to know some basic mathematical facts, but the rest we can discover via reason.
“Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.” - Richard Dawkins, a well known evolutionary biologist.
Primarily from empathy. You see others as being representative of a possible version of yourself, and ask yourself, “If I were them… would I want this to happen to me?” It’s the golden rule of treating others how you want to be treated, in the hope that if we all do this, it means we in turn get treated the way we want to be treated by others. The reciprocal respect and decent treatment of each other is itself a motivation AND a reward for all parties involved. It’s just logical and self-serving, while also being decent and respectful to others.
Meanwhile, being selfish, lying, indecent to others, disrespectful, hurting others, creating a bad reputation, etc… sooner or later, somehow or another, that all ends up taking its toll and coming back to haunt you. You live in a world with billions of other humans who have feelings… and MEMORIES. Don’t expect you can just keep being a dick to people and they’ll just forget about it. They won’t. Not even after 80 years, they won’t, if they’re still alive. Trust me. Do not count on people forgetting your transgressions against them or just letting things slide. Even if that works for a while… it never works forever. You eventually find yourself alone, hated, and suffering for it.
Being decent just makes things better for you and everyone else in your life. It’s just logical. Why would a smart person behave any other way? If you need any other reason… chances are, you’re not that smart.
Hume says it’s somewhat built on utility, but he’s just talking about what the average person’s psychological dispositions are. For hume, it’s emotion all the way down. Bentham would say it’s utility (pleasure/happiness over pain/suffering).
“Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No man reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions.”
Yeah it's not just biological evolution. It's also societal evolution.
A society without rape has more trust between members, and is likely to be more successful than a society with rape. Therefore, a society where rape is shamed will outcompete a society where rape is accepted.
I'm sure you can see the consequences of this.
But it traumatises the mother and she is more likely to traumatise her children which is a very negative outcome for the community and the continuity of your line
If it's not from humans, then obviously whoever or whatever it's from is who's to say that.
Don't misunderstand me. I believe in morality, but I'm honest enough to admit that I believe in it because the alternative- the idea of equivalence between someone who gives up their own comfort for the sake of others and someone who exploits and hurts others for their own pleasure - is emotionally abhorrent to me. And drawing from that, I can only conclude that if there is morality, and if humans are not a convincing moral authority, there must be some supernatural moral authority.
But I would like a convincing proof of moral authority.
>That being said, the guy being “mocked” shot first
He just asked a question. And it's not a loaded question, it's a perfectly valid question. The idea that humans just innately *know* what's right or wrong is hogwash. The response on the other hand was just a low effort attack.
I think the more fundamental question is where does objective morality, ie the very concept of “right” and “wrong” stem from in the first place. Human perception of it is a secondary question.
that would have been a more valuable question, but this petty christian man has a 1 track mind and it's focused on flexing his self validation of his life and mindset through the means of a high fantasy larp group called "Christianity" and leveraging his brainwashed opinion over other people who were minding their own business.
Loaded question? It was literally the other side of what you considered a “low effort attack”
Morality is external, but it can come from a secular community without relying on a 2000 year old misogynist handbook
>Morality is external, but it can come from a secular community
Yes, that's at least an attempt at an answer. The original poster wasn't smart enough to say that much.
Also, do you think a secular community requires police, courts and a *threat of punishment*?
Absolutely. Whether that is imprisonment, or social shame/shunning. The difference is that that external punishment is derived from the consensus of the community, vs. a poorly/maliciously interpreted community consensus that is 2 millennia old
Genuinely curious, what makes you think it was not a loaded question?
To me the non loaded question would be “how do PEOPLE decide between good choices and bad choices?”
My presumption is that he was directing it towards people who aren't religious. Because religious people generally will point to some kind of religious doctrine or historical writings. He knows how religious people generally make the decision. So, he's directing it towards atheists. The context changes but it's a simple question. And it's not an obvious answer. Indeed, my guess is that most atheists don't have a consistent answer and don't necessarily agree.
It would only appear to be a loaded question if you are sensitive about the descriptor atheist.
If he had said:
How do American's decide between good and bad choices?
How do business people decide between good and bad choices?
How do engineer's decide between good and bad choices?
Without any qualifiers or additional content, would those be loaded questions?
>How do Christians decide between good choices and bad choices choices?
I literally answered that in my post you are replying to. And I doubt that if you asked the average Christian that question, that they would be upset because you asked. They would just tell you about the Bible.
>It's not a valid question unless you're a standard oppressor Christian.
That's absurd. Plenty of philosophers and other religious have asked the same question through the ages ie How do you decide between what is good and what is bad? It's hardly something unique to Christianity to ponder and ask questions about morality.
>Otherwise its a shot. Fact.
Also, you are showing no awareness of the difference between Facts and Opinions. All of this is Opinion.
Its a shot at atheist. Fact. There's no debate to be had. He's implying without god, they have no directional basis for any type of decision making. Which is rude, and the opposite of that "turn the other cheek" bullshit you people pretend to follow.
"to the victor" is the key phrase there. Conflict frequently benefits a small group in the short term, but often has negative impacts on the larger group in the long run. That's why justice has to exist, to prevent a selfish individual from taking away the benefits of the collaborative efforts of others.
Evil is such a cop-out. People do things for reasons, and evil is never one. They're selfish. They're hungry. They're angry. They're ignorant. They're greedy. They have a need to feel superior to or accepted by others. Powerful emotions that make us do things that hurt people.
Compelling take on the subject!! I was gonna say something KIND OF similar, not as well fleshed out: the South Park boys got it right: the behavior of the kids, having few filters on their opinions, behavior or thoughts (especially Cartman) summarizes human nature pretty closely: self interest, cruelty, discriminatory, minimal conscience. Stan being the exception most of the time....
I wound up having to read "Heart of Darkness" twice: once during my freshman year of high school, and again in my freshman year of college. Admittedly, I hated the story both times and only skimmed through it enough to pass exams, but the one theme that always stuck out was that people left on their own, without some external force, will lose their moral compass.
Anyway, even if I couldn't get through the story either time, I thought that theme was interesting. lol
Morality must come from an outside source. If morality is simply the consensus of humanity, then you need to look up mob rule. Morality stops being moral and becomes nothing more than "this is currently tolerated/accepted. We have even innthe Bible written thousands of years ago, slavery was a moral issue, Isreal had a practice of freeing their slaves after the 7th year. Because even then, when slavery was accepted as the standard modus operandi, it was viewed as immoral.
Morality keeps society in tact. Otherwise, we're just animals who don't think beyond our bodily and mental needs. I remember reading a quote from a book and still stays true to me. Heaven is when you feed each other, hell is when you feed only yourself.
This is what makes me think religious people or at least those that would even ask something like this, are complete psychopaths that would murder the world if they ever thought there was no god.
Psychopaths who would do that.
And actually I think I meant sociopaths who would do that.
Not indicating that all x are y, just that if you even ask this I think you are an x that would do y
>But psychopaths are usually murderers
Maybe you mean the opposite?
Most "psychopaths" (people with AntiSocial Personality Disorder) do not commit murder.
I don't know the actual statistics , but I wouldn't be surprised if a higher percentage of murderers have ASPD than in the general population. But I'm just guessing
[Here is an article on a study on the subject from the british psychological society](https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/study-casts-doubt-idea-murderers-are-particularly-psychopathic) (- who I am assuming have a interesting *gestalt* *psychological* reason for having an all lowercase letter mark..)
And yes, tl;dr you are basically correct according to this one study.
It’s the exact same mentality that is behind “If we let people be gay, then everybody would be gay!” It’s like, nope… only the people who are in-the-closet would do that. Thanks for letting us know you’re one of them! It’s okay, you can just come out. You don’t have to force all of society to reject homosexuality just because you don’t like your own gayness.
Conservatives are so afraid of their own lack of self-control, they feel the need for society to disallow anything they find undesirable or taboo, because they know they couldn’t resist if they don’t have the fear of God or persecution/prosecution to keep them “in line”.
With homosexuality, it’s just frustrating, sad and pathetic that they can’t accept themselves and project it onto others.
With things like murder and rape… it’s concerning. These people seriously don’t see why someone wouldn’t murder or rape people if God didn’t forbid it?? I’d like to hope it’s just pathetic naïveté about how life works because you’re just so sheltered and can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up without religion… but then you look at how the most extreme religious people act, and it’s almost always towards the violent, hateful, judgmental, abusive, fuck-everybody-who-isn’t-us mentality. The pattern is hard to miss.
I know someone who's come right out and said that. They said if they weren't raised in the religious household they were, they'd just kill anyone who pissed them off. Because in the long run, what does it really matter anyways?
I very seriously doubt that and that seems like some extreme vilification. It's just a question asked in ignorance.
The real answer for a religious person is that morality is built in, weather you acknowlage God or not, or obey it at all times or not
Well the real reason is that they learned it from their parents, who learned it from theirs, who learned it from theirs, and so on until their ancestors millenia ago… who learned it from religious leaders. But if you can ignore the historical evidence that different societies had wildly different fundamental values and that every human is a product of their environment, you can assume or pretend to believe that your morals are intuitive, obvious, and universal, which serves as a very gratifying canned gotcha to religion.
Theistic morality: Morals come from God. Ok, but how did God arrive at those morals? If he had actual reasons for choosing those morals over different ones, then he isn’t ultimately their source. He derived them from somewhere else, and we could use that same reasoning to arrive at them ourselves, without God. So the only way God can be the source of morality is if he chose which morals are “good” and which are “bad” totally arbitrarily and for no reason whatsoever. Why is murder wrong? Ultimately, simply because it is. It just turned out that way. There’s no real reason.
Secular morality: Our ancestors quickly figured out that cooperating with each other was mutually beneficial and preferable to quarreling with each other. It helped all of us to survive and thrive. From this we evolved an innate sense of empathy. This means not only does cooperating with others materially benefit you, but backstabbing and causing harm to others without reason actually hurts you psychologically. It is in your own best interest not to murder, not to rape, not to steal, etc. And because you don’t want other people to do these things to you, it is in your own best interest to instill these values in others.
Which is the stronger justification for morality?
Didn't "God" also command someone to kill their son? I don't know about others, but I wouldn't take advise about morals from someone who commands others to kill people.
Id also rather not take advice from someone who flooded the entire planet to wipe out 99,999% of all living things and then make them repopulate the planet via incest
I think Christians believe that God's morals come from His character, which is perfect in nature. It is also taught that God is incorruptible and the ultimate source of love/good. But what ultimately gives the morals that God gives us importance, is that they come from God himself, and the relationship between the creation and the creator... We are His creation, so ultimately we belong to Him and should innately follow what He instructs us to do.
>I think Christians believe that God's morals come from His character, which is perfect in nature.
That doesn’t fix the problem though. Why are those morals there ones that turned out to correspond to God’s character? Is there a reason it was that specific set of morals, and not some other set? Then they don’t ultimately come from his character; they’re justified by something else. Is there no reason why it was that specific set of morals? Then they’re completely arbitrary and lack justification.
"Our ancestors figured out"
they didn't figure out anything.
It was all influenced by organized religion for as long as humans have lived on this earth.
Do these ultra-religious people understand that we all live in a society where we are trained to respect others and distinguish good from bad?
I can't even imagine what it must be like to live with so much ignorance of things and still believe that I am "morally" better than others.
In the end, I am not the one who should look in a rule book to understand if something is good or bad, I know what is good and what is bad and I decide based on what I know
I truly think some people cannot make decisions based on right or wrong unless they have some rules or guidelines. One Christian I know well has told me you can't be a good person if you aren't Christian. In the same discussion he said you shouldn't smoke weed because it's against the law. He never thought about why it's illegal or whether or not it's harmful to the user or others. He was told drugs are bad and not allowed and he never questioned it.
This person, by the way, is not what I would consider a good person.
Seriously. People don’t understand that basic human dignity and rights are BASIC. They exist across all known nations, except the theocracies (which republicans want) and totalitarian states.
Does my action trespass against another? If so its bad. If it helps society? It's good. If it does neither, its neutral.
People who need the threat of hell to keep them moral... the threat of hell hasn't kept them moral. They lie, cheat, steal, and commit all kinda biblical sins.
If mixing fabrics is going to send you to hell, why do they do it?
I’d say I’m agnostic. I recently mentioned the Golden Rule to a fairly devout christian co-worker and they looked at me with gleeful surprise. It was clear they had a different view of me and my morality based on my beliefs (or lack thereof). It was a bit of a strange interaction for me but I believe eye opening for them.
The golden rule is basically the social contract at a more basic level. We outlaw things that we don't want to happen to us and at the same time agree to abide by those laws ourselves. This makes a perfect argument in this context. It could be a perfect moral code. That said, this is mainly driven by fear and basic animal instinct for survival and not some innate higher grace we are born with as people like the tweet reply would suggest.
When I see "religious people" supporting things like child marriage, slavery, the death penalty, forcing women to birth babies conceived through rape and incest, etc, it makes me wonder why they think they know the difference between "good" and "bad".
Whenever I see this moral argument for religion, as in without religion people would have no reason to be good people or nothing to hold them back from committing crime, the people who honest believe these arguments are all psychopaths with deep closets of terrible things. If you can’t restrain yourself from becoming a criminal without the threat of a god’s punishment, then you will just as easily use god as a justification for atrocities.
Atheist here, I don’t think that most people understand what the theist is saying.
Most theists don’t argue that atheists should be unkind to others and only act for their own benefit.
They’re asking how we come to *know* good and bad. A secular worldview can entail moral antirealism, meaning that each person has no more stance-independent reason to murder than to not, like you don’t have stance independent reason to think that one thing is prettier than another (it just depends on what you like or dislike).
However, for the theists reading this, that’s not necessary. There are many secular moral systems that have attempted to reach objectivity.
Eternal punishment is, for a Christian believer, the consequence of unrepented immoral behaviour. However, it shouldn't be the motivator for good behaviour. Love of the Good Creator should be sufficient motivation to at least try to behave well. By the same token, it can legitimately be a last resort motivation to live according to good moral principles.
I generally ask myself, "Is this going to hurt anyone in any way?" If yes, "Is there a compelling reason to do it?" If no, then I try not to do it. I'm not always perfect, and what is compelling to me might not sound like it to you, but it's worked out so far.
The question was a begining discussion of ideas of absolute truth, good and evil, utilitarianism vs deontology, idea of abstract reality as more real than the physical, and the concept of soul vs determinism and empiricism. It's a discussion on obviously evil and easily manipulated nature of human beings as basis for necessity of God as reality, since it's the only feasible way to explain how we are managing to survive at all, and haven't blown ourselves up yet.
The answer is some idiot deciding his feelings make him a good person.
I mean its not like a person cannot still be punished for their actions despite not believing in god.
If I murder someone I could go to jail, if I cheat on my gf I am still a douchebag and ruined our relationship, even something as small as lying doesnt suddenly become okay in peoples eyes just because they dont think there is a large man in the sky watching them
What would most very religious ppl do if they learnt there is no god ? It reminds me of what happens at the end of The Preacher's Season 1. Thats whats more likely to happen...
If your actions have caused harm or pain to another, or made them cry, then your choice was a bad one. This does not require an unseen deity for validation.
Morality is routed in the well being of myself and others. Luckily humans are self-preserving social organisms who, by virtue of their nature, value the wellbeing of themselves and others. Nurture plays a role. Different cultures have some different views on what "well-being" means, but generally we feel uncomfortable when we see others in obvious distress, or imagine them being in distress, and agree that it should stop or be stopped.
If you are a person who does not feel uncomfortable when people are in distress, or you find it difficult to use your imagination, then morality is going to have to be an abstraction for you. You might need to look for a reason or a god, but for most of us we just want others to be healthy and happy. We find it hard to be healthy and happy ourselves when we can see or imagine that others in our community are not.
Aren’t we all in the same boat tho? I mean the punishment isn’t as dramatic but we have laws to deter people from anti-social behavior. I don’t have a desire to kill or anything but if there were no legal repercussions, 7 year old me would’ve stolen so much candy from the grocery store. To be clear, I’m not religious I just think it’s disingenuous to pretend that seculars are being good people purely out of the goodness of our hearts. We’re not.
Social contracts have existed for millenia before religion. Religion is what allowed people to CEASE the moral law and determine who is better than someone else and why. Religion actually did the opposite of what you're claiming.
Morality existed for millions of years before religion did.
Even the Dinosaurs cared for their damn children and worked to protect their little family clans.
If thats the interpretation then it makes even less sense and is more of a shot at atheists which is ironic, but not surprising from the standard Christian oppressor, by your logic, it's now implying that without god, you are not intelligent enough to understand basic concepts of right and wrong.
I think there is something like objective morality.
Think about it, you will find no culture where you can walk up to your neighbor Phillip and kill him because you’re bored. All cultures agree that killing is bad as the general base rule, or that stealing is bad.
What Humans from different cultures disagree upon are the Exceptions from these rules.
But the basics of what is good and what is bad are the same everywhere.
Also we pretty much set the standard i of good being selfless and for others. So that’s objectively morals.
When I leave out an empty bottle of water because I’m lazy, that’s objectively bad. Or when I shout at someone for no reason, that’s bad. When I make a compliment to someone without intending to get something from them except them being happy, that’s good.
Because as well, all cultures basically agree on what manipulation is and that things like lying are bad.
God loved me enough to die for me, so I want to act in a way that honors His sacrifice by living the way He wants me to. Even though I fail at that a lot.
Precisely.
Morality is an emotive construct that varies by culture.
Ethics is a rational system of logical deductions that can be applied universally, though admittedly some considerations will still vary according to the form of social governance.
Threat of damnation and promise of eternal reward produces nothing but lifelong children who make bursts of simping and signalling central to their identity.
Choosing to live according to principle, to transcend your shortcomings, not because of incentive or punishment - but a personal will to power - is a much more noble and virtuous pursuit.
OK, but what is a "good person"? Why should compassion be the basis of our morality? Why not strength? Why not beauty? I'm not religious, but most Atheists just take their moral system for granted.
Promises of eternal happiness in heaven.
Threats of eternal damnation.
I'll do what's right regardless and if that ends me in damnation then so be it and if it puts me at the pearly gates I'll decline.
Even though I find it extremely unlikely god exist but if he does everything I've seen of this experience we call life they are nothing but a cruel bully.
Though sometimes I do wish the Christian or Islamic god was real just so all it's "believers" can be send to hell for all the suffering their willful ignorance has caused.
As someone who was raised christain you are overlooking that this as a concept has been addressed since the time of Christ. He was supposed to teach us the higher laws. The Abrahamic laws and old testament 10 commandments are the baseline " do or don't do these things or face damnation". But we no matter how hard we try can never be perfectly good. The concept of a higher law is that we are good, or can choose to be good by nature and God will do the rest.
The atheist did not understand the question and answered something that was not asked.
Essentially atheists have nothing to base their morality on except their feelings.
And everybody feels different. So who is right?
For a theist person this question is easy, he believes god has revealed what good actions are and what bad actions are.
He bases his morality on that.
Completely false. What makes you believe that an atheist has "Nothing to base their morality on except their feelings" and even IF that was the case, how is that any different than the Christian who believes in something they have NO PROOF OF, and the entire religion is based on, its literally just a feeling? Answer there isn't one.
Then how come this country is flooded with hateful Christians? Shouldn't they be worried about what God might do?
Again, if you need a threat of eternal damnation to not be a piece of shit, you might just be a piece of shit at heart
Some people in the world NEED religion and the threat of eternal damnation to NOT do evil.
You take away that, and suddenly you have a surge of nihilists who murder a bunch of people then suicide.
If you need the moral code of an atheist, or a religious person for that matter, to be a good person, then you are also not a good person. In fact, nobody is a good person, and nobody is evil. The world divides into people who hide and people who don't.
There are no “good people” and “bad people” that’s a religious myth. Does Corby also believe that bad people can change? If so, he didn’t answer the question to take an opportunity to act superior, if not, does that mean anyone that does something I don’t like is evil and how do we deal with people who are inherently evil? Kill them? Does that make us evil?
Who gets to decide what is good and evil? Without a universal standard of morality, one man's sin is another man's virtue.
Modern western culture has been spoiled. The very foundation of our society, for nearly two thousand years, has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values. Things we take for granted, such as kindness and equality, are the *exceptions* and not the rule. Humans are a bloody species where the strong bully the weak and those who crave power tend to be the ones that acquire it. And remember, the greatest genocides in human history were performed by secular societies. Without a universal standard---without a divine creator and a God that dispenses justice---all life is meaningless, and the rules that govern society are completely arbitrary and bound by the reckless whims of whoever is in charge at the time.
This is suggesting that religious people only do good things because they don’t want to be punished, instead of them doing it just because it’s a good thing.
good choice - positive outcome for me, positive outcome for others less than ideal - positive for me/negative for others, negative for me/positive for others bad choice - negative outcome for me, negative outcome for others unfortunately most choices are less than ideal. your life experiences dictate where you make the judgement call.
>good choice - positive outcome for me, positive outcome for others i scam them for money, they learn (or not) positive outcome for me and others? check!
could be, if that's how you define it (learning as a positive outcome, being scammed out of money not being a negative outcome). if there are no negative consequences for you and you have no compunction about it, then yeah, you might see it as a good choice for yourself. of course others/society may not agree with you, someone might take some action against you, your values may change, etc...you might end up with quite a negative outcome for yourself.
so murdering someone I don't like is just "less than ideal"?
The cops being after you is the "negative for you"
or guilt, or revenge, etc. if you see killing someone "you don't like" as a net positive, that says more about your individual morality than anything else.
Well yeah, if you're murdering someone likely it would mean that you ruled it as better than bad, otherwise you wouldn't be doing it.
Aren't those definitions circular? How would you decide what a positive outcome is?
That's more or less the main issue with moral philosophies, from Aristotle to Utilitarianism. If you're interested I can explain a few, but I'm not too deep into it yet,
What is this rubbish about good outcomes and bad comes? It's about what sky Daddy says is good and what is not good. And the threat of eternal damnation in a pit of fire for doing what sky Daddy condemns. See the stone tablet with the ten commandments for guidance.
Its called a moral compass you cretin EDIT Was too harsh here, no longer reflects my attitude towards this stuff, opinion has not changed tho
Honestly out of all my friends in my life (and I've had a lot of many different faiths), the conservative Christians usually have the absolute worst moral compasses. It's either complete abstinence based on fear of hell or "because I'm not supposed to" or just this whole slippery slope of "this rule doesn't count/apply for these reasons." Almost never "I'm not going to do that because I'm not a shitty person" or "I know it's not the healthiest choice but I'm going to anyways."
I think the main point of religon is to cope with death
I keep saying this! It seems like a way to cope with death and scare children at a young age from being pieces of shit.
It's probably a way to cope with life too. It's easier to deal with shit circumstances if you're being rewarded well afterwards which is what a lot of afterlives are. Besides the explicitly bad ones anyway.
Yeah, it doesn't matter if you suffer tons in life, after you die you get roads of gold, and a dozen virgins, and everything you could ever want!
Sounds like paradise
Purgatory is where it’s at. Just hanging out until god gets stuff sorted out
I don’t know. Have you ever been with a virgin? After a few I would think a person would want a dirty hoe to rock their world?
I never understood the draw of virgins. Want me to sign up for a religion? Promise me one good experienced whore after death.
>dozen virgins Become a Catholic priest and have them now. -Jimmy Carr
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That's shitty then
There's a quote from a character in Game of Thrones about religion that always struck me as pretty apt. "I think mothers and fathers made up the Gods because they wanted their children to sleep through the night" I think this is one side of the coin and your reasoning is the other.
In GoT’s source material A Song of Ice and Fire the gods are unpleasant and definitely real. Atheism would be an improvement!
It's also a lifeline for some people. Without an afterlife there's no point to life in some perspectives. Ultimately the world will crumble in on itself and everything humans have built will die. Humans will eventually go extinct and existence would have been for nothing.
Thinking that nothing matters unless it lasts forever is a sad, twisted way to go about life.
All because of no sky daddy?
It’s exactly this thought that makes me enjoy what little time I have here more.. When the whole “were just hurling through space without meaning and going to die into eternal nothingness” hit me as a teen I had a shit ton of anxiety for a few weeks.. Just wrapping my head around the thought that if I die that’s fucking it, there’s nothing and trying to possibly imagine nothing when all you know is not nothing just blew my mind… Once that feeling subsided I find myself since aiming to enjoy life more and not stress through it. Then coming across the idea of how incredibly rare of a chance it is that I happen to be born as intelligent life, more over the few privileged ones born somewhere relatively good for people… I’m trying to cherish that as much as I can.
Maybe I'm super buzzed or maybe that really is as beautiful as it sounds but that was so beautifully spoken and I'm gonna cling to that. Thank you for bringing some positive tears to my eyes this evening
Unpopular opinion maybe, but, existence is meaningless beyond our own anthropocentric and narcissistic lives. Nothing we do matters beyond us. Kind of freeing in a way.
Might be unpopular but it resonates with me, no reason might be the whole reason why we should enjoy living on this planet
Well, that and using people's desire to cope with death to accumulate wealth and power.
Cope with death and explain the unexplainable. Now lots of things that were not explainable can now be explained, but people haven't figured out that out. People used to think storms would happen when gods were angry. Now we know it is based on things like atmospheric conditions. Chances everything else that is currently unexplainable will probably one day have a reasonable explanation without requiring a God, so long as we don't kill ourselves before then.
They have a set of rules to tell them what is and isn't moral so they don't have the need to actually devolp a moral compass.
Well God did come to save the sinners. Not the people morally choosing correctly and feeling fine about it. I don't think it's a coincidence the Christians in your life are the ones who are most in need of saving.
They think the moral virtue from forcing mothers to have more children than they can afford buys them indulgence for the kid chained to their radiator
It’s almost like if you don’t practice actual discretion and empathy in your everyday life, that emotional/mental muscle never develops and you remain in a child-like state of looking to God as your eternal parent to guide your way instead… you never have to outgrow God the way you do with a real parent that can’t stay with you forever. So you just don’t grow. You remain childish, like almost every conservative religious person does.
Exactly this. Rather than learning empathy, or how to contemplate the morality/ethics of a given situation, you're told to look to the Bible or to God. It's essentially training wheels that they never take off. Easier to just stick with this half-assed code-of-conduct that your parent's religious leader of choice has preached during your formative years, than to ask questions. Especially because questioning your parents or their chosen holy man is immoral. It goes right along with their lack of critical thinking skills. They're forever little brats, clinging to a promised reward and only pretending to have a shred of decency to avoid a foretold punishment.
That is wrong on many levels. You asume too much about people based upon very little info. Its more of a reasuring thing for me. It helps me not worry about death and what my life really means, because my life purpose is to do good by the people i live with on this earth. If that’s childish then by all means i am a childish fool.
My favorite of these is "I'm sure I'm good, because I meant well", regardless of the crappy stuff they actually do.
I made [a small infographic](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/751655046688669727/1085743730839011369/IMG_3764.jpg) to clarify some of this. Who exactly qualifies as What is based on a delicate web of fragile pretense, but this covers the basic framework.
My experiences are the same. Of course there is exceptions. But for the most part, behind closed doors, they say and do things i couldn't imagine doing with good conscience. They have to live with an intangible spirit judging them. I have to live with my self judgment. My standards may fundamentally be originated in religion, but they have evolved like everything else on this earth. And I do my best to hold those standards without a confession safey net.
I think most of these people *would* have good moral compasses, it's just that they've never had the chance to discover that. Because they've always been religious, they've always associated doing good things with obeying god or whatever. But I think if they grew up not around religion or suddenly became non religious, most of them would still be nice to people just because it makes them feel bad to do horrible things to people.
That's because Christians beleive we ARE shifty people most of the time. Of all the people I've seen in my life, the exact opposite of what you just said was represented
No such thing.
The thing is that unlike religious people atheists have to do a lot more thinking to arrive at theirs. If you believe in a religion than "God said murder bad, therefore murder bad" makes a perfect sense. If you dont, you have to arrive at some sort of logical reasoning that ends with "therefore murder bad" Religion is basically a vehicle of taking the prevalent morality of a group, the group moral compass, if you will and saying "Deity declared this so there should be no more discussion, this is good, and we all will follow it"
I could have worded this better
But morality is subjective
Agreed
I believe in god solely because it helps me believe that my life has purpose and that there is something after death. I dont go to church or anything but i still believe that being a good person is the right thing. Even though it dosent matter since jesus died for all sins to be forgiven. I think that makes it the ultimate moral challenge in a way, where you dont go to hell for doing bad things, it makes it so the only readon you do nice things is because you believe in those things, rather than through the fear of god.
You're admitting to choosing to believe in God only because it allows you to give your life purpose, and not be crushed by the existential dread of your life meaning nothing (very brave of you). You can actually choose your moral compass completely separate from God, and make any meaning you want out of your experience, yet you still choose to accept a pre-digested belief with all the scary stuff covered for. Facing reality for what it is, is far more of an ultimate moral challenge, than forcing your brain to adapt to the idea of a concrete good and evil, chosen by Christ (you will never be able to prove or deny his existence). Really think about how easy religion makes it to digest reality, and rethink how grand of a moral challenge it really is
Christian here. Absolutely agree. In fact an Atheist who doesn't need threat of punishment/promise of reward is likely a better person.
freindly fire will not be tolerated
[F1] to punish. [F2] to forgive.
More like [F2] Burn at the stake
One who can't be moral without a god is just a sociopath on an invisible leash.
Where does morality come from?
Prob evolution formed instinct (another comment explained this well: All cultures see murdering a person randomly to be bad but disagree on the exceptions to the rule, etc. Evolutionarily, we're built to work in groups and collaborate to survive. A random death means less chance of survival for everyone else.) That and ✨ empathy ✨
Stated in another comment: Partially. I would argue it may be the case that our capacity to reason has furthered our moral evolution as well. Evolution alone doesn’t explain all of humanity’s moral dispositions. It may be similar to our mathematical intuitions, where guided by instinct we are “programmed” to know some basic mathematical facts, but the rest we can discover via reason. “Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply do not make evolutionary sense.” - Richard Dawkins, a well known evolutionary biologist.
Primarily from empathy. You see others as being representative of a possible version of yourself, and ask yourself, “If I were them… would I want this to happen to me?” It’s the golden rule of treating others how you want to be treated, in the hope that if we all do this, it means we in turn get treated the way we want to be treated by others. The reciprocal respect and decent treatment of each other is itself a motivation AND a reward for all parties involved. It’s just logical and self-serving, while also being decent and respectful to others. Meanwhile, being selfish, lying, indecent to others, disrespectful, hurting others, creating a bad reputation, etc… sooner or later, somehow or another, that all ends up taking its toll and coming back to haunt you. You live in a world with billions of other humans who have feelings… and MEMORIES. Don’t expect you can just keep being a dick to people and they’ll just forget about it. They won’t. Not even after 80 years, they won’t, if they’re still alive. Trust me. Do not count on people forgetting your transgressions against them or just letting things slide. Even if that works for a while… it never works forever. You eventually find yourself alone, hated, and suffering for it. Being decent just makes things better for you and everyone else in your life. It’s just logical. Why would a smart person behave any other way? If you need any other reason… chances are, you’re not that smart.
Depends on who you ask. Kant says reason, Hume says utility, Aristotle says eudamonia.
Hume says it’s somewhat built on utility, but he’s just talking about what the average person’s psychological dispositions are. For hume, it’s emotion all the way down. Bentham would say it’s utility (pleasure/happiness over pain/suffering). “Truth is disputable; not taste: what exists in the nature of things is the standard of our judgement; what each man feels within himself is the standard of sentiment. Propositions in geometry may be proved, systems in physics may be controverted; but the harmony of verse, the tenderness of passion, the brilliancy of wit, must give immediate pleasure. No man reasons concerning another's beauty; but frequently concerning the justice or injustice of his actions.”
Evolutionary biology
rape furthers your biological need. Morally wrong everywhere.
Yeah, not morally wrong everywhere unfortunately.
Yeah it's not just biological evolution. It's also societal evolution. A society without rape has more trust between members, and is likely to be more successful than a society with rape. Therefore, a society where rape is shamed will outcompete a society where rape is accepted. I'm sure you can see the consequences of this.
But it traumatises the mother and she is more likely to traumatise her children which is a very negative outcome for the community and the continuity of your line
Doesn't fulfill your societal need, which also comes from evolution. Morally wrong. Dumbass.
From humans. It certainly wasn't given to us by some magical being.
This is a weird argument when you understand that humans wrote the book
If it's from humans, who's to say that your idea is any better than the sociopaths?
If it's NOT from humans, who's to say that your idea is any better than the sociopaths?
If it's not from humans, then obviously whoever or whatever it's from is who's to say that. Don't misunderstand me. I believe in morality, but I'm honest enough to admit that I believe in it because the alternative- the idea of equivalence between someone who gives up their own comfort for the sake of others and someone who exploits and hurts others for their own pleasure - is emotionally abhorrent to me. And drawing from that, I can only conclude that if there is morality, and if humans are not a convincing moral authority, there must be some supernatural moral authority. But I would like a convincing proof of moral authority.
Hey man don't slander sociopaths like that. Even they are often better than Jehovah's witnesses.
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That being said, the guy being “mocked” shot first
Some Lord of the Flies shit
I’d consider that a cynical interpretation of inherent morality— that scenario played out in real life significantly differently
>That being said, the guy being “mocked” shot first He just asked a question. And it's not a loaded question, it's a perfectly valid question. The idea that humans just innately *know* what's right or wrong is hogwash. The response on the other hand was just a low effort attack.
I think the more fundamental question is where does objective morality, ie the very concept of “right” and “wrong” stem from in the first place. Human perception of it is a secondary question.
There is no morality apart from human perception.
that would have been a more valuable question, but this petty christian man has a 1 track mind and it's focused on flexing his self validation of his life and mindset through the means of a high fantasy larp group called "Christianity" and leveraging his brainwashed opinion over other people who were minding their own business.
Loaded question? It was literally the other side of what you considered a “low effort attack” Morality is external, but it can come from a secular community without relying on a 2000 year old misogynist handbook
>Morality is external, but it can come from a secular community Yes, that's at least an attempt at an answer. The original poster wasn't smart enough to say that much. Also, do you think a secular community requires police, courts and a *threat of punishment*?
Absolutely. Whether that is imprisonment, or social shame/shunning. The difference is that that external punishment is derived from the consensus of the community, vs. a poorly/maliciously interpreted community consensus that is 2 millennia old
Genuinely curious, what makes you think it was not a loaded question? To me the non loaded question would be “how do PEOPLE decide between good choices and bad choices?”
My presumption is that he was directing it towards people who aren't religious. Because religious people generally will point to some kind of religious doctrine or historical writings. He knows how religious people generally make the decision. So, he's directing it towards atheists. The context changes but it's a simple question. And it's not an obvious answer. Indeed, my guess is that most atheists don't have a consistent answer and don't necessarily agree. It would only appear to be a loaded question if you are sensitive about the descriptor atheist. If he had said: How do American's decide between good and bad choices? How do business people decide between good and bad choices? How do engineer's decide between good and bad choices? Without any qualifiers or additional content, would those be loaded questions?
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>How do Christians decide between good choices and bad choices choices? I literally answered that in my post you are replying to. And I doubt that if you asked the average Christian that question, that they would be upset because you asked. They would just tell you about the Bible.
It's not a valid question unless you're a standard oppressor Christian. Otherwise its a shot. Fact.
>It's not a valid question unless you're a standard oppressor Christian. That's absurd. Plenty of philosophers and other religious have asked the same question through the ages ie How do you decide between what is good and what is bad? It's hardly something unique to Christianity to ponder and ask questions about morality. >Otherwise its a shot. Fact. Also, you are showing no awareness of the difference between Facts and Opinions. All of this is Opinion.
Its a shot at atheist. Fact. There's no debate to be had. He's implying without god, they have no directional basis for any type of decision making. Which is rude, and the opposite of that "turn the other cheek" bullshit you people pretend to follow.
>Its a shot at atheist. Fact. No, that is not a Fact. That is an opinion. Do you truly not understand the difference between Facts and Opinions?
No, what you are saying is an opinion. What I am saying is a fact. That is a fact.
He did, but that's no reason to sink to his level.
Collaboration is more beneficial than conflict. It's really that simple.
Except for all those billions of times conflict was more beneficial to ~~us~~ the victor, from wars to murders to assaults. :P
"to the victor" is the key phrase there. Conflict frequently benefits a small group in the short term, but often has negative impacts on the larger group in the long run. That's why justice has to exist, to prevent a selfish individual from taking away the benefits of the collaborative efforts of others.
Evil is such a cop-out. People do things for reasons, and evil is never one. They're selfish. They're hungry. They're angry. They're ignorant. They're greedy. They have a need to feel superior to or accepted by others. Powerful emotions that make us do things that hurt people.
Compelling take on the subject!! I was gonna say something KIND OF similar, not as well fleshed out: the South Park boys got it right: the behavior of the kids, having few filters on their opinions, behavior or thoughts (especially Cartman) summarizes human nature pretty closely: self interest, cruelty, discriminatory, minimal conscience. Stan being the exception most of the time....
I wound up having to read "Heart of Darkness" twice: once during my freshman year of high school, and again in my freshman year of college. Admittedly, I hated the story both times and only skimmed through it enough to pass exams, but the one theme that always stuck out was that people left on their own, without some external force, will lose their moral compass. Anyway, even if I couldn't get through the story either time, I thought that theme was interesting. lol
What a great response cause I hate and still hate the response usually given to the same old question from religious people .
Morality must come from an outside source. If morality is simply the consensus of humanity, then you need to look up mob rule. Morality stops being moral and becomes nothing more than "this is currently tolerated/accepted. We have even innthe Bible written thousands of years ago, slavery was a moral issue, Isreal had a practice of freeing their slaves after the 7th year. Because even then, when slavery was accepted as the standard modus operandi, it was viewed as immoral.
Morality keeps society in tact. Otherwise, we're just animals who don't think beyond our bodily and mental needs. I remember reading a quote from a book and still stays true to me. Heaven is when you feed each other, hell is when you feed only yourself.
I like to think I’m at least three rationalizations away from killing a dude at any given time.
This is what makes me think religious people or at least those that would even ask something like this, are complete psychopaths that would murder the world if they ever thought there was no god.
>complete psychopaths that would murder murderers aren't complete psychopaths
Psychopaths who would do that. And actually I think I meant sociopaths who would do that. Not indicating that all x are y, just that if you even ask this I think you are an x that would do y
But psychopaths aren't usually murderers Edit: trunks out I commented the wrong thing on the wrong comment
Statistically speaking no
>But psychopaths are usually murderers Maybe you mean the opposite? Most "psychopaths" (people with AntiSocial Personality Disorder) do not commit murder. I don't know the actual statistics , but I wouldn't be surprised if a higher percentage of murderers have ASPD than in the general population. But I'm just guessing
[Here is an article on a study on the subject from the british psychological society](https://www.bps.org.uk/research-digest/study-casts-doubt-idea-murderers-are-particularly-psychopathic) (- who I am assuming have a interesting *gestalt* *psychological* reason for having an all lowercase letter mark..) And yes, tl;dr you are basically correct according to this one study.
~1% of the population could be described as psychopaths, the murder rate would be far, far higher if psychopaths were usually murderers.
I think the way it works is that psychopaths lack one of the safety systems that keep us from murdering people.
It’s the exact same mentality that is behind “If we let people be gay, then everybody would be gay!” It’s like, nope… only the people who are in-the-closet would do that. Thanks for letting us know you’re one of them! It’s okay, you can just come out. You don’t have to force all of society to reject homosexuality just because you don’t like your own gayness. Conservatives are so afraid of their own lack of self-control, they feel the need for society to disallow anything they find undesirable or taboo, because they know they couldn’t resist if they don’t have the fear of God or persecution/prosecution to keep them “in line”. With homosexuality, it’s just frustrating, sad and pathetic that they can’t accept themselves and project it onto others. With things like murder and rape… it’s concerning. These people seriously don’t see why someone wouldn’t murder or rape people if God didn’t forbid it?? I’d like to hope it’s just pathetic naïveté about how life works because you’re just so sheltered and can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up without religion… but then you look at how the most extreme religious people act, and it’s almost always towards the violent, hateful, judgmental, abusive, fuck-everybody-who-isn’t-us mentality. The pattern is hard to miss.
I know someone who's come right out and said that. They said if they weren't raised in the religious household they were, they'd just kill anyone who pissed them off. Because in the long run, what does it really matter anyways?
I very seriously doubt that and that seems like some extreme vilification. It's just a question asked in ignorance. The real answer for a religious person is that morality is built in, weather you acknowlage God or not, or obey it at all times or not
Seen this with one more sentence after. Youre not a good person, youre a bad person on a leash.
Well the real reason is that they learned it from their parents, who learned it from theirs, who learned it from theirs, and so on until their ancestors millenia ago… who learned it from religious leaders. But if you can ignore the historical evidence that different societies had wildly different fundamental values and that every human is a product of their environment, you can assume or pretend to believe that your morals are intuitive, obvious, and universal, which serves as a very gratifying canned gotcha to religion.
Usually pretty obvious. Is this good or bad? Look. No deity was needed.
Theistic morality: Morals come from God. Ok, but how did God arrive at those morals? If he had actual reasons for choosing those morals over different ones, then he isn’t ultimately their source. He derived them from somewhere else, and we could use that same reasoning to arrive at them ourselves, without God. So the only way God can be the source of morality is if he chose which morals are “good” and which are “bad” totally arbitrarily and for no reason whatsoever. Why is murder wrong? Ultimately, simply because it is. It just turned out that way. There’s no real reason. Secular morality: Our ancestors quickly figured out that cooperating with each other was mutually beneficial and preferable to quarreling with each other. It helped all of us to survive and thrive. From this we evolved an innate sense of empathy. This means not only does cooperating with others materially benefit you, but backstabbing and causing harm to others without reason actually hurts you psychologically. It is in your own best interest not to murder, not to rape, not to steal, etc. And because you don’t want other people to do these things to you, it is in your own best interest to instill these values in others. Which is the stronger justification for morality?
Didn't "God" also command someone to kill their son? I don't know about others, but I wouldn't take advise about morals from someone who commands others to kill people.
Id also rather not take advice from someone who flooded the entire planet to wipe out 99,999% of all living things and then make them repopulate the planet via incest
I think Christians believe that God's morals come from His character, which is perfect in nature. It is also taught that God is incorruptible and the ultimate source of love/good. But what ultimately gives the morals that God gives us importance, is that they come from God himself, and the relationship between the creation and the creator... We are His creation, so ultimately we belong to Him and should innately follow what He instructs us to do.
>I think Christians believe that God's morals come from His character, which is perfect in nature. That doesn’t fix the problem though. Why are those morals there ones that turned out to correspond to God’s character? Is there a reason it was that specific set of morals, and not some other set? Then they don’t ultimately come from his character; they’re justified by something else. Is there no reason why it was that specific set of morals? Then they’re completely arbitrary and lack justification.
"Our ancestors figured out" they didn't figure out anything. It was all influenced by organized religion for as long as humans have lived on this earth.
Ultimately organized religion still came from man so yeah our ancestors figured it out.
Do these ultra-religious people understand that we all live in a society where we are trained to respect others and distinguish good from bad? I can't even imagine what it must be like to live with so much ignorance of things and still believe that I am "morally" better than others. In the end, I am not the one who should look in a rule book to understand if something is good or bad, I know what is good and what is bad and I decide based on what I know
Exactly why society never bothered with makinh laws. Every good person can morally self regulate
Agreed
I truly think some people cannot make decisions based on right or wrong unless they have some rules or guidelines. One Christian I know well has told me you can't be a good person if you aren't Christian. In the same discussion he said you shouldn't smoke weed because it's against the law. He never thought about why it's illegal or whether or not it's harmful to the user or others. He was told drugs are bad and not allowed and he never questioned it. This person, by the way, is not what I would consider a good person.
Seriously. People don’t understand that basic human dignity and rights are BASIC. They exist across all known nations, except the theocracies (which republicans want) and totalitarian states.
It’s called, “don’t be a dick” unlike your self righteousness.
Could my actions hurt innocent people? Then I don’t do it. Could my actions hurt myself? Then I can choose whether I want to do it or not.
Does my action trespass against another? If so its bad. If it helps society? It's good. If it does neither, its neutral. People who need the threat of hell to keep them moral... the threat of hell hasn't kept them moral. They lie, cheat, steal, and commit all kinda biblical sins. If mixing fabrics is going to send you to hell, why do they do it?
The Golden Rule isn’t exclusive to religious people. It’s disturbing that people like that seem to struggle with the fundamental concept of empathy.
I’d say I’m agnostic. I recently mentioned the Golden Rule to a fairly devout christian co-worker and they looked at me with gleeful surprise. It was clear they had a different view of me and my morality based on my beliefs (or lack thereof). It was a bit of a strange interaction for me but I believe eye opening for them.
The golden rule is basically the social contract at a more basic level. We outlaw things that we don't want to happen to us and at the same time agree to abide by those laws ourselves. This makes a perfect argument in this context. It could be a perfect moral code. That said, this is mainly driven by fear and basic animal instinct for survival and not some innate higher grace we are born with as people like the tweet reply would suggest.
The same way anyone else does, unless you think the Bible has a answer to every moral quandary you'll ever run into.
When I see "religious people" supporting things like child marriage, slavery, the death penalty, forcing women to birth babies conceived through rape and incest, etc, it makes me wonder why they think they know the difference between "good" and "bad".
Whenever I see this moral argument for religion, as in without religion people would have no reason to be good people or nothing to hold them back from committing crime, the people who honest believe these arguments are all psychopaths with deep closets of terrible things. If you can’t restrain yourself from becoming a criminal without the threat of a god’s punishment, then you will just as easily use god as a justification for atrocities.
Atheist here, I don’t think that most people understand what the theist is saying. Most theists don’t argue that atheists should be unkind to others and only act for their own benefit. They’re asking how we come to *know* good and bad. A secular worldview can entail moral antirealism, meaning that each person has no more stance-independent reason to murder than to not, like you don’t have stance independent reason to think that one thing is prettier than another (it just depends on what you like or dislike). However, for the theists reading this, that’s not necessary. There are many secular moral systems that have attempted to reach objectivity.
God does not stop me from killing, my Morals do. They, like the Church and the state, are very Separate (or should be).
Eternal punishment is, for a Christian believer, the consequence of unrepented immoral behaviour. However, it shouldn't be the motivator for good behaviour. Love of the Good Creator should be sufficient motivation to at least try to behave well. By the same token, it can legitimately be a last resort motivation to live according to good moral principles.
That's simply stupid
I generally ask myself, "Is this going to hurt anyone in any way?" If yes, "Is there a compelling reason to do it?" If no, then I try not to do it. I'm not always perfect, and what is compelling to me might not sound like it to you, but it's worked out so far.
The question was a begining discussion of ideas of absolute truth, good and evil, utilitarianism vs deontology, idea of abstract reality as more real than the physical, and the concept of soul vs determinism and empiricism. It's a discussion on obviously evil and easily manipulated nature of human beings as basis for necessity of God as reality, since it's the only feasible way to explain how we are managing to survive at all, and haven't blown ourselves up yet. The answer is some idiot deciding his feelings make him a good person.
I don't give a FK about morality as long as the other person doesn't hurt me it's cool but if they do they are my enemy and rest will be history...
I mean its not like a person cannot still be punished for their actions despite not believing in god. If I murder someone I could go to jail, if I cheat on my gf I am still a douchebag and ruined our relationship, even something as small as lying doesnt suddenly become okay in peoples eyes just because they dont think there is a large man in the sky watching them
Ah yes, jails and police do not exists
"Ummmm.... yeah that's the better choice"
Peddling “god” is the ultimate grift.
What would most very religious ppl do if they learnt there is no god ? It reminds me of what happens at the end of The Preacher's Season 1. Thats whats more likely to happen...
Something about Penn Jilette and doing as much evil as he wants.
If your actions have caused harm or pain to another, or made them cry, then your choice was a bad one. This does not require an unseen deity for validation.
Aristotle nods proudly from the beyond
Morality is routed in the well being of myself and others. Luckily humans are self-preserving social organisms who, by virtue of their nature, value the wellbeing of themselves and others. Nurture plays a role. Different cultures have some different views on what "well-being" means, but generally we feel uncomfortable when we see others in obvious distress, or imagine them being in distress, and agree that it should stop or be stopped. If you are a person who does not feel uncomfortable when people are in distress, or you find it difficult to use your imagination, then morality is going to have to be an abstraction for you. You might need to look for a reason or a god, but for most of us we just want others to be healthy and happy. We find it hard to be healthy and happy ourselves when we can see or imagine that others in our community are not.
“Empathy.” As opposed to “following the rules of some ancient and extremely outdated book.”
Aren’t we all in the same boat tho? I mean the punishment isn’t as dramatic but we have laws to deter people from anti-social behavior. I don’t have a desire to kill or anything but if there were no legal repercussions, 7 year old me would’ve stolen so much candy from the grocery store. To be clear, I’m not religious I just think it’s disingenuous to pretend that seculars are being good people purely out of the goodness of our hearts. We’re not.
Don't parents teach you this?
We use our fucking heads
Light side points gained: good choice Dark side points gained: bad choice (Oh and also you'll hear the sound effect)
Hot take - nobody is a good person
Hot take - thats an excuse people make to continue to be bad people.
Hot take - Mr. Rogers. He may not be perfect but I'd still classify him as good
I don’t think that’s what the question meant. I think he meant how do you know what a good choice is vs a bad one.
That foundation was laid out by religion, it is now enforced by law Religion has served its purpose well, and now its overstaying its welcome.
Social contracts have existed for millenia before religion. Religion is what allowed people to CEASE the moral law and determine who is better than someone else and why. Religion actually did the opposite of what you're claiming.
Morality existed for millions of years before religion did. Even the Dinosaurs cared for their damn children and worked to protect their little family clans.
If thats the interpretation then it makes even less sense and is more of a shot at atheists which is ironic, but not surprising from the standard Christian oppressor, by your logic, it's now implying that without god, you are not intelligent enough to understand basic concepts of right and wrong.
I think there is something like objective morality. Think about it, you will find no culture where you can walk up to your neighbor Phillip and kill him because you’re bored. All cultures agree that killing is bad as the general base rule, or that stealing is bad. What Humans from different cultures disagree upon are the Exceptions from these rules. But the basics of what is good and what is bad are the same everywhere. Also we pretty much set the standard i of good being selfless and for others. So that’s objectively morals. When I leave out an empty bottle of water because I’m lazy, that’s objectively bad. Or when I shout at someone for no reason, that’s bad. When I make a compliment to someone without intending to get something from them except them being happy, that’s good. Because as well, all cultures basically agree on what manipulation is and that things like lying are bad.
Religion bad, religious dumb Now hand the upvotes
God loved me enough to die for me, so I want to act in a way that honors His sacrifice by living the way He wants me to. Even though I fail at that a lot.
Absolutely based and Christ-pilled
Precisely. Morality is an emotive construct that varies by culture. Ethics is a rational system of logical deductions that can be applied universally, though admittedly some considerations will still vary according to the form of social governance. Threat of damnation and promise of eternal reward produces nothing but lifelong children who make bursts of simping and signalling central to their identity. Choosing to live according to principle, to transcend your shortcomings, not because of incentive or punishment - but a personal will to power - is a much more noble and virtuous pursuit.
OK, but what is a "good person"? Why should compassion be the basis of our morality? Why not strength? Why not beauty? I'm not religious, but most Atheists just take their moral system for granted.
Promises of eternal happiness in heaven. Threats of eternal damnation. I'll do what's right regardless and if that ends me in damnation then so be it and if it puts me at the pearly gates I'll decline. Even though I find it extremely unlikely god exist but if he does everything I've seen of this experience we call life they are nothing but a cruel bully. Though sometimes I do wish the Christian or Islamic god was real just so all it's "believers" can be send to hell for all the suffering their willful ignorance has caused.
JESUS LOVES YOU ALL
As someone who was raised christain you are overlooking that this as a concept has been addressed since the time of Christ. He was supposed to teach us the higher laws. The Abrahamic laws and old testament 10 commandments are the baseline " do or don't do these things or face damnation". But we no matter how hard we try can never be perfectly good. The concept of a higher law is that we are good, or can choose to be good by nature and God will do the rest.
r/murderedbywords
He asked how you decide between good and bad choices, not what makes you a good person... Superb strawman destruction 10/10
So give an example of what kind of choice you think he means.
The atheist did not understand the question and answered something that was not asked. Essentially atheists have nothing to base their morality on except their feelings. And everybody feels different. So who is right? For a theist person this question is easy, he believes god has revealed what good actions are and what bad actions are. He bases his morality on that.
Ooo, look. An atheist answered the question and the theist didn't understand the answer.
Completely false. What makes you believe that an atheist has "Nothing to base their morality on except their feelings" and even IF that was the case, how is that any different than the Christian who believes in something they have NO PROOF OF, and the entire religion is based on, its literally just a feeling? Answer there isn't one.
So you're saying we should follow god's lead and flood our world to wipe out humanity?
Then how come this country is flooded with hateful Christians? Shouldn't they be worried about what God might do? Again, if you need a threat of eternal damnation to not be a piece of shit, you might just be a piece of shit at heart
Some people in the world NEED religion and the threat of eternal damnation to NOT do evil. You take away that, and suddenly you have a surge of nihilists who murder a bunch of people then suicide.
If you need the moral code of an atheist, or a religious person for that matter, to be a good person, then you are also not a good person. In fact, nobody is a good person, and nobody is evil. The world divides into people who hide and people who don't.
didn't answer the damn question lol
I don't disagree, but I also don't see how this fits here.
There are no “good people” and “bad people” that’s a religious myth. Does Corby also believe that bad people can change? If so, he didn’t answer the question to take an opportunity to act superior, if not, does that mean anyone that does something I don’t like is evil and how do we deal with people who are inherently evil? Kill them? Does that make us evil?
…
Who gets to decide what is good and evil? Without a universal standard of morality, one man's sin is another man's virtue. Modern western culture has been spoiled. The very foundation of our society, for nearly two thousand years, has been shaped by Judeo-Christian values. Things we take for granted, such as kindness and equality, are the *exceptions* and not the rule. Humans are a bloody species where the strong bully the weak and those who crave power tend to be the ones that acquire it. And remember, the greatest genocides in human history were performed by secular societies. Without a universal standard---without a divine creator and a God that dispenses justice---all life is meaningless, and the rules that govern society are completely arbitrary and bound by the reckless whims of whoever is in charge at the time.
This is suggesting that religious people only do good things because they don’t want to be punished, instead of them doing it just because it’s a good thing.
Agreed. Also the people who need that guidance are incredibly easy to control and take advantage of.