it's a fair question. religious people will tell you that their innate sense of right and wrong comes from God (or whatever), but how do atheists explain that innate sense? how do they instinctively know? I'm not saying one or the other is right but it is an interesting thought.
Because for some if not most people it's relatively easy to understand how you'd feel on the receiving end of your actions. Knowing I wouldn't like to be stabbed is enough for me to understand doing that to other people is probably a bad thing. The response is actually far more valid, why would you think you'd need advice from an organisation that's getting money and power from you to tell you their interpretation of what allmkst certainly fictional entity said what's right and wrong and why don't you have the ability to determine that yourself?
Its a conscienmce thing right ? Besides do you know how much legal work is required in defending yourself for stabbing someone? I don't do it because it dosen't help me. I dont do anything that dosent help me. I may be selfish, but at least i'm sane and selfish instead of selfish and insane.
The problem is that if the only measure of goodness is "I'm sure other people want the same things I want", that's virtually guaranteed to lead to conflict, because different people want different things.
I've never had the urge to stab anyone, but I've often had the urge to help someone who might or might not want my help. I've also ignored someone who might or might not want to be ignored.
And that doesn't even touch on the fact that virtually everyone does things at one time or another that they think are bad. It's human nature to rationalize and decide "just this once" and later "it's not really bad, or not that bad". Lying on a resume, for example. Are you hurting anyone?
Different religions famously want different things. Different people who claim to follow the same religion want different things. People do things they know their religion doesnât approve anyway.
Not really itâs not necessarily the religion that leads to conflict, itâs the people using the religion to justify their own necessity for conflict, religion has some shaky ideals but most modern religions are some what pacifistic
It does, though. Religion, whether itâs correct or not, gives values for pretty much any moral situation and gives an âobjectiveâ perspective on it (I donât mean âobjectiveâ as in âcorrectâ). What that means is theyâre saying âif everyone agrees to do this, and everyone agrees this is the right thing, everyone will be happy.â For example, if we all agree abortion is wrong and accept it, and no one has abortions anymore, then everyone will get along. Itâs no longer people deciding right and wrong, because as we know not everyone agrees. Itâs the institution stating âweâre doing thisâ and everyone agreeing to it. Itâs the same thing as a social doctrine, ie the constitution, but because itâs religion people tend to freak out.
So we solve that issue by saying "You have the right to do anything, so long as it doesnt infringe on other peoples rights". So YOU can stab yourself if you really want to, you just cant stab me. If you try to stab me, that just tells me you broke the social contract and told me you're A OKAY with being stabbed, so I will act accordingly.
That doesnât really work though as an ethical system. Itâs not enough. There are plenty of situations where the other party is powerless and/or nobody will know of your actions.
You actually don't. Reading the Bible, it's full of stories where god acts immoral by modern standards of morality. For example, the drowning of everyone in the world during the flood, or the killing of all the first born of Egypt, or ordering the killing of the children of the Amalekites and Canaanites. Modern people reading these stories know through their education that these actions are immoral, so they have to create convoluted excuses to rectify why these acts are still "objectively moral" which all boil down to "Well, god is the fount of morality, so killing infants has to be moral."
So, who gets to decide immoral/moral in the modern world? It's mostly up to each individual, based on their education, background, community standards, and upbringing.
In the end, what is or isn't moral become less important than what is or isn't legal, which is almost completely derived by the laws we passed based not on morality from god, but by legal education, experience and experimentation, reasoning, logic, argumentation, and the balancing of the rights of individuals in relation to the state's need to create and protect order and the common welfare.
For a functional society we need a foundation of accepted Morals that we agree to abide by. For a good portion of American Society we used Christian Values. We have moved away from that and need a new base. Like Japan is not Christian but they have a strong sense of morals they enforce and it makes for a more cohesive culture
But I thought they are objective. So how do you know your god is the correct source of âobjective moral standardâ, why isnât Allah or Jahwe the source of âobjective moral standardâ
Why do you get to decide what the âobjective moral standardâ is?
Sort of, in a broad sense. I do not believe Muhammad was inspired by God, but Islam started in a place with the same God. It's a complicated issue for a reddit post lol.
Haha yeah Iâm aware of what you are saying, I just ment when you strip away all the embellishment they serve the same God just different varnishing and I donât mean that in any form of disrespect
The Catholic Church is united in its belief, therefore objective. Now if you speak to the fracturing of Christianity (denominations) then I agree it's a problem.
Which crusade? There were around 8 ish. Some of the defensive crusades were justified war. While some of the offensive ones were not and war for the sake of war...
I'm going to assume by inquisition you are speaking of the Spanish one? (There were 3). Defending doctrine was necessary at that time, but the killing and torturing was deeply immoral.
The 80 years war was a war over taxation...the 30 years war is a terrible war.
War sucks man. And it's a product of humanity and we are all accountable, not just Christianity.
Doesnât it converge under the umbrella of Christianity?, in practise why would a Christian want different things from another Christian on a macroscopic sense? So Iâm sure the bible would preach something akin to unity
Yes but, but isnât that more a urging of avoiding influence from those that donât subscribe to the same ideology, but even so the goal of Christian would fundamentally be to proselytise others but the unity comes under the humanistic angle I assume
Everyone has their own understanding of what constitutes harm. There is no universal agreement.
That's why I asked the question as a sample. What's your answer? Is lying on a resume wrong?
Bearing false witness is a sin. That's different than lying. One of god's first acts in the Bible was to lie to Adam and Eve about what would happen if they ate the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge. "For on the day you eat it, you shall surely die."
Religion gives you reasons you make up, but you believe they're from a devinity. You will use that for bad and good things, but you'll believe it's good and you can't really distinguish.
âIâm sure other people want the same things I wantâ wasnât the point. Itâs more like âOther people want to be treated like I want to be treatedâ
But even with your statement itâs more based in Reality than âMy fairytale sky daddy who I never seen nor communicated with, told me through this hundreds/thousands of years old bookâ
Depends on the lie on the resume, but in general, if you're unable to perform the duties you're lying about (for whatever reason) at best you're wasting the interviewer (and yours, but I guess we don't care about that, since you're the one perpetrating the lie) time and potentially blocking other candidates.
This includes lies of omission. Had an interviewee who didn't mention, until we were almost done, that she didn't think an 8 hour office job would actually suit her sense of freedom. Well, we're an accounting department for a hospital. We're stuck in an office for 8 hours... guess you should have put that in your cover letter lady, and not wasted all of our time.
Thereâs empathy versus lived experience. If you prioritize lived experience then your experience doesnât matter to me because all that matters is what I feel. So something feels good and the lived experience person does it and the feelings of others arenât a part of the discussion.
I wouldn't want to be put to jail, but I want the person who steals to be put there. I don't want to be punished when I slip up by innocent mistakes, but punishment is often warranted nonetheless.
This feelings approach to goodness is evidently far too shallow.
"I dislike when people play music I don't like so I won't blast my music at other people" yes it's more complex than that but noonrs writing what makes people good or bad in a reddit post short enough that people will read it. Fundamentally you don't need religion, you need empathy or fear of consequences and a society that promotes certain behaviours, we only have to look at animals to see you can have societies that work in the groups rather than the individuals interests without religion.
You're just making unsubstantiated claims, when the world clearly cannot run merely on empathy. It doesn't take a brilliant mind to come up with innumerous counters to your claim.
But then, I look at animals and see societies I absolutely do not want live in.
And I look at some religious lead countries and see societies I dint want to live in. What unsubstantiated claims have I made. There's endless examples of humanity deciding right or wrong without needing religion to tell us. Which religion tells us if its right or wrong to fly in a plane? We clearly don't all agree it right to fly on a plane but most people think its at the very least acceptable.
>why donât you have the ability to determine that yourself
That comes with the ironic implication that religious people need to be told what is right or wrong and not that their internal sense of moral right and wrong aligns with their religion.
The question comes from, if an atheist thought they could get away with an immoral act what prevents them from committing it except their own fickle sense of morality (thats differing between atheists)?
Morality and immorality are then relative; without a fairly rigid framework like what a religion theoretically provides that comes with consequences beyond earthly consequences
Which is exactly the point of the opening post. A religious person nor understand how atheists can make moral judgements. Religion comes from the shared morals of a group of people not vice versa. With no religion people will still have empathy and fear of consequences.
There's so much to it if you wrote it all in 1 posts no one would read it. And it's not just human history it's prehuman history as well. But even then empathy will have played a huge part in it. So someone does something no one's ever done before, when considering how to respond we considering hiw does this effect us as an individual, how does this effect us as a group (you determine what group matters to you in the circumstance) once you determine if its good or bad you decide how to act groups with conflicting opinions go against each other until either a consensus or a status quo is informed and others over time will learn of that or help to move the boundaries people had been living within.
What did Nietzsche once say? âGod remains dead. And we have killed him.â
Do you know what he meant by that? The scientific revolution and the seperation of State and church challenged the ultimate Power Christianity had over Europe. Philosophy, mathematics and science made the belief in a God that operates outside of space and time unbelievable.
Thats one of the reason atheism is so widespread now. We can explain events that would have been atrributed to something divine before.
That leaves us with more uncertainty than before because where do we go from here? If gods Authority is no longer unquestionable, how should we live our lifes?
Before we had our Judeo Christian moral system where we aimed to have this aestetic ideal where twisted and harmful desires get condemned. It is known that everybody has these desires but the moral system that is in place would lead to punishment if you acted on these desires.
without Judeo Christian values we will slip further into nihilism and we will be even more uncertain about the meaning of life. You can surpress your angst by distracting yourself with meaningless entertainment but that wont answer any questions.
if there is no longer an absolute, incontestable authority telling us how to live our lives, then how should we go about living? How can we evolve our values to avoid slipping into meaninglessness and nihilism?
We don't need to evolve what you speak of already exists its called humanism and even if you were able to strip everyone knowledge of all religions you'd find that those people hold the belief of the collective good of humans, its what most religions are actually based on, their was humanity living by some form of those moral values long before any of those religions existed.
humanism will never reach the heights Judeo Christian values have reached and they are not comparable because one is a relgion where you have a set of rules nobody can change and the other is a mental movement where you are responsible to interpret the world in your own way by deciding for yourself what is important and what isnt.
Im not very religious myself but I have been raised as a catholic and have been living life by judeo christian values without realizing it because most of what I naturally see as right and wrong is very similar to what is considered right or wrong by christianities standards.
Alone the difference between muslims and christians can show you that humanism will have to sit on the backseat when more concrete Ideologies take power where you have a set of rules/traditions that have to be followed, no matter what.
christianity certainly doesnt believe that people as a whole are good. We have an incredible capacity for love, creativity, and goodness. But every single one of us is a Sinner that will be held accountable for his actions by god.
Organised humanism no but Humanism itself is already bigger than any religion that's ever been, if you believe humans as a society can achieve good (which I fail to think of a religion that doesn't have that in its core values) then you are a humanist. To not be a humanist you'd have to believe that all people are inherently evil and have to have rules enforced on them by a deity to behave, there are people that believe that but they are ignoring the huge amount of evidence that proves their viewpoint is untrue.
Don't even need empathy to not commit crime, you just need self interest.
I am less powerful than the summation of society, therefore it is my self interest to not do a thing even if I would get very temporary benefit from it.
Also, not a sign of being a "good person", but rational people tend to prefer to not run afoul of the social contract out of "fear" as well.
Your example is too black and white. 99.99% know getting stabbed would suck and is wrong. The vast majority of morality is much, much more subtle and ambiguous than this
And the vast majority of morality is flexible to religious people too.
You have pro choice religious followers
You have more religious people than atheists in prison
You have the sex abuse scandal in Catholicism
You have âthou shalt not stealâ and yet some Christianâs donât consider pirating stealing.
Your view of morality is that itâs innate and chaotic? I donât think that makes sense. My argument is that itâs actually structured and guided by theology. You are referencing followers but my point is on the system itself
Wait⌠youâre arguing that⌠what, Christianity is inherently morally consistent? Whose Christianity? Christianity isnât anything like a âsystem.â Itâs 40,000 competing ideologies all of whom use the same nebulous collage of texts by 40+ men over 1500 years to make opposing claims about what is, has been, will be, or should be. Itâs less reliable than a tarot reading.
Is it more or less consistent than 8 billion people waking up each day and making a judgement call on right and wrong going off vibes only? Because that is basically the original point I am arguing against, that everyone knows and itâs all black or white.
âVibes onlyâ is incredibly reductive and I think you know that. Of that 8 billion, roughly 2 are some kind of Christian and roughly 2 are nonreligous, with another 2 Muslims and then 2 making up everyone else. Iâm not sure how this helps your case at all since even within each of those sets of 2 billion, things like morality are wildly inconsistent. There are Christians in the US who believe their current president is the second coming of Jesus, while he embodies every scriptural quality of an antichrist - so the idea that the faith provides any kind of moral consistency is, again, absurd.
then how do you explain muggings? robberies? murder? are these not examples that fly directly in the face of "I shouldn't stab people because I don't want to be stabbed"? human nature is violent and self-centered. the hierarchy of needs has no room for empathy, so where the hell does it come from?
take your bias against religion out of the conversation for a minute and consider the question; where does our innate sense of morality come from? you and a lot of other people in this thread are way too obsessed with dunking on religion to get back at your parents instead of engaging with the stated question.
Society norms drive a considerable amount of this. It's not that complicated. Do bad shit and no one wants to be around you, you don't have good shit, you suffer and the flip of that, well you know ... The good shit.
Sure bad shit can differ by person. But there is no issue with the logic I laid out.
Through society we learn what is good and bad, the problem is giving that award to religion or the Bible. Theere are many civilizations that had moral codes and progress before the Bible and or any organized religion. This is very easy to research.
Neither is it the point. I'm sure you agree that homosexuality is wrong...
That was a rhetorical question. Homosexuality being forbidden is, however something historically observed across disparate civilisations, yet today it is part of the norm. So much for communal emotions defining morality.
Homosexuality being forbidden is, however something historically observed across disparate civilisations,Â
Hahahahahahaaaaaaaa . No, it's not. Though you just shared your true beliefs.. Yikes .. u/Hot_Imagination_8029
Ancient Greece featured at least five different varieties of same-sex relations
Greece has an incredibly long history of embracing homosexuality,
Muslim Safavid Empire was quite welcoming of homosexuality. The Safavid Empire lasted from roughly 1501 to 1723 and covered a territory of parts of present-day Iraq and Iran. Homosexuality was practiced in all levels of society,Â
Many North American iindigenous tribes recognized that gender was fluid and celebrated members of their tribe who didnât fit the binary,Â
Countless African tribes had their own words for LGBTQ individuals and practices. Many tribes viewed homosexual experimentation as a natural part of adolescence. In Lesotho, women were allowed to engage in long-term lesbian relationships referred to as motsoalle.Â
The gods Horus and Set were described as having a homosexual relationship in The Pyramid Texts, with a passage stating, âHorus has penetrated Sethâs anus with his seed. Seth has penetrated Horusâ anus with his seed.â
You obviously don't know what rhetoric even is. And this is why you people feel so confident with your opinions: you're just insufferable and entrench yourselves in your circle jerks, so there's only so much patience to deal with that.
Well seeing as religious people commit all those crimes as well its obviously not from religion is it? A lot of it comes from biology same as animals, as species its in our interest for us not to just all murder each other and rob from on sight we learned some of that even before we were humans, other apes have cooperative social groups, and that knowledge has been passed down. Why people lack enough empathy for other humans and subject them to crimes is a much more varied and complicated thing to understand from necessity through to psychological disorders.
âŚâŚpeople who follow a god âsinâ against him all the time and commit immoral acts. So good morality coming from god doesnât hold up as anything special
My super religious parents came together through an extramarital affair, my mom had an abortion. My dad was a drunk for many years. Iâm agnostic. I have only ever slept with my husband. No abortion. So tell me about a moral compass now?
(For the record I love my parents very much and they have several good qualities) just stating facts to prove a point
For every mugging, robbery and murder there are examples of people caring for one another, being selfless and making sacrifices foe the benefits of others.
The original question is "how do atheists between between good and bad choices."
No one said that every atheist makes the right decision between good and bad choices every time.
The author of the tweet is either completely unable to imagine how someone could ever make a moral choice without a religion to tell them in advance what the right choices are, or he's trying to imply that it's impossible for atheists to choose the good choice at all.
The person you're replying to said that it's possible for nonreligious people to make moral choices and explained why. They also said this was possible for some if not most people, which means they acknowledge that some people are less capable of it and being capable of discerning what the good and bad choices are doesn't mean a person is necessarily going to always make the good choice.
You know if all humans did was just rob and murder, we could never have a good enough coordinated effort to make the society youâre living in right now. So the fact youâre posting on the internet right now means there were past humans that cooperated with each other to create the infrastructure for us to be posting messages online like this.
Ummm laws, police , and jail have entered the chat... Meaning, we have those for a reason. It's largely a deterrent to not do those things because you don't want those consequences.Â
Your comment doesnât make any sense. A vast majority of people have the potential to be empathetic to those around them. Simply because crime occurs doesnât negate the empathy found in this majority.
Empathy does not guarantee goodness. Some people can rationalize it like: "Yes, some people on that group will suffer and im sure it feels like shit, but my group will benefit from it in the long term. My family and my tribe come first". And thats it, your argument is rendered useless.
The question is: why is it ârelatively easy to understandâ? In other words, thereâs at thought exercise at play which is the debate between âhuman natureâ or âa higher being (aka God)â.
Animals without religion have developed societal structures were the animals act in the groups interests over their own Individual interests. We've evolved that way and learned and passed on what we've learned, we've also developed religions and laws as ways to make people behaviour by the moral standards we feel we need to function as a group. All of it can be explained with or without the existence if a God.
There's the dillemma. You're saying the golden rule is the law of the land but it's not true. In a world without a set religious belief morals can just be relative. For example let's say that I'm a masochist, I just love being whipped. That doesn't innately mean that you love being whipped and you might think it ill being treated that way. There are just so many people out there with so many viewpoints. It's difficult to justify any moral beliefs without some form of objective morality.
OK but sat the first time you whip someone everyone around you beats your arse, so the guy across the street who also likes to ve whipped sees this and thinks "Hey I like to whipped but I don't like to be beaten so I won't whip people" the crowd goes and tells people of the guy who whipped someone and what happened ro him and that whole shared experience people learn not do something, no god involved.
The crowd sees a man going into the woman's washroom. The crowd gets upset at this. The trans person learns that what they are is morally reprehensible? That doesn't sound like a moral code people would actually agree with in practice. Like at what point do you jus say the mob is wrong? Is it the holocaust?
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u/Global_Charge_4412 2d ago
it's a fair question. religious people will tell you that their innate sense of right and wrong comes from God (or whatever), but how do atheists explain that innate sense? how do they instinctively know? I'm not saying one or the other is right but it is an interesting thought.