> anything goes, you can be whatever you feel like and there's no judgement of any of your actions
Wow, what a terrible take. If anyone needs religion to live a moral life, I'm glad they have found it and hope they never lose it.
I'm judged by my peers, my family, my community, and my country. But even if I wasn't, I would know what's right and what's wrong. Moreover, I guess it's good that amoral people can find ethics from 2000 years ago (when women were without worth, slavery was acceptable, etc), because maybe that's better than nothing (only maybe!), but can we all start a religion based on everything we have learned since then?
For want of a better expression, amen. We're a couple million child sex abuse scandals past the point of pretending like organized religion has anything remotely resembling a monopoly on "moral" behavior.
Yeah, secular vs religious is not any basis for judging a value system. We've certainly seen horrible things done by fundamentalists of all stripes, religious or not! There is a lot of very beautiful religious thought over the millenia, and its very beauty is what enables its abuse by bad actors. We must always judge people as individuals by their actions in context, and never allow any form of ideology (whether religious or not) to be used as a shield against individual scrutiny. Morality is unfortunately not black and white, and the moment we try to make it so, we open the door to the greatest evils.
> But even if I wasn't, I would know what's right and what's wrong.
Is it right or wrong to act on homosexual urges? Is it right or wrong to use abortion as a form of birth control?
Have your answers to those questions remained consistent your entire life or did they change at exactly the same time they changed for the rest of western society ~20 years ago? If your moral stance has been unwavering, kudos. Otherwise, I would argue you don't actually know what's right and wrong; at least not on the "corner" (aka controversial) cases. For those you simply synchronize your moral compass to society's, which itself is not fixed or absolute (stances on abortion, LGBTQ, euthanasia, capital punishment, etc. have shifted a lot in the past few decades).
On these topics, yes. I independently worked through the moral questions of capital punishment in middle school, wrote long papers on euthanasia when I was 15. I explored the morality of abortion deeply also in high school, LGBTQ was never a moral question for me at all and I truly don't understand why it is for anyone outside of their religion telling them its bad without any justification.
I think people should be capable of exploring these topics deeply at a young age.
All of these (apart from abortion as birth control which is IMHO complicated) are very black & white issues.
But I don't see a problem when people change their opinions during their lifetime, with new experiences and better understanding. Much better than blindly following some specific dogma.
No one needs religion to lead a moral life. That's not the argument.
But without the transcendent, without a higher power, we have no grounding for our morality. Everything becomes subjective and "post-modern".
Actions then become "justifiable" - if there is such a thing - by whatever criteria suits us: the greater good, the good of the nation, whatever.
But essentially self-interest takes over completely.
The more we move away from God the worse our societies will become.
> But essentially self-interest takes over completely.
Orrrrrrrr... maybe... it doesn't? Maybe even when we're all alone and have to figure things out for ourselves we can come to understand ourselves in genuine relation to those around us and discover a kind and empathetic morality built from logical first principles? Even without the fear of the judgement of almighty sky daddy?
Humans are nothing if not self interested. But that's beside the point here.
Why "kind and empathetic"? Who said that's how we should be?
If we are nothing more than an arbitrary arrangement of matter, formed according to arbitrary laws of physics, and only for a relative moment, then what is "kind" and "empathetic"?
In a godless universe, you are no more significant than a rock. The only sound position you can then take is that there is no such thing as morality.
> In a godless universe, you are no more significant than a rock.
Can you think of anything in between? Why the extreme jump to “it’s either all or nothing”?
To state that The Only way to not be a meaningless hunk of rock is to worship your god seems like a pretty big lack of imagination.
I don’t need your god or your god’s rules to appreciate that you’re probably an amazing person in many ways. My partner is “godless” and she’s far more amazing than a rock.
If you want to argue that certain people need religion and that it may provide more benefit to society when those people personally worship their god I can see how this may be a sound argument. Some people really do need jesus, but this hardly means everyone needs jesus or some other sky god to see the value of other people.
This is such a good example of why I push back on organized religions and their foot soldier bible thumpers… this all or nothing thing. I don’t want your god, I don’t want your religious prudery. I thinks it’s amazing that you find meaning there, i really genuinely do. But it isn’t for me. No. I don’t want your god. I still see your value and still care—and, honestly it’s not a wild impossibility that I see value in others and that I do this without a god.
People feel good when they help others and feel bad when they get scolded by their peers. That is our inner moral compass and is the core to all morals even religious ones. Religion doesn't make it better, at best it is as good. Humans are pack animals, we put in a lot of effort to help the pack.
This is the way it ought to work, but often does not. Or, when your peer group associates criminal or antisocial behavior with positive attributes.
Shaming does not work in a large population of antisocial people. Religion is not THE answer however for a large population of people it is necessary (currently).
What I'm trying to get across is that a sense of morality is with us all. We have a generally shared understand of goodness, justice, etc. My point is that that morality is impossible to justify in a godless universe.
"People feel good when they help ...".
No argument. But is morality just about the feels? No, it isn't.
> My point is that that morality is impossible to justify in a godless universe.
You say that, and it's good that you did because the arguments you're making don't work together to prove your point in the way that you think they do. What about a godless universe makes morality impossible to justify? Is it that god is the only possible source of morality or meaning or value or something? Because you haven't proven that and can't just take it as axiom.
In order for morality to have any worth at all, it has to be an intrinsic truth (or rational determination) separate from god anyway. If the only reason something is moral is because an original creator declared it so then I don’t personally see the difference to us attempting to determine our own sense of morality based on what feels right. If it’s just an appeal to authority, why does it make a difference if that authority is god or human?
Now, if one believes in a creator that is many orders of magnitude (or infinitely) more intelligent than a human, sure, saying that they probably have a better insight into morality and we should listen to them makes sense. But it would be because of their greater ability to understand what is moral, not them being the law maker of morality.
>If the only reason something is moral is because an original creator declared it so then I don’t personally see the difference to us attempting to determine our own sense of morality based on what feels right. If it’s just an appeal to authority, why does it make a difference if that authority is god or human?
Well, because the god can stick you in a fire for all eternity if you follow the human's moral code instead. That's not really a great case for the soundness of their moral teachings but nonetheless presents a compelling argument for obedience.
In a godless universe, you are no more significant than a rock.
That's a rough approximation of my beliefs. The universe is massive and long-lived. I am neither.
I want to leave the world a better place than when I entered it. That trickles down to my daily life - are things better or worse when I go to bed than when I awoke? Being as insignificant as a rock doesn't preclude that desire.
And frankly, it's kind of offensive when Christians tell me I'm less-than-moral because I don't need their scripture to decide what's good or bad.
"And frankly, it's kind of offensive when Christians tell me I'm less-than-moral because I don't need their scripture to decide what's good or bad."
The moral argument isn't telling you that. You people (HN readers) seem intent on misunderstanding my initial statements.
It's not that atheists are not moral. Not even less moral than religious people.
The point I am trying, and failing, to express is that morality must come from a higher, non-human source. If it does not, then it is just a product of fallible human minds and is entirely meaningless. That's it.
At the scale of the universe, everything we do is meaningless. We simply are what we are and that's that. Realizing this causes me no small amount of existential angst. So I try to live in the moment as best I can and leave the world ever so slightly better than I found it.
So maybe we actually agree (on what lack of religion means, not on what we personally believe about morality or existence)?
The argument would work better if the Abrahamic god wasn't so clearly immoral, like in the example of Sodom and Gomorrah, killing of Uzzah, the Flood. The god appears to be a narcissist (the faith in him is the most important quality in a person), putting reverence and obedience above all (commanding Abraham to murder his son for no good reason). God as described in bible is a morally despicable person and surely no example to follow.
By which standard are you (blasphemously) attempting (and failing to) judge God by, though?
Because you clearly don't understand the context or reasoning behind any of the situations you listed, you resort to simply condemning God upon your own authority.
You think of yourself as better than God.
And that is what sin is.
Try acknowledging God as the authority, as He is your maker, and then you might even get to understand all the events you are ignorantly referring to.
> By which standard are you (blasphemously) attempting (and failing to) judge God by, though?
I think most people would agree that mass murders are morally wrong.
> You think of yourself as better than God.
I have my own problems, but otherwise I don't murder people.
> Try acknowledging God as the authority, as He is your maker, and then you might even get to understand all the events you are ignorantly referring to.
Fortunately the god doesn't exist, and the bible is just poorly written fiction.
But even if I was convinced that the Abrahamic god exists, it wouldn't change my opinion that the god is a narcissist psychopath.
> without a higher power, we have no grounding for our morality.
This might be more convincing if we had empirical evidence that this “higher power” even exists and could discern (and thus agree on) what it wants and why what it wants is good.
Was society better in the past when it was more religious? If you think so, maybe you could give a hint about how far back we might look. 50 years? 100 years? 250 years?
Is there a threshold for belief in God that you think is necessary for a healthy society? 50%? 75%?
For example: belief in a higher power simply isn't required to allow people to make their own medical decisions. Belief in a higher power isn't required to give someone food.
It's absolutely fine to propose religion as an ethical framework, but I don't think it can possibly make sense to propose it as the only ethical framework, or to propose that society will become worse if humans "move away from God".
You're missing the point. You're in good company though. I watched Christopher Hitchens make the same mistake in a similar discussion with Dennis Prager. A number of others in this thread are also doing it. The video link [1] below lays it out pretty well (also points out that A. C. Grayling had the same misunderstanding). Anyway ...
It's not that you need God to be moral. It's that you need an objective "higher power" as the source of that morality.
So I totally agree with what you wrote there, but you can't make a sound argument for a moral position without God or some objective higher power.
> "Belief in a higher power isn't required to give someone food."
So it's a moral duty to give a hungry person food. OK. I agree. Now we could have an exchange where you try to make a strong rational case for that, during which I will ask "why?" an annoying number of times until we get to the part where it's clear there is no basis for the moral duty absent a higher, non-human, source.
> until we get to the part where it's clear there is no basis for the moral duty absent a higher, non-human, source.
Casual sneaking in of "non-human" here, when a powerful human would fit just as well.
Your issue is that there often isn't a basis for anything at all except "seems to work". That's why we have the joke about the 5-year-old who keeps asking "why", exasperating its parents.
That we don't have a complete rationally-grounded framework doesn't imply the existence of God or even that it's good to act as if such a being exists. Insisting otherwise is basically a god-of-the-gaps argument.
You don't need any ethical framework, religion or otherwise, to allow people to make their own medical decisions. Not to give a hungry person food, nor to do anything to improve anyone's life.
I do understand your argument, and I definitely agree that some set of non-self "objective higher-power" can be very helpful. Like a personal or societal code of ethics. Bodies of law are an attempt at that.
I simply don't agree that our society will become worse the more we "move away from God". It's totally fine if "God" is how you want to do it. But not everyone wants this, and the development of secular philosophy, laws, professional ethics, and personal ethics are excellent substitutes for people who don't believe.
Not to mention, secular alternatives still allow people to practice their religious-based ethical framework without forcing others to do so.
Giving someone in need some food lestens suffering. That lestening of suffering is an observable and easily mentally modeled outcome rooted in the mundane world.
Acting so that we decrease suffering, increase wellbeing, and otherwise reduce harm is moral in and of itself without any higher source.
My own moral duty in that case is rationalized quite simply with the thought that if I were in that position, I would want other people to offer me food.
Wait, we don't need religion for morality but without it, it has no grounding? Perhaps for you and others indoctrinated to think in such a manner, but for others we do just fine.
> The more we move away from God the worse our societies will become.
Whose God? How well is it working in Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan?
The Bard makes an excellent point: "The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose." We could find countless "justifiable" actions that are based on "God told me to", so ignoring that aspect is dishonest.
I got $1000 that says that I could name several “Godly” (greater than 90% abrahamic affiliation) that you would immediately label “a shithole country”, but if I were to name the most secular ones, you’d most likely state that “theyre great, beautiful places to live with good people.”
The suggestion of Cicero as a counter to the expressed neccesity to have religion in order to have grounding for morals is sufficient to establish the existence of moral grounds not resting on religion.
Countering with two Catholic moral | ethical philosophers doesn't negate the suggestion of Cicero, it seems to be just an attempt to make the first proposition a second time.
Cicero might have a good point, but the curt words saying "Read Cicero" by themselves aren't very helpful.
It's going to take more time commitment than people reading random forum posts will give to do that. It would be better to try summarising some aspect of his ideas (which is of course a task that would demand time from whoever wishes to promote him). That's why I said the comment isn't helpful.
Would you be willing to give the hours+ time commitment if a random stranger said the two words "Read [name]" with no further elaboration or would you ignore it? It would be more helpful in a discussion to bring actual ideas to the table, or else the discussion would consist of no more than reading recommendations.
I had an Oxbridge type education, it was common practice for reading to be suggested with no further expansion.
In a thread about education, I expect the responses of the educated.
When an absolute position is taken a single exception rebuts the absolute.
If a comment is made regarding the absolute necessity of religion as grounding for morals and virtue and a simple response is given "Read X" then I expect that X addresses either supoort or raises an exception.
Cicero is sufficiently well known for many to be aware of the material, those that are unaware (in a thread about education) should be curious enough to learn more and advance their own position as to why Cicero may or may not be a suitable rebuttal.
FWiW I felt the comment given re: Cicero to be neccesary and sufficient and I'd tip my hat to the user if I had a hat, were to cross paths, and recognised them as such.
But this is just me, a random drive by HN commenter.
Ah, moral relativism. I believe there is no way around the idea that without religion, there is no such thing as morality. It all comes down to the question: how do you know what's right and wrong? If you don't have an external moral code, that is, you decide what is right and wrong, then the odds are stacked against you, 1 out of every individual with a unique opinion to ever exist; it is conceited for anyone to believe they are the one. Not even the majority is always correct; at one point in time the majority of the Earth believed slavery was fine, yet today we are so comfortable to say that was evil. I couldn't agree more strongly that it is evil, but what will the majority of society think about our morals in a millennium? Why start "the 21st century popular culture religion" when it is inevitably fallible to time?
The only possible solution is an external moral code. That is what the Bible, the Koran, etc... are: absolute right and absolute wrong. If that doesn't exist, why should I believe I'm any better than Hitler? He believed he was right. You wouldn't even be able to reason that murder is evil. Ultimately, there is no other basis for an atheist than: "That's what I feel is right, so that's what I believe."
Sidenote: I am a Christian, so I'd like to briefly correct the "(when women were without worth, slavery was acceptable, etc)" phrase pertaining to Christianity solely. At its core, the Bible teaches the very opposite of sexism and racism, however, misconstrued verses and nominal Christians distort the message.
> I am a Christian, so I'd like to briefly correct the ..
With no disrespect toward yourself, just a wry acknowledgement of a plain truth - the essential issue with <Some Text> as the external guidebook is that despite it being "conceited for anyone to believe they are the one" this is more or less the sharding issue of the many many many differing interpretations of (choose your own) <Some Book>.
I've travelled the world a lot in the past six deacades and lost count of how many clearly distinct groups of Christians I've encountered.
The Christian on Christian wars over differing takes on the same material have torn kingdoms asunder.
> without religion, there is no such thing as morality.
Would you agree that non-human animals aren’t religious? Because we see moral behavior in animals. For example [1]:
> In another experiment with rats, researchers find that if a rat is given the choice between two containers—one holding chocolate and one holding a trapped rat who appears to be suffering—the rat will try to help the suffering rat first before seeking the chocolate. Experiments like these show that animals make moral choices and that their behavior cannot be explained through natural selection alone.
There are lots of other examples, like animals that call out to warn their group of an approaching predator, placing themselves at higher risk.
Also, it seems like you’re arguing that an “external” moral code is The Only Way but then excusing people in biblical times for owning slaves because “that was a long time ago.” But shouldn’t their supposed access to this special moral code have been sufficient to conclude that owning humans as property is immoral?
> You wouldn't even be able to reason that murder is evil.
This is just downright silly. As a rational, thinking person, it’s easy to reason why murdering fellow human beings is not good.
> the Bible teaches the very opposite of sexism
Anyone can search for “sexism in the bible” to see what it has to say in its own words. For convenience, here’s one such link [2].
That take presumes that the morals you've been taught came directly from the lips of God. Otherwise, it's other people making stuff up.
The Golden Rule is pretty self-explanatory and is a solid foundation for moral behavior. I don't rape, murder, steal, etc., not because I'm afraid of God's wrath, or that of the police -- it's because I wouldn't want those things to happen to me or my loved ones and am able to understand that others feel this way too.
Meanwhile, that moral absolutism give license to kill people for blasphemy. And there's plenty more horrible things that are done to others because God said so.
Everybody's entitled to have their own relationship with God (even as an atheist I do in my own way), and I acknowledge that there's plenty of good that comes from people practicing their faith, but that is easily countered by very bad stuff that is morally justified by their interpretations of scripture.
And this concern is everybody's -- because there's ongoing efforts to make the US into a theocracy and that would be a very bad thing.
Are you, by "scripture" referring to the Bible, or just in general for religious texts?
I acknowledge that a lot of people do very bad things and supposedly justify them with the Bible. But I suggest that if they did something bad, then their justification is wrong, and can't truly be based on the Bible.
I also suggest that when someone justified something bad through the Bible, it can most definitely be countered and corrected with the Bible itself.
> I also suggest that when someone justified something bad through the Bible, it can most definitely be countered and corrected with the Bible itself
Then you're down to opinion vs opinion. Add into that the work that Bart Erhman has done on the veracity of the texts themselves, as well as the fact that the bible was assembled by committee (of men).
We're all entitled to our own beliefs, so I normally wouldn't care, except there are active factions trying to make the US be ruled by biblical law. So in that context, this act of interpretation is very much of everybody's interest.
Would you say that you behave in a moral way because you fear the threat of hell (extrinsic, negative motivation), or because you follow the example of Jesus Christ in your heart (intrinsic, positive motivation)?
I think your analysis fails at the step where you propose a universalized, objectively correct morality. Please show me the empirical test for this. Or is it just about whether you feel your actions accord with the word of God? Because even then you're just practicing moral relativism and waving your hands at a book composed by fallible humans, all of whom were doing the same, all the way back to before the canons were written. Is it because the book is supposedly divinely-inspired? How do you know the correct divinity inspired the correct people in the correct way? even standing on the soapbox of "well uh uh uh of course my religion is the correct one you smelly heretic" you literally have nothing to go off of except your own feelings and perspective.
So, in short, I don't find your position very convincing. Also, if Christians were some sort of uniquely enlightened group with special access to the metaphysical groups of the universe, why do they keep falling into the same patterns of behavior as all the other humans who don't have this divine guarantee? Like, if religion was actually some special basis upon which to erect a human morality, why does it achieve such similar outcomes as every other basis? If it's because "humans are fallible and don't always accord perfectly to the perfect divine plan allocated to them," then, again, how is that exactly non-relativistic? Is it because the book exists as some sort of measuring stick by which to determine the essential goodness of someone? Because even that depends on the fallible interpretation of the interpreter, unless you presuppose some special person who is blessed with divine discernment to determine the actual divinely-approved interpretation.
It all ultimately devolves to "you just gotta have faith bro." I do not have faith in an entire group of people thumbing their noses at everyone else like their shit doesn't stink. Antisemitism and hate is literally built into every canonical version of Christianity by way of the Churchfathers.
Maybe we should judge Christianity on the outcomes of Christians, instead of on the most compassionate and kindest way they beg us to take their positions. Actually looking at the facts reveals something most priests blush about... we're all equally clueless. The major difference between me and a Christian is that I don't actively look forward to dying, in the hopes I'll get The Good Ending and have an infinitely good time after I've perished in service to people who have an incentive to get me to live my life in service to them.
Your reply presupposes that "empirical tests" are the only way to establish truth, which is inadequate. What is the "empirical test" for a mother's love for her child? Or a teacher's love for a student? What is the empirical test for someone being the mayor? What is the empirical test for whether someone is in a relationship with someone else?
The empirical test for my subjective experience is my experiencing it, what a mind blowing revelation that things can exist in gradations. Shocking. I never said empirical tests are the only way to establish truth, but if you're presupposing an objective and universalized "correct morality" then it doesn't seem stupid to suppose that such a universal thing might be empirical. Or, failing something you can point to that exists in external objective space, that maybe you're just practicing the same kind of moral relativism an entire group of people are practicing and all loudly crying that "boo it's not relativism because sky daddy loves us :'("
There are many things that are true and real that you can't point to in external objective space. Categories. Concepts. Language. Grammar. Numbers. Something doesn't have to be physical or empirical to be real or useful to human experience. So I repeat: empiricism is inadequate for capturing what is true or real. Check out the writings of David Hume. The needful distinction between physical and metaphysical goes all the way back to Aristotle, to be fair.
Categories are concepts in the mind. Concepts are constructs in the mind. Language is a construct in the mind. Grammar is a construct in the mind. Numbers are constructs in the mind. They're nice easy ways to divide things that like actually exist in external objective space into easy-to-deal-with buckets. The existence of the subjective doesn't make the subjective somehow an objective, externalizable phenomenon, nor does it necessarily imply anything metaphysical.
I'm still waiting to hear how outsourcing your moral judgments to external human artifacts somehow implies moral absolutism, as opposed to self-reinforcing intersubjective moral relativism.
Any concept is metaphysical. It maps onto physical reality, but is above it, separate from it. Same with numbers. Same with everything else I said. They are all metaphysical. When I say "metaphysical" I'm not using it to refer to ghosts or to paranormal stuff. I'm using it with the philosophical definition of being "above the physical". Categories map onto reality, but they are not physical.
I don't have any idea what your last sentence means. But I am making the case that something can be real and objective without being empirical.
Concepts aren't "above" reality, they're just configurations of internal subjective spaces, which is carried out on the computational substrate of the human brain... unless you mean to make the claim that the mind is non-local to the brain, and that the physical realities of the brain have no impact on subjectivity (which would be wild.)
My last sentence is thus: just because you take your morals from a book doesn't somehow imply that there is a universal, correct morality. Christians are all still moral relativists, their morality is just relative to a human artifact and reinforced by the intersubjectivity of the other people who also take moral cues from that book. The only case one can make otherwise is, "Look, I have no evidence for an objective morality, I have no particularly good reason to believe it exists, but I have faith that it does and so should you." Which is fine, even if I find it personally stupid, but I can not imagine a single Christian argument for an objective morality that doesn't necessarily require faith as an axiom. I do not have that faith, yet I am a moral person. Religion is not required to have a conscience or to treat your fellow humans well. Therefore, I will not pay any attention to Christian claims towards uniquely privileged knowledge of the divinely mandated correct morality; instead, I will treat them the same as any other person, based on what they actually do.
Check out a book called Dominion by Tom Holland and you might be surprised to find the true source of your current moral structure. He discusses Roman history and contrasts it to Christian culture, which developed out of the carcass of a fallen Western Rome and flourished for a thousand years in the Eastern Roman Empire. so much of what we think of as "universal human values" are actually Christian values. Your adopted morality is a result of centuries of relative peace and the complete domination of Christian ethics in the Western world.
Yeah lmfao you're literally proving my point, of course there's no such thing as "universal human values," because it's all relative to the individual... hence moral relativism, as opposed to the idea that there is some sort of divinely mandated "correct" universal morality. I certainly do take some moral cues from the Judeo-Abrahamic religions, because even kooky cults can be right every now and then. That doesn't mean the rest of it is sensible, nor even that most people who call themselves Christian are capable of acting like decent people.
EDIT: I also like how not once do you even try to make a clear distinction between absolutism and relativism, nor do you try to explain how outsourcing your conscience to a religious book somehow implies universal absolutism.
We should take what makes sense from religions, cherry picking the parts of social progress that was somehow made under such an authoritarian and mind-numbing mental opium, and discard the rest. Any claims of moral superiority on the basis of religion should be outright rejected. The metaphysics are likewise senseless in my opinion, so I choose to ignore them.
Ah yes, mockery, did Samson not have a good comeback line recorded in the canons for you to lift? After all, I suppose if those of weak minds aren't told that a comeback line has been divinely approved, then how can they know it is in fact a sick burn? curious
> I'm judged by my peers, my family, my community, and my country. But even if I wasn't, I would know what's right and what's wrong.
The first sentence is True. It is at the foundation of community, co-operation, and yes, conformity. You may resent some things about living in a community, but you benefit from and become human through others. [1]
Wow, what a terrible take. If anyone needs religion to live a moral life, I'm glad they have found it and hope they never lose it.
I'm judged by my peers, my family, my community, and my country. But even if I wasn't, I would know what's right and what's wrong. Moreover, I guess it's good that amoral people can find ethics from 2000 years ago (when women were without worth, slavery was acceptable, etc), because maybe that's better than nothing (only maybe!), but can we all start a religion based on everything we have learned since then?