Nice, nice - much better metaphor. In fact, I may steal it for my own use someday.
And as to the OP, here’s my personal unvarnished opinion:
Atheists: Do the ethical and moral thing because it’s the right thing to do.
Religious-Minded Folks: Do the ethical and moral thing because a magical sky pixie who watches you masturbate said (via some drunken goat herders) that you’ll get in trouble if you don’t.
I agree with you completely, but I’d go even further. Trying to achieve a perfect life is one of the most noble things a person can do, and I believe that it’s a path to enlightenment and sustained happiness.
You most certainly do not need God to be good. Those that are ‘good’ because the fear the wrath of God are seriously damaged people.
I was an atheist until age 23 and I think, retroactively, that a great many things which I did, said, and thought during that time were bad things. I cannot imagine that I would have changed my behavior from the pattern I practiced then, if Jesus Christ had not intervened in my life.
Me personally? Absolutely not. I’ve been agnostic since my early teens and I just turned 63 on Monday.
My thoughts: strive to live in a harmonious society. If you do, you’ll do good. You’ll be nice, you’ll help your neighbors, you will demonstrate honor and integrity in your life, etc. Those that choose to not live in harmony with others show none of those attributes.
The following beliefs help to motivate and inspire me to be good. They are not all necessarily dependent on a belief in God, but they are, I believe, more compatible with theism than with atheism.
This is a moral universe, in which good and evil, right and wrong, are realities, and not merely personal preferences.
There is Someone who sees and cares what I do, and who perhaps blesses or rewards me for my attempts to do/be good.
Other people are human souls, loved and valued by God, and not just biological entities who will cease to exist in a few years.
I have more to look forward to than just my earthly life, and the things that I do or fail to do may have eternal consequences.
When my heart resonates to the goodness or truth or beauty I see in the world or in other people, their lives, their actions, their creations—I am sensing something real, that I want to be a part of and align myself with.
Without such motivations, I don’t think I would go around doing evil, but I do think I would be a lot more likely to live a life characterized by selfishness, laziness, and/or hedonism.
Can you say what actually changed your behavior? Was it fear of hellfire or something else?
I believe they claimed a god called Allah, though their understanding of Allah seems different then the God that some Muslims worship, so I suspect it is another Allah. I never heard them invoke the name of Love, perhaps you have.
I don’t believe they were acting as the God of Love, but as a disposable arm of Bin Ladan. So they were just puppets of religion (which religion has nothing to do with God). I really don’t know too much about them but from what was reported none of them strikes me as living as Jesus has been reported to live, but were just enslaved and forced to do bad things.
If you are living as a child of God, you are a child of Love and your life will be similar to that of the life of Lord Jesus as reported in the gospels.
But if they really were acting in the name of the God of Love, then whatever refinement they need to act as Jesus would act would be completed in their next life, or perhaps they realized the true way in the last moments of their life, such as the thief on the cross in which case they would be taken into the Kingdom of God no questions asked.
But ultimately through lives and deaths, heaven, earth and hell, all will come to the good eventually, so in that respect nothing anyone does is ultimately bad and we are eventually all found sinless because God has made it good.
Long post, and I certainly don’t agree with most of it, but (as an atheist) I like this last bit. For the record I don’t believe that evil exists, I think that some people just get really misguided.
I just need a god that knows his or her place and knows how to make a deal and stick to it. If you tell me I’m supposed to give to the poor, the dirty, smelly poor, fine, I can do that. But what’s in it for me. Make an effort to spell some of this shit out and don’t leave a brother hangin’. You want animal sacrifice? OK. A little twisted, but hey, your universe your rules, just tell me what I can count on getting in return. Aside from the fact that I’m a little squeamish, there’s also the issue of legal liability from violating various laws and ordinances.
In short, if religion is going to be run as a business, then let’s adopt some very basic good business practices, and one of those is what you need to do to establish a binding agreement.
This is why Satanism is so attractive. Satan had this shit down eons ago. You want your neighbors land? No problem, I’m not going to judge you. But what are you going to give me? You see. Right from the get go he let’s you know it’s cool to negotiate. Most religions don’t get that.
It was definitely not fear of hellfire. It was learning a clear definition of what things are sinful and what are virtuous that went beyond no-brainers like “don’t murder”, learning how a great many great individuals had followed this system throughout their life, and most importantly learning that God cares and will assist me to do what I cannot do through only my own power.
Agreement. The Golden Rule seems to be near-universal in human cultures, so, whether or not it is “divinely” inspired, it certainly isn’t unique to Christianity. And an awful lot of atheists hold it to be good, also.
Agreement. In fact, I think that a lot of “good” things are instinctive, at least in the social mammals. I think that dogs, especially, exhibit a lot of “good” behavior. They love their puppies, they cooperate in the hunt, they use domination to sort out their society rather than actually killing each other, and they accept submission when an underdog has been defeated. i.e., they know restraint and mercy!
(I suppose that a religious believer could argue that dogs’ good behaviors come from God…)
What do you mean by “good”? Compassionate? Kind? Avoiding hurting others?
I don’t believe in God anymore and I don’t think I’m less compassionate. People are people, after all. I believed that God was the ultimate good, and that’s why I believed; not vice-versa.
To reiterate a comment (not an argument)
Without a God… goodness is…? kindness is?
…charity
…consideration
…not peeing on the seat
While I am not at all suspicious of people who are afraid of guns, the original comment did make sense to me. I think it’s sort of the same way I am automatically suspicious of men who constantly seem to be thinking about women as potential victims of violence from other men. It’s sort of a “normal people’s minds don’t go there, at least not continually and obsessively” thing.
I don’t need a god to be good, no. I’m glad there’s a concept of god(s) and numerous books of stories about god(s) and what those god(s) want people to do or refrain from doing for those people who feel they do need one to be good.
If that’s all that’s between that person and standing in the tower with a rifle, or whatever, I’m totally happy such books exist. If there’s a person unable to self-regulate to a degree they need a book to tell them how to be ‘good’ or to define ‘good’ for them, then awesome. Would disagree that the contents of god-books are always good, but at least most of them cover behaviours that are actively dangerous to others. (Most, not all, but oh well.) Most of them forbid murder and theft and the like, so there you go.
I can work it out on my own, thanks.
Actually don’t we have to decide if ‘good’ and evil’ exist as cosmic truths BEFORE we can have THIS debate? For example what if ‘God’ exists, but he is ‘evil’?
I don’t think any of us currently need to believe in God in order to be good. Good atheists are my cite. But I do wonder if we might not have needed someone to have believed in God way back when to be good. Let’s see if I can try to make sense, here…
When we say someone is “good” we mean that they act in a way we believe to be moral. And most of the things we consider moral have been what other people before us for hundreds of years have considered moral, so basically we’re not straying too far from what was codified ages ago. Now it’s so ingrained that *you personally *don’t have to agree that God is peering sternly down at you to fall in with everyone else because, again with some exceptions, these “correct” behaviors have lasted because we all pretty much agree that murder, rape, torture, theft and so on are things we’re happier not to have much of in our societies.
But if those people all that long while ago weren’t afraid that God would get them for being mad back when social mores were still being sorted out, would we really have the same morals as we do now? It’s hard to say since people invented religion right after language.
We need to accept a basic set of axioms about what is good. Accepting those axioms is no easier or more difficult than is accepting a god concept as they are both accepted, well, axiomatically. Accepting God as the justification just moves the axiom acceptance a few yards farther downfield.
(Actually I read the op title as asking whether I needed God to be good in order to believe; that is, could I accept a concept of god that had god as not being necessarily good. Certainly the most religions have god concepts that are not all good gods.)
I don’t need a god at all, much less need it to be good. And the arguments being quoted by the OP are silly as others have said. You aren’t a good person if you just do good because your god tells you to, that’s amoral at best; someone who genuinely* bases their “morality” on what “God” says would just as cheerfully chop up the children next door with an axe if their “god” told them to. Nor is something moral or immoral just because a god says so, nor does the evidence support the idea that any gods that may exist are good; rather the opposite. Nor does the evidence support the idea that being religious makes people more moral; on the contrary, religion by all indications makes people worse.
*IMHO, most people who say this are outright lying; they pick and choose what their god supposedly wants or distort it until they can say that “god” wants them to do what they are already doing. Which while it’s stupid is still usually better than actually trying to follow a moral code written down by bronze age barbarians.