# Is redemption possible without religion? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 13, 2010, 9:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583 "2010-09-13T09:15:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/21 "2010-09-13T16:29:09Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > It’s impossible, because it is meaningless. With atheism\* goiod and evil are meaningless words. You cannot do good to anyone, nor evil. There may be under some atheist systems, right and wrong, but that is a very different concept oriented purely towards utilitarian ends. Now, I do know some atheists who claim to have the former, but then, they’re also the ones who ignore the implications of their beliefs whenever it is convenient. Including a great many on this board. A deity is no more inherently required for good and evil to exist than Super Mario Brothers is. A deity is simply a representation of one or both of the two abstracts. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/22 "2010-09-13T17:36:54Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > like I said, pointless philosophical hand waving. All of the above is simply asserted without evidence and makes no sense outside of the structures of a religious doctrine. Actually it must exist outside the structure of religion, as Love can’t operate under constraints. And evidence is meaningless if reality is subjective, which I believe it is. ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 5:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/23 "2010-09-13T17:46:31Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > > [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > > > like I said, pointless philosophical hand waving. All of the above is simply asserted without evidence and makes no sense outside of the structures of a religious doctrine. > > Actually it must exist outside the structure of religion, as Love can’t operate under constraints. And evidence is meaningless if reality is subjective, which I believe it is. Well I think you are just making up your own definitions here, that’s not something worth arguing with. ---
**Author:** ![rayman5321](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/85f322/32.png) [@rayman5321](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rayman5321)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/24 "2010-09-13T18:07:39Z")
> [@WhyNot](#): > > I think you need two things for \*true \* non-religious redemption - forgiveness of the person you harmed, and forgiveness of yourself. The latter is often the harder for good people. Restitution sometimes helps. Ideally, this restitution would be paid to the person wronged, and may be connected to gaining forgiveness from them. Even if direct restitution is impossible (the wronged person has died or refuses all contact with the person seeking redemption), restitution in like kind (a donation of time or money to a charity related to the offense or a favorite of the offended, for example) often helps a person to forgive themselves. I couldn’t have said it better. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/25 "2010-09-13T18:20:43Z")
I don’t think you can answer the question usefully without context. Redemption in your own eyes? In the eyes of your victim? According to some abstract moral balance? > [@Thudlow\_Boink](#): > > It might be said that redemption isn’t possible without religion in its broadest sense, since it involves things like the state of one’s soul, right and wrong, meaning, and why/whether the things a person does ultimately matter, which are religious questions. No, they aren’t. Except for the matter of the soul which is only just a religious question because they aren’t real; if souls were real then they wouldn’t be just a religious question either. > [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > It’s impossible, because it is meaningless. With atheism\* goiod and evil are meaningless words. You cannot do good to anyone, nor evil. There may be under some atheist systems, right and wrong, but that is a very different concept oriented purely towards utilitarian ends. Now, I do know some atheists who claim to have the former, but then, they’re also the ones who ignore the implications of their beliefs whenever it is convenient. Including a great many on this board. > > That said, the other implication is that you don’t need to. You can’t do evil, either. So why would you need redemption. Redemption explicitly involves leaving behind a bad life to embrace a new, better life, and in that even having your past evil removed from your being. That entire concept fails to apply to an atheist. > > Whether you can “turn over a new leaf” is irrelevant. You cannoyt be “better” or “worse” except by establishing an personal and arbitrary system of value in an atheist system. Ah, standard atheism bashing. We’re all amoral monsters, there’s no reason without God to not go around slaughtering and eating each other. :rolleyes: As I’ve said many times before, gods are _irrelevant_ to morality; even if gods were real, a god saying something is moral doesn’t make it so. And as I’ve also said before, “objective morality” is equally as meaningless since we have no way to know it, and I for one have no intention of following it if it happens to conflict with what we mere humans have decided is right. I’m not going to start murdering and enslaving people just because some abstract “objective” morality says we should (I notice that people who believe in “objective” morality always assume that it will conveniently agree with their own). ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/26 "2010-09-13T18:26:20Z")
> [@DrFidelius](#): > > smilign bandit – > > Instead of a “personal and arbitrary system of value,” couldn’t the repentant atheist subscribe to and apply the value system of the society he lives in, working from a purely sociological point of view which does not need the hypothesis that these values were imposed by a “higher power” than the people themselves? No. Societies do not have morality. People may assuming you believe it exists. Societies can have ethics to a very limited degree, but this is always a case of people beliving in different things, and varying them to their personal taste. It only “exists” to the degree that enough people with sufficient cumulative power can enforce it. However, the fact that people think this way does not show it actually works this way. Either there is neither good nor evil and repentance is just a meaningless, empty word - or there is a real good and you can fall away from it and repent to become good again (better than you were, in fact). I love watching SD’ers flail away trying to match up their beliefs in mechanistic atheism and yet maintain their deeply-held belief that good exists. The amusing little insistance that you can repent if you are forgiven and forgive yourself. How lovely: a system which posits that hateful spuse abusers can be forgiven constantly and are always redeemed, while those who hold themselves to a high standard are not - because they haven’t forgiven themselves. Or perhaps that the people who did some minor wrong, but sincerely regret it and want to do better, can never be forgiven if the person they did wrong against are themselves spiteful and nasty and never forgive… Of course, I suppose they could be just abusing the language to their whim, but it will amount to the same thing in the end. > [@Really Not All That Bright](#): > > A deity is no more inherently required for good and evil to exist than Super Mario Brothers is. A deity is simply a representation of one or both of the two abstracts. Whether you personalize it or not, you MUST have a religious belief in a true, correct good, timeless and universal, in order to believe in any good and evil. Otherwise, you’re just fooling yourself. This belief is unprovable, unfalsifiable and cannot be surmised by any analysis of the world we inhabit, unless you are really believing it first and the finding it second. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/27 "2010-09-13T18:36:00Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > Sort of yes, but that choice is not up to you, but it involves self discovery, who you really are and what the longing of your heart is. The sins you commit hurt your own heart, and cause you to lose touch with it, walling it off as a defense against pain. > > One day you will want to get back in touch with those aspects of your heart and you seek the true longing of your heart which is seeking Love (which is God), and Love will take you on a journey, which may avoid religion, but will get you a direct personal relationship with God. > > The thing about religions is that, for all the trouble they cause, they have answers to who we are and about God who Loves us as His children. So it’s a tool God uses to learn about His Love, and a tool the devil uses to control people. Later in the journey the damage of Satan is removed and just God’s Love remains, at this point there is no religion anymore for that person. > > You also have divine spirits coming to people directly, some may have been atheists, and starting a immediate relationship, again bypassing religion. Normally these people will define themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’. But again it was not the choice of the atheist but the divine. > > There also has to be a breaking away from what we have been taught is ‘real’, this can come by a spiritual visit, or a questioning of authorities and creating your own reality. The OP asks if redemption is possible outside of religion, and your reply is yes, but you need your god to do it right? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/28 "2010-09-13T18:46:35Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Whether you personalize it or not, you MUST have a religious belief in a true, correct good, timeless and universal, in order to believe in any good and evil. Again, wrong. What you are unwilling to grasp is that not everyone feels the need to pretend that good and evil are written into the laws of physics. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/29 "2010-09-13T18:55:09Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > The OP asks if redemption is possible outside of religion, and your reply is yes, but you need your god to do it right? Redemption must be outside of religion, I was addressing if it is needed to go through religion to get to redemption. Or in other words must a person experience religion at some point in their life to be redeemed, and my answer is it depends, some will some will not. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/30 "2010-09-13T19:07:51Z")
> [@kanicbird](#): > > > [@Czarcasm](#): > > > > The OP asks if redemption is possible outside of religion, and your reply is yes, but you need your god to do it right? > > Redemption must be outside of religion, I was addressing if it is needed to go through religion to get to redemption. Or in other words must a person experience religion at some point in their life to be redeemed, and my answer is it depends, some will some will not. Is redemption possible without god and/or spirituality? ---
**Author:** ![cwthree](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de0a6/32.png) [@cwthree](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cwthree)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/31 "2010-09-13T19:09:09Z")
> [@UDS](#): > > OK. In (mainstream) Christian thinking, you are not redeemed by your own efforts, but by the grace of God. Further, redemption doesn’t require any input from the person/people against whom one has sinned. Redemption is entirely between the sinner and God. Judaism does place value on seeking forgiveness from anyone whom one has harmed. However, it’s still possible to be forgiven by God without being forgiven by human beings. Without religion, the entire concept of redemption strikes me as meaningless. Redemption is specifically about sin (not about good/bad or right/wrong), and the concept of “sin” exists only within religion.\* Further, redemption is about the relationship between humans and God(s) - if there are no deities, there is no relationship to redeem. On the other hand, there’s no reason that an atheist can’t recognize that he or she has behaved badly and harmed people. Further, there’s no reason an atheist can’t set out to right those wrongs, make amends, and seek forgiveness – from people. That’s more about a sense of closure and moving on than about redemption. \*Questioning this? Would you consider eating a ham and cheese sandwich this coming Saturday (18 September)? Why or why not? ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/32 "2010-09-13T19:13:46Z")
> [@cwthree](#): > > Without religion, the entire concept of redemption strikes me as meaningless. Redemption is specifically about sin (not about good/bad or right/wrong), and the concept of “sin” exists only within religion.\* Further, redemption is about the relationship between humans and God(s) - if there are no deities, there is no relationship to redeem. I don’t think so; people do say things like “redeem themselves in X’s eyes” when “X” is a human, not a god. ---
**Author:** ![Dioptre](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/278dde/32.png) [@Dioptre](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dioptre)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/33 "2010-09-13T19:21:25Z")
Actually, I’m going to revise my contribution as I’ve realised a fatal flaw in any idea that “redemption” requires forgiveness of the person you harmed. If you harm someone, they may later become unable to forgive (key example is they may die before they forgive you). If morals are mostly social though, then it is only in the eyes of whatever society judges someone to have done wrong that the someone can be redeemed. Hence “self forgiveness” whilst poetic has nothing to do with redemption either. To _ **smiling bandit** _ - you seem to be confusing “atheism” with “utilitarianism” and “religion” with “deontological ethics”. The concepts are disjoint. Religion is a way of framing and representing morality, not a source of it. Christianity is a key example - it has both utilitarian and deontological requirements, but practitioners have to pick and choose which ones are important based on some external morality. ---
**Author:** ![Lanzy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/74df32/32.png) [@Lanzy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lanzy)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/34 "2010-09-13T19:31:24Z")
I thought redeemtion came from god. No god, no redeemtion. You just gotta learn to live with it, whatever it is. ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/35 "2010-09-13T19:40:52Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > ]Is redemption possible without god and/or spirituality? I can’t see how without God, as we are gods (little child gods). The closest thing I can think of is Buddhism, which as I understand it, is it realizing who we are, though they chose not to use the word ‘god’ but substitute beings of light & love. And a connection to a ‘oneness’ of light and love. But admitting that I have only attended 2 Buddhist ‘services’ so I may not be correct in that. We are also spirits and it is the spirit that is being redeemed and the spirit is who we really are, not the physical body. So I’d have to say that I can’t see how it’s possible. ---
**Author:** ![ToeJam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dfb087/32.png) [@ToeJam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ToeJam)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/36 "2010-09-13T20:14:04Z")
> [@Czarcasm](#): > > Is redemption possible without god and/or spirituality? I believe it is. But that’s only 1 person’s belief. So doesn’t really matter much. But I believe it is certainly possible for atheists to be “redeemed” by a religion, without ascribing to that religion. But those are only my personal religious views and thus if you want mass appeal, well that’s probably a different issue. ---
**Author:** ![Revenant\_Threshold](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f1d935/32.png) [@Revenant\_Threshold](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revenant_Threshold)\ **Post date:** [September 13, 2010, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/37 "2010-09-13T21:44:57Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > It’s impossible, because it is meaningless. With atheism\* goiod and evil are meaningless words. You cannot do good to anyone, nor evil. There may be under some atheist systems, right and wrong, but that is a very different concept oriented purely towards utilitarian ends. Now, I do know some atheists who claim to have the former, but then, they’re also the ones who ignore the implications of their beliefs whenever it is convenient. Including a great many on this board. > > That said, the other implication is that you don’t need to. You can’t do evil, either. So why would you need redemption. Redemption explicitly involves leaving behind a bad life to embrace a new, better life, and in that even having your past evil removed from your being. That entire concept fails to apply to an atheist. > > Whether you can “turn over a new leaf” is irrelevant. You cannoyt be “better” or “worse” except by establishing an personal and arbitrary system of value in an atheist system. > > \*Mechanistic, not the tiny batch of spiritual pantheistic atheists around. Can’t you have subjective redemption, though? As an athiest, I certainly would not argue about there being inherent, objective standards of morality built into the world, but I don’t see why it isn’t possible to have redemption on those subjective standards. As you say, you simply establish a personal and arbitrary system of value. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/38 "2010-09-14T03:20:34Z")
> [@Revenant\_Threshold](#): > > Can’t you have subjective redemption, though? As an athiest, I certainly would not argue about there being inherent, objective standards of morality built into the world, but I don’t see why it isn’t possible to have redemption on those subjective standards. As you say, you simply establish a personal and arbitrary system of value. You can. It’s just that nobody else has any reason to accept it. I talked it over with a friend, however, and he suggested I might be being too harsh in my standards. After all, most people are implictly accepting the millions of years of evolution which may or may not be forcing communitarian ideals upn us as a method of survival. In this case, it’s perfectly rational to accept them without reflecting on it: it gives you more time and energy for practical things like gathering wealth. In this case, I can’t argue that an unreflective social-acceptance is wrong or “incorrect”. it is, however, limited, and cannot be true except by chance. Likewise, you can go for a culture-specific morality, but that would in fact require that “evil” be variable by the minute. The Nazis were evil before they gained power and social authority, then they were good, then they were evil again. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 3:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/39 "2010-09-14T03:37:13Z")
> [@Dioptre](#): > > To _ **smiling bandit** _ - you seem to be confusing “atheism” with “utilitarianism” and “religion” with “deontological ethics”. The concepts are disjoint. Religion is a way of framing and representing morality, not a source of it. Christianity is a key example - it has both utilitarian and deontological requirements, but practitioners have to pick and choose which ones are important based on some external morality. Strictly speaking, I would agree with you, except… The problem is that mechanistic atheism (the prevalent variety today) can have no sources of value other than the personal/arbitrary and the utilitarian: it specifically disallows everything else as a consequence (and watching some people try to wiggle around that is hilarious). It can have ethics according to a specific philosophy, but not a morality. That said, I do not confuse Religion with Deontology. Religion is is not about morality: no religion has ever been about morality, and Christianity is is the closest perhaps but still not about morality. Religion is about the _source of a moral order_.Religions teach behavior in a way that reflects their understanding of that moral order. But the morality cannot come _before_ the order. This doesn’t have much to do with Deontology. Ethics are a code of conduct for ensuring fairness and socially-determined roles, status, and order. People have trouble stepping outside of their own familiar ethics, but most ultimately can accept multiple competing systems. This is complicated because the law may support, ignore, or hinder the social ethics, and because epople with differing cultures or personalities canc lash over what is proper. But the key is what is “proper”. Morality often partly include an ethical code, but are principally concerned with intrinsic good. An ethical society would likely not interfere with an individual doing something bad to themselves, but moral individuals may choose to do so. Ethics are collective, morality personal. Here’s the real brain-buster: morals are individualistic because they claim to be universal. Individuals must apply morals as best they can, from a universal set of rules and values. Ethics are social because they are a code which applies only to certain individuals at certain times and situations. They are created, implemented, and monitored by social organizations. The indidivual is left largely to personal judgement in the former, and constrained by social rules in the latter. An ethical actor, for example, chooses actions based on a (frequently explicit) code which spells out duties and obligations. To the extent he meets those obligations, he has done his duty. However, there is no way to _exceed_ your ethical duties. Morals, however, can be stretched further. You can go beyond what is considered normal and required. This is not to say one is neccessarily superior to the other. All I can do is explain my understandings of the terms, and accept that some people may differ. And this analysis assumes for the sake of argument that morals may in fact exist. ---
**Author:** ![Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/46a35a/32.png) [@Walker\_in\_Eternity](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Walker_in_Eternity)\ **Post date:** [September 14, 2010, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583/40 "2010-09-14T08:26:35Z")
> [@cwthree](#): > > > [@UDS](#): > > > > OK. In (mainstream) Christian thinking, you are not redeemed by your own efforts, but by the grace of God. > > Further, redemption doesn’t require any input from the person/people against whom one has sinned. Redemption is entirely between the sinner and God. > > Judaism does place value on seeking forgiveness from anyone whom one has harmed. However, it’s still possible to be forgiven by God without being forgiven by human beings. > > Without religion, the entire concept of redemption strikes me as meaningless. Redemption is specifically about sin (not about good/bad or right/wrong), and the concept of “sin” exists only within religion.\* Further, redemption is about the relationship between humans and God(s) - if there are no deities, there is no relationship to redeem. > > On the other hand, there’s no reason that an atheist can’t recognize that he or she has behaved badly and harmed people. Further, there’s no reason an atheist can’t set out to right those wrongs, make amends, and seek forgiveness – from people. That’s more about a sense of closure and moving on than about redemption. I think you have a point, having looked up the definitions of [redemption](http://www.answers.com/topic/redemption), if we ignore any financial meanings regarding redeeming debt then we are left with redemption of sin, and as I stated earlier as an atheist I do not accept the existence of sin. So maybe no redemption is possible without religion. Although this does not mean that one cannot be forgiven for one’s actions. Maybe for non-theists though there is something in the paying a debt back concept that amounts to a kind of secular redemption. Could this be where the concept of blood money comes from? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-redemption-possible-without-religion/553583.md?page=3)