In an earlier thread about atheism, a theist claimed that God was the only thing keeping him from stealing and killing.
I found this quite disturbing, actually. If that is true, this person is a sociopath. Fear of eternal torture by an intangible parent figure is the only thing keeping him in line. I’d hate to be around people like that when and if their belief system crumbles.
I used to be a Christian, but eventually I could no longer deny the overwhelming evidence of evolution and that the earth was older than 6,000 years. Right now I’d consider myself agnostic. What keeps me from screwing people over is love for my fellow human beings, not threat of endless pain in the afterlife and the hope of perpetual bliss if I do good.
I guess the point of this thread is, are theists who do good just to escape divine retribution really moral? Aren’t atheists who practice altruism with no hope of reward in the hereafter better people than the aforementioned theists?
I made a thread a while back about people who only are Christians it seems out of fear of Hell. I don’t think we should have to worry about Heaven or Hell-we should concentrate on doing what is right because it is right-not because of punishment or reward.
Is that what you’re saying? Punishment and reward vs. good for its own sake?
**In an earlier thread about atheism, a theist claimed that God was the only thing keeping him from stealing and killing. **
Well is it a good idea to make assumptions about people that believe in God based on “a theist” ? I think that generally speaking, people are good because they like to be good, not because they fear what may happen if they are bad. I think the more practiced we are with goodness, the more we desire goodness. I think it feels good to be good. Some people rely on their concept of God to help them deal with various temptations. I don’t think this reliance is characterized by fear.
Those who are inclined to steal and kill may be helped by religious beliefs where there is a lack of strength in those areas of behavior. Look at the success of Alcoholics Anonymous. Just because some can manage without a higher power doesn’t mean everyone can.
However, I agree that the kind of spiritual strength and peace gained from prayer and other religious activities, not a fear of Hell, ought to be the primary motivator.
Hi Bryan, I’m the resident atheist lazy bastard. Nice to have company.
What he said. If fear of Hell is worse than fear of jail, than whatever works for you.
The best and worst of human behavior is insignificant on a cosmic scale. But here and now, where we live, obeying most laws and watching out for others works. As in, is a viable method for ensuring the propogation of specific strands of DNA over strands lacking the social thingamabob.
Just FYI, most Christians believe in evolution (at least to some extent) and that the universe is older than 6000 years. I’m a Christian and have always accepted that our universe is really, really old and that dinosaurs lived and died long before we showed up.
I agree for the most part with what you say. However, we daily hear pronouncements from many of the “holier than thou” religious branch that the reason for any national ill that they name is that “secular humanists” have “thrown God out.” And it does seem to me that the current Attorney General and the President are more than a little taken with that claim.
If brain imaging (PET scans for instance) could be used to display people’s senses of morality most brains would display a cheap, rickety little object barely holding together. How they keep that object from falling into complete decay is less important than that they do. Whether they believe that moral behaviour only comes from a sense of duty and obedience to some absolute law (presumably originating from God) or whether they consider the consequences of what they do to be the important issue, I don’t care. I only know that the thing the brain scan would show up is something that has to be cared for if it’s not to fall completely into ruin.
I only know that the thing the brain scan would show up is something that has to be cared for if it’s not to fall completely into ruin.
I like this analogy. Having a relationship with God, imho, usually involves a degree of spiritual work and awareness. This work builds our capacity for goodness.
Obviously all of us are highly capable of wrong thinking and behavior. Some of us twist reality to such an extent that we start believing that if we proclaim our belief in God, stay involved in services connected with church and community, that we are “all - good”. I mean, we look good, so we are good. This, imo, is a mistake.
I think living a life that is based on goodness is easier if spiritual awareness is present.
The practicing of various religions involves recognition of wrongness or “sin” and seeking forgiveness. This is a key part of living a good life. It makes us recognize self-interest and sin. It allows for forgiveness, which helps with guilt. Thinking and believing in a higher power provides a source of strength and vision. This too, gives us yet another tool for good living.
jacksen9: Thank you for your compliment. I totally agree with your sentiment that looking good is not being good.
A relative of mine used to walk to church every Sunday. It was quite a distance from her home. She told me she was rarely offered a ride back (by the “good looking”) even in bad weather and, in fact, her clothes were often splashed by the wheels of Mercedes and BMWs as they drove off. I thought that was hilarious.
I have a real problem in understanding the co-existence of the huge Christian congregations of Kenneth Copland, Joyce Meyer and Creflo Dollar etc etc etc and, for instance, the lack of compassion for the homeless and unemployed. It’s like religions should be required to issue charters or mission statements and be penalised for not living up to them. Businesses have to work along those lines. Why not churches?
I’m convinced that the OP’s header is a necessity. The “devils” to the ‘ideal’ of theism is nihilism. Nihilists by nature and definition follow every moral in the Bible (for example) to the tee, and then some. It must make the theists seethe with fury to watch people who don’t believe a word they say, being the only individuals capable of following their ‘ideals’ with unerring consistancy, integrity and conviction. IMO, the Bible is a peice of garbage given this evidence. I use it’s defined morality to determine what is immoral; not the other way around. “Do not kill” is the only biblical passage that makes any nihilistic sense. I currently find it a quirk of existence that the religous manage any functionality in society; and draw from this a rather pessimistic view of meaning in life.
The explanitory power and the predictive power of nihilism for moral consistancy and logical consistancy is to me so self-explanitory; that if religion is not a conspiracy to aquire wealth by violating trust covertly; then people must be geniuinely stupid as a whole.
Nearly everything I have learned about human determinism, counter-intelligence, resource manipulation, logical corruption, logical inconsistancy, behavioral inconsistancy and moral inconsistancy have been derived from analyzing the phrasing and wording of the Bible. It is to say; that (using a bit of circular reasoning to be sure!), if I were to reverse engineer the Bible to create a text which mechanized people so as to bleed them dry as capitolistic resource, in recompiling the Bible; I would not change much of it at all. The Bible is to me the standard, unrivaled in publication to this day, of what I consider the root of immorality in society. It reminds me of a 60 minutes peice just recently on the techniques that abductors use to lure their child victims. The parents are astonished that the techniques work so well, given that they knew the child would not leave with a stranger, as they constantly roleplayed these scenarios with them until it was drilled into their brains. The object of course is to disable the ‘brain’ (the logical structure of consistancy), which sociologically, psychologically and arithmatically, the Bible is the most glowing example of this science. It is to me, the Beethoven sonata’s of mind control compilation, filled with forms and variations which have scarcely found a rival in even modern times. We will certainly discard the wheel someday, or ‘re-invent’ it as we progress technologically; as time stands now however, the wheel proves invaluable towards a great many endevours of controlling energy and sensory acuity; and ultimately what we believe.
I can’t state this forcefully enough:
The Bible is the greatest source of logical forms that a counter-intelligence specialist must study in order to comprehend the nature of that art/science.
These sciences have no explanitory and predictive power without fundamentally understanding that the Bible is to the science of human determinism, as the scales are to an aspiring musician.
The Bible has only a couple concrete truisms intrinsically embedded within the system from which the algorhymic variations of logical corruption are sown and recorded. It is these algorythmic processes which are systematically memorized as ‘scales’. They are aknowledged as corruptions of logic which are sociological tools used to automate the human indentured system as a resource, to meet the specified demands of a group or individual. Their power lies in the discovery of non-transparency algorythms applied to fundamental truisms; to, (like the child mentioned earlier), disable the logical centers of the brain and over-ride it long enough to gain command level access; once the ‘mind’ is in the vacinity of the workshop to where all the tools for reverse engineering its own will reside, the practitioner then utilizes these non-local resources to completely rewire the indentured system.
To me, our moral task in society is to live peacefully with the types of weapons and technology that the Bible catagorically lists; (like working with nuclear energy without blowing ourselves up or using it to threaten and control people) not using them “just because we can”; which I believe to be the defining purpose of religion. It is to say that religion is the emergent counter-intelligence body used to patent and validate the use of these vicious tools on society for its own advantage.
A person that only avoids killing and stealing out of fear may indeed be less moral than someone that avoids these things because of a sense that they are wrong. But since morals have no value beyond their ability to manipulate behavior, all people that avoid killing for any reason are equally “good” from a functional perspective. What goes on in a person’s mind only matters if you are psychic (and even then you can avoid reading it).
I don’t believe in right or wrong per se, though I enjoy using them as variables. I believe in efficient and inefficient; consistant and inconsistant. I define morality in these confines; a product of measurable function (given these dualist veiws listed above) which provides a result. Only religious folks bent on mind control use terms like “good” and “bad”, “right” and “wrong”. Their very non-transparency is what makes these individuals so successful in life.
It is in and of itself a form of stealing and killing; and yet the realm of which, they haven’t the sensory acuity to detect, or the education to know. Neither of which is anyones fault IMO.
So far as they’re concerned, it works… nothing further to analyze.
What I meant to say sigh – (I’m the poster child of someone who needs to edit my posts…)
Morality does have a function above and beyond its ability to manipulate behavior. One cannot consider a moral valid if it has no logically consistant bearing. Morality is a product of logical consistancy. We don’t kill other people; because it is more logical to first kill oneself. By violating these simple laws, you negate the very axioms you use to put food in your own mouth to survive. It is a hypocrisy of such severe negation for self-value, that the only way to kill someone and function, is to invert the logical system; thus creating an individual who is for all practical purposes “non human”. The very fact that nature fundamentally rewards this device is another topic altogether.
The fundamental ‘faith’ of human existence is to hold onto logical consistancy, increase efficiency (grant more time for contemplation) and hope against all hope that there is an intrinsic purpose to this path. To be so off the ball, that you’re running around killing and stealing to prove purpose in ideas where purpose has already been negated, is to be nothing short of the living dead. The purpose derived within these acts is self-explanitory; however, axiomically; the effect is a negation of more fundamental axioms one espouses every day of their lives to survive. Morality is in essence the roller-coaster one rides when embracing hope for inherent meaning in existence. To constantly enforce behavior that negates the point of existing, and in doing so; not killing yourself, is nothing more than walking backwards, or as stated earlier being the living dead.
The glory is all stolen glory, the hope has all been slaughtered hope. It’s not about how happy you are; it’s about whether it’s more logicaly consistant / efficient to kill oneself to achieve ones goals. You can ultimately save yourself vast quantities of time by following through with the logical potentiality action of the arguments you enforce for it every moment.
I say that morality’s only value is its ability to manipulate behavior because there is no true moral standard. Many people can come up with a great number of reasons why it is amoral to kill others, but I can also come up with a moral ground for killing everyone (and this is only one of many).
If I see a lot of unhappiness and suffering in the world, I may conclude that all people are better off dead (myself included). Upon reaching this conclusion I decided to kill everyone I see. I could indeed kill myself first, but if I were to commit that selfish act, I would be denying everyone else the death that they so clearly need. And since most people do not understand how much better off they would be if they were dead, it is necessary for me to force my morals on them (which happens all too often in the name of morality). The point is what is moral or amoral is nothing more than an opinion. Since these opinions can differ so drastically, there is nothing inherently valuable about being moral. However, if your morals allow you to better function in society, then your morals have value. This value however is only in the morals’ ability to regulate your behavior.