Suppose you have someone who doesn’t believe that Jesus was the Messiah but follows the morals he taught. Or someone that doesn’t believe that Mohammed was dictated to by Gabriel but follows the morals that he taught. Or someone who doesn’t believe that Buddha achieved enlightenment but follows the morals that he taught. The person may be an atheist but also may not.
Is there a term for this sort of person? Someone who follows Christian morals but doesn’t believe in Jesus? Someone who follows Muslim morals but doesn’t believe in Allah?
Deist. They will let god stand in for the great oigin mystery, but relegate his role to “clockmaker”, not daily intervener. Many of the founding fathers like Jefferson didn’t think Jesus was anything but human. Jefferson even cut up his bible to remove the things he thought were apocryphal.
I don’t think there is a particular name for this. I’m pretty sure that none of the responses so far are what the OP is looking for (though it’s probably accurate to say that Thomas Jefferson is an example of what the OP is talking about with respect to Christianity).
“Conformist” is the best I can come up with, although it’s not specific to religion: just a person who conforms to some norm just to avoid standing out.
Here is a good wikipedia article about Infidels and what the particular religions call people who reject central tenets of faith. Buddhists sometimes call heretics tirthikas.
One thing about religions that I’ve found, it doesn’t matter what you call yourself as a non-conformist, because those religions already have a term for you… usually derogatory and loaded.
More specific? “Thou shalt not kill” probably should be observed regardless of your particular religion. Is there a special term for someone that has morals (or observes social mores) despite religion?
I don’t believer there is any word for someone who may respect the moral philosophy of teachers like Jesus ir Buddha without embracing the religion.
I think good and decent person qualifies.
I find it perfectly reasonable and logical for a person to come to the same or very similar conclusions as these teachers in the area of interpersonal relationships even without studying the specific religion.
In the US it may even been that an atheist is heavily influenced by the morals taught in Christianity simply because they are so pervasive in our culture.
If a person genuinely believes, for example, that it is unethical to commit murder, how does that make a person hypocritical because it appears in the Bible?
I would suggest to you that many atheists in western societies would agree, for ethical reasons, with principles espoused in the ten commandments. Or at least the latter ones such as murder, theft, honouring parents, etc. I wouldn’t include the first four or five including having no other god or idol-making. I would expect that the same is true for many other religions in providing principled advice on leading an ethical life.
I know that **Bokonanist **(from the religion in Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut) hasn’t been used in that general way (except in the back of my mind). But it is a (fictional) religion that has as a tenet that all religions are lies, but that the lies are useful. I think it could be useful to generalize it.
Well, I would call them by name, if I knew their name. And greet them as if they were the Lord Himself. I would respect their ethical standards, and be respectful to their person, as I would expect from them.
No authority in this world is entitled to judge their souls.