What Happens When You Remove Faith

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Selfish acts that benefit myself that I would no longer find 'morally wrong' because nothing actual means anything and there really isn't much of a right and wrong to speak of. I think that I just wouldn't give a fuck.

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As long as you weren't hurting others, why would this be bad?

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If we're all godless animals without any real meaning to our existence, then fuck all y'all, gimme mine. None of this shit matters anymore. But then, maybe I'm just a bad person. You should be glad that I believe in god. It makes me a better person.

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I don't see that as making you a better (moral) person.In the way you've described yourself, it appears to me that you are an immoral person who is behaving well only because he fears being punished.A moral (good) person would behave well because they are able to empathise with other people; being able to know that other people feel pain and hurt when they are treated badly, and as we understand how the pain feels ourselves, we do not wish to be the cause of pain to others, either.I thought that the whole of Christian morality was structured around the Golden Rule; "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."?In other words, "Don't be a selfish asshole because you wouldn't want to be treated that way by somebody else." Basic preeschool playground rules and lessons of reciprocity and empathy.As you've described it, you seem to be operating under the philosophy of, "I shouldn't act like a selfish asshole because of bad things that may happen to ME if I do."In other words, you are still only thinking of yourself.Edited by nator, : No reason given.Edited by nator, : No reason given.

Forgive the dumb question, but what makes a nice person different from a moral person?You may choose to be nice and treat people well, but why?It still comes down to motive. You are nice because God wishes it, or you are nice because you expect that others will reciprocate. Or, you are nice because you are afraid of hell, of afraid of being unpopular. There doesn't seem to be any reason to be nice 'just because'.The ability to empathise is just an ability, it is not a motivation. We have discussed this many times before. What is the motive for following your empathetic conclusions?Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

(1) A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.(2) A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.(3) A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.I once read a story that analyzes the difference between a robot equipped with these 3 laws and a perfectly decent human being. I'll have to go back to the library to get it since it's been quite some time. But the conclusion was that there is essentially no difference between a perfectly decent human being and a robot driven by these 3 laws.

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We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current.

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Disclaimer:

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Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

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He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

So you are readily admitting that you are a bad person by default and only because of your belief in a supernatural father figure to do suppress your "badness"?I guess.. I don't know.. I have may have to apologize ahead of time for what I am about to say. I personally think that is one of the most disgusting things I have ever heard.Edited by Jazzns, : No reason given.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

Why though would you continue to help? The quote in the OP is from you when you said, "my intellect left to its own devices inevitably disintegrates into Ego, Selfishness, and self-centered versus altruistic patterning".What part of your egotistical, self-centered patterning allows you to still have altruism without God?I guess I am really asking, why did you say what you did? Doesn't that seem wrong to you? Why would they not drop to ZERO? What is propping up the Golden rule for you when you remove God as the supposed scaffolding of your giving, altruistic self? Who is doing the commanding? I think that our own existence defines this for us quite well. We are all selfish except when it is to the consequential detriment of our "group". Our level of altruism then is conditional upon our definition of "group". I tend to think this is pretty apparent.That is besides the point of the OP though. You seem to be backing off of your stance that you would automatically turn into a scrooge the moment God is taken out of the picture.

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Of course, biblical creationists are committed to belief in God's written Word, the Bible, which forbids bearing false witness; --AIG (lest they forget)

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The ability to empathise is just an ability, it is not a motivation.

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I disagree.It is an ability, and it is a motivation.It also seems to be quite hard-wired into humans, and is only completely absent in a very small percentage of the population, whom we call "sociopaths". Such people generally have different brain anatomy than the rest of us.Let me repeat your sentence, except with a different word:The ability to feel hunger is just an ability, it is not a motivation [to eat].Just as we evolved to feel hunger in order to motivate us to take on fuel for the operation of our bodies, we evolved to feel empathy in order to motivate us to live together in cohesive social groups. Certainly, the former preceeded the latter by quite a long time, but that is neither here nor there.Both were advantageous for survival.

That may be true, but in some books ('Foundation and Earth' I think, was the one I read) Asimov introduced the zeroth law (that came as before the first law): "A robot may not harm the human race, or, by inaction, allow the human race to come to harm." (I think that's right)Basically, the robot had to kill a madman who wanted to blow up a planet or something (it's been a while).Just an aside for you.

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i am guessing you mean christianity as the religion in question ..so for a easy answer look at human life from 1 BC backwards ...were nations lawles ? were the basic rules of morality unknow / ignored ? ... and please before anyone cry about barbarity and warfare look at the world 1 AD till today .. were now its fear of the bomb that "incourages" moral behaviour between nation states.

Good point.I suppose what I am saying is that even if god didnt exist, I believe that my inner spirit still exists. Perhaps I attribute this internal goodness to an impartation from a monotheistic Omnipotent source...so in essence, even if God didn't exist, I do.If an uncaused first cause and source of all goodness is taken out of the equation after the fact, the effects of that initial cause still exist.

all that we have is an observation of morality (through whatever means) in secular cultures since time began. This has nothing to do with God, apart from the premise that He foreknew everyone.Perhaps we need to focus on what faith is and whether the idea of removing God is more than a choice.Faith can be an acrostic:
Forsaking
All
I
Trust
HimThats one version.What about this version, however?
Finding
Answers
I
Test
HypothesisWhats the common denominator between the two acrostics?I

The other animals don't care about you too much either, but some of them value other animals in a special way. There are plenty of godless animals that don't just fuck each other over or have the attitude "fuck y'all" - instead they help each other out, share food, groom and play together...they help out friends and family, and scorn enemies (either fighting them, or just as a group exiling rule breakers). Either social animals believe in God, or belief in God is irrelevant to adhering to social rules of right and wrong.

I quite don't agree with this statement.first of all, by my standard at least, I don't see that many individuals in our society capable of empathising for others. What I see masses of people conforming to social standards. Sociopaths are just the extreme cases of most of these people.We can also look at other societies to see examples of the inability to empathise with others being more prevalent. Biblical accounts, whether they were work of fiction or not, and the greek myths portray the savagery of bronze age societies (jar and purple might not agree with me on this one). The middle ages showed us perfect examples of people's inability to empathise. And let's not forget that slavery used to be a good thing. The nazis somehow got the overwhelming majority of their people to throw their conscience away. Even in this day and age, we have examples of mass murders and genocides that result in hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people dying.Schraf, you don't have to look far to see just how heartless people are. The fact that the evangelical movement is somehow taking over this country should be telling enough just how little empathy people have. I don't think so. Society is mostly held together by ideals that at one time or another were conjured up by the few that actually had empathy. I'd say that most people, while lacking the ability to empathise, are closer to the neutral part of the spectrum and therefore can be easily swayed either way. In our case, the masses have been swayed toward the better part of the spectrum.

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We are BOG. Resistance is voltage over current.

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Disclaimer:

​

Occasionally, owing to the deficiency of the English language, I have used he/him/his meaning he or she/him or her/his or her in order to avoid awkwardness of style.

​

He, him, and his are not intended as exclusively masculine pronouns. They may refer to either sex or to both sexes!

Boo-fucking-Hoo.There's no reason for personal insults, crybaby.

Nope.Without god, do you think that a tiger would torture you? (and lets not get into defining ”torture’, I’m just using the same word you used. You could replace it with ”maim’ if you want) Me neither, Whatever. Thanks for the words of wisdom, phat

Welcome to the disgusting club. Maybe, if you believed in god, you would do more good