What Happens When You Remove Faith

I recently saw this comment from Phat in another thread and it really got to me. I remember also we had a poster recently who claimed that he would quite likely cheat on his wife if he wasn't religious although I cannot recall the thread.I seem to see this more and more lately and it essentially this boils down to certain religious people who believe that their supposedly religious based morality exists to the exclusion of any secular or rationally based morality.I find these types of statements very strange because even as I question my own belief in God I would NEVER think that my own morality hinged upon my choice to believe or not.The reason I do altruistic things is because it is the right thing to do. When I see someone get into a car accident ahead of me, I stop and help if I can even if it means it cuts into my video game time at home. I don't need God to tell me that it is the right thing to do to pause The Office to help my neighbor jump start his car. I don't need God to tell me that I love my wife and that I would not cheat on her.It seems like that some of these statements imply that the only thing holding a lot of fundamentalists back from total selfish debauchery is their faith. So the question I like to pose to the forum is what would actually happen to these people if they could be convinced en-mass that there was no God? Would we see divorce rates go through the roof? Would there be a mass exodus from all charity giving and volunteerism? What would happen?With that I would like to offer my opinion and in it my hope for the basic sense of humanity that I like to believe most people hold. I think that nothing would change. Yea sure there would be a few newsworthy issues but for the most part, I tend to think that a lot of people in our current culture currently do things for reasons beyond faith. People would still give to charity for the same reason that they would help a young mother in the parking lot change a flat tire. People now seem to stay married for everything OTHER than religious reasons. (I do in fact know some people who refuse to get divorced because of religion so I imagine that there would be some effect but I don't suspect that lines would start forming outside of the local strip clubs.) Tragedy would still invoke mercy and compassion in our hearts. Our sense of community would be rebuilt not around tall building with stained-glass windows but rather our innate sense of cooperation which is what actually makes us human.I guess what irks me the most about the people who make these statements, their morality compulsory with their faith, is that they forget that what makes us human is our inability to survive without community and cooperation. As nuclear as we have become in the west, we still vitally depend on those around us for both our happiness and existence and I don't see that changing any time soon.Faith & Belief please.

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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)

Need some moderator love please.

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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)

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)

Well, even though I did not say anything even remotly to that extent, I can sort of understand how someone as coarse as you have been in this thread could invent that characture based on how I feel about this absurd tendency for religious people to abandon all dignity and humanity with their mythology.I am fully aware that people out in the world are assholes. We have ample demonstration of that all the time. But I tend to think that it is a lot worse for people to KNOW that they WILL BECOME assholes the very moment they stop believing in fairy tales.Worse still is the use of this line of argument to try to say that because of this there is some kind of value in faith! There very well may be value in faith but it is not because it provides some invisible force to stop you from being a selfish jerk.That is what I find disgusting.

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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)

Says who? You?I can think of plenty of penalties for never having empathy.

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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)

Thats good. I am happy to heard that. I was also happy to hear Phat back down from his original statement.I seems kind of weird that one of the knee jerk reactions from the openly religious is to say, "heck yea I would be bad/selfish/immoral if there was no god" and that once they think about it for a minute they realize that this is not really true at all.LIke you said: Which is very much a lighter statement than before. IMO at least. I suppose I can start to see that problems arise due to the conditioning of a lifetime of altruism based on faith being removed. You never had a chance to develop non-religious reasons for being non-asshole-ish. I suppose that at the very least we might expect something of a burst of egotism before the religious slowly learned that there are good non-religious reasons to give, volunteer, etc. Your newest clarification is not as disgusting but it is pretty bad.The claim being examined is that, " religion is good because it keeps me from a monster". That is not a good argument. Your latest post just softened it up with words like "hypothetical" and "more asshole-ish".Remember we are also not just talking about you. I wonder if someone could help me remember the thread awhile back where someone admitted that they would likely cheat on their wife if they didn't have their religion. IIRC the pattern was very similar. After being confronted and thinking bout it for a minute he backed down from the extreme position.But it is still shocking I feel that this is the initial reaction that religious people have when confronted with the idea of abandoning their faith.

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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)

Well, I mean now we are just playing with scope of words and forgetting the context. Anastasia was talking about the difference between being nice and being empathetic. That necessarily presumes that you are faking empathy.Regardless if this applies to all situations, most situations, or "more" situations in the case of your most recent and softer post, I can still concieve of consequences for lacking empathy. Few are externally driven, but they very much can have external effects.

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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)

Perhaps Phat you would like to comment on this example that I recalled. Since mpb1 is on right now, perhaps he can join us and explain himself further.Ironically, I found it pretty easy once I went to the board's search engine and searched for "cheat wife" This thread was first, the following thread was 2nd.The exchange starts here.
Message 8Here are some of the quotes I find relevant to this discussion. I find this last quote telling because it goes back to what I said when I believed this is an issue of conditioning. If you are conditioned to believe that the only reason for being "good" is because of religion, you have missed out on all of the real and rational reasons there are for being "good". It may be very difficult and perhaps impossible for some to go back and re-learn thos reasons. Some will come out of necessity. I am sure that if mpb1 really did start becoming a hedonist that it would have implications on his marriage, finances, children, job, etc that he might not think of as "pleasure" at all. IMO, many people find that a loving relationship is more pleasureable over time than the hot skin-on-skin action with anyone you want right now. In fact, our biology dictates that this must be true. That is how humans reproduce. If we didn't have pair-bonding, all of us may not be having this discussion right now. Instead we may be poking at termite hills with sticks.After being confronted by schraf, mpb1 starts to soften his rhetoric a little bit, but it is still pretty rediculous to me. (emphasis mine) (emphasis mine again)Here we see that the problem is that there is exists no concept in his mind of a rational morality. In this delusional concept of reality, the only thing holding an atheist back from committing attrocities is the chance that they will be punished. This seems strange to me because I am pretty sure we can dig up some evidence let alone present the obvious anecdotal observations that this does not seem to be the real state of the world if you were to look outside your window. I am starting to think that it was a figment of my imagination that mpb1 ever backed down from this. What I get different out of this quote is the addition of "self-destructive lifestyle" as a consequence of loosing faith based morality. Also, he seems to be fully admitting that the only reason this is a problem is BECAUSE Christians have an built in expectation that all morality is religious based!Ahh... Here is mpb1 backing down: He goes into an explanation of that that is interesting to read. The whole post is here Message 100.I also remember some prime examples from FSTDT.com although it is more difficult to locate them on that site. I know I have seen them before, does anyone have any other examples that can help us drive this discussion?

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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)

RAZD, I am replying to you but I hope that everyone else participating will read. Your reply to the OP was very strange, you are usually very lucid, but I didn't understand a word you said or how it related to the OP at all.All of the previous few pages of posts have been very interesting but almost none of them addressed the primary concern from the OP which is why the religious feel like their morality would be destroyed if they lost their faith.Some of the points have been interesting and slightly related such as anastasia's comment about how "morality" for some people means turning the other cheek or, "if someone takes your coat give him also your cloak".So yes, there is a side question that has taken over about what loosing your morality really means.In order to get some constructive debate going, I would like to reframe the OP a little.A person has ANY morality. Lets give it a name. A person has morality 'X' which he claims is responsible for actions 'A'. This person claims that if they loose their belief in a deity that they will abandon X and therefor willingly fail to do A because they can see no rational reason to do A.In general it seems they think that anyone who does not believe in their diety ALREADY fails to do A or only does A for spurious reason that they feel would not be compelling to them or because we live in a soceity that has been already been shaped by X.Anyone who has an X that depends on a god can presumably come up with some cirumstances of A where this will be readily true. Anastasia's type of example is a perfect case of this assuming that she would actually do this in reality. Most Christians I know would not volunteer their wallet and house keys over to someone who is jacking their car.What about all of those circumstances of A that intersect with rational reasons to do A? Examples of these are something like not cheating on your spouse, charity, or volunteerism. Why the total abandoment of X if you loose your faith?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)

That is not quite the argument that is being made.Essentially, these people who have expressed the sentiment in the OP are doing so in order to justify faith by the reasoning that it is useful in preventing "immoral" behavior. Ignoring for the moment that they also claim that the faith itself defines what is immoral, it is a rediculous argument in and of itself to claim that your religion is right because it has (questionable) meta-physical usefulness.Moreover, they seem to admit (mpb1 did at least) that the only reason this is true is BECAUSE their morality is build upon their faith. The only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that there is an understanding that if their morality had been build from reason, that they would be immune from this supposed effect of loosing their faith.It just seems like the argument destroys itself. I just want to know why then it seems to be so pervasive whenever the issue of , "what if there was no god" seems to be raised. You inevitably get some religious person claiming that either they or the rest of the world would turn into a marriageless orgy of self-only-interest.

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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)

If such a response was given I think I would be equally as baffled by it.For a set of people who seem to spend a significant portion of their time worrying about moral issues, it seems strange that they would be able to abandon even the thought of reconstructing their morality. Part of the reason claimed by religious people for why religion is good is because it turned them away from things that they independently considered bad. For example, how many times have you heard that finding God helped someone cure a gambling addiction. Its not like they didn't know before they suddenly "gained" this power over their addiction that made them realize it was bad. They knew about it beforehand, religion was just the solution and they proffer this as a reason why their religion is right.That is why my guess in the OP stated that I feel that in reality the vast majority of religious people would hardly change their effective morality. If X' is their morality after figuring out that god does not exist then X and X' would be very similar.I still don't think any of the folk who have expressed the sentiment in the OP or agree with it are willing to come into this thread and defend their statements. I think they realize that it makes them look bad and their religion worse.

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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)

I don't see why you think this. I haven't gone into depth on this myself but I find it suspect that you are making this claim based on what has been said so far. Just because the people you have been speaking to have not quoted "chapter and verse" does not mean that they haven't told you why. I don't want to get too deep into this discussion but I feel it is important to dispel this myth that a rational morality is floating upon a sea of uncertainty.The only thing that has happened so far is that people have not given you justification for YOUR standards as to what it would take to have a grounded morality based on reason and empathy. I see nothing wrong with using the golden rule as a basis for a rational morality. Christianity certainly does not have a patent out on it. I certainly have not said that. Perhaps I have not read this thread in enough depth but I don't think anyone else has said that either. If someone in front of me gets into a car accident it is right to stop and help for very specific rational reasons. I am perhaps in the best position to help due to my proximity and it may be necessary for to be a witness to the scene. It is also the reason why I DONT stop to help out at an accident where there are already people out and about helping the victims. There is nothing wrong with that rational and flexible morality about the situation.Nothing about that situation need be dictated by principles from religion. It certainly CAN be, but it does not have to be. I certainly have not said that. I don't recall ever making that claim. If there is an absolute morality though we certainly have not found it yet. If there is an absolute morality, it MOST DEFINITLY is not derived from any of the Abrahamic faiths. That is partly attested to by the fact that no one thus far has been able to point to a religiously derived absolute morality. The conversation tends to degrade into a discussion about the conscious and how God gave us all that "little voice inside us" even when we don't believe the completely contradictory scriptures that are supposed to tell us how to live. That is totally and completely false. I would argue against anyone claiming that the rational justification for choice is its popularity. The rational justification for choice revolves around the consequences of restricting or eliminating choice. We have data and real life anecdotes that show us direct negative outcomes for not having choice. Why not? This seems totally ridiculous! We judge peoples morality all the time. In fact that is exactly what we are here to do in this thread. I feel justified that I have a very good logical reason to think that the statements that Phat, Catholic Scientists, and mpb1 made are indicative of a weak moral framework. The best part is, I don't even have to use my own morality to make that determination. The weakness is built into the claims they made about how easily they would abandon their morality if they lost their faith.Self-contradiction is the most basic of evidences for rationally abandoning a moral framework. Christians do it constantly with regard to Talmudic law. Have you ever tried to construct a rational morality? Must someone carve it into stone tables with a fiery finger for it to be valid? Is your only issue that it cannot be enumerated? I certainly don't deny that. I also don't find any conflict with that statement and anything else I have read thus far.I think your biggest problem is that you cannot accept the existence of a fluid yet rational morality. It may be because you feel that if you acknowledge that it COULD exist that you may diminish the value of your own claimed "absolute" morality.I don't want to get into the topic of if an absolute morality exists. You can claim that it does all you want and I would not care. The only line of reasoning I would want to understand is why you would or would not keep it if you to be shown tomorrow definitively that God does not exist. Your answer to that question, IMO, determines the value of that morality.The other related question is why some people like to offer the argument that the frailty of their morality is a good reason to think that their religion is "good", "right", or at the very least "useful".I say so what! It may very well be true that believing in certain fairy tales make some people act in redeeming ways without going through the effort of discovering a rational morality. It should be obvious that this does not lend one ounce of strength to the claims of religion.

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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)

I don't see why it is so difficult to pin down the basis of this discussion. If you are not making the claim that your absolute morality is religious based then I have to beef with you concerning the OP. I do not understand how you could have read my reply to you, understood it, and still make this claim. Just because the "why" is not in some circumstances well-defined does not mean it does not exist. I would argue that relative and rational justifications are in a lot of ways better because they can chance to meet the needs of the given situation. That is just rediculous. In a rational morality 'good' is defined by many metrics that don't necessarily require a supernatural foundation. A lot of them are exactly what people have been explaining to you. I have to ask, given the depth of the conversation in this thread in an attempt to describe a relative morality, can you possible imagine that you just simply are not getting what some of us mean when we say relative morality? Really because it just looks like you are either intentionally equivocating or honestly have not grasped what people have been communicating.The other thing to notice is that God does not define what is good either! What is good to God seems to change at about the same rate as humans change their relative morality. That is besides the point that God never really lays down any criteria for how we should determine what is good in circumstances that are not directly proscribed. God's approval or disapproval of certain ancedotal events seems to change with realtive philosophies of the era in which his word is written down.If anyone claims that we get our morality (not necessarily absolute) from God, I would claim that even if it was true it is painfully obvious that God has a relative morality. Not necessarily rational, but very evidently relative. Actually, even people who believe in God and claim that God is the source of morals have some relative morals that are built both without reference to God and often in direct contradiction to their proclaimed morals. Examples of that are brought up all the time. If there really was such a thing as an absolute morality, the behavior of those who claim to have it should tend toward that morality and instead what we see is exactly what would be expected if morality was fluid. I said very explicitly in my last post that I was NOT making the claim that an absolute morality does not exist! I am making the claim that if it does exist that it is currently not defined. I also made the claim that if an absolute morality does exist it will not ever be found in Christianity, Islam, or Judiasm.You see, we can easily tell where an absolute morality DOES NOT exist. An absolute morality does not exist in a moral framework that directly contradicts itself. That is an important point for you to realize and I would have hoped you would have picked that part of my previous post to respond to. I cannot fathom how you can equate reactionary consequences with absolutism. To me all you are saying is, "because you believe this is blue, it is therefore red". You simply cannot use the word "react" and "absolute" in the same sentence to describe the same thing and expect your audience to think that you have a coherent argument.I have already gone down too far in the rabbit hole you have dragged me so I won't argue with you about your opinions on the GR or how you feel that people are hypocritical with regards to relative morality. I'll only say this; I believe there is evidence, some of which has already been presented, that shows how humanity already operates with a relative morality. The reason why we are justified in throwing people in jail for certain actions is because we have determined that certain concepts within the vast majority of all of our relative morals intersect with each other and therefore we can agree to make social consequences that are completely legitimaly founded upon those moralities.I'll close with this and I hope these last few words will drive any response you care to offer more so than the above. In the end, it does not matter to me what you claim your morality is. I don't care if there is actually an absolute morality or if you claim to have an absolute morality. My curiosity with this thread was purely based on the contradiction inherent in the claim that a religiously derived morality is likely to be abandoned if the religion is destroyed. Moreover, that this should be any reason for us to give merit to the idea that any given religion is "good", "right", or "useful".You said above that you feel that the people making that claim down "own" their morality. I ask you this, if you believe your absolute morality comes from God, why would you KEEP your morality if tomorrow you discovered there was no God?

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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)

First off, I have never made the claim that loving people IS morality. Second, I disagree that if someone did make that claim that it would be necessarily false. You dragged us down the rabbit hole of defining morality and yet never offered anything more than your cryptic and subjective reasons for claiming that moralities framed in certain ways that you disapprove of are wrong. I also disagree about this. I think that there is much to learn for myself about the difference between having a morality that is built by conditioning in religion versus conditioning in reason. It will not only help me more properly define my morality but it will show to both me and the rest of the readers how weak or strong these claimed "God derived" moralities actually are.Not to say that this should be any reflection on God of course. God may certainly still exist. It just goes to the weight of the point that God is most certainly not the arbiter of morality like some religious people like to claim.Do you disagree that there are MANY religious people who claim that their religion is "good", "right", or at least "useful" because of the effect it has on morality? Don't you think it is interesting to examine that claim?

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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)