What Happens When You Remove Faith

It may sound odd RAZD, but I have a feeling that much of morality IS instinct that has been obscured by intelligence. I believe that because we have a high intelligence, and free will, we have challenged much of what we were 'meant' to do. We have many arguments about how humans 'ought' to behave. I find this in line with being created [sic] in the image and likeness of God. Of later being so like God that we could in turn become the CREATORS of our own ideas. The ideas that are in line with instinct are those that stay around, generally, except for that little problem that most of us instinctually seem to want to benefit ourselves rather than others. It is not a problem when you consider personal surivial or the survival of a small group or your own offspring, but it is a problem when you apply it to a large scale. Conventional morality is about large scale tolerance and respect, and seems to defy instinct. I agreee that we are way on a tangent. It started with the repeating of the idea that we are instinctually moral because of empathy, and therefore don't need God. I did think that because of our intelligence and ability to question what we do rather than rely solely upon instinct, that a philosophy of some sort was necessary in making moral decisions, for atheists and theists alike. Because we have to reason out what is good, and because we can't rely only on instinct alone, I wanted to know what thoughts about human equality and why we should resepct that, were motivating the non-theist.I do enjoy learning about animal behaviour, and I could talk about how trainable an animal is, and how far training can proceed within the boundaries of instinct or ability. Hm...like sheepdogs. But my thought was that benefical things like washing potatoes and tasting salt were not really moral, no more moral than using bleach or inventing the dryer. They are just interesting progressive training and signs of intelligence, without connotations of bad or good. It was not moral for Imo to teach other macaques to wash potatoes, or do you feel otherwise?

I am going to lay aside the greed part for now.You still have to think about doing right because it's 'right'.That is a useless statement without a premise for why or how a thing is right.Why is it right to do good to others?Even if you don't answer that question, I hope you can see that you can not cater your morals to meet everyone's needs.The smiles, shrugs, or frowns of other people do not indicate what is good or bad. They only can indicate what that person likes. It is very GOOD of you to wish to please people. We have a concensus that this is a good thing. If that is your desire, even a frown can not make you immoral.Say you tell a joke because you want to cheer up your friend. Say it hits a really sore spot with him, and he gets even more depressed, even mad at you. All you can do is hope he appreciates the thought that you tried.That is a simplistic example of why it is not appropriate to judge morality by the affect you have on others. We can not produce another morality from our shirt sleeves if someone isn't in love with ours.I hope you see that treating people 'good' is important, but is not the answer to what IS good. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Jazzns, I know we have been jumping around.I am not one of those who feel I would lose my morality if I lost my faith. People who say this are simply not thinking.My contention thus far is only that the motives for morality without faith are at the least hard for people to explain and inconsistant.Most people are saying that doing good to others is just right, with no idea why. They also can not explain how they know a thing is the right thing to do to others.They will say that society dictates what is right. If that is true, doing right because it's right has no meaning. All a person is saying is that they are doing something because it's popular. You MUST know what I mean.Most people have a strong opinion about abortion. NO ONE wants to come out and say it is good in itself. What they want to say is that giving a person a choice is moral, because it reflects on love of neighbor. It is popular to agree with this thought, and also tempting because it sounds so good to our moral sense. Before you think I am preaching, just know that I am only giving an obvious example of how some moral questions are not answered, only obscured.It is still important to make our own moral judgements. When it comes to ourselves, the concensus that freedom is good does not help us decide which path to take. At times, it can mislead us into feeling that all paths are equal, that there is no right or wrong associated with an action. I can respect that a person may feel there is nothing inherently wrong or right in life, but that is not the gist I am getting from yours and other's posts. You all keep saying that things are just right because they are. In the same breath you say there is no absolute morality. If a thing were indeed good in itself, if such a thing exists, allowing us to have free will in choosing it is exactly no different from when we had no moral code and had no idea what was right. Society in general has essentially made it popular to have no determination about abortion and many other things. The popularity of choice has done NOTHING in determining morality of a choice. IMHO we are corrupting the ideal of love thy neighbor by loving them in all things to spite whatever may be honestly good or bad about their actions. It is no longer 'love the sinner not the sin', but 'love the sin because it will spare the feelings of the sinner'.Now, without faith, I can make some guesses about whether or not abortion affects a fetus. I can make no determination about whether it affects a soul, or God's plan for that human life. If I don't believe in God, I CAN rely on science to help me understand what is going on in the womb. Then I can feel good or bad about the act, and if I act according to my conscience and what I know, I can be considered a moral person. That does not mean I am right or wrong. I may still be judged as being wrong by others. The important thing is that no one else can judge your morality by how you behave. Only you can judge. Even you can not know for certain if you are right or wrong...so long story short, one MUST have a philosophy for determining what is right in their own mind. While I don't contend that mainstream faith is the only possibility, I have yet to see many viable alternatives.It may not be important to determine what is right, as 'right' is subjective and changes, but I absolutely can not take any more of 'I do right because it's right'. Coupled with the idea that right changes, that makes no sense. Nothing then is right. It is only popular, and we should call it for what it is. Not morality, for Pete's sake. As I have already posted, morality is about what IS right.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

silencio,I sincerely hope that you are not using EvC to promote your documentary, and that you will stick around awhile.You may have noticed we have a thread devoted entirely to the Creation Museum. I think your video would be appreciated over there. For myself, I had no idea that this museum would be so depressing-looking and so focused on doctrine. I am sure that I would NOT agree with what these people are teaching regardless of the science aspect, and I am disappointed that they would not seek to tell the 'truth' without the confines of their sectarian doctrines. IOW, if you believe in creation, fine. If you believe in the validity of the Bible, fine. But DO NOT try to preach your own version of Christianity as the only version. Don't make folks say things about how Christianity is going to ruin this country, by doing something so foolish as putting the '7 C's' of YOUR denomination up on the wall of what is supposed to be a science exhibit.If something is true it will be true for ALL denominations. I think I have seen enough to know that Ham is not only pushing for Creationism, but for his own version of the entire Bible. That bothers me.Aside from this, I am not sure how you wished to tie your video to the morality discussion.

You say that immoral behaviour is not prevented by a pet religion. That is imho not the issue. The issue is whether said immoral behavious is dictated by said pet religion.Where is this notion that a behaviour is immoral [like killing your child] coming from?It is completely impossible to decide whether religion makes or breaks morality without deciding how we got morality in the first place. The folks who argue on the faith side are not saying that religion makes you moral. They are saying that religion decides what IS moral. In the absence of the word religion, I would be fine with the word philosophy. The question at its core is whether it is a super imposed ideaology defining moral code, or something more instinctual.I am betting on the idea that instinct defines morality. BUT, because of free will and intelligence, as I have said, we have abandoned instinct to a degree. We rely on ideas to bring us into accord with our purpose. We also check our ideas against what we instinctually feel.If that makes no sense, let me try to explain.We instinctually desire reproduction. Our philosophy of equality and respect will not allow us to rape. One of these actions is instinct, the other ideal. The philosophy of respect can be checked against reality...it makes others happy, and in the long term makes for good survival skills. Thus, the good social idea of respect benefits the instinct to reproduce. If both urges are instinctual, only intelligence can decide which is most useful. Only intelligence can decide if respect or reproduction is MORE useful. If we were to say that all men were equal, and that respecting them was by far a greater good than having offspring, even if you were alone on a island...which would you choose? Does the idea of respect begetting children still measure up?For this discussion, I feel the main issue is to determine how we came to the conclusions of what is moral, before we can judge whether we would be moral or not without these conclusions.If I love because Jesus said so, it will be a poor motive. If I love because it makes sense, it will be a better motive. If I understand why Jesus said to love, I can be loving even without thinking of Jesus. It is very possible for non believers to love because it makes sense. What is harder is to get non believers to explain why and how it makes sense.It is crucial, because so many have this same problem, to determine what IS moral, before we can pass judgements on the morality of religious people.When you complain of a Christian killing or hating, you are complaining on behalf of the indoctrinated CHRISTIAN idea that killing and hating are immoral. You are defending Jesus Himself. I absolutely know that this idea is not unique to Christians, but I think it is safe to say that our appreciation of the concept stems from long familiarity as a society with Christian ideals themselves.What you or anyone needs to do in order to prove otherwise, is to provide evidence that love is so instinctual as to not only make Jesus right about its worth, but to make all people, aside of the amoral, desirous of selfless acts without need for faith, and solely based on their merits alone. I DO believe they are capable of the first, because I believe that Jesus showed us some of our most basic needs in order to be fulfulled, and that these needs affect everyone regardless of faith. What is lacking is the underlying thought process for why we desire selflessness aside from our own greed and gratification.

I have hardly said a thing about the Bible, zero quotes and verses, no fiery fingers, stone tablets, or God making people act in redeeming ways. I try to have honest discussions that can be understood on a human level, not a doctrinal level. If I fail at the 'understood' part, that is another matter but I am not any kind of preacher, or distracted by any faith, to the degree that I can not philosophize about all things equally.I think it is almost stupid to discuss whether people are good just because 'God said so'. Some people may be, and that may keep them out of doo-doo, but it is not owning your morality. So guess what? Those people probably are the ones telling you that their morality would evaporate into thin air if they stopped believing.The issue is not, except by accidental misdirection, one of God telling people what to do. I am so beyond that argument or thought.It is as you have said. Some people go through the effort of finding a rational basis for redeeming ways. What they have not done is find a rational basis for WHY certain things are redeeming. You can't talk about doing good without God unless you have dealt with and found conclusively what 'good' is. Only then can you determine if we need God in order to perform.I am also done with the absolute morality thing. All of you are repeating that it does not exist, and all of you are lying. Not ocnsciously or maliciously. The mere claim that how others react to your behaviour is an indication of morality is proof that all of you are living by an absolute standard. Have you made this claim? See, the GR is your absolute standard. The term morality itself has become synonymous with the GR. That is incorrect. Morality is ANY way of life that humans have described as good. It is very important to remember that the Golden Rule is not the basis for morality at all. It is A moral, as in one, single, solitary, moral. It is one thing which we have decided is good. Jesus Himself never said it was the only moral, just the most important.So, now, what is the rational basis for your embracing the GR as one of your morals?I am glad you used the word rational. nator and others have been over this topic enough times to know that there ARE rational grounds for doing good to others. One of the most common themes is that helping others benefits survival of the species or of ourselves. While I respect the thought, we are still left in the dark concerning which actions are truly helping. We agree that love is a good moral, but what IS love? How should I love thee? Hm...by treating you with my morals. If I believe it is moral to be fair, I will be fair to you. If I believe lying is immoral, I will be truthful to you. Love of others is nothing but a big stupid circle that proposes to be both the answer and the question.Stile's starting a topic on it.Just remember, the GR is not morality. If you use it as the basis for your actions, you are indeed making all acts relative to how they affect others, and making the GR an absolute upon which to determine what is good. That is still a lie, because we do NOT want people to have choice, we want them to follow our morality of loving others. If they fail, we throw them in jail. Doesn't matter if they are good, bad, or indifferent, they have simply failed to live as we want them to. That's a double standard there...preaching choice and not being able to follow thru with it. I don't like that element of uncertainty in my rational thoughts, so therefore I keep faith in my life. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

I don't believe morality 'comes' from God, as in, spoken from God's own mouth. It is more of a thing which goes TO God, or revolves around God. God based, sure, not God dictated. It must still be discovered by our own rationale.I believe the entire question of morality is one of inherent rights and wrongs assosciated with actions, and that without fixing in our minds a higher purpose for morality, it is impossible to determine what IS right or wrong. Morality is goal oriented.So, if I lost my purpose for morality, which is currently to please God, I would only cease doing those things which I do to please God, and retain the things which I do to please others because that is what society has agreed upon as 'morality' and it seems rational on some level.The object of morality is the only 'absolute' I have spoken of. If there were no God, I wouldn't 'keep' my morality, I would get a new one. I am not sure if I could even call it morality, because to me morality is a religious thing. Nevermind that though.Again, the people who respond and say they would stop being moral if there were no God, are simply not thinking things thru. They would become differently moralled, with maybe a binge period where they were just not thinking at all. Perhaps they would become amoral, and simply follow rules and laws, stay out of trouble, and not make anyone mad. You CAN do things which other people think are right, without being moral. You CAN be moral and do things which irk the crap out of other people.I am sorry for taking this to some other level, but as far as the OP goes, if you want to discuss morality using befuddled ideas and the false concept that loving people IS morality, that is fine. I don't think you can learn much from folks who aren't thinking deeply enough. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

You have made an example of how morality is goal oriented. If your goal is to honour men, or reduce the population, then yes killing girls would be a righteous behaviour.

That's sorta my beef Stile. Greedless goodness works ALL of the time if your motive in morality is to make the Christian God happy or to gain salvation. This is why I have been discussing motive so much. Change your motive, you change your morality.We might not need God in order to develope a moral system, but for all you atheists out there, I suggest that our current moral system is 'recovering' if you will, or transitioning, from a God based one, and that there exist gaps in the logic of it because folks are not yet thinking about motives. We are kind of like birds returning again and again to a feeder because we remember it held seed at one time. It's habit without use, a monthly dinner with the college roomie you no longer relate to.

This is the statement from your OP. This is from your last post. In the above and throughout the thread you DO equate love with morality. You skip a few obvious things. Loving your wife and cheating on her are not mutually exclusive. They are only so by some standards. The polygamists have no problem with someone loving more than one person, thus there is no 'cheating' involved. Cheating is only considered wrong by the standard of having and remaining faithful to one wife, which incidentally is largely Biblical. It is the fornication and adultery part which was considered immoral. If you reason the way you have, a person who is not in love with their wife would be justified in his adultery. It's no different from what the silly theists are saying about 'cheating' on GOd if they didn't love Him.How would you behave if you didn't love your wife? Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

Maybe, unless you revert 'gaining salvation' back to 'what God wants'. We can already see that the entire speech on greedless goodness is a little droll, because if we have a motive for our morality, that already implies that there is a use for it. If we are not going to benefit from morality in some way as humans, why have it? If God exists, and there is indeed an afterlife, I would not consider gaining it completely greedy. Is it greedy to eat, or is it a necessary part of survival?As we have already discussed, anyone can make moral behaviour a source of personal satisfaction. It is going to have a reward, immediate, long term, real, or imagined, either for us or for someone else. When I ask you to find a motive, I ask 'what are you trying to accomplish?'.Now, say I tell you I am trying to get 'saved'. That's my motive. You ask how I will do that...and I say 'I will love others as Jesus told me to'.So, I ask you, 'Stile, what are you trying to do?'. Your answer: 'love others'. Yes, love them selflessly, love them for the pure sake of doing it...but maybe you can see why someone may ask 'why?'. It is because, to us, love was the how and not the why.I believe it was Aristotle who concluded that the purpose of life was to be happy. That is a hop, skip, and a jump away from morality. How to be happy is a very subjective thing, just as how to be moral is. You may or may not include others in your happiness, and you may not be happy unless others are happy. Morality is still very greedy, because it essentially asks 'what do you want from life' and only then asks 'how do I get that?'. It could be greedless, but you are having a time with finding it goodness. I don't blame you, but I am detached enough to say that if the person discriminating truly believes it is the right thing to do, it could be 'good' to him. If I don't tell you that, by most accounts of what the Christian God 'wants', discriminating is wrong, I will have no basis for judging other Christians. You would, because by YOUR account, discrimination is wrong. As it so happens, I agree with you, so we are in the clear, and I AM telling you that this is not my opinion of what the Xian God wants.There are definitely alternate opinions about what will make God happy. It is not only a problem in a religion based morality. Remember I gave you an example of telling a joke to a friend, and it turned out that the joke offended him? People are point blank going to be wrong when they try to make God happy, and wrong when they try to make others happy. It is the TRYING that makes a person moral.Can you imagine what would happen if we all believed that the purpose of life was to be happy? We would have utter chaos, or people brainwashing us into thinking their ideas will make us happy. Hm...sounds like some Christians.There's a fine line somewhere. God DOES want us to be happy and fulfilled, but it is up to us to determine how to do that. We have a few clues, and loving others is one of them.Btw, I can not get God to tell you anything personally, and it would be up to you to determine what God desires of you now. There are scores of Christians already making those determinations. Hey, I keep telling you that doing whatever anybody else wants is not morality. In order for something to be greedless goodness, it has to BE goodness. I told you the idea doesn't make sense, because you can't find out what is good unless you have a motive. If your motive is 'making others happy' there is a problem. Someone is forgetting about the 'as you love yourself' clause. In most utterings of the GR, there is the presumption that self somehow comes first. Oh stop. You can just cease performing greedless acts for their benefit, and that will be a greedless act. No, it's not. Mother Theresa was very good at it. Only God knows if she was greedy. All of us would say that leaving home and living in the slums of India, caring for lepers, cradling the dying, not even preaching, and never getting rich from it, was about as close to greedless as you can get.

I disagree with the premise, brenna. It depends on the brand of Christian, but I would tell you that all people are dualist by nature. I think the Christians who say we are all evil are really saying that we are all capable of evil. None of us is good. We can be only called 'good' after we rectify our behaviour through morality. For many Christians, 'good' is a quality of God alone, and we are stuck with something like 'trying to be good'. That's really all that makes morality. The most messed up ideas of goodness can't make a person evil.

Well hey, I agree with you. I also don't want a morality that is built upon conditioning in society. I am only trying to debate the reasoning behind morality, because I am becoming convinced that the morality of athiests is a conditioning by society, and left-over from when society was Christian. I think you are all slowly working on what morality is, and why you need it, but I am jumping to the 'reason' part and leaving behind the conditioning part.

Huh? If you start acting selfish just to please someone else, it's not really selfish is it?You are just mad because acting selfish doesn't sound moral. If all you want is to make someone smile, being selfish just might be 'good'. My mom doesn't want gifts, I don't get her any, everyone is happy. No one can make me BE selfish if I don't believe in it.Stile, defending your morality isn't greedy. Being selfless isn't doing whatever anyone asks. It's just doing what you think is right without personal gain. Are you suggesting that it's moral to be a push-over? It can be fine to cater to someone, but not if it invalidates your morality at the other end. A wrong doesn't make a right. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.

You are saying that somehow, if another person doesn't like your unselfishness, then it's all of a sudden 'bad' to be unselfish. That's because you have already defined 'good' as doing what other people want.Maybe you are saying that selflessness is not an absolute. So what? Everyone has to use discretion in real situations. My only issue was that you are using 'love others' as the absolute here, since that's trumping whatever else you think is moral. It the same question as 'Can I kill someone because they want me to?', I suppose Dr Kavorkian would say 'yes', but I am getting at the idea that YOU are the final authority on 'good' because it is truly not a concept encapsulated in total by the GR. Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.Edited by anastasia, : No reason given.