How can someone be a moral person if they only act out morally out of fear of a gods wrath?
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Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week agoHow can something be morally wrong if there is no God?
Kickforce@europe.pub 1 week ago
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week ago
You can also act morally out of love for God. A moral act is a moral act regardless of intention. The alternative is no morality at all. And in that case, you’re either following the law out of love for your state and/or fellow human, or because you don’t want to be sent to prison for breaking the law.
splendoruranium@infosec.pub 6 days ago
The alternative is no morality at all. And in that case, you’re either following the law out of love for your state and/or fellow human, or because you don’t want to be sent to prison for breaking the law.
You’re going in a circle there. If individually define moral action as “an action that cannot be derived from anything but some kind of supernatural being”, then yeah, you can dismiss anything else on normative grounds. But then what’s the point of asking “How can something be morally wrong if there is no God?”?
Kickforce@europe.pub 6 days ago
If there is no god there is no other responsibility than your own. No destiny or gods plan to hide behind, no comfort that people who suffer now will have a better place to go to when they die. You either act like a decent person now or you mess up the only chance people have at a nice life. Once you accept that, there is only the choice to help others or at least minimise the damage you cause just by being there. People who would not realise that on their own won’t improve with religion. They are the kind that would only use religion to judge others and decide the infidels lives don’t matter.
There is enough humanist morality that does not include god and a lot of pretty decent morality that comes from non Christian philisophy or religion. If you want religious people who really act good look at the Sikh. If you want a set of humanist morality rules that have nothing to do with the christian god look at the tenets of the satanic temple.
The Satanic Temple has seven fundamental tenets:
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.
Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.
People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 week ago
I don’t need a god to tell me hurting people is bad.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week ago
What if someone else does?
JackbyDev@programming.dev 1 week ago
If someone else tells me it’s wrong to hurt people I would agree.
Cracks_InTheWalls@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
Because morality exists independently of any diety figure. It is ultimately a set of ideas about what constitutes good conduct between humans and the environment around them.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week ago
So why does one Humans moral code matter more than another
Semester3383@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Why do you believe that it does?
Look mate, we’re a cosmic blip. On the scale of the universe, we don’t even register. We’re born, we live, we die, and on the scale of how long the universe has existed, it’s not even a blink. The universe is about 13,900,000,000 years old. The first single-cell organisms emerged about 3,500,000,000 years ago. Humans, in our current form, have only existed for a mere 300,000 years. Our sun will turn into a red giant in about 5,000,000,000 years, which will sterilize the surface of the earth, but it won’t matter to humans, because we will have evolved into an entirely different species and almost certainly have gone completely extinct billions of years before that happens.
NOTHING we do matters to the universe. There is nothing we can do that will affect the course of the entire universe. Any belief to the contrary is simply terror management. So how could one moral code, in the grand scheme of the universe, matter more than any other?
What makes you believe, aside from your attempts to manage your terror of non-existence, that any of your morality matters at all?
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week ago
What makes you believe, aside from your attempts to manage your terror of non-existence, that any of your morality matters at all?
Because I believe that the moral code I follow was authored by a Creator higher than the universe.
If you’re an atheist, morality simply is just a suggestion.
AngryRobot@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Do you think only the religious can be moral? That morality only comes from religion? That people cant simply respect others’ lives and live their licpvss according to a moral code?
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week ago
No. We are inbuilt with a moral code by God. However, people can desensitise themselves to things or lie to themselves. This is why you need a moral code given by God. You cannot have an moral code without God.
AngryRobot@lemmy.world 1 week ago
We are inbuilt with a moral code by God.
This is the stupidest thing I’ve ever read.
bollybing@lemmynsfw.com 1 week ago
If you believe that an omnipotent God designed everything to be exactly how it is, then its a perfectly logical statement. But then you also have to accept that God gives kids cancer.
Semester3383@lemmy.world 1 week ago
Why do you assume that a god is necessary for morality? What led you to this conclusion? What falsifiable evidence do you have?
socsa@piefed.social 1 week ago
Because my god can beat up your god.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week ago
Who is your god?
socsa@piefed.social 1 week ago
Obviously the one true God.
Birch@sh.itjust.works 1 week ago
And his name is…
JOHN CENA 🎺🎺 🎺
jenesaisquoi@feddit.org 5 days ago
If you need a god to tell right from wrong then you might be a psychopath.
flamingos@feddit.uk 5 days ago
Because God must use some criteria to assess if something is morally right or not, otherwise morality would be arbitrary (see the Euthyphro dilemma). These criteria can exist without God, therefore morality can exist without God.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 days ago
God has His own endorsed criteria. If there’s no God to endorse the criteria, the criteria holds no weight. Good action is good because it is loved by God.
flamingos@feddit.uk 5 days ago
You’ve just moved some words around. God must have reasons for thinking something is good, otherwise goodness would be arbitrary. You can argue that god is only one who can know those reasons/criteria, but I don’t think there’s a good argument that these reasons/criteria can’t exist without them.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 days ago
Then that’s kind of the whole “where did God come from” argument
remon@ani.social 6 days ago
Morals only exist by consensus. If enough people agree something is moral, it practically is. They are an idea, not something that actually exists in nature.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 days ago
So if nazis were to take over and start making these horrible morals, and people follow them, it’ll be okay?
remon@ani.social 6 days ago
Depends on who you ask. If you ask the Nazis they’ll say it’s ok. The people they took over would probably disagree.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 5 days ago
So who do you believe? Who do you listen to?
I believe that man is made in the image of God, and the Nazi’s treatment of people degrading them as livestock was deeply blasphemous, cruel and immoral. They did not love God with all of their heart and did not love their neighbour as themselves. So I conclude that the Nazis were evil and anyone today who continues to sympathise with them is evil.
J52@lemmy.nz 1 week ago
Because ethics, compassion, love, etc aren’t dependant on religion, they’re basic human values.
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 week ago
According to who?
pokexpert30@jlai.lu 6 days ago
Instinct. Which is a pretty word to say “évolution etched this in our brain as moral people tend to survive longer”
Flax_vert@feddit.uk 6 days ago
Looking after your grandmother doesn’t benefit humanity. In fact, looking after the old would negatively impact humanity as it’s basically a waste of resources.
J52@lemmy.nz 6 days ago
According to those understanding what it means to be human.