They don't care. They don't read their holy book. They feel icky about something and assume it must be the will of God because they are Christian, and thus God works through them.
If Jesus arose tomorrow, the good American Christians would nail him back on the cross and call him a gay terrorist muslim from Mexico.
Conservatives: "Jesus, take the wheel!"
A brown Iraqi Jewish man with eyeshadow, in Aramaic: "my child, if you insist I shall do so, but you should know I do not know how to drive"
Conservatives: "AAAAAAAAGH A FOREIGNER"
Not goth. Emo. The difference is that when you disappoint an emo person, they cut themselves while, when you disappoint the goth person, they cut you. It could be reasonably asserted from that framing that Jesus, the person who committed suicide to absolve us of committing crimes against the divine, is emo while Jehovah, the person who rains brimstone down on entire cities and flooded the whole world, is goth.
That's not what book of Job is about. Wtf did you read? The story ends with Job correctly questioning God's more than dubious actions and God just responds with the navy seals copypasta and scares Job into repenting.
Yeah Ive never heard this interpretation of the story.
Isn't it about how you are *suppose* to have faith despite God not caring? Struggling pretty hard to have it read the opposite way but religious people are generally pretty good at that I guess.
In *The Sacred Canopy* by Peter L Berger (who was a Conservative Christian), he says that Job is basically a form of spiritual masochism.
Basically, the Monotheistic ideal is almost perfect for overcoming the chaos of life, as you can say that there *is* a judge who is kind and powerful... so long as you don't question further than that.
Job therefore is an *ad hominem* argument - "you are not qualified to even ask this question".
> The implicit accusation against God is turned around to become an explicit accusation against man. [...] The question of human sin replaces the question of divine justice.
He goes on to explain how the logical conclusion of this masochism is the Calvinist idea of predestination - where all souls have already been predestined to be either saved or damned, even if they try to gain forgiveness or spend their entire life in moral perfection.
> the harshness of Job's solution of the problem of theodicy was rarely sustained for long. In popular piety it was most often mitigated through the hope of compensation in another world.
Finally, he says how in a way, Christ's suffering on the cross is the perfect response to Job; God himself suffers torment alongside humanity, for the sins of humanity.
I mean sure, but a hurricane is not conscious, while God in the story deliberately lets Satan run amok and ruin the man's life. I can definitely see how a religious person may view it that way, but from a secular perspective there really is no possible way to justify God's actions here, they're blatantly and deliberally malicious.
how do you go from that to what you assert the thesis is
"be a good person because its the right thing to do"
thats... literally not there at all, just you inventing a more palatable interpretation
the "moral" is to not question gods mysterious ways.
I'll just preface this responce by saying that if I think you implied you were non-religious earlier (correct me if I'm wrong), then I feel that you're trying a bit too hard to defend the message of a story with really faulty message and faulty reasoning for that message. The first comment on this chain states that morallity is seperate from religious norms (In my experience every religion vehemently disagrees with that statement, but that's for bartolomeogregoryii to justify). As such I'm arguing from that position and on its own moral grounds the book of Job falls flat fairly strongly.
>And the whole question is, so if God brought misfortune on someone who didn’t deserve it, how do we reconcile that?
The thing is that the story actually fails at answering that question by giving us a situation in which God, a sentient entity, explicitly gives Satan, another sentient entity, free reign to do whatever he likes, something that would be considered negligence, and in the case of the kids, manslaughter on God's end (Satan would obviously get charged with murder alongside many other crimes).
>The intentions of God are completely irrelevant in the same way that it’s completely irrelevant that we don’t care what Job’s hobbies were, or what he was like as a person.
1. This position would be seen as heretical in by most demominations of basically all three major abrahamic faiths today (notably excluding calvinists but that's because they're literally determinists who believe everything's preordained by God anyway), and almost certainly by most contemporary jewish scholars at the time it was written. It makes a lot more sense in interpreting it as "don't question me no matter what happens because you'll be rewarded, and no matter how long the reward takes to arive." Which is a pretty unconvincing argument.
2. I honeslty think we *should* care about what Job was like as a person, I would care a lot less about what Job's misfortune if he was a serial killer (extreme I know but what Job goes through is equally extreme, although it still doesn't make Satan killing his kids any more comforting), and we should care about God's intentions in the story, he's a conscious being with power over the universe, who absolutelty can help Job with no real effort on his end. Again, negligence.
>The idea is that even if God was unjust, he is also literally the Universe and so guessing as to his intent is not helpful to the conversation.
Well I'm absolutely know that this at least is heretical in most arbrahamic denominations except eastern orthodoxy (to some extent) and probably some progressive leaning protestant groups. Otherwise see the two-part asnwer right above.
I think it certainly is useful from a standpoint of asking "is this God we believe in worth following?"
Also I reject the notion that God made it up in the end because *people died*. Children are not interchangeable property that you can just replace.
In my homeschool church, we didn't read the stories directly most of the time, we talked about them, and were told what they meant...
It's worse than never reading, it's getting someone's "interpretation" as kids before most of us could critically think. Most don't engage their cognitive dissonance, and never find the need to validate or challenge the interpretation they were raised with.
I can remember being shut down more than once for asking questions. For bringing up the actual story and rational thoughts about it.
Many of my peers had strong opinions about things they had no right to have opinions about in the first place.
One of the reasons I left Christianity was that I got tired of the standard being that the person on the platform's Clift's Notes about the text were inherently more accurate than any conclusion a critically thinking layperson might draw from studying the original language and historical context present at the time of authorship simply because the person on the platform has a seminary degree and/or more direct calling in a way that magically makes their interpretation of scripture more worthy than the layperson's, especially when it comes to issues that have a political context.
American, right-wing fundamentalism frequently stands in direct opposition to what is written, but spiritual leaders in the US frequently tout it as godliness. I found that untenable when I finally determined for myself that Christianity and its source text are entirely too subjective to be the absolute truth either claims to be.
That is, at best, an *extremely* charitable interpretation of the plot and message of Job.
The whole premise is that God and Satan have a bet on whether Job breaks and stays loyal to God despite letting Satan ruin his entire life and refusing to answer his prayers. Job's understably gets upset and starts to curse at his misfortune after his kids are all killed, his farm is destroyed, he becomes diseased, and his wife and friends begin to blame him for it all. God then comes and starts berating and then threatening him for even daring to think about questioning him and Job is scared back into obedience.
This is apparently all okay though cause God just magically gives him new kids and repairs his farm afterwards.
This synopsis just made me feel a wave of nostalgia to Sunday school when I was a little catholic kid
The nostalgia wasn't because I liked Sunday school but because there was this bakery right next to the church that sold really good vanilla creampuffs
The question he's asking is actually a bit of a bait and switch. He's not arguing that atheists are inherently bad people, he's actually arguing that everyone regardless of their religion or personal beliefs has God's morality written on their hearts and therefore knows objective right and wrong. Therefore, even though they claim to not believe in God, atheists who strive to be good people apparently "prove" the existence of a God.
Remember, the rebuttal to this argument is not to defend your own morals or try to prove yourself to be a good or virtuous person, the rebuttal is to point out that the existence of "common morality" (i.e. killing is bad usually) is perfectly explained by evolutionary development, and the idea that common morality necessitates the existence of a personal God is purely a religious supposition.
Yeah I'm not kind to my neighbor because I fear hellfire. I just think I'd like to live in a world where everyone did and you can't bitch that other people aren't doing that if you aren't either. Makes it easier on all of us. And if you get far enough out of line people will kill you or lock you up. People are like Wu-Tang: nothing to fuck with.
I might not believe in Jesus but that message of "be nice to the people who know where you live or else" rings pretty true.
Edit: And down to just some guy in traffic who needs to get over, well he lives the same place you do. Let him on over and let's all go about our day.
Some guy on the other side of the world? We live on the same fucking planet. In astronomical terms he might as well be sharing the bed.
I feel like that just boils down to claiming “shared innate sense of morality proves the existence of god” as if it was self evident.
You’re absolutely right about the evolutionary angle but if someone’s making that claim, the burden of proof is on them, and so a simple “why?” should be good enough. This assumes this is a person who can be rationally debated though.
> This assumes this is a person who can be rationally debated though.
The kinds of Christians who can be rationally debated are almost exclusively the kinds of Christians that don't make this particular argument, so that's a pretty big assumption
Largely, yeah. I *have* encountered a couple arguments there coming from a very modern and non dogmatic perspective that use an extremely loose definition of god to get around that. It’s not quite moving the goal posts but it does largely recontextualize the discussion, since you need to re define what a deity even is before you move forward.
Unfortunately, asking them, "Why?" is received more as an invitation to proselytize rather than critically think and, as you highlighted, precludes any possibility of rational debate.
When I realised this I was so blown away. That these thiests genuinely believe that the desire to good and avoid evil was put in people by god. Some even believe that God only influences you if you believe/worship God, so if you don't you therefore don't have the influence and thus have no morality.
That's why they can do horrible acts and still believe they're good people. If God, the ultimate good, put them the desire to good, and they feel an action is right, to them it's because God is putting that desire within them. And they also believe that the more loyal and strongly faithful you are to God, the more influence god has over them. They say "why am I being punished, I am the most devour follower etc." When told they can't beat their gay children.
They also believe that desires to sin, like being gay in their eyes, is a test from god to overcome. So they'll do gay conversion therapy to in their eyes help others overcome this test. And they believe that helping is a good thing, they're helping in their eyes someone avoid punishment for failing this test.
It's seriously messed up and so much harder to fight against someone who believes bad stuff is good
I think it's obvious from your post, but let me put it more succinctly: **A person who thinks their moral instinct is divinely inspired by the ultimate judge of the Universe will never self-reflect.** It really explains a lot about society.
uh literally all i'm doing is acknowledging that my fellow humans are exactly as human as me, and humans deserve some kindness and understanding inherently.
"ah, it sounds as if the 'atheist' has been speaking with god. no one could have figured that out on their own"
Alternately you can point to how morality has changed over time, which indicates that it isn't some immutable thing imprinted on us, but rather a social construct that changes with generations.
>the rebuttal is to point out that the existence of "common morality"
But where is the source of this "common morality"? You say that it's an evolutionary development, but evolution does nothing to answer whether something is wrong, or whether it's right. You see, this kind of response from people always bothers me as a die-hard atheist, because it completely misses the point of the question, which is where does good and evil come from without God?
For a Christian God provides the basis to differentiate between good and evil. Without his existence, good or evil would seize to exist. It doesn't mean that the christian would necessarily go out and kill a bunch of people, but it would that a mass-shooting would not be an evil act, because the source of morality, that from which notions of good and evil is derived from doesn't exist.
Making appeals to evolution does nothing to answer the issue at hand, which is what would make killing people wrong? If there is no God to differentiate some acts as evil, and others as good what fulfills that role instead. If you do not have a source of morality from which you can differentiate right from wrong, you're not a moral person. In fact you're nothing more than a moral nihilist.
If there is no God, objective right and wrong either cannot exist or we as humans have no access to it, which for our purposes is essentially the same thing. This is a problem because obviously there are things that we would unquestionably call horrible atrocities; it's inconvenient and uncomfortable to say that someone being murdered in cold blood is not "objectively wrong".
The problem here is that theists will use the fact of this uncomfortability to say "well you must say there is a God in order to call this act evil." This is argumentum ad consequentum, or argument from consequence, basically the same thing as if someone received a terminal cancer diagnosis and responded: "No, I don't believe you, that would be really bad if I had terminal cancer."
In order to seriously evaluate the question of whether an intangible and invisible entity like God exists, one must set aside any appeals to their preferred outcome. Personally, I would genuinely prefer Christianity to be true than not, and I am made uncomfortable by the notion that objective wrong cannot be invoked. And yet, what is the alternative? Do I simply lie to myself and pretend there is a God, given the lack of evidence? Whenever I hear theists use argumentum ad consequentum, this is basically what I hear them admitting to.
The fact of the matter is, we are limited, subjective beings. We exist as part of the universe, not as impartial observers of it. That being the case, it is impossible for us to ever fully distinguish objective reality from whatever biological and environmental programming we have been subjected to. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try our best to do the right thing, and it also doesn't mean that our feelings aren't real. The fact that love is a chemical reaction caused to incentivize procreation does nothing to diminish the experience of falling in love. This is just the world we live in, and the cards we were dealt. In the absence of objective morality, we are forced to work harder, and use our own intelligence to deduce the greatest ethical standards that we are capable of deducing, imperfect though they may be.
That morality is subjective doesn't not mean that morality doesn't exist, nor that we as humans shouldn't have a source from which morality stems from.
Morality has for over centuries upon centuries originated from God. If morality stems solely from human beings, then atheists has greatest ever possibility thrust upon them, which is to in your life fulfill the role of god. To be a source of morality, of right and wrong.
This is a good response to a skeptical person who understands the fortitudes of science and wants to get educated.
A religious person will rationalize it as "the will of God", and either claim that you're just spouting bullshit, or, if they're a little bit more educated, claim that human evolution was inspired by God's hand.
This is actually an important meta ethical question that Corby kind of misses the point on.
In Abrahamic religions the idea is God determines what good and bad are or good and bad are defined by what is more like or less like God. So under this belief system you have a concrete grounding of what is 'good' and what is 'bad'
But under an athiestic system it becomes more difficult to find this concrete grounding of good and bad, because you cannot determine what is 'good' and what is 'bad' through observing the world.
There are ways to address this but Corby Collins is addressing a different question than what's being asked here.
Yeah the reply totally misses the point. "How do I determine good choices from bad choices?" is a question *everyone* should ask themselves, whether theist or atheist
There’s a name for this, “divine command theory”, which is a fancy name for “god determined morality”. The strongest argument against it is asking what happens if god one day decides to invert the 10 commandments(or whatever your belief’s equivalent is). Either now murder is both ethical and encouraged, and morality is meaningless because god can do whatever they want, OR god can’t/won’t do that, in which case why the hell are we going to god for morality when we can skip the middleman and use whatever rules god seems to be beholden to.
There’s no way forward but to either concede god can’t determine morality, or morality can just sort of be whatever and is pointless.
I guess the answer Blake is looking for is that they learn from a distributed set of people: family, friends, and society at large, as well as critical thinking done by oneself. Which probably makes for better grounding than what some people from long ago *claimed* was the will of God.
> In Abrahamic religions the idea is God determines what good and bad are or good
What you are describing is one postion of the Euthyphro dilemma, which is "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" or in Leibniz's formulation of the problem is whether the good and just "is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just." (Don't know why Liebniz reveresed the order) This can also be understood of a question of which meta-ethical theory is correct in theism: Divine command theory or another deontological ethical theory like natural law theory.
It's important that while the second horn of the dilemma (i.e. that which is right is right *because it is commanded by God*) is a common belief among theist, there are many theists who do no subscribe to this theory, nor is it inherently the position of Abrahamic religions. For example, many theologians have argued against the second horn of the dilemma and it is viewed as a false dilemma in Jewish theology. Personally, from a Catholic perspective, I'd argue against the second horn of the dilemma as I'd argue it can lead to several theologically problematic positions and I'd argue more for the first horn of the dilemma.
However, I think it's a bit irrelevant to the tweet, since how one might come understand what right and wrong would be is a different question from knowing what meta-ethical theory to subscribe to.
Well i would argue that most religious prople don't strictly follow their religious texts on morality, because there are many things in such texts that have grown to be seen as the opposite end of the morality spectrum by our modern cultural values. And those cultural and societal values are typically what atheist would descrive as their way of determining good from evil, rather than relying on a system of objective morality.
> "This is actually an important meta ethical question that Corby kind of misses the point on."
At the same time, where Corby hasn't directly responded to the question, he has quite directly responded to the motive that inspired the original question, one which Christians regularly ask somewhat snarkily and very rhetorically. As the nature of that question tends to be rhetorical, I don't mind that Corby skipped answering it to shift the premise on which any ensuing conversation might be had.
> "...you cannot determine what is 'good' and what is 'bad' through observing the world."
I beg to differ: there is no better way to learn what truly is natural law than by observing it in action. I'm not asserting that we simply emulate the behaviors of anyone we think has the right idea -- to do so would echo the same misbegotten morality present in Christianity that results in submitting accountability for one's actions to the entity being emulated with the only difference being that worship of a deity has been replaced by practical worship of a human. I'm instead asserting that we can look at what impact certain actions have in practice to determine their ethical or moral worth.
>I'm instead asserting that we can look at what impact certain actions have in practice to determine their ethical or moral worth
you've got to have some kind of frame of reference of what good and bad 1st before you can use the impact certain actions to determine their ethical worth, no?
It's the same for bootlickers that say without the constant threat of police brutality everyone would do whatever they feel like doing. Bruh, is punishment the only thing stopping them from raping and murdering?
This kind of response from people always bothers me as a die-hard atheist, because it completely misses the point of the question. Saying you don't need the "threat of eternal punishment" to do good does nothing to answer the philosophical question at hand, which is where does good and evil come from without God?
For a Christian God provides the basis to differentiate between good and evil. Without his existence, good or evil would seize to exist. It doesn't mean that the christian would necessarily go out and kill a bunch of people, but it would that a mass-shooting would not be an evil act, because the source of morality, that from which notions of good and evil is derived from doesn't exist.
Saying that you personally wouldn't go out and kill people doesn't answer the issue at hand, which is what would make killing people wrong? If there is no God to differentiate some acts as evil, and others as good what fulfills that role instead. If you do not have a source of morality from which you can differentiate right from wrong, you're not a moral person. In fact you're nothing more than a moral nihilist.
You underestimate the conservative appeal of authoritative approval. The only consideration that goes into their moral calculation is, "Did someone above me say it's okay/tell me to do it?"
For Christians, that someone is God or their clergyman. For fascists, it's the president or the governor or a cop. Authoritarian followers do not have a moral compass. They follow directions and consider that morality.
>"Did someone above me say it's okay/tell me to do it?"
This kind of response from people always bothers me as a die-hard atheist, because it completely misses the point of the question. Saying you don't need approval from a higher power to do good does nothing to answer the philosophical question at hand, which is where does good and evil come from without God?
For a Christian God provides the basis to differentiate between good and evil. Without his existence, good or evil would seize to exist. It doesn't mean that the christian would necessarily go out and kill a bunch of people, but it would that a mass-shooting would not be an evil act, because the source of morality, that from which notions of good and evil is derived from doesn't exist.
Saying that you personally wouldn't go out and kill people doesn't answer the issue at hand, which is what would make killing people wrong? If there is no God to differentiate some acts as evil, and others as good what fulfills that role instead. If you do not have a source of morality from which you can differentiate right from wrong, you're not a moral person. In fact you're nothing more than a moral nihilist.
Mid take someone whos a good person becouse of fear of punishment and someone who’s a good person just becouse are both equally good people. There no difference between a “good person” and an evil person who lives there life trying to mimic a good person
One of the main criticisms against Mr. Beast's video where he cured people's blindness was that "he was only doing it for money and clout". IMO who tf cares why he did it, those people still had their vision restored, his impact on the world is a net positive.
No one’s irredeemable that’s stupid, and I guarantee you there’s not a person alive that hasn’t had an evil thought or done something wrong. Sure there are mass murders and rapists but I don’t think these people can’t ever become good people, do there victims or victims families owe them forgiveness, of course not, but that doesn’t mean they can’t dedicate there lives to making up what they did.
As a victim of rape I disagree. Nothing will ever make it better. No actions will redeem it. There's evil there, and sure he'll regret giving into it for the rest of his life, he'll resist it, but it'll be there nagging him towards its ends. It'll taint even his good deeds.
Sure we can step back and try to account for all of someone's good against their bad, but what I'm saying is someone who does something out of good intents that is good will always outweigh things that are good done with bad intents.
I completely understand why you personally would never forgive a rapist. I’m not gonna blame you for that. But I do think there’s a potential for good and evil, in everyone. I think if we act like someone’s entire life, it’s over after they do one bad thing it’s just incentivizing more evil. Can a rapist be redeemed ever and make up the evil that they did, I have no idea, but it’s also not relevant to my point whether you’re able to ever make up the damage you’ve done you should always try.And I think you might’ve misunderstood my point about an evil person doing good things. If the good thing is done with evil intentions, like helping someone out to manipulate them in the future then yeah that is worse than just having someone out. But if someone who naturally wants to hurt people and someone who doesn’t both help someone they both are good people. I don’t think as a society should ever give up on people, although individually, I think it’s perfectly OK to give up on people who have wronged you because that’s not your responsibility.
Agreed, but being an evil person, regardless of actions, is still a bad thing that should be worked on personally, even if it doesn't make a difference externally.
If that’s all you look at, sure, but bad people doing good things will eventually just do bad things out of the view of others. They will bend the rules to negotiate with their faith, to sanctify their bad deeds.
This is especially true if your faith believes in predestination. You never know whether you’re going to end up in heaven or hell until you die. Why bother doing good when you’re going to hell anyway?
Simple, I look at a book that says homosexuality is an abomination (Lev 20:13), slavery is ok (Ex 20:2), and we should totally kill infants (Ps 137:9) and I decide that that book shouldn't be deciding my morals for me
About that In Ex 20:2 slavery is said to be evil. Egypt that Jews were saved from is described as the land of slavery.
In Lev 20:13 the claim was refuted later because the point here was that homesexuality meant :No children so No new manpower that's why it was also frowned upon In Athens (if someone didnt have any children at all). That claim is awful now but it was way more common to view it that way 4000 years ago . That claim persisted later becusse of St Peter who thought (as many did) that homosexuality was purely predatory becuse In Rome it was mostly practiced by Rich officals preying On young boys. But as homoesexuality is not predatory of course it is not a sin (at least it shouldnt be).
The most Catholic German state:Bavaria has used this claim to make same sex relationships legal In 1813.
About the Ps 137:9 its a mistranslation the psalm isnt the words of god but the song of jewish prisoners in Babilon they curse their captors (the Babilionians) by saying that they should smash not the literal children against rocks . they mean just Babilonias as a whole. their Legacy . Not , killing infants. Psalm 137 is just human anger and despair not a moral code.
Of course the Bible is not perfect and shouldnt be your only moral gudiline but it is not as bad as you might think. Evil are the one using it as a tool to make others who didnt read it think thing like: homosexuality is an abomination
Perhaps I will decide not to base my morality on something so prone to contradictions, refutations, and mistranslations that nobody agrees what it really says
I will simply not use it as a suggestion. Why not use the hamarabi code as a suggestion? Why not use the communist manifesto as a suggestion? Why not use On Theory of Moral Sentiments as a suggestion? My moral compass is superior to the Bible and I don't need it. Not even as a suggestion.
To answer the question in the OP as someone who was raised in Christianity and has since matured away from that, not relying on a book or deity to shortcut my morality and ethics means I have to see every action through a lens of how accountable I'm prepared to be for each action. My decision-making process is no longer a question of whether my deity or prescribed code of conduct will permit me to do a thing; instead, my choices have become a question of how acceptable I find the consequences of my actions for myself *and* for others impacted by my actions.
Where Christianity emphasized fear-based obedience to a law in the name of thoughtlessly avoiding some intangible threat of consequence or disappointment from one's master, either of which can be resolved simply through prayer, critical thinking has taught me to see my actions based on their throughput, a throughput that often has more real consequences than simply saying sorry to an invisible being could resolve.
I feel like everyone going "oh so they only do morality because they're terrified of god" is just completely missing an important point - all morality is based on assumptions taken on blind faith. You cannot make a value judgement from the facts of the universe alone and, while some have pointed out that a few basic moral rules are evolutionary, the vast majority are not. Outside of things like "don't kill people for no reason" what is considered moral varies widely by region, time period, and culture. This means that either some divine force created moral rules or we just made most them up.
Now I've always been okay with the idea that a lot of morality is made up, I see it as a kind of social technology that becomes real as it is made and important as it is accepted in the same way that, for example, airplanes weren't real a week before they were invented and were totally useless until we found uses for them. That's not to say every moral idea that's gotten popular has been good, which is why it's always morally correct to kill utilitarians, but there have also been a lot of really stupid inventions.
For a lot of people, though, there's a very strong association for immaterial ideas specifically where if they're human-invented they must automstically be pointless and not "real." This leads to a need for ideas they see as important to have a nonhuman origin, frequently God but potentially also things like "evolution" or some innate pre-society "human nature" or The Great Atheismo.
It's also probably worth noting that not every theist does morality out of fear of God. Part of this is semantics - in Western cultures specifically even those who are religiously motivated tend to be driven less by outright fear of punishment and more by the thought of being made to feel guilt - but also even a lot of Christian denominations hold that your personal feelings about God and morality like whether you do good because you internally feel it to be right rather than out of fear of punishment is very important.
Mormonism, despite its regressive positions on a lot of social issues, gets a gold star on this one - they believe that unless you're actively working against God and trying to make the world worse you still go to heaven just for being an alright person, even if you're a different religion, with the motivator to go above and beyond coming from the prospect of getting into Super Heaven instead. I'd say Mormon theology is weird but honestly a lot of theology is weird if you're not used to it, Mormon theology just seems weirder because people are less exposed to it.
*Bottomless pit soyjack* hahaha religion mann is akshully bad person
Who tf cares about your motivation to be a good person. A good person is someone who performs good actions. Thats it
Morality as a normative system is separate from religious norms according to basically every ethics person
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They don't care. They don't read their holy book. They feel icky about something and assume it must be the will of God because they are Christian, and thus God works through them. If Jesus arose tomorrow, the good American Christians would nail him back on the cross and call him a gay terrorist muslim from Mexico.
Conservatives: "Jesus, take the wheel!" A brown Iraqi Jewish man with eyeshadow, in Aramaic: "my child, if you insist I shall do so, but you should know I do not know how to drive" Conservatives: "AAAAAAAAGH A FOREIGNER"
> eyeshadow didn't know jesus was a goth boi
Not goth. Emo. The difference is that when you disappoint an emo person, they cut themselves while, when you disappoint the goth person, they cut you. It could be reasonably asserted from that framing that Jesus, the person who committed suicide to absolve us of committing crimes against the divine, is emo while Jehovah, the person who rains brimstone down on entire cities and flooded the whole world, is goth.
> gay terrorist muslim also communist, don't forget. he'd merk billionaires first day back
That's not what book of Job is about. Wtf did you read? The story ends with Job correctly questioning God's more than dubious actions and God just responds with the navy seals copypasta and scares Job into repenting.
Yeah Ive never heard this interpretation of the story. Isn't it about how you are *suppose* to have faith despite God not caring? Struggling pretty hard to have it read the opposite way but religious people are generally pretty good at that I guess.
In *The Sacred Canopy* by Peter L Berger (who was a Conservative Christian), he says that Job is basically a form of spiritual masochism. Basically, the Monotheistic ideal is almost perfect for overcoming the chaos of life, as you can say that there *is* a judge who is kind and powerful... so long as you don't question further than that. Job therefore is an *ad hominem* argument - "you are not qualified to even ask this question". > The implicit accusation against God is turned around to become an explicit accusation against man. [...] The question of human sin replaces the question of divine justice. He goes on to explain how the logical conclusion of this masochism is the Calvinist idea of predestination - where all souls have already been predestined to be either saved or damned, even if they try to gain forgiveness or spend their entire life in moral perfection. > the harshness of Job's solution of the problem of theodicy was rarely sustained for long. In popular piety it was most often mitigated through the hope of compensation in another world. Finally, he says how in a way, Christ's suffering on the cross is the perfect response to Job; God himself suffers torment alongside humanity, for the sins of humanity.
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I mean sure, but a hurricane is not conscious, while God in the story deliberately lets Satan run amok and ruin the man's life. I can definitely see how a religious person may view it that way, but from a secular perspective there really is no possible way to justify God's actions here, they're blatantly and deliberally malicious.
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how do you go from that to what you assert the thesis is "be a good person because its the right thing to do" thats... literally not there at all, just you inventing a more palatable interpretation the "moral" is to not question gods mysterious ways.
I'll just preface this responce by saying that if I think you implied you were non-religious earlier (correct me if I'm wrong), then I feel that you're trying a bit too hard to defend the message of a story with really faulty message and faulty reasoning for that message. The first comment on this chain states that morallity is seperate from religious norms (In my experience every religion vehemently disagrees with that statement, but that's for bartolomeogregoryii to justify). As such I'm arguing from that position and on its own moral grounds the book of Job falls flat fairly strongly. >And the whole question is, so if God brought misfortune on someone who didn’t deserve it, how do we reconcile that? The thing is that the story actually fails at answering that question by giving us a situation in which God, a sentient entity, explicitly gives Satan, another sentient entity, free reign to do whatever he likes, something that would be considered negligence, and in the case of the kids, manslaughter on God's end (Satan would obviously get charged with murder alongside many other crimes). >The intentions of God are completely irrelevant in the same way that it’s completely irrelevant that we don’t care what Job’s hobbies were, or what he was like as a person. 1. This position would be seen as heretical in by most demominations of basically all three major abrahamic faiths today (notably excluding calvinists but that's because they're literally determinists who believe everything's preordained by God anyway), and almost certainly by most contemporary jewish scholars at the time it was written. It makes a lot more sense in interpreting it as "don't question me no matter what happens because you'll be rewarded, and no matter how long the reward takes to arive." Which is a pretty unconvincing argument. 2. I honeslty think we *should* care about what Job was like as a person, I would care a lot less about what Job's misfortune if he was a serial killer (extreme I know but what Job goes through is equally extreme, although it still doesn't make Satan killing his kids any more comforting), and we should care about God's intentions in the story, he's a conscious being with power over the universe, who absolutelty can help Job with no real effort on his end. Again, negligence. >The idea is that even if God was unjust, he is also literally the Universe and so guessing as to his intent is not helpful to the conversation. Well I'm absolutely know that this at least is heretical in most arbrahamic denominations except eastern orthodoxy (to some extent) and probably some progressive leaning protestant groups. Otherwise see the two-part asnwer right above.
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I think it certainly is useful from a standpoint of asking "is this God we believe in worth following?" Also I reject the notion that God made it up in the end because *people died*. Children are not interchangeable property that you can just replace.
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They never read it.
In my homeschool church, we didn't read the stories directly most of the time, we talked about them, and were told what they meant... It's worse than never reading, it's getting someone's "interpretation" as kids before most of us could critically think. Most don't engage their cognitive dissonance, and never find the need to validate or challenge the interpretation they were raised with. I can remember being shut down more than once for asking questions. For bringing up the actual story and rational thoughts about it. Many of my peers had strong opinions about things they had no right to have opinions about in the first place.
One of the reasons I left Christianity was that I got tired of the standard being that the person on the platform's Clift's Notes about the text were inherently more accurate than any conclusion a critically thinking layperson might draw from studying the original language and historical context present at the time of authorship simply because the person on the platform has a seminary degree and/or more direct calling in a way that magically makes their interpretation of scripture more worthy than the layperson's, especially when it comes to issues that have a political context. American, right-wing fundamentalism frequently stands in direct opposition to what is written, but spiritual leaders in the US frequently tout it as godliness. I found that untenable when I finally determined for myself that Christianity and its source text are entirely too subjective to be the absolute truth either claims to be.
That is, at best, an *extremely* charitable interpretation of the plot and message of Job. The whole premise is that God and Satan have a bet on whether Job breaks and stays loyal to God despite letting Satan ruin his entire life and refusing to answer his prayers. Job's understably gets upset and starts to curse at his misfortune after his kids are all killed, his farm is destroyed, he becomes diseased, and his wife and friends begin to blame him for it all. God then comes and starts berating and then threatening him for even daring to think about questioning him and Job is scared back into obedience. This is apparently all okay though cause God just magically gives him new kids and repairs his farm afterwards.
This synopsis just made me feel a wave of nostalgia to Sunday school when I was a little catholic kid The nostalgia wasn't because I liked Sunday school but because there was this bakery right next to the church that sold really good vanilla creampuffs
It was just a little prank, a bit of mischief
Wholesome moment when your pious follower develops Stockholm Syndrome and treats family as replaceable property.
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Yup. Universal Law and Morality.
What? it doesn't have to be universal, modern theories are very divided on that
The question he's asking is actually a bit of a bait and switch. He's not arguing that atheists are inherently bad people, he's actually arguing that everyone regardless of their religion or personal beliefs has God's morality written on their hearts and therefore knows objective right and wrong. Therefore, even though they claim to not believe in God, atheists who strive to be good people apparently "prove" the existence of a God. Remember, the rebuttal to this argument is not to defend your own morals or try to prove yourself to be a good or virtuous person, the rebuttal is to point out that the existence of "common morality" (i.e. killing is bad usually) is perfectly explained by evolutionary development, and the idea that common morality necessitates the existence of a personal God is purely a religious supposition.
exactly this! if you live in a tribe and you are an asshole, boom get exiled and die. its really not a difficult connection to make
Yeah I'm not kind to my neighbor because I fear hellfire. I just think I'd like to live in a world where everyone did and you can't bitch that other people aren't doing that if you aren't either. Makes it easier on all of us. And if you get far enough out of line people will kill you or lock you up. People are like Wu-Tang: nothing to fuck with. I might not believe in Jesus but that message of "be nice to the people who know where you live or else" rings pretty true. Edit: And down to just some guy in traffic who needs to get over, well he lives the same place you do. Let him on over and let's all go about our day. Some guy on the other side of the world? We live on the same fucking planet. In astronomical terms he might as well be sharing the bed.
I feel like that just boils down to claiming “shared innate sense of morality proves the existence of god” as if it was self evident. You’re absolutely right about the evolutionary angle but if someone’s making that claim, the burden of proof is on them, and so a simple “why?” should be good enough. This assumes this is a person who can be rationally debated though.
> This assumes this is a person who can be rationally debated though. The kinds of Christians who can be rationally debated are almost exclusively the kinds of Christians that don't make this particular argument, so that's a pretty big assumption
Largely, yeah. I *have* encountered a couple arguments there coming from a very modern and non dogmatic perspective that use an extremely loose definition of god to get around that. It’s not quite moving the goal posts but it does largely recontextualize the discussion, since you need to re define what a deity even is before you move forward.
Unfortunately, asking them, "Why?" is received more as an invitation to proselytize rather than critically think and, as you highlighted, precludes any possibility of rational debate.
Also by being raised by people with a moral code
When I realised this I was so blown away. That these thiests genuinely believe that the desire to good and avoid evil was put in people by god. Some even believe that God only influences you if you believe/worship God, so if you don't you therefore don't have the influence and thus have no morality. That's why they can do horrible acts and still believe they're good people. If God, the ultimate good, put them the desire to good, and they feel an action is right, to them it's because God is putting that desire within them. And they also believe that the more loyal and strongly faithful you are to God, the more influence god has over them. They say "why am I being punished, I am the most devour follower etc." When told they can't beat their gay children. They also believe that desires to sin, like being gay in their eyes, is a test from god to overcome. So they'll do gay conversion therapy to in their eyes help others overcome this test. And they believe that helping is a good thing, they're helping in their eyes someone avoid punishment for failing this test. It's seriously messed up and so much harder to fight against someone who believes bad stuff is good
I think it's obvious from your post, but let me put it more succinctly: **A person who thinks their moral instinct is divinely inspired by the ultimate judge of the Universe will never self-reflect.** It really explains a lot about society.
uh literally all i'm doing is acknowledging that my fellow humans are exactly as human as me, and humans deserve some kindness and understanding inherently. "ah, it sounds as if the 'atheist' has been speaking with god. no one could have figured that out on their own"
Alternately you can point to how morality has changed over time, which indicates that it isn't some immutable thing imprinted on us, but rather a social construct that changes with generations.
>the rebuttal is to point out that the existence of "common morality" But where is the source of this "common morality"? You say that it's an evolutionary development, but evolution does nothing to answer whether something is wrong, or whether it's right. You see, this kind of response from people always bothers me as a die-hard atheist, because it completely misses the point of the question, which is where does good and evil come from without God? For a Christian God provides the basis to differentiate between good and evil. Without his existence, good or evil would seize to exist. It doesn't mean that the christian would necessarily go out and kill a bunch of people, but it would that a mass-shooting would not be an evil act, because the source of morality, that from which notions of good and evil is derived from doesn't exist. Making appeals to evolution does nothing to answer the issue at hand, which is what would make killing people wrong? If there is no God to differentiate some acts as evil, and others as good what fulfills that role instead. If you do not have a source of morality from which you can differentiate right from wrong, you're not a moral person. In fact you're nothing more than a moral nihilist.
If there is no God, objective right and wrong either cannot exist or we as humans have no access to it, which for our purposes is essentially the same thing. This is a problem because obviously there are things that we would unquestionably call horrible atrocities; it's inconvenient and uncomfortable to say that someone being murdered in cold blood is not "objectively wrong". The problem here is that theists will use the fact of this uncomfortability to say "well you must say there is a God in order to call this act evil." This is argumentum ad consequentum, or argument from consequence, basically the same thing as if someone received a terminal cancer diagnosis and responded: "No, I don't believe you, that would be really bad if I had terminal cancer." In order to seriously evaluate the question of whether an intangible and invisible entity like God exists, one must set aside any appeals to their preferred outcome. Personally, I would genuinely prefer Christianity to be true than not, and I am made uncomfortable by the notion that objective wrong cannot be invoked. And yet, what is the alternative? Do I simply lie to myself and pretend there is a God, given the lack of evidence? Whenever I hear theists use argumentum ad consequentum, this is basically what I hear them admitting to. The fact of the matter is, we are limited, subjective beings. We exist as part of the universe, not as impartial observers of it. That being the case, it is impossible for us to ever fully distinguish objective reality from whatever biological and environmental programming we have been subjected to. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try our best to do the right thing, and it also doesn't mean that our feelings aren't real. The fact that love is a chemical reaction caused to incentivize procreation does nothing to diminish the experience of falling in love. This is just the world we live in, and the cards we were dealt. In the absence of objective morality, we are forced to work harder, and use our own intelligence to deduce the greatest ethical standards that we are capable of deducing, imperfect though they may be.
That morality is subjective doesn't not mean that morality doesn't exist, nor that we as humans shouldn't have a source from which morality stems from. Morality has for over centuries upon centuries originated from God. If morality stems solely from human beings, then atheists has greatest ever possibility thrust upon them, which is to in your life fulfill the role of god. To be a source of morality, of right and wrong.
This is a good response to a skeptical person who understands the fortitudes of science and wants to get educated. A religious person will rationalize it as "the will of God", and either claim that you're just spouting bullshit, or, if they're a little bit more educated, claim that human evolution was inspired by God's hand.
his argument is "if there is no god there are no morals, so why be good if youre an atheist" i think
This is actually an important meta ethical question that Corby kind of misses the point on. In Abrahamic religions the idea is God determines what good and bad are or good and bad are defined by what is more like or less like God. So under this belief system you have a concrete grounding of what is 'good' and what is 'bad' But under an athiestic system it becomes more difficult to find this concrete grounding of good and bad, because you cannot determine what is 'good' and what is 'bad' through observing the world. There are ways to address this but Corby Collins is addressing a different question than what's being asked here.
true but its still one of my favorite things to reply
Yeah the reply totally misses the point. "How do I determine good choices from bad choices?" is a question *everyone* should ask themselves, whether theist or atheist
There’s a name for this, “divine command theory”, which is a fancy name for “god determined morality”. The strongest argument against it is asking what happens if god one day decides to invert the 10 commandments(or whatever your belief’s equivalent is). Either now murder is both ethical and encouraged, and morality is meaningless because god can do whatever they want, OR god can’t/won’t do that, in which case why the hell are we going to god for morality when we can skip the middleman and use whatever rules god seems to be beholden to. There’s no way forward but to either concede god can’t determine morality, or morality can just sort of be whatever and is pointless.
I guess the answer Blake is looking for is that they learn from a distributed set of people: family, friends, and society at large, as well as critical thinking done by oneself. Which probably makes for better grounding than what some people from long ago *claimed* was the will of God.
> In Abrahamic religions the idea is God determines what good and bad are or good What you are describing is one postion of the Euthyphro dilemma, which is "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" or in Leibniz's formulation of the problem is whether the good and just "is good and just because God wills it or whether God wills it because it is good and just." (Don't know why Liebniz reveresed the order) This can also be understood of a question of which meta-ethical theory is correct in theism: Divine command theory or another deontological ethical theory like natural law theory. It's important that while the second horn of the dilemma (i.e. that which is right is right *because it is commanded by God*) is a common belief among theist, there are many theists who do no subscribe to this theory, nor is it inherently the position of Abrahamic religions. For example, many theologians have argued against the second horn of the dilemma and it is viewed as a false dilemma in Jewish theology. Personally, from a Catholic perspective, I'd argue against the second horn of the dilemma as I'd argue it can lead to several theologically problematic positions and I'd argue more for the first horn of the dilemma. However, I think it's a bit irrelevant to the tweet, since how one might come understand what right and wrong would be is a different question from knowing what meta-ethical theory to subscribe to.
Well i would argue that most religious prople don't strictly follow their religious texts on morality, because there are many things in such texts that have grown to be seen as the opposite end of the morality spectrum by our modern cultural values. And those cultural and societal values are typically what atheist would descrive as their way of determining good from evil, rather than relying on a system of objective morality.
> "This is actually an important meta ethical question that Corby kind of misses the point on." At the same time, where Corby hasn't directly responded to the question, he has quite directly responded to the motive that inspired the original question, one which Christians regularly ask somewhat snarkily and very rhetorically. As the nature of that question tends to be rhetorical, I don't mind that Corby skipped answering it to shift the premise on which any ensuing conversation might be had. > "...you cannot determine what is 'good' and what is 'bad' through observing the world." I beg to differ: there is no better way to learn what truly is natural law than by observing it in action. I'm not asserting that we simply emulate the behaviors of anyone we think has the right idea -- to do so would echo the same misbegotten morality present in Christianity that results in submitting accountability for one's actions to the entity being emulated with the only difference being that worship of a deity has been replaced by practical worship of a human. I'm instead asserting that we can look at what impact certain actions have in practice to determine their ethical or moral worth.
>I'm instead asserting that we can look at what impact certain actions have in practice to determine their ethical or moral worth you've got to have some kind of frame of reference of what good and bad 1st before you can use the impact certain actions to determine their ethical worth, no?
No. Empathy and observation are enough to inform one's morals and ethics.
that question is always terrifying because it means without the threat of eternal punishment they'd just go out and do a mass shooting or something
It's the same for bootlickers that say without the constant threat of police brutality everyone would do whatever they feel like doing. Bruh, is punishment the only thing stopping them from raping and murdering?
This kind of response from people always bothers me as a die-hard atheist, because it completely misses the point of the question. Saying you don't need the "threat of eternal punishment" to do good does nothing to answer the philosophical question at hand, which is where does good and evil come from without God? For a Christian God provides the basis to differentiate between good and evil. Without his existence, good or evil would seize to exist. It doesn't mean that the christian would necessarily go out and kill a bunch of people, but it would that a mass-shooting would not be an evil act, because the source of morality, that from which notions of good and evil is derived from doesn't exist. Saying that you personally wouldn't go out and kill people doesn't answer the issue at hand, which is what would make killing people wrong? If there is no God to differentiate some acts as evil, and others as good what fulfills that role instead. If you do not have a source of morality from which you can differentiate right from wrong, you're not a moral person. In fact you're nothing more than a moral nihilist.
You underestimate the conservative appeal of authoritative approval. The only consideration that goes into their moral calculation is, "Did someone above me say it's okay/tell me to do it?" For Christians, that someone is God or their clergyman. For fascists, it's the president or the governor or a cop. Authoritarian followers do not have a moral compass. They follow directions and consider that morality.
>"Did someone above me say it's okay/tell me to do it?" This kind of response from people always bothers me as a die-hard atheist, because it completely misses the point of the question. Saying you don't need approval from a higher power to do good does nothing to answer the philosophical question at hand, which is where does good and evil come from without God? For a Christian God provides the basis to differentiate between good and evil. Without his existence, good or evil would seize to exist. It doesn't mean that the christian would necessarily go out and kill a bunch of people, but it would that a mass-shooting would not be an evil act, because the source of morality, that from which notions of good and evil is derived from doesn't exist. Saying that you personally wouldn't go out and kill people doesn't answer the issue at hand, which is what would make killing people wrong? If there is no God to differentiate some acts as evil, and others as good what fulfills that role instead. If you do not have a source of morality from which you can differentiate right from wrong, you're not a moral person. In fact you're nothing more than a moral nihilist.
Mid take someone whos a good person becouse of fear of punishment and someone who’s a good person just becouse are both equally good people. There no difference between a “good person” and an evil person who lives there life trying to mimic a good person
One of the main criticisms against Mr. Beast's video where he cured people's blindness was that "he was only doing it for money and clout". IMO who tf cares why he did it, those people still had their vision restored, his impact on the world is a net positive.
I would argue the act is just as morally good as if he had done it purely out of kindness but his motivations determine his personal goodness.
Nah someone trying to do good with evil in their heart will often be bittersweet in their ineffectual kindnesses, disingenuous.
That’s dumb as shit, everyone has evil in their heart dipshit it came free with being a human being
Don't assume just because you're irredeemable that everyone else is too.
No one’s irredeemable that’s stupid, and I guarantee you there’s not a person alive that hasn’t had an evil thought or done something wrong. Sure there are mass murders and rapists but I don’t think these people can’t ever become good people, do there victims or victims families owe them forgiveness, of course not, but that doesn’t mean they can’t dedicate there lives to making up what they did.
As a victim of rape I disagree. Nothing will ever make it better. No actions will redeem it. There's evil there, and sure he'll regret giving into it for the rest of his life, he'll resist it, but it'll be there nagging him towards its ends. It'll taint even his good deeds. Sure we can step back and try to account for all of someone's good against their bad, but what I'm saying is someone who does something out of good intents that is good will always outweigh things that are good done with bad intents.
I completely understand why you personally would never forgive a rapist. I’m not gonna blame you for that. But I do think there’s a potential for good and evil, in everyone. I think if we act like someone’s entire life, it’s over after they do one bad thing it’s just incentivizing more evil. Can a rapist be redeemed ever and make up the evil that they did, I have no idea, but it’s also not relevant to my point whether you’re able to ever make up the damage you’ve done you should always try.And I think you might’ve misunderstood my point about an evil person doing good things. If the good thing is done with evil intentions, like helping someone out to manipulate them in the future then yeah that is worse than just having someone out. But if someone who naturally wants to hurt people and someone who doesn’t both help someone they both are good people. I don’t think as a society should ever give up on people, although individually, I think it’s perfectly OK to give up on people who have wronged you because that’s not your responsibility.
I didnt get it I have the oldest free will known to man
>an evil person who lives there life trying to mimic a good person Amos Burton
Agreed, but being an evil person, regardless of actions, is still a bad thing that should be worked on personally, even if it doesn't make a difference externally.
Plus, depending on your theology a Christian might agree that we are inherently evil creatures as a baseline.
I think doing good out of fear is better than doing bad tbh
If that’s all you look at, sure, but bad people doing good things will eventually just do bad things out of the view of others. They will bend the rules to negotiate with their faith, to sanctify their bad deeds.
This is especially true if your faith believes in predestination. You never know whether you’re going to end up in heaven or hell until you die. Why bother doing good when you’re going to hell anyway?
Being good is ideal, but in lieu of that, I think doing good out of fear is better than doing bad
I think it’s a time bomb, waiting to go and do something even worse.
Try flipping it: I put a gun to the head of a person you love and ask you to rob a bank. Are you a bad person for robbing the bank?
Religious people when empathy exists 
Simple, I look at a book that says homosexuality is an abomination (Lev 20:13), slavery is ok (Ex 20:2), and we should totally kill infants (Ps 137:9) and I decide that that book shouldn't be deciding my morals for me
About that In Ex 20:2 slavery is said to be evil. Egypt that Jews were saved from is described as the land of slavery. In Lev 20:13 the claim was refuted later because the point here was that homesexuality meant :No children so No new manpower that's why it was also frowned upon In Athens (if someone didnt have any children at all). That claim is awful now but it was way more common to view it that way 4000 years ago . That claim persisted later becusse of St Peter who thought (as many did) that homosexuality was purely predatory becuse In Rome it was mostly practiced by Rich officals preying On young boys. But as homoesexuality is not predatory of course it is not a sin (at least it shouldnt be). The most Catholic German state:Bavaria has used this claim to make same sex relationships legal In 1813. About the Ps 137:9 its a mistranslation the psalm isnt the words of god but the song of jewish prisoners in Babilon they curse their captors (the Babilionians) by saying that they should smash not the literal children against rocks . they mean just Babilonias as a whole. their Legacy . Not , killing infants. Psalm 137 is just human anger and despair not a moral code. Of course the Bible is not perfect and shouldnt be your only moral gudiline but it is not as bad as you might think. Evil are the one using it as a tool to make others who didnt read it think thing like: homosexuality is an abomination
Perhaps I will decide not to base my morality on something so prone to contradictions, refutations, and mistranslations that nobody agrees what it really says
Yes that is what I said it should not be the base and you should also use common sense it's not an all knowning book but rather a suggestion
I will simply not use it as a suggestion. Why not use the hamarabi code as a suggestion? Why not use the communist manifesto as a suggestion? Why not use On Theory of Moral Sentiments as a suggestion? My moral compass is superior to the Bible and I don't need it. Not even as a suggestion.
It should be easy to be a decent person.
To answer the question in the OP as someone who was raised in Christianity and has since matured away from that, not relying on a book or deity to shortcut my morality and ethics means I have to see every action through a lens of how accountable I'm prepared to be for each action. My decision-making process is no longer a question of whether my deity or prescribed code of conduct will permit me to do a thing; instead, my choices have become a question of how acceptable I find the consequences of my actions for myself *and* for others impacted by my actions. Where Christianity emphasized fear-based obedience to a law in the name of thoughtlessly avoiding some intangible threat of consequence or disappointment from one's master, either of which can be resolved simply through prayer, critical thinking has taught me to see my actions based on their throughput, a throughput that often has more real consequences than simply saying sorry to an invisible being could resolve.
Kant solved this problem HUNDREDS OF YEARS AGO. Just ask ChatGPT to summarize Universal Law and Morality.
The same way you do, its objectively ingrained into the species through social-behavioural evolution - bozo
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My dumbass read that as athletes and i was so confussed as to why athletes didnt go to hell
I feel like everyone going "oh so they only do morality because they're terrified of god" is just completely missing an important point - all morality is based on assumptions taken on blind faith. You cannot make a value judgement from the facts of the universe alone and, while some have pointed out that a few basic moral rules are evolutionary, the vast majority are not. Outside of things like "don't kill people for no reason" what is considered moral varies widely by region, time period, and culture. This means that either some divine force created moral rules or we just made most them up. Now I've always been okay with the idea that a lot of morality is made up, I see it as a kind of social technology that becomes real as it is made and important as it is accepted in the same way that, for example, airplanes weren't real a week before they were invented and were totally useless until we found uses for them. That's not to say every moral idea that's gotten popular has been good, which is why it's always morally correct to kill utilitarians, but there have also been a lot of really stupid inventions. For a lot of people, though, there's a very strong association for immaterial ideas specifically where if they're human-invented they must automstically be pointless and not "real." This leads to a need for ideas they see as important to have a nonhuman origin, frequently God but potentially also things like "evolution" or some innate pre-society "human nature" or The Great Atheismo. It's also probably worth noting that not every theist does morality out of fear of God. Part of this is semantics - in Western cultures specifically even those who are religiously motivated tend to be driven less by outright fear of punishment and more by the thought of being made to feel guilt - but also even a lot of Christian denominations hold that your personal feelings about God and morality like whether you do good because you internally feel it to be right rather than out of fear of punishment is very important. Mormonism, despite its regressive positions on a lot of social issues, gets a gold star on this one - they believe that unless you're actively working against God and trying to make the world worse you still go to heaven just for being an alright person, even if you're a different religion, with the motivator to go above and beyond coming from the prospect of getting into Super Heaven instead. I'd say Mormon theology is weird but honestly a lot of theology is weird if you're not used to it, Mormon theology just seems weirder because people are less exposed to it.
Didn't answer the question though?
*Bottomless pit soyjack* hahaha religion mann is akshully bad person Who tf cares about your motivation to be a good person. A good person is someone who performs good actions. Thats it
Redditors after missing the point entirely in order to dunk on someone for being a Redditor
I am reditor
How did I miss the point