I no longer think religion is essential for morality

@Mervin_Bitikofer, I agree that justice works best if we have God, because I don’t want to rely on mass hysteria or hypercriticism to ensure stability or that I get a fair shake!. However, the very sense of right and wrong appears to likely be evolved–the good of the community is a teleology in itself. We recognize “goodness” and unselfishness as virtues as social advantages, don’t we?

The concept of God and the supernatural is actually very adaptive too. It helps our society work better.

All that is not to say that God doesn’t exist–in fact, working backwards, it’s possible that we have that God shaped void for very good reason. And I am a Christian and I do believe in God.

But–if we were universally selfish, humanity would die out. Evolutionarily, the concept of morality, altruism and God is very adaptive.

the reason I’m saying this is because I’m afraid of resting my belief in God on a foundation that is false. Morality seems to be also reasonable and healthy, and thus can be explained naturalistically. I am forever trying to avoid a “house of cards.” :slight_smile:

Randal Rauser, who tries the 50/50 rule of giving 50% of the time he talks as a reverse apologetics in favor of his opponent (both to be congenial and to understand the other person), wrote
"Atheists often critique Christian morality on the two-fold claim that it is motivated by fear of punishment AND desire for reward. And, so the critique goes, this is a juvenile punishment/reward approach to morality. The truly good person, so the claim goes, recognizes that the pursuit of the good is an intrinsic reward.

I take the point, but I also reply that Christian morality in its mature form is likewise motivated by the good as its own intrinsic pursuit while rewards are natural results of the pursuit of the good."Does Objective Morality Need God? A Christian and Atheist Debate - Randal Rauser

I’ve not watched the debate he references here, though.

Let’s say my neighbor drops his wallet in the driveway, and I see it before he does. I know what it is like to lose money out of a wallet, or lose a wallet altogether. It’s a horrible feeling. I know what I thought of the people who took the money out of my wallet, and they weren’t pleasant thoughts. Reason tells me that I should return my neighbor’s wallet, money intact. Why? Because that is how I would want to be treated, and that is how I wanted to be treated in the past. That is reason and empathy working together.

Just by being a social group you have already prioritized the group over the individual. Humans instinctively form groups just like other animal species.

Excellent! I would be happy to have you as my neighbor, and share in those same values with you.

Yep. Which still doesn’t get you to why you “ought” to do any of that. And sometimes we put our own immediate family on a higher priority, other people might go more tribal (all people who look like me). Some might even prioritize “national social groupings” (nationalism) over their own immediate welfare (we rightly decorate them as war heroes.) Reason only helped them arrive at their destinations (in each peculiar case) through not just a premise, but probably a host of premises that had to be admitted before reason could start its work.

And then, to complicate things even more … somebody (a wise student of the human condition) once noted that “the heart hath its reasons that reason knows nothing of.” In other words – our “reason” is pretty much a post-hoc justification system for what we had already decided we were going to do anyway on quite other grounds.

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A frightening prospect indeed! I’m glad that our civilization has bequethed to us the religious conditionings (both eastern and western) that it did (even with all their warts and damnable faults) to “enculturate into us” our collective sets of morals that we do share. Without it we would probably still be scrabbling over bits of meat somewhere. That’s my opinion, anyway.

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I don’t know about that. Some cynics would claim that this is already the world we live in now, and all altruism is illusory. But we probably agree that none of us would want to live in a world where that instinct was followed with abandon. I’m not entirely convinced we didn’t emerge from such a world, though. It’s hard to imagine us (in any sort of “childhood” of our race) being instinctually non-selfish (even alongside any instinctual “empathy” that our better angels may provide for us.) For one thing, how “enlightened” are we about this now that we can even have these discussions. And despite all this progress, how many times do I still make a selfish choice over an empathetic one? [Quite a bit more than I’m prepared to discuss here.] All that is to say, I think God does (did and will continue to) work with us where we are at. I don’t think the distant past would have been a very rosy place in any of these regards.

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:slight_smile: Yes, but those who are most aware of the selfishness are generally more generous. It’s probably those who are genetically predisposed best for social living (faithfulness to one’s neighbor and family) that regard themselves as fallen, I would imagine.

I agree that altruism is illusory–it’s for the survival of the species. I’m hoping to learn more to be like Christ, who isn’t dependent on that impetus!

but I enjoy reading your posts. You are universally kind. Probably as a result, you are very perceptive–as Randal Rauser is.

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well … thank you for your kind words! I will have to reflect meditatively on them next time I’m stealing a little old lady’s purse. [that was humor … nothing to see here … move along now.]

I was putting those words into the mouth of a cynic, and not committing myself to that category necessarily. But I will agree in faith that there is true altruism to be found … certainly where Christ works in any of us!

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My impression has been that he was more on the skeptic/deist side in his younger years, and gradually grew more overtly religious, perhaps influenced by his wife (who was extremely religious), and especially later, by the death of his son and the horrors of the war.

I don’t recall this either, source? Just interested. I’m a bit of a Lincoln nut. I will say I don’t think it was really unusual back then to abstain in general. Lincoln in his younger years was quite a gregarious type but wasn’t known to be a ladies’ man. I think he talked about how they made him a bit nervous :slight_smile:

A shocking statement! Actually, it is my opinion that the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is incomprehensible without the “fulfillment” in Jesus.

John 12.28-29: Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

Even when they hear a voice come from heaven, people can misunderstand it or attribute it to natural causes.

No, because morality existed long before the Christian worldview, or even the Jewish worldview, was expressed in the Bible. Hammurabi’s Code predates the 10 Commandments, to give just one example.

All people have this ability, according to Paul in Rom. 1.18-20. It is not limited to believers.

(Note: The parts in Courier type are from the Novella article that @T_aquaticus linked. They are not Richard’s words.)
Novella simply doesn’t understand tradition or its role in cultural formation and evolution. He seems to think each generation invents its own moral codes independently of all the previous generations that have come before it. He’s stuck in the modernist rebellion against tradition and authority. The post-Modern philosopher Hans Georg-Gadamer, in Truth and Method, rejected the mistrust of tradition and authority. In his view, those things play a positive role as a bridge between past and present and, more importantly, as a filter to pass on interpretations and insights that have stood the test of time.

Nevertheless, traditions and cultures themselves do change over time. Even revealed ones. Jesus is proof of that.

No, each of us do not determine morality for ourselves. Morality and moral codes rest upon a foundation of shared values within a culture. You didn’t invent the culture into which you were born. A normal human being makes moral choices, but that is not determining morality, that is simply determining whether to follow or ignore “conscience,” which is nothing more than the internalization of the moral behavior we observed and learned as children.

Morality is impossible without reason and empathy, but which came first? You might like this article by Jonathan Haidt, The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail.

Right. See Haidt above.

You bring up a very interesting connection between trust and learning. Learning actually is impossible in the absence of trust. For example, young children blindly accept the authority of the parent/teacher or of the rule. If they doubted everything they were told or experienced, learning would be impossible. Imagine a class of first graders who doubted the rule that 2+2=4 or required verification before they believed that a squiggly line on paper actually corresponded to a sound made with the mouth.

Basically, what this means is that belief always precedes doubt. As Wittgenstein put it: “A child learns there are reliable and unreliable informants much later than it learns facts which are told it.” If you want an example, look no further than Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy. The age that a child begins to doubt those stories is the approximate age when they begin to understand metaphorical thought (between 8-10). Alexander Bain said in 1868: “We are all faith at the outset; we become sceptics by experience, that is, by encountering checks and exceptions. We begin with unbounded credulity.”

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Dang! Sorry to double up, but I wanted to address the “obedience” question, as well as say a word on the moral code of the Bible.

First, the Bible has not remained relevant for 3,000 years because it tells us facts about history or science; it remains relevant because it tells us true information about ourselves, as human beings, and our relationship to God.

Second, Christian morality is not blind obedience to a set of rules. Jesus demanded obedience to his teachings, but this did not consist of a list of rules. Rather, he commanded us to follow him as learners (disciples), taking up our cross and following him “on the way,” as Luke frequently put it, to Jerusalem and death. As learners, we must trust absolutely in his teaching, even though, as adults, we struggle with fear and doubt.

Imitating Christ is the essence of Christian morality, and it goes far beyond obedience to a set of rules, because imitating Christ requires creativity and adaptation to constantly changing circumstances. Furthermore, it recognizes the fact that human beings learn morality by exemplar, not by theory. This is the genius of Scripture. The Bible is not a philosophical treatise. Rather, through its stories and narratives, the Bible provides us with examples – both good and evil – of moral behavior. As children, we are stuck with the role models that “fate” has provided. As adults, we have some freedom to choose the role models that influence the direction of our lives. God, who completely understands us and the way that we learn, did not provide us with a moral philosophy to be memorized, but with a story to be absorbed, for that is how we learn to imitate Christ. We absorb his story until it becomes our own.

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What do you find shocking about it? Compared with the divine command to execute one’s beloved son what could possibly seem shocking?

Great title for a good article on an interesting idea. But lets get back to the idea of taking a life because the order to do so comes from a source one has decided knows all and is the best judge of morality. If Abraham trusts that it is God who commands him and yet he (Abraham) cannot understand how his son can possibly deserve execution or how his killing his son will avoid a greater harm or achieve a greater good … how can it possibly be permissible for Abraham to kill his son? To do something so reprehensible without understanding the moral calculus oneself? Unthinkable. Is it moral for God to ask it? Is it moral for God to distress him in this way knowing He would rescind the order? Is it possible to consider whether the words and acts of God are morally reprehensible?

I mean, I can appreciate a good prank. But no way would I set someone up to kill their beloved son just to see if they would do it. The distress to the father would have to be justifiable in some manner other than might-makes-right.

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Tongue-in-cheek. Sorry.

Exactly right, for all the reasons that you state. That is why if you take away the story’s prefigurement of Christ and God the Father’s sacrifice of his own Son, then Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac is incoherent. It only makes sense in light of later developments.

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Just a small quibble: Abraham was prepared to kill his son with no notion of how that could possibly be a benefit to the son, his fellow man or to God. Personally, I think it would be a greater sacrifice to kill ones child than to kill oneself. But when God sacrifices his son it is also himself (somehow?) and he has foreknowledge of exactly what the benefit will be. So I don’t think the sacrifice made by God and that extracted from Abraham are even close to equivalent in spite of the fact that Abraham’s son is spared. The sacrifice by Abraham to agree to the betrayal of his son’s trust is the greatest harm incurred by any of the parties in the story IM(not so)HO.

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This is fairly common modern sensibility to bring up as a slam-dunk put-down of any ancient moral sensibilities, such as they were (or so the modern mind supposes).

But I’m not convinced the mockery survives any sober reflection even now. Just take the “because God ordered it” and substitute in for it: “because our national security depends on it” or “because the greater good of many outweighs the greater good of the one” … or maybe any number of even less noble sounding things and suddenly you have us not only being willing to sacrifice our sons and daughters but even being willing to nuke entire cities! At this point the historical Abraham is jeering at all of us: "Creeminy --I was “only” giving up one person --and that person was the son I love! You’re willing to sacrifice entire cities, not to mention the whole globe to your gods! (Abraham recently came up to speed on climate change.)

The modern materialist mockers aren’t about to be stepped on this way, though, and they reply: “wait a minute! You’re making a useless sacrifice to an imaginary sky fairy who you think has been talking to you. We’re making sacrifices for real causes…” (which after translation into Akkadian comes back to Abraham as: “unlike your god, our gods are real!”)

Now Abraham gets a bemused smile on his face, and replies “oh – I see how that works. So I’m your exemplar of immorality? Yeeeeaahhhh … Whatever.”

In conclusion, I fail to be convinced that there has been so much progress in the human condition as we (both Christians and atheists alike) so want to suppose. “We haven’t been getting rain for our dying crops! … I know! Let’s kill Steve!” is the modern caricature of ancient practices. But here is the equivalent in modern times: “Our country might lose control of its interests in this region! … I know! Let’s send millions of Steves over there in military uniform so we can pretend that this will make things so much better for everybody!”

This is not to justify or endorse any form of human sacrifice. It was heinous then. AND … and here is the ‘and’ that today’s self-righteous crowd conveniently leaves out: It is still heinous now!

[Oh – and under Abraham’s God’s supervision, Abraham received his ‘steve’ back alive and well. So Abraham looks at his modern mockers from this age and asks …“So how’s that been working out with all the ‘Steves’ on your end?”]
[with edits]

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Hi. I have been surprised how polite, reasonable, and articulate many of the opinions and responses seem to be on this site/forum/etc. I have nothing bad to say to any Christian that apparently accepts scientific truths. I am curious, though; what do Christian Scientists(those that accept evolution and deep time) believe about original sin? Are we ALL sinners? Can a 4 yr old be a sinner? Is ANY disease a result of sin? Do I apparently suffer for the sins of my grandpa? I’m curious for a few reasons. I honestly wish I believed in heaven, and I want to know what Christians whom aren’t constrained by a " young earth" description of reality believe about the nature of reality and humans place in it. Regardless of the answer, Thank You for showing me an open-minded and truly ethical religious view. I look forward to your answer(s)

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First of all, welcome to the forum, Mr. Coleman! (Clyde?) You open up with a lot of good questions. Most of which I will leave to see how others answer. [While I’m a Christian, I’m not a scientist – only an educator in science, and math]. In case you haven’t discovered for yourself already, you can access essays by guest authors on things like ‘original sin’ by going to the homepage and typing ‘original sin’ into the magnifying glass search box. But if you are looking more for casual and immediate interaction with … whomever … this is a great place to be. You can even start a thread of your own if a topic doesn’t seem to fit into existing threads. And an easy way to start a response is to highlight a particular portion of another person’s post that you really want to respond to, and then click the grey quote box. That opens a new message and includes the quoted portion. Just like I did here:

Those are good questions, and I may revisit here in a bit to respond to some of them myself without my ‘moderator’ hat on. But meanwhile I look forward to seeing others input here and interacting with you more later.

Well – it looks like I’m the one who isn’t otherwise engaged this fine Saturday evening!

I can give you my particular take on some of your questions at any rate.

Yes.

I guess, given how I answered the first question above, that would answer this question too. That said, though, I do believe there is such a thing as “an age of accountability” before which it isn’t reasonable to hold a child morally responsible. And if we are willing to recognize such needed grace on our kids, imagine how much more God is able to do the same. Don’t expect there to be any exactly defined age, though.

I think sin is one part of a causal chain that helps spread some diseases. But I don’t think sin is the entire explanation. So there are many sick people who are sick, but not through any fault of their own.

I suppose you could be. If your grandpa was an unrepentant gambler who frittered away your family fortune so that you all are scraping by in financial hardship right now, you would certainly be living with obvious consequences of an obvious sin. Other less obvious sins will have their effects too – so yeah; I think we all live with the consequences of the sins of our forebears and even those who aren’t our direct ancestors. But maybe you were meaning more … does God continue to hold such things against us. I’ll skip to your broadest question:

Actually this deserves longer treatment than I’m prepared to give it right now. So I’m hoping others will jump in! How’s that for letting my self conveniently off the hook just when the questions got more challenging!

I want to clarify and correct myself, @T_aquaticus.and @Mervin_Bitikofer. . I had mentioned that positing God helps us avoid crowd mentality. I think that there is just as much crowd mentality among the religious (if not more); and the secular can be just as independently thinking. I am sorry. That sounded bad! I appreciate your insights.

Okay … the answers to “life, the universe, and everything” … I’ll take a few minutes here this morning to get all that nailed down. Then we can close down this site, lock the doors and look for other things to do. :smile:

Seriously, though; a lot of us use this space as an informal “processing space” not just within a certain community but even for ourselves. It’s a great place to kick ideas around. Some are just “thinking aloud” and are totally prepared to be persuaded otherwise while others have already given a well-read history of thought to convictions they have already spent decades kicking around and refining. I’d like to most of us are operating somewhere between those two, both humility and confidence always standing by to attend. In that spirit …

The nature of reality? I believe (and I bet nearly everyone here does, whether they claim religion or not) that there is an objective reality and that an objective truth about it (truth being everything that corresponds to that one reality) can, in principle be embraced. Scientists tend to believe this, and indeed build their careers on it. So I personally reject the premise of full-blown subjectivism that suggests that reality only exists in our heads.

That said, my epistemology does (cannot escape from) admitting a form of subjectivism in that there will be no “knowing” anything about that objective reality apart from such “knowledge” being in my head. Things like community, church, education, science, …social life in general…, help us beat back that subjectivism at least a little by requiring that our ideas be bounced off others and tried against reality itself. Those are valuable tools that help us get out of our own heads at least a little bit.

Regarding “our place in reality”? Here my response is intended to be distinctively theistic, and even more specifically yet: Christian. And as we get more and more specific in this, there is probably more and more disagreement as people (even other Christians) peel off from things peculiar to me here.

One big distinctive I see for theists is the embrasure of a principle that, not only is there a “greater power” out there that transcends myself (as even any non-religious 12-step participant might be coached into accepting), but that there is a “greater power” that transcends all of us and our cultures / civilizations [indeed all cosmic history] together. In that latter, I think it pretty safe to say we’ve lost non-theists by that point. Not that the object is to try to “lose” people here; but only to highlight some very essential premises for the theist. I embrace this premise, not as a conclusion always relying on support, but as a faith presupposition. [We will all have seasons when faith is in front of us as a conclusion we are needing to work toward, looking for warrant -I’m not saying I still don’t go through seasons of that “faith growing” now, but only that when it is manifesting as an operating faith, it is simply the way I have now learned to view the world.]

So I accept a cosmic power underlying all of existence. Venturing further on that faith, I’m willing to entertain the idea that this cosmic power has a personal interest in the universe, and in particular the development of life in it, and even more in particular the development of life that can consciously share in the enjoyment of all of creation. While all these things can, in their turn, become more and more a “presuppositional life basis” for us, it is also true that it takes more building to “get there” from mere impersonal cosmic power (such as Einstein contemplated). For me this is where the testimony of scriptures, prophets, and apostles come in.

Up until this last bit, I hadn’t gone any farther than where Romans 1:20 describes as being universally available. That reality around us that we all live in, whatever kind of believers we are, calls us to contemplation of that higher power in frequencies that we have all been gifted for sensing; hence our being “without excuse” in that regard. That is the “book of creation”, the first of the two books that Francis Bacon spoke of in a metaphor that I still embrace today. The second book (Jesus Christ, as mediated in scriptures, and by the witness of the Holy Spirit) is what gets me the rest of the way to knowing just exactly what this Cosmic Power is really like. I am taught to look nowhere else but at the cross. All understandings of creation, all understandings of scriptures, all understandings of anything at all, are all held up for scrutiny under the light emanating from the cross. That is my ideal, even though I struggle to live up to it. My spiritual self (though constantly doing battle with my flesh) always knows that my true and lasting identity is found only in Christ.

I don’t think I’ve said anything above which couldn’t mostly be affirmed by nearly any orthodox Christian. Since you mentioned how we might be distinctive from “young earth” views, I might give some answer to that.

One main different might be in a general approach to scriptures. Some want to view scriptures as a static gift plopped down from above in a sort of immutably solid and permanent gift to be properly decoded. Others are more comfortable seeing scriptures in a living and pliable sense, to be interacted with and to be a witness to us of our forebears variously rebelling against God and at other times wrestling with God (two distinct activities there – not to be confused with each other!).

One side sees a certain decoding of the early Genesis accounts as a sign or test that a person is properly submitting (or not!) to biblical authority. In contrast, others (I include myself here) critique that as an erroneous elevation of one particular modern understanding up into an unwarranted status of infallibility.

Since I am open, then, to taking into account truths and understandings from both of God’s books, that does make me at least wrestle with the implications of deep time and common ancestry and how those may or may not impact my understandings of God.

…and now that it may have just started getting interesting to you, I have run out of time and need to scuttle off! Will wait to hear more from you before I keep investing more and more time.

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BTW I still think that religion is the best source for morality, whilst in theory Aristotle’s virtue ethics can work on it’s own, there is a certain collectivism required by it to prevent it from devolving into pure selfishness, whilst the Biblical notion of the Imago Dei is a message of individualism.