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God and morality - 5/14/2008 11:36:26 AM
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abraxas
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Quite often in threads, an idea regarding morality comes up which could be summed up in the Dostoevsky quote, "Without God, everything is permitted."
To name one example, this has come up in the thread on genetically modified human embryos, in the science folder. Other examples are in the "Atheism is the opiate of the jaded" thread in the God folder.
This has been on my mind for a while, and I'm wondering which of these you feel is more correct:
If there is no God, everything is permitted.
or
If there is no belief in God, everything is permitted.
I can imagine other questions or tangents springing from this, which hopefully will not stray too far from what I'm wondering about, which is: Is it the existence of God, or the belief in the existence of God, that you find essential to morality?
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RE: God and morality - 5/14/2008 11:47:48 AM
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Qtman
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I for one think it is the existence of God. Because He does exist even if some don't believe it.
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RE: God and morality - 5/14/2008 12:33:35 PM
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Jhud
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quote:
I can imagine other questions or tangents springing from this, which hopefully will not stray too far from what I'm wondering about, which is: Is it the existence of God, or the belief in the existence of God, that you find essential to morality?
Well, I think from the perspective of the one making moral choices, I am not sure there is a difference. If they don't believe that God exists, then they act as if He in fact did not exist - just as they would if He did not in fact exist.
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Jack
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth”
William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008
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RE: God and morality - 5/14/2008 1:14:49 PM
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abraxas
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Hi Jhud,
I think I singed some neurons responding to your post in the other thread (it's 1:30am here), so I'm going to have to come back to this. Thanks for your thoughts!
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RE: God and morality - 5/14/2008 6:35:51 PM
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mvic
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I asked a similar question in another thread. If you had undisputed proof that there is no hell, no punishment or retribution whatsoever - would people behave in a moral way?
Of course God exists whether people believe in Him or not.
So I suppose to answer your question, it is people's attitude to His existance that drives their behaviour. If they don't believe He exists, or if they believe but don't care about Him anyway, their moral behaviour would be different than if they believed and respected/honoured Him.
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RE: God and morality - 5/15/2008 12:29:18 PM
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abraxas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
Well, I think from the perspective of the one making moral choices, I am not sure there is a difference. If they don't believe that God exists, then they act as if He in fact did not exist - just as they would if He did not in fact exist.
So whether or not God actually exists, it's important for people to believe that God exists? Or at least that a belief that God exists will affect the moral choice-making?
btw, I wolfed down a bowl of ice-cream--think it helped. 
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RE: God and morality - 5/15/2008 12:35:02 PM
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abraxas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mvic
So I suppose to answer your question, it is people's attitude to His existance that drives their behaviour. If they don't believe He exists, or if they believe but don't care about Him anyway, their moral behaviour would be different than if they believed and respected/honoured Him.
I think that behaviour could be positive or negative, depending on the person/belief/setting, but presuming you take belief in God to lead to more positive behavior (I'm presuming you do), would you teach your children that God was real even if you believed God wasn't real?
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RE: God and morality - 5/15/2008 1:21:29 PM
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Jhud
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quote:
So whether or not God actually exists, it's important for people to believe that God exists? Or at least that a belief that God exists will affect the moral choice-making?
Um, well not exactly.
The belief that God exists will affect moral choice making, whether He exists or not.
The belief that God doesn’t exist will affect moral choice making whether He exists or not.
If God does exist (at least as the Bible describes him) then it is rational to ascertain and comport with the morality He reveals.
If God does not exist, then morals are really irrelevant. People may claim them, but they are really only personal desires and not objective reasons to act one way or another.
Is that more clear?
_____________________________
Jack
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth”
William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008
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RE: God and morality - 5/15/2008 1:27:05 PM
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chrystar
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quote:
ORIGINAL: abraxas
Quite often in threads, an idea regarding morality comes up which could be summed up in the Dostoevsky quote, "Without God, everything is permitted."
To name one example, this has come up in the thread on genetically modified human embryos, in the science folder. Other examples are in the "Atheism is the opiate of the jaded" thread in the God folder.
This has been on my mind for a while, and I'm wondering which of these you feel is more correct:
If there is no God, everything is permitted.
or
If there is no belief in God, everything is permitted.
I can imagine other questions or tangents springing from this, which hopefully will not stray too far from what I'm wondering about, which is: Is it the existence of God, or the belief in the existence of God, that you find essential to morality?
Jesus said( paraphrase here) that if we who are sinful know how to give good gifts to our children, then how much more our heavenly father in heaven
Meaning that even though we are sinful and dsiobetiant we still have the capacity for some "morality"- the answer therefore to your uqestion is: neither
"Moraility" is not based on the existaince or belief in god
Your question is faulty beacue it assume that we need God in order to be moral people.
The atheist have this part right- we dont need God to be moral people, for I know many that are. But being "moral" is not what saves you, it is God grace and his grace alone that saves
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RE: God and morality - 5/15/2008 1:58:39 PM
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mvic
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To reply to abraxas - Post No. 8:
Agreed - behaviour could be positive or negative.
Agreed - belief in God leads to more positive behaviour.
No - I would not teach anyone that God is real if I didn't believe it. That would make me a hypocrite. How could I possibly teach someone something I don't believe?
As Jhud rightly said: Whether you believe God exists or doesn't will affect your morals, regardless whether in fact He does exist or not - i.e. it is the belief that affects the choice and not God's existance.
I hope this has cleared things up a little ... although now I am confused and my brain hurts !!!
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RE: God and morality - 5/16/2008 11:53:46 AM
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abraxas
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A little more clear.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
The belief that God exists will affect moral choice making, whether He exists or not.
The belief that God doesn’t exist will affect moral choice making whether He exists or not.
The above part is clear. The next part I'm still wondering about:
quote:
If God does exist (at least as the Bible describes him) then it is rational to ascertain and comport with the morality He reveals.
When you say, "If God does exist" is that different from saying "If one believes that God exists"? Or are you just expanding on your previous statement?
quote:
If God does not exist, then morals are really irrelevant.
Do you really think that?
quote:
People may claim them, but they are really only personal desires and not objective reasons to act one way or another.
This starts to get to the heart of what I'm thinking about. Some people see subjectivity in their own morals, but still value morality. Others say that their morality is objectively-based--however it looks to me that this is what they believe, and so it's also subjectively-based.
If that is so--that they are both ultimately subjective--is there something essential about believing that it's objective?
I hope that made sense.
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RE: God and morality - 5/16/2008 12:05:11 PM
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abraxas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: mvic
Agreed - behaviour could be positive or negative.
Agreed - belief in God leads to more positive behaviour.
No - I would not teach anyone that God is real if I didn't believe it. That would make me a hypocrite. How could I possibly teach someone something I don't believe?
Even if you believed that belief in God leads to more positive behavior, you wouldn't, despite not believing in God yourself, encourage a belief in God in your children? I can see the hypocricy of it--or perhaps irony is a kinder term--but if so perhaps it might be considered a "noble hypocricy". After all, you believe that that belief would lead to more positive behavior.
It turns out that my father was a bit like that. A "pragmatic believer" so to speak. Or a "pragmatic church-goer" anyway. After I "outed" myself to my family about leaving my faith, my mother and I had several very candid talks about it all. One thing she said that came as a shock to me was that my father didn't exactly believe it--she considered him more of an agnostic. One of the big motivations for him was the alcoholism of his father. He wanted to provide a structure for his children that might keep them from ending up like Grandad.
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RE: God and morality - 5/16/2008 12:14:31 PM
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hammurabi
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quote:
If God does not exist, then morals are really irrelevant.
It seems to me that if God does not exist, then almost nothing is permitted. Because there is nobody to permit, and nobody to deny - there is no overarching, transcendent, principle; and hence no privilege or permission. Levinas, who initially developed his ethics outside a religious context, bases morality on the irreducible and primary experience of subjectivity when confronted with the Other - that is, their irreproachability, their demand for help and need, and their imposition to the subject; for without the providence of a God, there is a recognition of a demand which is their alterity staring back at you, through their Face. That is, the Other makes demands of the subject - demands not to kill, not to murder. Basically, the appearance of subjectivity is the ethical relationship with another.
But aside from that. Couldn't it be argued that if God is arbiter and judge, then anything is permitted because the consequences are always known - all acts have telos, there is always retribution and reward - but to the non-theist, or in a world without God, all actions are not permitted because there is no knowledge of consequences, hence all actions are indeterminate and unknowable? If I am free, and I am free outside a judicial system, all actions refer back to "why and how" - what is it I can do, how am I permitted to do them? I'm not sure if this line of reasoning holds, though. Partly because it's not well reasoned. 
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RE: God and morality - 5/16/2008 12:46:24 PM
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Jhud
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quote:
But aside from that. Couldn't it be argued that if God is arbiter and judge, then anything is permitted because the consequences are always known - all acts have telos, there is always retribution and reward - but to the non-theist, or in a world without God, all actions are not permitted because there is no knowledge of consequences, hence all actions are indeterminate and unknowable? If I am free, and I am free outside a judicial system, all actions refer back to "why and how" - what is it I can do, how am I permitted to do them? I'm not sure if this line of reasoning holds, though. Partly because it's not well reasoned.
I think you are just playing with the word ‘permitted’ here. If God doesn’t exist, then it’s not that there is not ‘permission’ to do something, it’s that ‘permission’ is irrelevant to the activity in question. That fact that there is no minister of breathing to grant me a license to take a breath doesn’t mean I’m ‘not permitted’ to breath, it simply means permission is irrelevant in that context.
And you are also conflating permission with what is allowed. God allows us to act contrary to what He permits (that is, he doesn’t control us in a way that keeps us from acting in such a way), but that doesn’t mean He permits everything. In fact, if that we couldn’t do the things that He didn’t permit, then His ‘permission’ would be unnecessary; seeking permission is an recognition of proper authority, not a recognition of what can and can’t be done.
_____________________________
Jack
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth”
William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008
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RE: God and morality - 5/16/2008 1:55:22 PM
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Jhud
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quote:
When you say, "If God does exist" is that different from saying "If one believes that God exists"? Or are you just expanding on your previous statement?
I’m just expanding on my previous statement. For the person who believes God exists, there is obviously no ‘if’.
quote:
Do you really think that?
I do actually. I have always been rather ruthlessly honest that way, and as a former agnostic I acted accordingly. I have never understood why someone who truly didn’t believe God existed would adopt what amounts to a form of Judeo-Christian morality, however watered down.
quote:
This starts to get to the heart of what I'm thinking about. Some people see subjectivity in their own morals, but still value morality. Others say that their morality is objectively-based--however it looks to me that this is what they believe, and so it's also subjectively-based.
If that is so--that they are both ultimately subjective--is there something essential about believing that it's objective?
I hope that made sense.
Well, just because we believe something, and so have subjective ideas about it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist objectively. I believe gravity exists and affects me, and I value my life, and so those two ideas keep me from walking off 40 story buildings. Is my belief subjective because I have never walked off a 40 story building to test it?
I suppose in a sense our entire experience of reality is ultimately subjective because it’s an individual experience; but that doesn’t mean that those things I hold to be real are themselves the product of my subjective experience, and my goal should be to have my subjective ideas comport as much as possible with what really exists.
I hope that made sense!
_____________________________
Jack
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth”
William F. Buckley Jr. 1925-2008
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RE: God and morality - 5/17/2008 6:13:15 AM
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mvic
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Reply to abraxas - Post No 13.
Thanx for your post and your candid story.
If I did not believe in God, yet I knew that belief in God by other people leads them to more positive behaviour, I still would not encourage my children to believe in God. I would teach them positive behaviour by other means other than relying on a loving/punishing God as my motive.
Now as it happens I do believe in God and therefore I would encourage my children to believe in Him. I stress the word "encourage". I would not badger or pester them into believing. Of course when young I would teach them right from wrong but beyond a certain age I would leave the decision of believing to them.
As for encouraging other people - I suppose I would not actively do so. I believe each person should make the decision on whether to believe or not for themselves. Sure, I would help/advise if asked but I would certainly not "encourage" people to believe.
I suspect that this would make me a hypocritical Christian. One who does not go out and witness to others as Christ asked. Well, maybe I am a hypocrite. That's for others to judge.
I feel if we're to "encourage" others to turn to God, or to witness to them, it should be by our deeds, our example, by being good Christ-like role models, and not necessarily with our preaching at them.
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RE: God and morality - 5/17/2008 7:01:58 AM
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abraxas
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
I do actually. I have always been rather ruthlessly honest that way, and as a former agnostic I acted accordingly. I have never understood why someone who truly didn’t believe God existed would adopt what amounts to a form of Judeo-Christian morality, however watered down.
What other form would they adopt? Because one of the ten commandments was thou shalt not steal, should non-believers find some other attitude towards theft? I think you put the cart before the horse by saying it amounts to a form of Judeo-Christian morality.
quote:
Well, just because we believe something, and so have subjective ideas about it, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist objectively.
True. The great "What Is" is just what it is. But we come closer to objectively verifying some things than others. If we have subjective ideas about something, but can't verify them objectively--like we can with the effects of gravity--then that thing doesn't exactly deserve the same status as something that we can. It might still be objectively true in the end, but if we can't demonstrate it...
quote:
I suppose in a sense our entire experience of reality is ultimately subjective because it’s an individual experience; but that doesn’t mean that those things I hold to be real are themselves the product of my subjective experience, and my goal should be to have my subjective ideas comport as much as possible with what really exists.
I'd say that people of all stripes agree with this.
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RE: God and morality - 5/17/2008 7:06:53 AM
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abraxas
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mvic,
It looks like you just have a different idea of what it means to "witness" to others. So I'm afraid I'm going to have to strip you of your "hypocrite" label. Cheers for the insight.
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RE: God and morality - 5/17/2008 5:46:29 PM
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hammurabi
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Jhud
quote:
But aside from that. Couldn't it be argued that if God is arbiter and judge, then anything is permitted because the consequences are always known - all acts have telos, there is always retribution and reward - but to the non-theist, or in a world without God, all actions are not permitted because there is no knowledge of consequences, hence all actions are indeterminate and unknowable? If I am free, and I am free outside a judicial system, all actions refer back to "why and how" - what is it I can do, how am I permitted to do them? I'm not sure if this line of reasoning holds, though. Partly because it's not well reasoned.
I think you are just playing with the word ‘permitted’ here. If God doesn’t exist, then it’s not that there is not ‘permission’ to do something, it’s that ‘permission’ is irrelevant to the activity in question. That fact that there is no minister of breathing to grant me a license to take a breath doesn’t mean I’m ‘not permitted’ to breath, it simply means permission is irrelevant in that context.
And you are also conflating permission with what is allowed. God allows us to act contrary to what He permits (that is, he doesn’t control us in a way that keeps us from acting in such a way), but that doesn’t mean He permits everything. In fact, if that we couldn’t do the things that He didn’t permit, then His ‘permission’ would be unnecessary; seeking permission is an recognition of proper authority, not a recognition of what can and can’t be done.
Well, okay. With less word-shifting, what I mean is this:
If God exists, then we have a distribution of power across the entire ethical plane. All acts are ethical, because all actions are teleologically oriented towards an end (death and resurrection). There is nothing that escapes the authority of an overarching ethical set of decrees. All things are here allowed, but not all things are permitted, then. And as such, every choice has a necessary consequence; a necessary effect, a quantifiable scale of ethical reserve set up in heaven for a time after death.
If God does not exist, then power is distributed across a merely ontological plane, and ethics arises somewhere from it. No acts contain a priori ethical quantities because no action becomes ethical outside its social irruption into ethics, and ethics becomes distributions of security, power, well-being, regulation, fulfillment. No ethical act has a necessary consequence beyond its natural consequence, and so the question of what is permitted become a question of what consequences are desired to be achieved; or what intentions will fulfill an end; or what actions will produce social harmony. It means nothing is permitted because nobody is permitting or delimiting actions, and so they don't have implicit moral teleology. It requires baseless decision-making.
For example, you said:
quote:
The belief that God exists will affect moral choice making, whether He exists or not.
The belief that God doesn’t exist will affect moral choice making whether He exists or not.
With God, the question of God's existence isn't an ethical question, because it doesn't pertain immediately to the moral; it only serves to regulate the acceptance of a specific, but teleologically oriented, morality. (Unless you argued that getting into heaven is a moral good). If God doesn't exist, then the act of assenting to God's existence becomes an ethical dilemma, if in fact it changes the way a person acts, because the actions have uncertain ends and no guarantee of correctness.
Just some thoughts. I could by all means and probably am wrong, however.
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miscellanea, a blog.
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RE: God and morality - 5/17/2008 5:47:42 PM
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SonInMe1
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Jesus Christ is the Truth. The truth never changes.
Right or wrong does not depend on wether God exists or not. Right or wrong...are right and wrong.
What the bible says is right, is right and its right 100% of the time.
What the bible says is wrong is wrong 100% of the time. This proved God to me, if such a thing is possible.
If you act a certain way becuase you believe there is a God then you don't have the proper relationship with Him. His existance is not the reason why we believe. Its who He is and that He loves us that is the reason why we believe.
God is not some rulemaking hard hearted fun buster. God through His Son, the Word of God has defined to us the things that hurt us and the things that help us. Everyone in a love relationship does this.
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You adulterous people, don't you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God.
James 4:4
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RE: God and morality - 5/17/2008 9:11:35 PM
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hammurabi
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quote:
If you act a certain way becuase you believe there is a God then you don't have the proper relationship with Him. His existance is not the reason why we believe. Its who He is and that He loves us that is the reason why we believe.
So you're saying that God's existence has no effect on your actions, and your belief doesn't effect your actions in any way? There is no relationship between your relationship with a God pos | | |
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