Without religion there would be no morals

So why do you stay in a basement instead of living a rich, fulfilling life?

Without religion everyone can operate under their own choice of what "moral" means. "No morals" for those people means no unified moral framework to apply to everyone.

But what's the point of God anyways? Is it just to unify a society under a single culture? Nice but freedom should be better right? If you can self-organise into the culture you want to be in instead
Was God ever useful for stopping rich and powerful people from fucking over the common folk?

>A person doesn't need religion to be moral
Absolutely true.
>since humans are created in His image and likeness, thus humans are more attracted to good, or trying to since the fall.
If God exists and if this is why humans are moral, then that's that. But let me ask you. If there was no God, could there be objectively true and real morality? I say yes. But I have a feeling you wouldn't user. Unfortunately I think that's not much better than the people saying there would be no morals without religion.

>But what's the point of God anyways?
God allows the possibility of "purpose", meaning and morality, justice, truth, etc.

>Is it just to unify a society under a single culture?
No not really, revelation and prophets come at times when culture is in disharmony, and often it leads to more conflict because it sets a high standard for man, it tells him man not to be a slave to his passions, his false idols or to put his country/family above God and truth.

> Nice but freedom should be better right?
There is no freedom for men enslaved by their passions, their ego and sins.
Authentic freedom comes from being God oriented, not self-oriented.

> If you can self-organise into the culture you want to be in instead
Many times we don't even want what we want.

>Was God ever useful for stopping rich and powerful people from fucking over the common folk?
Religion is interested in saving souls and creating better humans.
Not class struggle, enriching the poor or making ugly chicks sexy.
It orients man towards what eternally matters, and puts things in a bigger perspective.
That being said, yes God does dish out judgement in this world and in the next.
The greedy and wicked will all have to answer for their sins.

Without God, nothing matters and there's no grounds for morality, no grounds to accuse the wicked of injustice/theft/rape/murder, it's just might-makes-right; and the poor and weak have no argument against the rich and powerful in a Godless world.

>objective morality without God
elaborate how that works, how do you know it, and so forth.

>without religion there would be no morals
Who says this anyway? apart from this character in Dostoevsky's Demons, and a few retarded priests.

elaborate how that woks, how you would know what is moral, what's it based on, and why you should follow it without God

Here's one example: if morality is grounded completely in reason and autonomy, then morality is possible without having to appeal to a God. I don't endorse this view, but that is Kant's view. Another way would be to inquire about the nature of the truth conditions for moral sentences. For example, if "Do not lie" were a true moral sentence, then (like other true sentences) it is true only given that certain truth conditions obtain of it. "Snow is white" is true when actual, real snow happens to truly be white. Here we're dealing with physical stuff out in the world. On one view, the truth conditions for moral sentences are more like the truth conditions for the "Snow is white" type of sentences: this is to believe that moral facts (= the truth conditions for moral sentences) exist as ontological primitives of some sort, but that they really form part of the metaphysical make-up of reality, in this case not necessarily by being grounded on anything else (like a God, or human beings, or whatever). You could probably compare this view to Platonism since the moral facts are not physical things nor mind-dependent entities, hence third realm entities of some kind (if they exist).

All of that just tells us some ways that morality without God would be at least conceptually possible. How could we know that this was the case? Well I'm really not here to say what even counts as "knowledge." Some contemporary epistemologists think that justified true belief (with some additional constraints) is enough for knowledge though. So if we are justified or warranted in the appropriate way, and it happens to be true that moral facts exist without God existing, then we "know" it, something like that. Not satisfactory to all, I realize, but that's one option. What I think is easier to show is that we are justified believing that moral truths do exist. That's independent of being justified believing that there is a God, or being justified believing that there isn't a God. If we do have reason to believe moral truths exist, and reason to be atheists also, both being justified, it's as easy as that: you are then a moral realist but also an atheist. Plenty contemporary atheist philosophers are moral realists also. You won't know about them if all you know is continental philosophy though (they tend to be analytics). A recent survey ("What Do Philosophers Believe?") showed that over 50% of philosophers surveyed are moral realists (= believe in the reality of objective moral facts). Over 70% of the same philosophers did not believe in God (atheism). I'm pretty confident the overlap is quite large actually. Contrary to popular belief, most philosophers today (at least if you consider more than just the famous continentals) are both atheists and moral realists.

The question is not: Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives? There is no reason to think that atheists and theists alike may not live what we normally characterize as good and decent lives. Similarly, the question is not: Can we formulate a system of ethics without reference to God? If the non-theist grants that human beings do have objective value, then there is no reason to think that he cannot work out a system of ethics with which the theist would also largely agree. Or again, the question is not: Can we recognize the existence of objective moral values without reference to God? The theist will typically maintain that a person need not believe in God in order to recognize, say, that we should love our children.

If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. After all, what is so special about human beings? They are just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Some action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo; but there is on the atheistic view nothing really wrong about committing incest.

Consider, then, the hypothesis that God exists. First, if God exists, objective moral values exist. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so.

On the theistic view, objective moral values are rooted in God. God’s own holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. God’s moral nature is what Plato called the “Good.” He is the locus and source of moral value. Moreover, God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commands which constitute our moral duties or obligations. Far from being arbitrary, these commands flow necessarily from His moral nature.

Finally, on the theistic hypothesis God holds all persons morally accountable for their actions. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be vindicated. Good ultimately triumphs over evil, and we shall finally see that we do live in a moral universe after all. Despite the inequities of this life, in the end the scales of God’s justice will be balanced. Thus, the moral choices we make in this life are infused with an eternal significance. We can with consistency make moral choices which run contrary to our self-interest and even undertake acts of extreme self-sacrifice, knowing that such decisions are not empty and ultimately meaningless gestures. Rather our moral lives have a paramount significance. So I think it is evident that theism provides a sound foundation for morality.

reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/can-we-be-good-without-god/

>If there was no God, could there be objectively true and real morality?
No there wouldn't because there would be no source to get it from.

If I could rape and rob my sister and "get away with it" I wouldn't because I find it morally repugnant. It has nothing to do with self gain, unless you just want to simplify every thing down to feelings and intuition = hedonism, which is obviously retarded.

Conceptually-speaking I disagree. See for more. Now, might it be one of those non-conceptually-demonstrable impossibilities? Maybe. Theists tend to believe that even mathematics and logic exist thanks to God. So to be faithful theists of that kind you have to believe literally EVERYTHING couldn't have possibly existed unless God did. So morality is in no special problem compared to logic, mathematics, or the physical world, or minds, etc.

interesting shit my dude

Rarely, and strive to not do so.

Maybe it's how one looks at life and what they look for. Going from that mindset of everyone being selfish and changing my attitude to for good in the world I notice people doing selfless acts without noticing it, just because it's right thing to do. Also,
>tripfag

nice read my dude

Selfishness and self-interest are not the same thing.

Whatever the case, both puts the self before others.

>reason and autonomy

why should one be reasonable in a Godless world? Where is the force behind any "thou shalt" ?

>God allows the possibility of "purpose"
God doesn't have a unitary claim on meaning any more, now that its pretty obvious he's not literally real. One of the more complete sources of meaning, for sure, but it's just another culture competing for adoption. You can be a greedy materialist, or a nationalist/fascist and it's still just as imperative you're not a slave to your passions, etc. You can serve what you want, nation, family, why should you serve the morals of a dead God?

Some parts of mainstream western culture are obviously much more degenerate now compared to Christian times, but you can't sell God as the only option anymore. You have to give people a reason to worship this made-up God that works even if other people don't believe it, which is the case in our atomised era. Sinners going to hell doesn't work when neither you nor the sinner have a good reason to believe that hell is real

>Without God, nothing matters and there's no grounds for morality, no grounds to accuse the wicked of injustice/theft/rape/murder, it's just might-makes-right; and the poor and weak have no argument against the rich and powerful in a Godless world.
That's what I'm saying. We are living in the Godless world you describe. It would've been great to be around in pious times, when the powerful and the perverse might've actually been afraid of God, but the fact is, as much as it sucks, might does make right when there is no source of universal morality (states enforce laws which is as close as it gets)

Of course you wouldn't do that, but you wouldn't do that because you love your sister and love is definitely self gain even when you give more than you receive

>long text
>expect nice in depth explanations about morality
>"hes not real lel"

Like I said the view is Kant's, not mine, so you're best off reading his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and maybe checking on some helpful secondary literature or other reading helps to know what's going on. Hard to sum up what's relevant here, but the idea is that if we are really free, the only way to be autonomous rather than heteronomous is to legislate laws (maxims universalized so as for everyone to follow) for ourselves which don't self-contradict when universalized. Kant would say immoral people are being irrational. But there is no "why" to a "thou shalt" here other than in virtue of autonomy and so forth. Kant distinguishes hypothetical imperative "oughts" from categorical imperative "oughts." The latter are moral ones, they have no precondition for following them, but they only get generated in the way he says. You might be looking at the problem wrong as a result. If you generate a categorical "ought" via autonomy (and Kant thinks it will turn out to be exactly the same as morality), it calls you to follow it without precondition. And there is no prior "why" as to why be autonomous, because that is to undercut the very notion, by presupposing we need hypothetical imperative preconditions to do the very thing that generates categorical normativity.

Sorry how exactly do moral truths exist? If you are inventing axioms/primitives like "Do not lie", that is the same as inventing a God, minus some of the baggage God carries.

If you are trying to discover these primitives instead, on what grounds do you evaluate if "Do not lie' is a moral truth, versus "Always lie"?

Do you observe how well the "Do not lie" culture performs vs the "Always lie" one? Sounds like Might Makes Right to me, if you're going to evaluate along those lines

To be clear, I authored the first and third but not the second. Not every lengthy post here is by the same person.

They were nice to read all the same.

I would challenge you about it being minus the baggage, honestly. Anyway. Some people believe in moral sense. It's like how people believe our regular senses veridically communicate to us the existence of a material, outside world. As you know, we can always be hyper-skeptics and say that all we really know is sense data and not unobservable physical matter. At the end of the day though (and the best skeptics, like Hume, granted the following) we can't help but believe, at some deep level, that there are these physical objects out there. We may not want to endorse these beliefs but we still at some level can't help but believe. So is it really that bad to actually endorse the existence of physical matter? Well that's for you to decide, given the success of science in predictions and (as a result) technological development. The case with moral beliefs is similar. Most of us at some level find some things very morally reprehensible. So it's not that weird to think that moral truths really exist, when we honestly can't help but believe they do at some level, regardless of whether we endorse these beliefs. Now granted, some among us are sociopaths or psychopaths who don't have those natural beliefs, but it's not too different from people with akinetopsia (motion blindness) or prosopagnosia (face blindness). Those people literally can't perceive motion and faces respectively, even though they have the exact same sensations you and I might have. Object permanence is necessary for us to "see" motion or faces, so it goes to show that people can be deficient in "sensing" things the rest of us all can sense (physical discrete objects, like faces, or objects moving around). Point being, aside from exceptions in both cases, moral beliefs would be justified on bases similar to how our beliefs in the external world would be justified. I challenge you to find a single person who only came to believe in moral truths after they accepted the existence of God. I'd actually be quite worried about such a person if they suddenly lost their faith. Like I said, believing in the existence the moral truths happens independent of believing in God, and the justification for the former doesn't hinge on the latter.

Our morals are derived from biology. They're tools to organize society and society is a large contributor to our evolutionary fitness. Therefore our human morality does have objective, that is, shared by all humans, badis.

An alien species with a different biology would develop different morals derived from their biology under this theory.

For example we humans view it as morally wrong to kill our offspring. But what about a species which is having hundreds of children?

Free will was a mistake. I know it's heresy, that I'm spitting in His face by rejecting His gift, and that I'm telling an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent God that He's wrong but I truly believe that the world would be much better if people followed the CCC without question.

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>person who only came to believe in moral truths after they accepted the existence of God. I'd actually be quite worried about such a person if they suddenly lost their faith
please help.

Morality and immorality are irrelevant without religion.
>oh no it's so shocking!
>and that's a good thing!

I'd recommend literature which advances moral realism in ways independent of grounding morality in an existent God, if that's any use. Kantian ethics are good start even if I'm not ultimately 100% with Kant.

thanks

I think our intuitive moral sense is a result of our culture and upbringing though. It's a lot more subjective than your perception of the physical world. Your capacity for empathy has a lot to do with serotonin (take MDMA and psychedelics for example), and will definitely be different for someone who had a secure, loving childhood vs someone who grew up in a harsh, cruel environment. What's the right amount of selfishness vs selflessness to exhibit? Obviously one of directions is more "good" than the other, but what's the moral truth we will enshrine in law? Fortunately our societies have become prosperous enough to decide that "you shall not kill" is an appropriate amount of empathy to be a moral truth, but what I'm saying is that it's a moving target. We can't afford to be communists yet, without Star Trek-esque post-scarcity, environmentally-stable technology. Morality is something we can bargain for more of, but I don't think there is objective moral truth

Religion is a more efficient moral system from a social point of view, as having a sacred writing or set of norms allows for a more stable ethical background. That gives stability through time, but also habit stickiness that impairs adaptation to new changes in the environment.

That is why Christianity was massively abandoned starting with the social changes of the enlightenment and industrial revolution, where the productive environment changed so much that the old ways didn't provide stability anymore and an explosive exploration of new ethical systems was born, a search which concluded at WWII and we decided to adopt this tolerance based globalism and human rights defense speech sustained by virtue signalling and fear of hate.

I agree that there's a lot of subjectivity and cultural bias with a lot of moral particulars. But I think some basics are still presupposed regardless, except when a culture very radically undermines the most basic moral instincts. You will still find people appeal to those instincts within those cultures though, even if they end up suppressed. Likewise I think our notions of the physical world are similarly informed by our theories, but at a very basic level we can't help but believe in the most basic notions (like object permanence, or causal regularities), even though the theoretical details can be different. Scientists before thought they observed phlogiston, caloric, and the luminiferous ether, though we reject those now. Likewise I think moral codes and theories can be wrong, but there are still basic intuitions we all (barring impairment) normally have. It's a further step from this to concluding that our intuitions correspond to real moral facts of course, but like I've said I think the fact we can't help but hold them legitimizes our belief in them the way it works with our intuitions that a physical world exists. Or at least, they similarly stand together and fall together. Other than that I grant you that a lot of moral intuitions are a moving target like you said, but I think it's consistent with the view that we can be justified believing in the existence of objective moral truth.

>without religion the world would be more moral!
*ahem*
commies, reddit, and militant atheists are faggots

I think that user misspoke.
I wouldn't rob and rape *YOUR sister, whom I do not love, even if I could get away with it.

Human decency is not individualistic, moron. The word of the day for you is: empathy.

Those who think as you do leach off the society created and upheld by people who think like me. I really hate you user, but even still, I'd never once consider raping your sister.

Science discards old facts in favour of new ones that fit empirically observable reality better, so it's always moving in the direction of being more closely aligned with truth. How does that apply to moral truths? In the past there used to be lots of different ways of organising societies and economies, now almost every country is capitalist. Does this mean capitalism is more morally true than tribes that operate on trust instead of currency? No, it means the only "moral truth" is, unfortunately, Might makes right. Any other morals have to come from our ability to tell a story justifying them, and bargaining for them

...

>it's always moving in the direction of being more closely aligned with truth.
I agree with you here but it's worth looking at some criticisms of this. There's a lot of criticism, in the philosophy of science, for the belief that we are actually progressing toward truth. It's sometimes called pessimistic induction. We've always been wrong before, so why think we are right now, or will be? Anyway it's beside the point. I think there will be people in both trust economies and capitalist economies that can agree about some very basic moral intuitions, which is what I've claimed earlier. That they disagree about other things, I won't dispute, but as I said I don't think that's inconsistent with my claims so far.

what are they guaranteed to agree on? what moral opinion would you consider to be universal