To ATHEISTS a serious question.?

Question

This question is not intended to provoke anger and Im trying to ask it in a genuine way. Besides obeying the laws of the land which have consequences, what is the purpose of being a moral person?If you say love and caring, what makes you love? Is it instilled in you? That being said, what source causes you to be moral? Is it like the animal kingdom who nuture their young and try to stay cohesive for order, or is there something more Im missing. Thanks.

Answer 1

The purpose of being a moral person is to make the most out of your life. People only get one shot at life, so why screw around with it and make yourself and other people miserable just because you can't be nice. I love because of raised plasma levels of NGF, it's not really something I can help, it's a protein like any other. My morality comes from common sense, trial and error. If I do something, and everyone feels good after I've done it, then I'll continue to do it. If I do something and everyone feels bad after it's been done, then I consider that thing wrong, and I do my best to stop doing it. From animal instinct my survival or the survival of my community comes before anything else, so I would hurt someone before I allowed them to hurt me or my family.

Answer 2

I think you have the answer to this question right in yourself.
Are you a good person or a bad person? Do you know the difference between right and wrong? Well if you do then you already know the answer. It is not religion that causes us to be good or evil. We all have choices. Some of us Atheists choose to be good moral people. Some don't. Some Christians choose to be bad people, some don't. You yourself know if you are a good moral person. Others that know you also know whether or not you are a good moral person. In the end whoever or whatever made the human race will know which were good and which were evil and I don't need a book to know that will happen. I have the All Mighty in my heart and no one can see that but the All Mighty. And I don't take that on faith, I just somehow know it, sort of like a built in gene thing. It is what I feel and I have felt that way for most of my 58 years.

By the way I guess I am a theists in some way or another, I believe that there was a Creator but not a human one and no I don't believe the bible was "spoken" by god and I have no proof that the man Jesus lived and did the things that the bible says he did. And yes I am a really good moral person.

Answer 3

Do you think there is a planed purpose of being moral? This is one of the things that is born in you or it is not. Some peple have more then others. Kinda of like telling someone they drink too much beer. If you was a drunk a person that drank a beer a day would be a church goer and to a church goer a person that drinks one beer a day would be a drunk.

So I get the feeling you are trying to say that atheist have no morals because we do not believe in god. And if I was not of any set religon but I did believe, then I would have some morals. If I was of some other belief then yours I would have a few more and if I was of your belief then I would have high morals. It is the same for love adn caring.

A person can be a good person lovin and caring and not have a god.

From what I have seen in my life and I'm pretty old. It is reverse of the way you see it. I can't see how you have time to love or care for anyone but your god. The more you believe in a god the lest time you have for people or anything else. Your only love is god and you can't wait to be by his side and could not care less in any way about what happens here in real life. You are not worried about dieing and are willing to take anyone you can with you to meet your god.

It works both ways. There are good on both sides of the coin but I do feel the worse are on the side of religon.

Answer 4

I'm a "moral" person and obey the laws because I think that's the best way to live out my life and be happy and become prosperous. It's working as I'm extremely happy and rich.

I believe almost all human beings are down deep good. If we weren't, we'd be extinct! Religion in my opinion was created because we have this inherent goodness built into our brain.

Another reason that I'm "moral" and follow the established laws is because I was taught by my parents and teachers to be that way. If I was taught to be immoral and to cheat, I probably would be an immoral person, who would cheat and lie to get ahead. But I was taught to be a good person.

To me, it just seems that being a good, moral, honest person is just "natural". It doesn't "pay" to be the other way.

As far as love goes, it's both instinctual and a learned behavior.
Again, it just seems "natural" to me to love. Why be the other way?

I don't know why religious people automatically think people who do not believe in a higher powers are immoral or bad. We are not.
We are just like everyone else. We want to live peacefully and find happiness just like anyone else.

My religion is science. I don't have an opinion on "god". It may exist, it may not. It's a personal choice. I may be wrong. As a scientist, I keep an open mind, so who knows, I may come to "believe" some day.

Sorry, the spell checker was having problems. Please excuse any mis-spelling.

Answer 5

Haven't you seen animals that cooperate with each other? Animals that follow certain rules in the group? There are even animal species that mate with the same group member their whole life (they don't cheat!). Why do they do this? Simple, it's of interest of the group, according to their way of life, for their own benefits.

We humans are animals (i'm not sure why some claim otherwise), our developed brain make us capable to try to explain and elaborate our own desires to the point that we can come up with a whole new philosophy about why we do what we do, but deep down inside it's always the same basic behavior shaped in different forms according to instruction and experience through our life and that includes the behavior that results by being exposed to religion of any kind. Most of our behaviors are logical by simple taking in account the effect of the overall society behavior on our lives.

Now morals, it's understood that morals, per se, is doing what's right without taking in account men or god(s). Are there any believers of the the judeo-christian-islamic god really moral people or are they just ethical (following rules) because god's commandments or the wish of the afterlife reward? I think the are moral christians and other aren't, but do they know why are they moral? If they claim it's because god's commandments, that's not morality, to be moral you have to be beyond this. The history of the ring of Gyges in Plato's Republic illustrate this quite well.

Answer 6

If you study game theory, you will realize than in many scenarios, a selfish player can and will often select a choice A that maximizes his outcome at the expense of the other players instead of a choice B that could maximize the outcome for all players, because choosing B requires the cooperation of all players (a rogue player could make choice A while everyone else makes choice B, dooming the B choosers) For example if a buyer and seller trust each of their implicitly, they both make a choice B. Or if a seller wanted to cheat a buyer, the buyer would have to respond by having all sorts of escalating fiddle faddle protections which wouldn't otherwise be necessary.

Morals are just a proxy for those too young or too dumb to understand the concept.

Answer 7

The real question is where in the world did you ever get the idea that one needs to have a religion in order to be a moral person, who loves, and has a sense of ethics.

Are you honestly telling everyone that if you didn't have a bible to tell you that murder and rape were wrong, that you couldn't figure it out for yourself????????????????

There is something extremely defective about any person who can't reason right from wrong without the help of 2000 year old mythology.



I think that you are the one who needs to explain to the rest of the board why you find it strange that people can develop a moral compass on their own.
I am disturbed by your implication that theists would all be sociopaths without the crutch of a bible.

Answer 8

It is a combination of our genetics and our upbringing like almost everything about people. If I were raised in a society that found murdering your daughter for premarital sex acceptable, perhaps I would too. I can only hope not. Although I am SURROUNDED by xians, I am atheist, so I like to think that rationality would win out no matter where I was.

But a more fundamental thing is that we are a pack species so to some extent we are concerned about the well-being of others. That restraint is supplemented by the restraints of my culture.

So in some ways it is exactly like an animal caring for it's young or not attacking it's pack-mates and in some ways it's my culture telling me what is acceptable (and also my own decisions sometimes).

But I can assure you that if there were no such thing as police, things would be MUCH more chaotic regardless of anybody's religious beliefs. If we really had no forensics and/or police, people would be a lot more prone to committing crimes. You may think not b/c you grew up in an orderly society, but if it were chaotic from your childhood, most people would act VERY differently.

Answer 9

We are pack animals my man. Have you not figured it out. We have survived for 250,000 years, the way we did that was to work together. We are fragile creatures, and not the strongest. Our strength is in numbers, also intelligence but number too. To live together you have to have rules, that is just the nature on how things work. Your family is supposed to instill those ideas in you, not religion. That is what seems to be the real problem today, is that the struggle for survival is so hard no a days that we have to work longer and longer hours, neglecting the time that we should be spending with our kids. Try reading some Socrates some times, you will see that it can teach you more than a Bible can. The Bible teaches you how to prepare for death, philosophy teacher you how to live. Don't worry so much about death, it will come. Life is life, and no one gets out alive. Just live in the now and take care of your own.

Answer 10

i can't say im atheist. i dont know what i am. but my purpose of being a moral person is for peace of mind. morality is relative but im assuming moral to you means being civil.

i treat people the way i want to be treated. don't lie, cheat, steal etc..create a good example to others and respect others so that i dont have to live life looking my shoulder all the time.
create an atmosphere at least in my small social realm where people trust each other. love because love feels better than hate. hate takes too much of my energy and frankly id rather be doing other things with all my energy if you know what i mean ;)