Is God necessary to be moral?

Question

Please support your answers. I am doing a survey on what people think! I WILL pick best answer ... thanks

Answer 1

Do you need the threat of punishment of promise of reward to do the right thing? I am agnostic, I make my choices based on not hurting others, or taking away their freedom in any way. Sociopaths can believe in god and still have no regard for those around them.

Answer 2

Before we share our thoughts with you I need to take you to your childhood.

When you were a little kid and if you did some mischief and created problems didn`t your mother threaten you with an imaginary presence of a poliman or a dragon or some such ? When you refuse to have your food properly did she not divert your attention by telling moral stories to make you open your mouth?

Even after we have become adults we are constantly threatened but with GOD this time.. These are just ploys to make to fall back as we are children still , in many respects. For morality no prop is needed, least of all God!

But morality is necessary for godliness, for sure.

Answer 3

I do not think God is necessary to live a moral life. I think community is a more important concept for living morally than a god. In living in a community, we are forced to interact with others, and as such, we learn that there are certain ways we should act. I am thinking of the social contract theories of Hobbes and Locke; humans live in communities for their own benefits, adn act morally....you don't need a good to make the choice of whether you should act in a moral fashion or not. You need to think about how you want to be treated, and how it is best to live.

Answer 4

Who decides what's right or wrong? throughout history society has made up the customs to suit themselves and still they change. I mean it was morally okay for a guy to sleep with his sister but not his *** now he might sleep with his *** but not his sister, (kidding).
I guess in the distant past morals were more about pleasing the gods than much else. I don't think these days a god has alot to do with it but as the 10 commandments are more or less ingrained into our mentality morals can't be seperated from religion.

Answer 5

In my view, morals have more to do with the requirements of a secure and amicable social order than with either God or religion.

Morals have evolved through experience as to what behaviour and actions amongst ourselves create the most secure and harmonious social environment. In the olden days, religion was the most effective and powerful medium to enforce these codes and thus came a mistaken notion as though morals have anything to do with God.

Various religions came up at different places and times and yet their respective moral codes are hardly different......... the reason has nothing to do with God being one, instead it has much to do with the fact that security and mutual amity requirements are the same in every society.

To be moral, one need not be God fearing...... one just needs to be wise and good natured towards others, in other words aware of and concerned for the needs of a secure and harmonious society.

Morals are not any more ingrained into us through churches or temples..... these are learnt from parents and teachers at a young age and confirmed or rejected through personal experience in the society.

Answer 6

i dont think so. i believe human beings are born with an innate sense of what is right or wrong. keep in mind, i am not saying that humans are inherently good or bad, just that they have an understanding of what acts are unacceptable.
for example, human beings instinctively know that it is wrong to kill someone. in doing so you jeopardize your own survival. one less person means less resources such as food or reproductive possibilities.
i think the same reason can apply to stealing. it would not serve primitive man to steal from his companion. instead, a state of mutual reciprocity would be more beneficial to the survival of both in the long run.
basically, i am saying primitive humans survival depended on a cohesive group, no "cave man" could survive alone. out of this necessity to band together, certain behaviors were more beneficial than others and thus passed on. all these behaviors necessary to maintain a group became what we call morality.
almost all religions have the same basic rules; dont kill, steal, lie etc. so called primitive tribes in the middle of a jungle have the same rules as well. morality is a survival mechanism that predates religion.

Answer 7

God may or may not be necessary for morals . to get this we have to get the most accepted definition of morality and god. morality as we say it : is a set of values that we learn from the good rule book of socity, being truthfull, honest, not hurting anyone, compassion, love etc.etc the list is unending and unrealistic, some times even impractical to follow.
but if we look close these are the invisible chains socity had created down the ages to keep the animal instinct in humans as controlled as possible. these chains are designed very very carefully to maintain the peace and order in socity and so far they have served the purpose by and large.
now if u look at the definition of god, the commonest and most accepted def. of god is similar to a controlling and disciplining headmaster/big brother. these two ideas completely and perfectly are in compliment with each other, there seems no contradiction. so if we see from this angle god and morality are one and the same thing.
but is this the truth?
what if humans dont need to control that animal part of them, what if humans grow out of that animal instinct and no more suicidal or killers.
can we still say morality and god are the same thing?
lets look into it- if god is not a headmaster and just a source of energy that keeps this universe alive and buzzing, and if morals are not to be taught as a set of rules, rather if they are born out of natural compession and love for the rest of creation, than god and morals are still in compliment with each other.
but if morals are forced upon us then they are opposite to god, and if god is precieved as a big brother and morals are born out of compassion than again they are opposite to each other.

Answer 8

God is not necessary to be moral. Knowing right from wrong does not require knowing God. In fact, there are many people who claim to know God who have no morals.

The key to having morals is to know when you are affecting or effecting others. If your affect or effect is hurtful rather than helpful than your act is immoral. It is that simple.

Knowing God is important, but does not give a person morals.

Take care,
Troy

Answer 9

I think God is very necessary to have morals for without God we would not know how what to base our morals. (If men were to base our morals on our own imperfect knowledge then morals would not be morals but thoughts that are consequences of our perspective, but If we base our morals on what is to be believed as divine knowledge which IS God, then we can call them morals because God's perspective is not flawed and he sees eveything therefore we can trust that his thoughts are perfect.) The validity of this statement depends on both the belief that God exists and the existence of any aspiration to live like him.

Answer 10

i think that at the very least a BELIEF in God is necessary to be moral. without God as a concept of absolute good, and a final arbiter of good from evil, then any ethic that can be proposed will devolve into a system of relativism, which will depend on the popularity or usefulness of that system with the sovereign, or the individual.

however, if you read aristotle's philosophy on ethics, it is a fairly sophisticated and well-reasoned attempt to create a foundation of morality that does not rely on divine authority for its legitimacy but is based entirely on concrete and observable phenomena.

he establishes by evidence that certain things in life are "good", and lists what they are. (frankly i don't remember what they are, but there were 9 "goods" i think). one of these things is human life itself. his system of ethics begins with the rule that in making one's decisions, one should never choose to go against the "good". since life is a good, then things like euthanasia, murder, abortion, capital punishment, would be things to avoid.

this is an extremely rudimentary presentation of his world-based ethic, but you get the idea. however, even it is subject to relativism if human values change. or people disagree with whether or not those "goods" really are good.

what if people suddenly decided that murder was ok? or if there were definitive word of God that it was not evil? would democratic renunciation of the criminality of murder really make it ok? would God's word make it so?

probably not. on some level we would still have an intuitive sense that it IS wrong... paradoxically, this attitude presents arguments both for and against the existence of God. on the one hand it suggests that we decide what is right and wrong without reference to God, because even if God spoke from on high and told us murder was not evil, we would probably still continue to hold it to be evil. on the other hand, the fact that we cannot conceive of "acceptable murder" may indicate that God does provide an absolute GOOD and by his presence in us, an intuitive sense of ethics in us as well.

in short though, i think you could say that God may not be necessary to be moral, but He's a hell of a sales pitch for it.

Answer 11

Necessary to morality? Only morality as described in the Bible, but without those guidlines, who decides what is moral and what is not? Other cultures have their Gods to help construct their own guidlines as well. I think that most people need that higher power to set certain limits. Without them, chaos would reign.