Why do religious people beleive that we receive our morals from their sacred texts?

Question

Does anyone honestly believe that we are moral because our God's ask us to be? Let me take an few examples from the Bible. A man gathering sticks on the Sabbath - stoned to death! A warrior who made contract with God - his only daughter burnt in God's honour, as agreed with God! Both are Old Testament stories. What sort of morals should we derive from these terrible examples? And, if Christians say we should not draw from these particular examples, then why do they pick and choose what they decide to abide and what they decide to abhor?

Answer 1

Eyes wide open, yet you do not see?

Why for instance are you on about Christian morals? Dont other religions have their "good books" and is it not true also that they shape their written word into how they want to percieve it...?

The thing about the Ten Commandments is, if we all based our lives on those few simple statements the world would be a better place..... not perfect but better.

Answer 2

People don't get their morals from Sacred Texts, they use Sacred Texts as guidelines for morals. That is why people can be moral even though they are of different religions.
You are right, those things are terrible. Think of it like this: America has soldiers (sons and daughters) fighting to give freedom to people who don't want it, that man had just fought for the freedom of his people and his daughter was the price he paid.
There is a man in jail in America for his part it the 9/11 hijackings, he treated the US justice system with contempt thinking he would become a martyr, instead he got a "rest of your life in jail" sentence. Now he wishes hadn't treated the justice system with such contempt, then he could easily have got a shorter sentence or maybe walked away free. The episode with the man picking up the sticks came about because he treated God with contempt.

Answer 3

I am so fed up that some fanatics believe you can only be a good person when you are religious. That is complete b*llsh*t. Morals is something you are taught by your parents, b y your personality, by your friends and surroundings.

Additionally, being a Christian does nt automatically mean you are a good person. Take the priests who molest little kids, the Rwandan priest who contributed to the genocide by helping to exterminate 80 000 people. Or some ( not all of them!!) Christians who do judge me for not being religious. Doesn't the Bible say to love and respect others?

Answer 4

Morality actually stems from being highly intelligent social creatures. It is in our best interest to be "moral" by most general standards. Therefore, it was ingrained in our evolution.
What made us sad tens of thousands of years ago, what made us suffer, what made us feel the need for justice and revenge took shape by so many years of savage trial and error. And eventually we began to "See and Feel" our brother's pain, thus compassion and empathy. And eventually the more we became intelligent, so our frontal lobe cortex became developed as time passed. We began to philosophise, and think deeply about complex ethical issues and try to sort them out.
This is why I feel it is important for believers to read philosophy, it is worth getting a different perspective on morals, if they value wisdom of the ages.
It's amazing that they don't give refined wise thinkers such as Aristotle, Plato or Socrates as much clout as they do the primitive and barbaric scribblings of Middle Eastern men only a few years before them.
I wonder how far we ever progress, though,
We are after all still animals.

Answer 5

To be moral, you have to acknowledge an arbiter of good and evil above yourself. You therefore acceot the authority of another person (who has to make the same decision), or accept that these morals come from God.

The alternative is to accept that we are our own arbiters of good and evil. That being the case, we approve of whatever we do and judge that it is good. Even if this is stealing, being violent, lying and cheating. If we judge any of these as wrong, we accept a higher authority over ourselves to which we are subject. If there is no authority above us then the only authority we have is self. Selfishness, self centredness, self righteousness. No-one else matters.

Answer 6

Poor boy, your life is painful because you ask many question which you want to understand. The best way is you go into those major religious and understand why the book indicated the story which seemed not make sense. Those stories are telling the situation at that moment how people committed sins and how the hollyman wanted to stop them.

For your information; sometimes hero and devil are the same. Those hero and devil are wrong.
Look into your mind why this piece of mind coming up to you and how it gone. If you follow the piece of mind and go on, will be sin already.
You had already added up your clarifications, standpoints, experiences, ideas in it.

Answer 7

some christians feel that everything in the bible is correct and just and that anybody who doesn't agree with them and the bible are immoral and unjust when that is absolutely untrue morals come form our parents and our ability to empathise with other individuals and through reason logic and common sense i'm an agnostic by the way and i have morals thank you very much

Answer 8

We are made in the image of God. God is holy. All men (and women) have sinned. Because we are made in the image of God, we are aware of sin, good and evil and we therefore, automatically have an understanding of morals. We therefore, do not receive our morals from sacred texts, they just remind us of them.

Answer 9

Our modern morals are historically derived from sacred scriptures. To deny that is to deny reality. But to believe that mankind is moral is also to ignore reality. We have viable instructions on how to live good, moral lives. That doesn't mean we actually follow them, though.

Answer 10

"All God wants from us is love and acknowledement and acceptance of what he gave to us. Our sins have been forgiven as long as we accept his beautiful gift."

Um, no, that's not quite right. God requires us to repent of our sins and turn away from them... There's more to it than just acknowledging He exists.

As for the original question, we are not moral at all, and the Bible doesn't say we are. Humans are sinful and immoral beings at heart. That's why we all sin. To be saved from Hell, we must repent of our sins and make a conscience effort to turn away from sin. We must also put our faith in Jesus. These are the things that will get a person to Heaven.