Lets pretend for one second that?

Question

god did not exist, hypothetically of course. What would happen to you? Would you continue to believe that life was beautiful? Would you still try to be a good person? What would become of your morals and ethics? Would they vanish or would they persevere?

Wow I did'nt think I would get so many answers! Although I read them all I don't have the time to pick the right answer. I'll pick this one because i wanted to comment on what he said, but I don't think it is the best answer and there are too many good answers to just pick one.

Answer 1

what do you mean? im an atheist and strive to live my life as morally sound as possible. i dont NEED a father figure in the sky admonishing me not to be a bad boy. i dont NEED the threat of eternal torture or the promise of eternal reward to not be an asshole. if you need to be pushed into being a nice person out of fear, then its all for the wrong reasons. i do what i do for the benefit of the people around me, not so that daddy wont be mad at me.

Answer 2

When I became an atheist, I realized that I was telling myself that even if I died young or didn't get to experience certain things in this life, I could do it in heaven. Oh, I never made time to skydive? I know I'll get to do it in Heaven. Oh, I am not driving as slow as I should? That's okay, I'll see my family again in Heaven and everything will turn out okay in the end. Well, now that I don't believe there is a God OR Heaven, I realize that I need to do everything I can in this single, short life I have been given. I am so thankful that I have a good life- it could have been so much worse. I also view it as SO much more of a tragedy when someone dies. They aren't going to "live forever" somewhere else than here. They are just dead. I don't think people that believe in an afterlife have the same regard for life and keeping it as atheists do. I will try to hold on to this life as hard as I possibly can. It's the only one I've got and I will protect it. I wish everyone was an atheist. There would be no more terrorism, no more groups that hate eachother because of religion, etc. The world suffers so badly from people doing things that don't make any sense at all becuase some damn book tells them they should.

Answer 3

I didn't change much when I became an atheist. Life still has its beautiful and ugly moments, and I don't really think being good has anything to do with God(well, for some people). But it really depends what you mean by good or bad? Having sex before marriage is not considered as a good thing if u believe in the existence of God and you have a religion but if u don't well I guess it's something normal in today's society(not everywhere in the world though)
And if you mean do I still help people and...If I have the opportunity I'll help people and in fact now that I don't believe in God and life after death I think everybody should have a comfortable and enjoyable life and it can be done by people helping each other.

Answer 4

I am agnostic, I have never been sure how this world was created. If it DID happen that God did not exist, it would just make matters more confusing and the world would be way more messed up. I would still be myself, and I'd try to make everyone around me and kids with AIDS and animals happier and the world a better place to live in. I do it for us, not God, because we're all in it together. Life has always been beautiful through the good and the bad, but I guess I'm being an optomist. I don't think I've ever had any morals.

Answer 5

My morals and optimism have nothing to do with god. As far as I am concerned, god does not exist and I enjoy my life without hurting anyone/anything. I don't lie, steal and cheat. I believe in responsible behavior so that while I can get certain advantages (higher marks, better salaries etc.) but not at the cost of my integrity and then I use the higher salary to help other people. How has the absence of god made me a bad person or amoral/unethical person?

There is so much to do, so much to see, so many lovely people... why would I not think life is beautiful?

Answer 6

Nothing would happen. As far as I'm concerned God may very well not exist at all. Still, it's worth it to be a good person and follow a moral code because it makes life more pleasant. We are social creatures, after all, and we depend on one another for survival. The more of a jerk you are, the less likely you are to survive (at least in an ideal world). As far as post-death. We probably just become ashes anyway. Big deal. What difference does it make? The point is we should try to make life as good as possible while it's in our control.

Answer 7

If God didn't exist I wouldn't exist nor would any morals or ethics. Despite the very optomistic cheerleading section there is absolutly no proof that matter can come to life on its own. This has been worked on in labratories for years now by Stanley Miller and associates. If anything they have proved the opposite to be true. the amino acids needed to build a protein contain left handed amino acids but there is no process to separate them from the right handed ones and in every case they end up having about a fifty fifty split of both left and right handed amio acids. This is why scientists are looking elsewhere because they can't get it to happen here even while trying to recreate every conceivable variation of a pre-biotic soup.

Answer 8

Hello,
I find it interesting that we are forgetting that morals and ethics are learned behaviors. And that they are part of our cultural experiences. The origins of humankind’s morals and ethics are still debated, but from observations of feral children, we know that they are immoral and therefore have no ethics. A casual observation of anarchist societies (Old Yugoslavian states, Somalia, and etcetera) demonstrates the ease and quickness of the loss of moral and ethic standards.

I can only hope that my cognitive morality would remain in tact, but I would also be aware that I would also be in Sartre’s existentialism’s hell of meaninglessness. And the world would need to reinvent the basic concepts of good, evil, right, and wrong, because the entire world conceptions of those ideas is based on cultural understanding of what their particular religion (God Worship) teaches them about the aforementioned ideas.

Happiness is transient and for me is not a conscious quest. However, although in the hell created by a universe without God, I would seek spiritual fulfillment in my quest to persevere to the end. Those things in life that are beautiful, like the sound of children playing, the stars in the sky, the bloom on a flower, the turn of a phrase, the shape of a woman, the perfectly placed chord, and so many more are, have, and will always be beautiful. Even with all of those things, I have no idea if my life could still be beautiful if there was no God, because we should not forget that spirituality is that thing or those things that give life meaning.

I do know that what I do, or do not do is important to me and having lived through terrible events, I have learned that a lot of survival is attitude. Knowing this, I also know that the taste of life is sweet. Yes, it is often seasoned with peppers, sours, and bitters, but as long as I desire that underlying sweetness. And sometimes the only important thing is to keep on desiring the sweetness of life.

Answer 9

For me it's not a hypothetical, I don't believe there is a god, at least the common understanding of what one is. Some higher power had to design electrons around a proton but we may never know what means. I certainly don't think it's a GOD who controls the universe.

If you look at remote south american jungle tribes who have never seen a white man, let alone Christianity, it is AMAZING how they live with the same values as you and I. Share with your neighbor, work together as a community, don't covet another mans wife blah blah bah, all WITHOUT the influence of GOD

My morals are the same, do unto others, etc. No GOD ever needed to learn that.

Answer 10

1. Christians would continue not to believe it was true.
2. Christians would suddenly all go out and riot and kill and adulterize and fornicate and lie and be prideful and vain and greedy and all that.
3. The reborn would revert back into drugs and whatever else they used religion to get out of, helpless.
4. Satan would become ruler of the world, and... I'm not sure what would happen then. I guess considering the gullibility of people, there would be a lot of former christians who, finding themselves without a deity, would flock to Satan as a replacement. Then again, Satan came from God, so, if there was no God, then no Satan, but then again Satan's not even in the Bible, so I don't even know where to start for answers here.
5. When we die, we wouldn't have a Heaven to go to. Maybe we'd just roam the earth for eternity (no God, then no Heaven, and no Hell, which isn't the Bible, either, so again, no idea).

Answer 11

It depends on who your asking. Someone who has thought god has helped them get through everything will feel betrayed and helpless, others will feel triumphant and powerful. I think if god did not exist then that would mean life is even more beautiful since there is no other life. I would try to be a good person because good (or sometimes bad) habits die hard. I would persevere.