Atheists: Can you abandoned your beliefs in morality?

Question

As a Christian, I am often accused of believing in a delusion. However, if there is no God, then there are no universal ethical truths. Belief in “right” and “wrong” are just as fictional as a belief in God. Most people would agree that “molesting children is always wrong,” or “genocide is always wrong,” regardless of a particular person’s personal beliefs or cultural background. Yet if God is not real, one’s moral feelings and thoughts about those issues are delusions. If you have abandoned your belief in God, have you abandoned your delusional belief in universal “right” and wrong?” If not, why not?

Sorry about the misspellings

Answer 1

thank you for seconding this extremely valid point i have always contended.


i should never ever hear an athiest say something is wrong. if there are no absolutes, (ie---relativism)...how could somethign possibly be wrong?? just because you're heart says so at the time????

because there is no wrong without an authority!!!!

Answer 2

DONT GET HEATED READING THIS. YOU WILL LOVE MY POINTS. Are you talking about believing God or "a god." Secondly, what you said makes no sense. Don't worry I have read carefully, let me break it down. You say ,"Yet if God is not real, one’s moral feelings and thoughts about those issues are delusions." By saying this you are saying that everyone that believe in more than one god is delusional and you are saying everyone who doesn't believe in god is delusional. And yes, belief in right or wrong is just a fictional as belief in god, but alass, humans will never know the answer to what is truly right or wrong nor will we ever receive proof he exists. Universal ethical truths, if something makes you feel bad when you do it, or if something makes you feel good when you do it. People live by this rule alone no matter if there is a god or not. If you like to kill and watch things suffer, you may have a tendency to kill and make things suffer, but if you like to help people to live and thrive and be happy that's what your going to do. So it's a system based off you, not generaly accepted rules. And yes I have a ton of good beliefs, such as no war, no killing, people should be more understanding of each other - and I believe these values are right, but besides that all Christians would agree right? How many soldiers in Iraq are killing people? How many are Christian and committing sin? Would that make them a sinner under God or just all atheists working in Iraq? We swear on the bible in court, but our government condones killing. I agree with the ethical values of the bible, but I use my own judgement know that the truth lies in me and what I do - not a book.

Answer 3

It's problematic that you state that no God equals no universal ethical truths. To say God has to exist for there to be a sense of right and wrong doesn't make any sense. Our sense of morality probably came from times before us, when trying to survive was the norm. In order for the species to survive, you cannot kill each other. This idea was passed down, and as the human species flourished, so did the idea that killing in general is wrong, becoming what is considered right without any question.

To extend on this, consider pain and pleasure. It doesn't take the belief in some big guy in the sky for someone to tell you that most people do not like pain, and most people like pleasure. In some cases they may become intertwined, another person's pain being pleasure, or your own pain giving you pleasure. These are responses from the brain that evoke a certain emotion, and that emotion is then considered whether to be something that you want to experience again, or something you would rather not. It is more or less, a sense of right and wrong.

I believe you are delusioned in thinking you have to believe in God to not be delusioned, and that without God, there is no sense of right and wrong. This delusional way of thinking brings about your delusioned question, which is probably why you're accused of beliving in a delusion.

Answer 4

The difference between right and wrong is partially instinct and partially environmental and it is not a belief, it is a fact. Take for example a child born alone in the woods with no beliefs or preconception of GOD. He would kill to survive but he could learn empathy also. He would learn that everytime he kills something it bleeds and then it dies, this is fact. He might wound an animal one day instead of killing it, he would no doubt see its pain, this is a probable experience. He would feel pain himself from falling etc., another probability. He would also learn that when he eats a banana or fruit from a tree instead of killing something it doesn't bleed therefore it does not hurt and it tastes just as good, this is a fact. He may choose to eat bananas and fruits more often than killing something, this is a probability, he has now learned morality and no one told him that, he was not preconditioned, it was learned.

Right and wrong is a universal thruth , its the environmental factors (religion, beliefs, conformaty, mass acceptance) that corrupts or changes them.

The delusion is not in morality itself, it is in the fact that someone defined that morality for you. Do you honestly believe if you had no preconditioning you would believe in God or would you just know right from wrong because you would have learn that through the same experiences that you have had in life. It might be some what different but you would be the same person just not with the same preconditioned delusions.

Answer 5

There aren't "universal ethical truths" even if there is a god, especially if it's the god of the Bible who has no problem murdering innocent children. Christians themselves can't even agree on moral issues such as abortion. God never mentions it in the Bible and even if he did people can interpret the Bible however they want. Since this supposedly all knowing god didn't provide an instruction manual for how to read the Bible and understand what he's really saying, your interpretation is no more valid than mine or those of the Christians at the Westboro Baptist Church who day after day thank god for 9/11.

Here's one of the definitions of delusion at dictionary.com:
'An erroneous belief that is held in the face of evidence to the contrary.'

My moral beliefs do not go against evidence that say the opposite, therefore, my beliefs when it comes to morality are not delusional beliefs.

Answer 6

Morality cannot come from faith. Morality comes from the concepts of good and evil. These concepts come from reason.

Animals, which have not evolved a conceptual brain, have no ability and no need to be moral. A cat does not have a concept of living and non-living. When a cat sees a plastic mouse move, he pounces and plays with it as if it were alive. When he sees a real mouse, he does the same thing. The taste of blood will tell the cat which is good to eat. Does the cat make a moral distinction? No, it cannot conceptualize.

Faith is just an emotion, like a desire. It makes me feel good to think that there is a perfect being up in the sky, somewhere, who looks after me. I can wish anything that makes me feel good. But neither wishing, nor believing and imagining can make me distinguish the good from the bad. Reason can.

Morality is made up of the guiding principles that tell me how I should act. Should I rob a store a week to live or should I trade my work for a paycheck? Why is one an immoral action and the other moral? Is it because God tells me? Is it because society tells me? Is it subjective, depending on what I like? Is it temporal and relative, today is bad to steal, but tomorrow it will be moral?

The study of ethics, which is the part of philosphy that gives us the reasoning for being or not being moral is not taught in schools, and is certainly not taught by religions.

Religions are primitive forms of philosophy based on divine or mystical authority. They only ask that you believe and obey, as if you had the brains of a dog!

Answer 7

Every "moral" code develops out of community experience. Behaviors that enhance the survival and wellbeing of the community are encouraged, those that diminish it are discouraged. At times, individuals may challenge previously established rules. To discourage this, community leaders attempt to increase their moral authority by claiming to speak for the wise elders, or beyond that, the ancestors, or even beyond that, the god(s).

As time and circumstances change, old moral standards may become obsolete. But having set the rules up as absolutes makes it hard to permit the change necessary to accommodate new knowledge, understandings and social developments. Questioning the current applicability of an ancient "moral" is to question the validity of all moral determinations, not to mention the power of those who decree these rules.

Identifying God as the moral "authority" is merely a way to protect human authority from philosophical dispute. "God says so," shuts down discussion because who can argue with God? But without a God to back them up, righteous folk have no logical basis for their "virtue".

Atheists tend not to speak of "morals" but of "ethics". There is a difference. Morals are associated with specific acts, such as sex outside of marriage, immoderate drinking or murder without the approval of the government. Moralists list the WHATs. Ethics considers the motivations behind acts, the WHYs. Ethically, certain acts could be good or evil depending on the circumstances under which they are employed. There could be "moral" acts that are not ethical, or "immoral" acts that are.

Consider lying and telling the truth. A person can lie to protect an innocent person from attack. A person can make a technically factual statement to mislead and divert attention from an inconvenient issue. Morally, lies are always bad and truth is always good. Ethically, it depends on who benefits from a deception. You don't need a God to determine that.

The biggest worry seems to be that one will make a mistake and confuse something wrong with something right. Under God, this is a serious problem, a defective conscience, sin undiagnosed! Without God, it can be a serious social problem, but it is a mistake in perception, which can be dealt with either by therapy or isolation.

People can tell when someone's behavior is a problem. The difference is in whether we memorize the list, or occasionally stop to think about why it is a problem.

Answer 8

"However, if there is no God, then there are no universal ethical truths."

Wrong. If you learned tomorrow God did not exist, would you start molesting children and advocating genocide?

Buddhism is a non-deistic relgion. They do not believe in a personal God. They seem to have right and wrong figured out.

There are many theories on morality. Some believe it is mostly learned (my parents teach me not to kill, I teach my kids not to kill, etc.) Some believe it can be explained in evolution.

http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2007/02/05/morality_play/

I choose to live by a certain code because I enjoy living in a progressive society. I have strong empathy for other humans. I don't enjoy seeing other humans suffer. I enjoy the benefits of social ineteraction and I like the benefits of technology, intellectualism, etc that can olny be achieved by participating in a structured society. And I suspect most humans enjoy those things as well. This is one example of a non-God based reason for having ethics.

Human ethics were in place well before the bible was around and widely available. The also continue to flourish in places where the Bible does not exist.

Answer 9

No...

What a terribly faulty jump in logic.
Morality and religion have nothing to do with one another. Some of the most immoral people are the ones who insist the most strongly that they ARE with god.

We evolved to have a basic understanding that killing one another is wrong. Why is it wrong? Because Basic morality and altruism are hardwired into our brain because that's the best way for social creatures to survive in groups.

Humans, as a species, cannot survive as solitary individuals. We need each other to live on this harsh planet. If we're only about helping ourselves, the community as a whole will not survive. Mothers won't bother raising young, people would be killing each other with impunity in the streets. There could be no civilization. And our big brains wouldn't mean much because no one would bother teaching anyone else how to use advanced tools or concepts.

Answer 10

I have a very strong moral compass that allows me to quicky decide whether a given action is right or wrong. But I think you are right that the concept of "universal right and wrong" is delusional. There is no set of commandments that you can define that will result in unambiguous decisions of right and wrong under all circumstances. Take "Thou shall not kill" for example. Surely you would allow for some exceptions to that rule? If you could have killed the 911 hijackers before they crashed the planes, wouldn't you have done so?

The problem with your line of thinking is that you assume that if I don't believe in moral absolutes then I must have no morals, or at least have very weak morals. In truth, I have very strong morals. Just not absolute ones.

Answer 11

You are so wrong on so many levels. I do not need to believe in a god to know what is right and wrong. As a HUMAN BEING we know how we want to be treated and how to treat others. You do NOT need an antiquated religion to be a moral person. I suggest you do a little more research next time before sticking the proverbial foot into your mouth. It just makes you look foolish.