why cant we develop morals by leaving god?

Question

instead of always dragging the name of a god/allah why cant we use our own thinking develop good morals and look forward to a better world?

Answer 1

Without God there can't be sense of accountability and without accountability you can't have morals

Answer 2

What you've asked is a question that's been around since Socrates.

If not God, or a god, or gods, some kind of transcendental force or truth is necessary for morality to be anything more than an idea. Without putting faith in some kind of 'objective certainty' then the 'should' or 'ought' of morality is pointless. What I'm saying, is if there is no greater truth underpinning the universe, then good and evil become just relative labels made up by humans, so morals are meaningless.

Sure, many morals have practical, self-interested motivations behind them. They allow us to live in a less chaotic society, and most of us enjoy order and certainty.

What of the instinctive nature of many morals? Do our feelings guide us to behave in a 'good' way? If so, then we obey our feelings. Why *should* we obey our feelings? Because it's moral to obey our feelings? Moral according to what? Our feelings? Thus this line of reasoning is a dead end.

So without a greater truth, morals lose their bite. We obey them simply because we feel bad if we don't. This is obviously futile, and people are unprepared to accept that morals have anything less than a divine, or at least transcendental basis.

Answer 3

Saying that one can have good morals and deny God at the same time is an oxymoron. Jesus sums up good morals in 2 commandments. The greatest is to love God with all your heart, soul and mind. The second is to love your neighbor as yourself. People that reject God can certainly do the 2nd but they can't accomplish the greater of the two moral commandments. So as you can see any person that denies God can in no possible way be living a moral life, at least not to the greatest extent.

Answer 4

I think people do...there is the natural law.

Such as killing ones own children would go against natural law because we would be killing our own blood line. There is also the understanding that we need to co-exist and work together for the good of all the community etc. etc.

People have and do ascribe to this type of moral code. The Church recognizes that these morals exist. God just takes us that much higher.

Answer 5

Great idea! Who gets to decide what they are? Will it work as well as law?
Invisible police are cheap and widely effective.

Getting serious here, the problem becomes who is 'we' that are developing this set of morals, and why people who have minor disagreements with the terms should adhere.

At the moment there is a consensus large enough and loud enough to define morality, even if you do not believe in God, or are not a Christian, you do know what the range of consensus of your society is, and must at least pay lip service to the core of it. Without this consensus there would be little social pressure to adhere to any particular system of morality besides law. Out present social consensus is called law. Law is a game, not a way to run a life.

I do not want a consensus called law crawling into my bed, or standing between me and my children. I do not want to give anyone the right to assure themselves of my compliance with official morality at that level. I prefer invisible police at that level of minutia of moral behavior.

That law *is* crawling in beds and standing between parent and child, and between married persons is a result in the decline in membership of the previous moral code: Religious faith. Lots of people still go to church, but few actually practice a faith and the morality that goes with it.

It is a mistake for society to attack religion and weaken its consensus value when it has lasted millenia as a working solution to running a society/culture. A few societies, mostly eastern, have gotten by on elaborate systems of good manners as social moral consensus - most required that a person commit suicide for seriously embarrassing themselves in relation to these codes of manners. This is also a cheap means of policing, practical and workable, but even more ridgid than a faith that encompasses forgiveness.

Religion has been tested against secular humanism and fascism before, and religion still stays the best solution to the moral base problem...
Whether you believe in God or not.

Answer 6

Hello Answer buddy...

Because then we would have no absolute standard as to draw our morals from,..

And we would always be changing our mind as our culture develops, this would be terribly confusing and only end in chaos.

Thankfully God also gave us a conscience, with his morals in built, when we are connected with him, this conscience is much clearer and less likely to be corrupted by the views of the world, and the rubbish media we see today in television and hollywood soap operas/ "beauty" magazines etc

(-:

Answer 7

Actually i know of more morally upright atheist than religious people...its the mind not the faith...

The basis of morality is the ability to learn without ego, total acceptance. This is something religious people lack because they are very complacent that their particular religion is perfect.

Answer 8

People had good moral systems before christianity and islam, they have good moral systems despite the existence of christianity and islam, and they will have good moral systems when both religions are dust in the wind.

Answer 9

How can you develop morals if somebody else tells you what to do and how to behave, in name of some god?
It just means that they never tell you why you have to behave like that, only that 'god wants it that way'.

Well, isn't it great that they know exactly what god wants of you, and that god never ever comes down from heaven to tell you himself?

Answer 10

You claim to be of no religion, you are not Christian, and you left Islam. Your own thinking seems to think it's ok to steal people's IDs, trash their religion and attack their character. If this is how you act with no religion, then I really think you need to find God in your life quickly. You are a poor example of morals and good thinking.

Reported for cloning/impersonation.

Answer 11

The previous answers are why.
There is no unifying theme. Religion provides a single view on issues.
The methods are extraneous, book, web, movie, walk in garden. So to answer you question, we can't because there is no method to do so. Are you asking why don't we have a committee on moral development?