Christians do you believe Atheists can have good morals without religion?

Question

What if the commandments disappeared, do you believe the world would be worse without them?

Answer 1

I am a Christian. I believe that anybody can have good morals, with or without faith in God. Good morals, like faith, are a choice each individual makes for themselves. I've known plenty of so-called Christians with horrible morals, and plenty of atheists with wonderful morals.

The commandments are a very useful tool, they give us good guidelines to live by, but would the world be worse off without them? I don't think so, simply because most of the world doesn't follow the Judeo-Christian religious traditions, and therefore doesn't follow the commandments.

Good morals are good morals, regardless of where we believe they were handed down to us from, be it God or our forefathers.

Answer 2

Atheists may have good moral values without religion; professed Christians may have poor moral values with religion. However, if you are an atheist rather than a theist, you must consider this: What standard of right and wrong are you basing your judgment. What is "good."? Further, how can you know, how can there be, any right or wrong, good or bad, lest their be a supreme being who establishes the standard. If there is no God, than human life has no more intrinsic value than anything found in nature. If that's the case, why worry about right and wrong?
Consider this: Natural law is the idea that humanity is imbued with a sense of absolute right and wrong, a standard, if you will. The Commandments are rooted in natural law, but natural law only exists if there is a God. If there is a God, than the Commandments would surface anyway; if not, than it doesn't matter because no absolute right and wrong exists. Taken a step further, the world will one day end and all that humanity has accomplished will be lost forever. So you might as well live for today and not worry about the question, because without God, it really is meaningless.

Answer 3

I would venture to say that the % of Atheists, non-Christians and Christians who have good or bad morals is probably about the same. Personally I do not specifically follow the 10 commandments, but I do follow the Golden Rule! Do unto others as you would have done to you. And frankly I believe this covers more than the 10 commandments do.

Answer 4

I'm Christian, and I don't think that. What is morality? What is good and what is evil, right? If you are a civilized and normal individual, it's rather common sense to know what is really moral or not. We're brought up to know what is moral. And on the subject of rape.. "But if in the field the man finds the girl who is engaged, and the man forces her and lies with her, then only the man who lies with her shall die. 26"But you shall do nothing to the girl; there is no sin in the girl worthy of death, for just as a man rises against his neighbor and murders him, so is this case. 27"When he found her in the field, the engaged girl cried out, but there was no one to save her," (Deut. 22:25-28). Keep in mind that the old and new testament are very different, from several centuries apart, time wise. You can't take things out of context, and try to fit the piece in the puzzle where it doesn't fit. EDIT: Your comment on the Deuteronomy passage.. I think you are only glossing over the surface of this passage and misreading it. During those times, if a woman is raped she is doomed to poverty because she will not ever find a husband. The fact is that the rapist would marry her and never leave her to protect her from this instance. So really, this is punishment to the rapist. The rapist must pay the victims father and must provide for her all the days of his life.

Answer 5

I fell like that if you do good and try to help people, if you are kind, and the things that you do do not hurt another person or does not go against the laws then you are a pretty good person. Just because either you believe or don't believe in God or a higher power does not mean that you do not have good morals. I know alot of people that claim to be good god fearing people and their morals belong in the toilet. I always have believed treat everyone the way you would want them to treat you.

Answer 6

If a person doesn't already understand that cruelty is wrong, he won't discover this by reading the Bible or the Koran — as these books are bursting with celebrations of cruelty, both human and divine. We do not get our morality from religion. We decide what is good in our good books by recourse to moral intuitions that are (at some level) hard-wired in us and that have been refined by thousands of years of thinking about the causes and possibilities of human happiness.

We have made considerable moral progress over the years, and we didn't make this progress by reading the Bible or the Koran more closely. Both books condone the practice of slavery — and yet every civilized human being now recognizes that slavery is an abomination. Whatever is good in scripture — like the golden rule — can be valued for its ethical wisdom without our believing that it was handed down to us by the creator of the universe.

Answer 7

No matter if Atheists have morales or not, they still live in arraogance beleiving there is no GOD, no matter if they are good people or not they still are ignorant beleiving this life is the real life & eternal & there is no hereafter, i dont have any problems with non-religious, atheists people but thats how it is, if one is going to have morales then why not follow religion which also has morales and belive in something which created you, atheist is like refusing & beliveing to worship what put u here in the first place, but GOD can be mericful, what about the religious people who also have morals, do they end up same as atheists? u see it dont make sense, if one belives in GOD & has morales & oen does not beleive in GOD & also has morales then it doesnt seem fair that the beliveing person will end up nowhwere as atheits belive, there has to be somone , some force to judge us out there.

Answer 8

Civilizations thrived for many, many years before Christianity and were moral. The same civilizations thrived before the 10 Commandments. How many Christians follow all 10 Commandments? With all due respect (which isn't much) this is a stupid,self-serving question.

Answer 9

Morals are relative, and atheists can (and do) have morals. I myself am a moral atheist. I don't lie, cheat, steal or kill.

Something to make you think...what's worse: a moral atheist or a x-tian who has morals because if they don't behave, then god (little "g" intentional) will punish them for it?

I live my life the best way I know how. I love my family, I love my friends, I love my wife, I love my country (and my world) and I love the human race. I treat everyone as I would like to be treated, from my mother, to my wife to the guy at Kroger who bags my groceries. If at the end of my life, St. Peter bars me from paradise I chose not to believe in a sick twisted god then I'll gladly give him the finger and say, "Give me eternal hellfire."

Answer 10

Whenever I see nonsense like this, I am appalled to be reminded that there are people out there who are so out of touch with their basic humanity, and reality, that they would not have any idea how to conduct themselves in society, absent the code of an imaginary supernatural being, based on the myths, superstitions, fairy tales and fantastical delusions of an ignorant bunch of Bronze Age fishermen and wandering goat herders.

Cooperation, altruism and love are innate properties of human existence... a more sophisticated version of the social organization that you can see among pods of dolphins or orcas, packs of wolves, lion prides and troops of chimpanzees. Moral consensus, moral conscience and mutual empathy are evolved survival traits. These are social constructs... the social lubrication that allows people to exist together. People come away with the misconception that they don't exist, absent religion. The religious puppet masters try to perpetuate that idea, in order to protect their conduits to wealth and power... but that is a canard. This has to do, entirely, with human nature.

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"With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion." ~ Steven Weinberg
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Hey... you Christians who think that atheists have no morals need to chew on this for a little while. Christians make up about 75% of the US population and 75% of the US prison population. No big surprise there.

Atheists, on the other hand, make up about 10% of the US population... but they only make up 0.2% of the US prison population. Now, isn't THAT a surprise? That means that on a per-capita basis, atheists are FIFTY (50) times LESS LIKELY to be incarcerated than Christians. Pretty strange, huh, for a group that has no god-given guiding moral principals?

I can only think of two possibilities that might reasonably be said to account for this discrepancy:

1. Atheists are of a higher ethical and moral caliber than Christians, and thus are less prone to do the same kinds of nasty things that land so many Christians in the slammer;

OR,

2. Atheists are, overall, a lot smarter than Christians and thus, they are less likely to get caught in the course of their transgressions.

It's GOT to be one or the other... take your pick.