Atheist, point of view.... serious question.?

Question

I am reading a book which is supposed to answer the 20th toughest faith questions.

One of the points that God exists is that God accounts for the objective of ethical values.

Obviously, we all have moral values whether you believe in God or not. We all have basic intuitions that murder is wrong, it's right to be loving and truthful, courageous, and compassionate... These values appear to stand distinct from the human mind and will.

The author who is Christian says that moral values are incompatible with all forms of ethical relativism including naturalistic, atheistic, and evolutionary theory. Since ethical relativism is incoheent and cannot serve as an acceptable moral theory. In the absence of a personal God, morality can only be conventional and subjective in nature.

Atheism has no foundation upon which to ground man's conscious awareness of moral obligations. Christian theist are grounded in the morally perfect nature of God.

Is this true?

So how do atheist answer the question on why we all have morals and a conscious? I am sure there has to be another answer...

Answer 1

Of course it is not true.

Answer 2

If God was omnipotent and truly moral we would never had experienced the Inquistition, witch burnings, the Holocaust, etc.

The fellow who wrote the book can say anything he pleases and still come to an erroneous conclusion. If only Christians are moral, then we did Hammurabi, who was born long before Christianity existed, have laws? Why do the Chinese have laws? You can still be moral even if you do not believe in a God. The author's conclusion is an OPINION and not a FACT, and there is an enormous difference between the two.

Also, as to the "morally perfect" nature of God, try reading the Old Testament - its full of incest, genocide, murder, betrayal, adultery - so much for "moral perfection".

Answer 3

People often say that morals can only come from a god. I find it sad that these people have so little faith in the ability of humans. It is perfectly reasonable to believe that humans developed their own morals. The idea that early humans forming tribes would need to create rules to live by. No stealing, no killing, no attacking each other. If you break these rules then you are tossed out of the group. Early humans got together for survival. A band of people working together made survival easier. A band of people would need rules to live by or else it would impair survival. They, therefore, would create rules.

Another thing, look back at the history of christianity. It is littered with times when christians acted very immorally. They obviously did not get the grounding they needed. Also, look at non-christian civilizations. They had strong morals in place yet they worshipped completely different gods. Why do the christians not attack these people and tell them that they do not have morals unless they worship the christian god?

Answer 4

Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) discusses ethics in some detail. I suggest he would have had something to say about the idea that there would be no moral obligation without the Christian God.

I'm would also question the supposed 'moral perfection' of a God that in part of the Bible tells people to kill others and in another not to.

It seems to me that this is an argument that I have heard before. But I have yet to be convinced that Christian values somehow differ (in this case being somehow less subjective) from the inherent moral bias we all share, apart from being enshrined in doctrine. On this basis I would say your writer is biased and wrong. But that's just my opinion.
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Answer 5

"The author who is Christian says that moral values are incompatible with all forms of ethical relativism including naturalistic, atheistic, and evolutionary theory. "

None of those "theories" assumes ethical relativism. I am an atheist, a believer that nature is all that there is, and of course I accept evolution. I also believe that ethics are absolute. The author you're reading has apparently made a bad assumption at that point, when he assumes that only believers in some supernatural supreme being can hold that ethics are absolute. That's simply false.

"Atheism has no foundation upon which to ground man's conscious awareness of moral obligations. Christian theist are grounded in the morally perfect nature of God".

Both of those statements are also false. The first is apparently the product of that false assumption I mentioned above - the author assumes that there can be no foundation outside of some supreme being's authority, and logically concludes (based on that false premise) that atheism can have no moral foundation. Garbage in, garbage out.

Regarding the second sentence, Christian morality is not "grounded in the morally perfect nature of God", it is grounded in the very imperfect nature of the men and women whose authority as recognized as representing God's word for the various Christian churches. Quite a different matter, of course.

Were Christian morality really grounded in "the morally perfect nature of God", there wouldn't be disputes among (and now even within...) the various Christian denominations about ethical matters. Just look at the Episcopalians - it's clear that Christian morality is grounded in human judgment, not in the word of some perfect supreme being.

I find it very difficult to believe that an educated person could honestly believe the kinds of things that author has said. I strongly suspect that he is deliberately lying, and not just innocently ignorant of the facts. That's significant, given the topic he's talking about.
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LOL at "Fundamentalist Christian" (below).
Uh, kid, she didn't "get attacked for this question". Just how delusional are you? Are those "attacks" just smears on your glasses? Here in the real world they're nowhere to be seen.

Answer 6

I'm not atheist, but I'll answer anyway. You're view of why atheists are atheist is once again incorrect. Clearly your search of websites and listening to atheists talk was very limited. Atheists aren't just anti-christian; they don't believe in gods at all ... not just the christian god. Now, that that is out of the way, this needs to be addressed: ** "My Question: If the evidence is so clear and so overwhelming, do you also conclude that the biblical scholars, the 38,875 men & woman who hold Phd's in the U.S. & countless more world-wide who have dedicated thier lives to studying the bible, are apart of a giant conspiracy to fool the public?" ** Just because there are scholars out there studying a text and religion does not validate that text or religion as any demonstration of truth. If that were the case, then the numbers for scientists studying physics would validate physics over christianity. Or the numbers of scholars throughout history would validate Classical pagan literature over christianity. Hell there are scholars who study the Lord of the Rings, does that make it a valid religion? And so on. So, while I'm sure you thought you had trumped up some grand logic, your logic was in fact erroneous. Yes, intelligent people can disagree. In fact, we do it all the time. The problem is, christianity does not allow for disagreement. Christians are preached to witness and bring the "misguided non-believer" to the fold. They proselytize. It is unwanted and unwarranted. When they do it, it is okay. When someone writes a book that is fictional, but christians don't like suddenly the author is trying to brainwash good christians into the service of the devil. As a result, you end up with endless questions on Y!A and other places or endless news reports of the christians having their world taken away from them, while they are trying to do the exact same thing to everyone else. It is kind of like that child who keeps poking his brother all the while crying to his mommy that his brother is poking him and being mean to him.

Answer 7

This is demonstrably false, in that is assumes that Christian moral values are an absolute and all other moral codes are subjective.
Sure, it's real comforting for Christians to loll back in their pews and smugly assure themselves that their philosophy is inherently superior and "ethical relativism" (an invention of Christer apologists, BTW) "is incoherent and cannot serve as an acceptable moral theory."
However, ALL moral codes are subjective and conventional. There is no inborn conscience, no moral sense, no native creed, no original sin. It is all learned, and learned differently by every individual. Consider that, for Christians, the murder and plunder of Jews and Muslims and "heathens" was morally correct until rather recently. That code changed, and that which changes is, a priori, subjective and conventional (to borrow your excellent terms).
Without defining in detail naturalism, atheism, evolution and relativism (and so biting at the Judas goat of your position), it is neverless important to realize that there is no monolithic "Christian" morality, either, and that to assert so is fallacious.

Answer 8

The fallacy is in the assumption that Christians are not moral relativists, and do ground their morals in some perfect code of God.

Let's review some of God's perfect morality as revealed in the Bible:

Anyone who works on the Sabbath shall be put to death.

Children who are disrespectful shall be stoned to death.

Women must atone for the unclean act of menstruation by offering two turtles or pigeons each month as a sacrifice to God.

Slavery is fine, so long as you make slaves of neighboring tribes, and obey a few simple rules (like don't beat them quite to DEATH).

Almost all Christians reject these moral teachings and laws of the Bible now. When pressed for why they were God's law at one time, most Christian will resort to moral relativism: "Well, it was appropriate to that time... things were different then."

Now here's the tricky part: How do you know which of the laws to keep and which of the laws to reject, when even Jesus says in the New Testament that all of the law will remain in force for all time?

The answer is that you use your own moral intuition, the "perfect morality" of God is of no help, in fact it is God's morality which you are rejecting.

So true morality transcends religion and gods. This makes it much easier to explain the fact that we sometimes see the fundamentals of human morality at play in the interaction of other primates

Answer 9

I actually am agnostic, but I contend that the author is incorrect. Religions, mostly christian and muslim, have throughout history murdered in their gods name. As someone who has no proof one way or the other about some after-life, I feel that I treat people much better because I know this may be (or probably is) there one romp through consciousness (though I have met people that possibly prove they have no life of consciousness!) . Haven't you heard that good christian saying:

killem' all and let god sortem' out!

That obviously is not what most christians think so I am not bashing all religious people. Just understand there are people who do not believe that probably have higher moral standards than most.

Answer 10

No.

First, it's a false premise that all atheists subscribe to moral relativism. Absolute acts of good and evil do occur. No rational person of any belief will ever say it is good for an adult to rape children.

I also reject that societies moralities come from religion. I can cite volumes of Christians being amoral (crusades, inquisition, slavery, lynching, denying woman the right to vote, etc..) and cultures that have never heard of Christ showing examples of morality (pre-Colombian Native Americans, China and Japan before Europeans arrived).

Also, animals, especially primates, show altruism and morality. If they can not understand the word of God, how do they know to care for the sick and not murder their won species and form family groups and herds, etc?

There are books on this subject if you are truly interested.

Answer 11

One only need to look at the progression of History, what we think is "Right" now, as opposed to 100 years ago to see the flaw in his argument. If God were the ever present, unchanging foundation of morality, morality would never change. However in the last 150 years, we've seen the freedom of the slaves, intigration into societies of minorities, and a largely universal rejection of Nazi racist murderous ideology. An evolving morality, social sense, or what is termed "Zeitgeist" is the only explaination for how Christians now abhore slavery, but 200 years ago fought vociferously to continue the practice. Religion as a basis for morality falls on it's face when one takes a look at the progress of history.