No morals without god, a self-fullfilling prophecy - please give opinion...
Offline I work in moral philosophy and i recently devellopped this idea about the whole "no morals without god" idea.
The big thing about that I believe is that this sentence is an historical self-fullfilling prophecy. Let me explain.... Before the rise of christiannity, there were a lot of schools of moral philosophy in the roman empire such as sophisms, socratism, platonism, epicurianism and stoicism. These schools were trying to explain by rhetorical or philosophical arguments, and MOST of the time without ANY reference to the supernatural why we need/have morals.
The Dark age that followed not only impeded science or education, but also for more that 1400 years there were almost no writting, research or debate on morality without any reference to god. We have to wait until 1700's or so for that to come back very slowly.
Thus, i think the "no moral without god" assertion is a self fullfilling prophecy. Nowadays, we miss a lot of good secular arguments on morality because many texts have been burned, less studied, forgotten, and left alone for more than a milllenium, so they could not adapt to modern thought, and only recently does secular morality debates appeared again.
To conclude:
If you say there is no morals without god, there will actually be no morals without god.
This assertion is n ot only false, but also sterilizes research and philosophical debate.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
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Morals form naturally, as soon as a sentient brain is able to form opinions on matters.
The philosophical question: "whence comes morals" has always been an exercise for obtuse philosophers in ivory towers... the average man has his implicit pragmatic methods, and these are enough to justify moral systems.
"Hitler burned people like Anne Frank, for that we call him evil.
"God" burns Anne Frank eternally. For that, theists call him 'good.'
that does not explain:
1) Moral diversity between cultures
2) Is there a progress in moral systems? Is there better ones?
3) What should a moral system be
This argument just states that morals come from the brain as soon as you can have opinions. But like evrything else in philosophy (aesthetics for instance) it doesn't tell us why does THIS is percieved as (or should be) bad and THAT as good without more thinking.
I think moral philosophy is an interresting field of knowledge, and i would expect the same from someone who quotes socrates ;p lol...
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Other than the muslims in certain middle-east nations, nobody anywhere uses morals from their religion or god. Christians may tell us that theirs are, but look at the morals from the bible for a moment. They claim that our morals come from the new testament and jesus, yet jesus still said on a few occasions to follow the 10 commandments. The punishments for all of these was death. Jesus himself said that if a child is disobedient to its parents, the child should be killed. Does this sound just and moral to you? It sounds horrible to me.
In my humble opinion, those who get their morals from christian religion DO actually get it from there (that's where most of my morals are shaped from) BUT modern christian religions get their morals from society. Things that 2000 years ago would have resulted in being stoned to death even in the chrstian world are perfectly acceptable today and vice versa. Christianity has changed its moral lines, and it took its new stances from society.
Christians get their morals from their religion, and their religion gets it from society. Atheists cut out the middle man.
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
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lol, you're preaching a convert here.
My original idea was not about that though, it's about a different topic. The fact that Religion sterilized debate in moral philosophy (and in other realms, such as the questions about the meaning of life) by calling upon god or scriptures, which doesn't offer secular thinkers as much alternatives as it would without that dark era.
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Wo.. I don't mean to jump in, but I'm gonna need a verse for this...
Because this seems to be an absolute statement for which, if absolute proof (the statement) existed, I would be very interested.
Rhad,
Here is one verse:
If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother ... Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city ... And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard. And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die. Deuteronomy 21:18-21
If you noticed the quote I was refering to..
I don't believe Jesus (as in, the biblical character) ever is credited with stating something to this affect.
Granted.. he could be refering to, what I suspect, is some sort of though process with connecting something Jesus said to Old Testament verses. Yet, the way I read this particular quote was as if there is some verse without that extra step.
As if I said. "My dad says I should do my homework." Well.. then that suggests that my dad actually did say "do your homework" or that "do you homework" was attributed to him in some 'story' of him.
Unequivocal.
But like I said.. I suspect its the former and not the latter.
If it is the latter, then I would be very surprised and would thus need to reevaluate some things.
The former, on the other hand, leads to.. tangent argumentation.
I noticed what you were referring to. I am not aware of a quote like that directly attributal to jesus. Maybe the poster knows of a different quote.
Whether jesus really said anything attributed to him is another story, if he even existed at all.
Indeed.
I don't believe jesus said that.... he was more a "hate your parents" kinda person.. lol
For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof,
then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.
Check Matthew 15:3-4. "Jesus replied, And why do you break the command of God for the sake of your tradition? For God said, Honor your father or mother and anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death."
I read this one out loud to my kids and then gave them the evil eye - LOL
There are other passages that address this, but this one was supposedly said by jesus.
Very good find JCE! I had heard on a podcast a simular quote but when I searched the "skeptics annotated bible" last night I could not find the verse. I must have overlooked it.
http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/
Here are some sound family values from the pages of Matthew:
Family Values in Matthew
Reading the bible on good friday? LOL
Good job on the quotes! Mark has similar passages for those who have nothing better to do today than read more about bad moral advice.
Jesus hated women and he REALLY hated to be criticized! The sections in Matthew and Mark related to killing disobedient children stemmed from a comment by the Pharisees asking why the disciples did not wash their hands before they ate. Defensive, much? Jeez, how hard is it to wash your hands before you eat? I'll bet the Pharisees were looking at one another and thinking, "WTF?"
Alright. Thanks JCE. And.. the other guy (BGH?).
That is actually the verse I was referring to. Thankyou, saved me the effort of looking it up.
Of course all these responses came while I was asleep. Time for me to get some breakfast actually.
Organised religion is the ultimate form of blasphemy.
Censored and blacked out for internet access in ANZ!
AU: http://nocleanfeed.com/ | NZ: http://nzblackout.org/