lol xtians are so silly.

all this is a load of -facepalm-

I am so waiting for the answers to 3 and 4.

My view of religion and belief in god has changed a lot but my goals in life are the same. I am pretty much the same person, if not better because I don't have the snooty attitude that I'm better than everyone else. I often wonder if I'd have been the same person if I was not raised in a godly family (and when I mean godly I mean everything had to be related to God-- music, movies, friends, social events, everything) if I would have turned out the same. Would I still have my morals, my compassion, my drive? It's hard to say where I get my morality from.

@Rain_of_Mystic_Sorrow - agreed

I'm going to leave a fairly long comment so if you don't feel like reading it, that's fine by me.

1)

For some people, yes. Some people really won't live morally unless they are punished when they don't, or they are rewarded when they do. It's kind of like operant conditioning. If you learn to associate a certain action, like something that would be considered a sin in the bible, with the idea of going to hell or of eternal pain, you probably won't do it much. So let's say that someone could learn that way, but did not naturally feel altruism or something like that. I mean if the person really only cared about themselves... and not about what they did to others (because for some people, if there is no consequences that are going to happen to you, it really doesn't matter what happen to others), then yes, they would need some form of control. For some people, laws would be enough. For others, there would need to be serious fear of eternal damnation.

For some people, nope... not at all. A lot of people simply act morally because it makes them feel better about themselves. Acting according to morality make them feel like good people which raises their self-esteem, and make them happier.. so they do it because of that.

Others simply act morally because they're naturally that way, and they just believe in doing the right thing because they're actually good people who really do care about this world.

And then there are all those other stupid psychological details to take in consideration for why people do what they do, and ughh..

I guess it's different for everyone.

Though, let's pretend for a second that I believe that God exists.. so in that case:

God created pretty much everything... therefore he created morality (or did he create us, and then we created morality?... but even at that, he'd still be responsible for morality in a way), so it couldn't exist without him.. so his existence (and not the belief in his existence) would be necessary for morality.

If he's real, wouldn't we still have morality even if we didn't believe in him? I mean... wouldn't he still be there, guiding atheists to behave morally anyways? Wouldn't he care enough about this world to at least do that?

Yet again, I'm an atheist so I'm not sure if that makes sense at all. Actually, I'm not sure if any of what I said made sense, but whatever.

2) Actually, I'm just lazy. Killing someone would require getting up from this chair and leaving my precious Xanga.

3) Are they good looking children? Haha.

4) No clue.

"1) Do you believe that God is necessary for morality?
2) If you do, are you only obeying the rules for fear of punishment? Or are you obeying them because you don't feel like raping and killing?
3) If you believe that God is the root of morality, let's play out a hypothetical scenario. Tomorrow a new document which is just as accurate as the Bible (however this may happen... it's a hypothetical) that shows God wants us to rape the children of unbelieving families. If God is always right (as is essential in Christianity, Judaism and Islam), do you do it?
4) Is what God dictates as good and evil that way because God dictates it as such, or are they actually good or evil and God is just informing us of this?"

1) I do happen to believe that our morality reflects God's mind. I think, at the very least, original intentionality and a mind outside of our own that created the universe is needed for objective and meaningful moral axioms. Moral axioms are purposeful in nature, they relate to the proper function of a thing, which isn't possible in a purely mechanistic universe.

2) No. I don't need to actively follow God in order to believe that a God is required for morality. I follow my conscience, which I believe reflects a meaningful set of moral axioms because it reflects what God has created me for. What prevents me from rape is my belief that it is objectively and absolutely wrong, which is consistent with theism/transcedentalism and inconsistent with mechanistic materialism. That these morals are consistent with theism does not in the slightest way entail that our motivation for following the morals is to avoid God's punishment. Trying to make the latter out as if it is implied from the former seems to be nonsense to me.

3) This is a misunderstanding. I don't start off with the premise that God has created all moral axioms to see fit however he wants. I start off with assuming certain moral axioms themselves, which I take to be absolute and objective, and then choose the God-hypothesis/transcendentalism as the best explanation of these facts. An evil God is self-consistent, certainly, but so is a Good God. To hypothesize "What if he were evil?" is besides the point. In order to ground the right moral axioms objectively and absolutely, you need a good God, and that is what the argument tries to show. Another way of saying this is that it is possible that God is evil, in which case our morality isn't any good. But for the moral axioms we believe in to objectively good and meaningful a good mind who ordered our conscience to reflect his own is required.

4) Suppose I take moral axioms to be things God did not create. Then what are moral axioms? They certainly are not physical things, nor reducible to physical things. The only existence they have is in the form of propositions, and the only things in which ought-propositions exist are minds as dualists take them to be, since a physical mind isn't capable of deriving oughts. Therefore, moral axioms have no existence outside of a mind. Then we arrive at the possibility that the morals exist in God's mind. They are absolute, to be sure (in a sense). But they cannot exist apart from being thought of, and therefore belong to a mind's activity. One explanation to their meaningfulness and relevance to the people of this world is that the people of this world were created to operate according such moral axioms.

What I tried to do in 4) was say that if I take option 2 and say these morals are not made up by God, I'll still have to deal with the nature of morals, whose best explanation (even with the difficulties of the euthyphro dillemma) is a mind that created the world to operate according to certain guidelines. Even at the very worst, since question 4 can be tweaked to ask essentially the same thing to a materialist, a bad answer doesn't imply that naturalism more plausibly explains morals than theism.


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Edit: I notice that alot of people interpret the questions quoted above differently from how I did. I take morality to be ontologically based in God, or at least in a transcendental reality that's inherently purposeful. That doesn't at all mean that you must believe in a God in order to behave morally, or to be kept in line, or be motivated to do good works. The two things are different. Night.

1) Considering I'm an atheist, no, I don't believe that a "God" is necessary for morality.  As a psychological geek, I strongly believe that our morals are both nature and nurture qualities.  Some moral decisions are different based on where you were raised; in some cultures you are viewed as a good mother if you take the life of your infant that is unable to survive.  Would that be acceptable here?  Would that mother be praised as a good mom?  Absolutely not.  So obviously not all morality is inborn.  However, there are some moral ideas that seem to thrive in nearly all cultures despite upbringing.  So obviously some morality is inborn.

2) I try to be the best person I can be because I want to.  Part of existing is making both the world around you and the people around you better through acts of service and compassion.

3) N/A

4) N/A

["As an atheist, I am often asked "Why would you behave morally if there is no God watching over you?""]

@lovechartreuse -First of all, I find it interesting that you can pick apart some of the things I say, but neglect the part where I mentioned that I wasn't in the mood to debate this... not because I can't defend myself or anything like that. I was just interested in telling the side from a Christian pov. I just don't want a never ending debate, you understand what I mean? I know myself all too well. I won't stop until my point is proven... and is that really worth either of our time? Anyway, It isn't illogical. It is common sense. That is like saying that Moby Dick is about the Ocean. It isn't. They just happen to be in the ocean. And it isn't "about" being a slave owner. It is "about" treating others humanely. Including slaves. Slaves were around back then. It's a fact. And since being a slave or having slaves wasn't considered immoral in that culture, it tells those who do own slaves to treat them right. Is this making sense?

Let me paint you a scenario:
I am an Anarchist. I don't believe that God wants us to have a government (something else I will not get into today) for various reasons, alll of which can be found in the bible. However, there are still verses that tell us to pay our taxes and submit ourselves to our governing authorities... which I do. But just because it tells us to do that, it doesn't mean that the bible is for government. It just acknowledges its presence and tells us how we should treat those who have worldly authority.

The whole "sin" thing and being created in God's image is simple. I believe God has the ability to choose. He gave us that ability as well. However, man chose to disobey God.
God created us in his image, yes. But he did not create us to be God. He created us as people... obviously. He placed a tree in the garden that he forbade Adam and Eve to eat. They did anyway. There eyes were then open to sin. You know the story, I'm sure... but it's this: We, from the beginning were never meant to be "like God", but created in his image. But they were tempted with the idea that they could be like God.