god and morality

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whatsit
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god and morality

Post #1

Post by whatsit »

i'm sure this topic has cropped up before, but let's assume it hasn't.

recently, the following was posted in the ramblings forum:
8. Yeah. We eat trout, salmon, deer, pheasant, quail and elk. If you really want sushi and caviar it's available at the corner bait shop.
(Q) if we do manage to totally excise god from society, what does the above mean for humanity?

whether you want to admit it or not, each of us is capable of murder.

what would keep us from an outright slaughter?
you can't use we are somehow different or special from animals, without a god that's ALL we are, mere animals.

please, no assumptions, do not assume our morality will remain without a god unless it can be shown otherwise, as in some kind of controlled experiment.
in all great revolutions, there is one man with a vision.

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Re: god and morality

Post #41

Post by whatsit »

ytrewq wrote: ytrewq asked the following questions to Whatsit.
God doesn't come into it, unless you are seriously trying to tell me that the only reason you don't murder is because your God told you not to. That seems to be what you are saying.
Is that what you are saying?
And then clarified for Whatsit's benefit :-
Is the only or principle reason that you personally don't murder, rape or steal, because your Christian beliefs forbid you from doing so?
And here is Whatsit's reply verbatim :-
i believe humanity is more than "animanity"
YOU might consider yourself an animal, maybe some of your girlfriends might even agree, but i believe humanity is more than that, definitely.
yes, no question about it.
animals aspire to be nothing more than butt sniffers.

what is that saying again? ah:
if men cannot aspire to be like the gods, then they shall be worms.

is this the question you wanted answered?
I'll leave others to judge the relevance and quality of your reply, but make the following points.
actually you said it was the bolded part in post 9.
i responded to that part ytrewq.
Firstly, given that this is a debate forum, I think you are being intellectually dishonest in deliberately not answering a straightforward question that was exactly on the topic of the thread.
i responded to the bolded part in post 9, just like you requested.
refrain from murdering, raping and stealing just because their God forbids them to do so. A belief in a God is not necessary for good moral understanding and behaviour.
maybe.
has there been any controlled experiments conducted, seeing as this is an "intellectual debate" and all.
Finally, I find your attitude towards animals quite sickening.
yes, those sacred cows make great hamburgers.
Presumably, you would be quite happy for you pet dog to starve to death when you went on hoilday, with no more care than if your potplant died. Fortunately I don't believe your attitudes here are shared by the majority of Christians, or people of other religious faiths. Here is something else for you to think about. Recently a politician (tho irrelevant that it was a pollie) disgraced himself by sniffing the chair of a female staffer after a meeting (damned butt-sniffing human), and 'upskirting' is a significant problem, meaning using miniature cameras mounted on shoes etc to film 'up the skirts' of unsuspecting women in public, and bestiality (sex between humans and animals) has been around a long time, and then you have the hide to tell me that humans are more moral then animals.
take your inderal dude, you are passing 1500
I'll take this opportunity to again ask another question from my first posting. Do you believe that you are more moral than myself, or other atheists on this forum?
i haven't a clue as to how "moral" you are.
in all great revolutions, there is one man with a vision.

whatsit
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Post #42

Post by whatsit »

ytrewq,
you are apparently missing the point, by about 50,000 light years.
morality is a learned behavior.
with that in mind, where should we learn our morals?
from another human?
or from "someone" that tops ALL of us.
can you see the connection here?
this is the reason i made the quote earlier:
if we cannot aspire to be like the gods, then we shall be worms.

this is the sole reason i say our morals come from a god.

surely you can understand that.
in all great revolutions, there is one man with a vision.

ytrewq
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Re: god and morality

Post #43

Post by ytrewq »

whatsit wrote:
ytrewq wrote: ytrewq asked the following questions to Whatsit.
God doesn't come into it, unless you are seriously trying to tell me that the only reason you don't murder is because your God told you not to. That seems to be what you are saying.
Is that what you are saying?
And then clarified for Whatsit's benefit :-
Is the only or principle reason that you personally don't murder, rape or steal, because your Christian beliefs forbid you from doing so?
And here is Whatsit's reply verbatim :-
i believe humanity is more than "animanity"
YOU might consider yourself an animal, maybe some of your girlfriends might even agree, but i believe humanity is more than that, definitely.
yes, no question about it.
animals aspire to be nothing more than butt sniffers.

what is that saying again? ah:
if men cannot aspire to be like the gods, then they shall be worms.

is this the question you wanted answered?
I'll leave others to judge the relevance and quality of your reply, but make the following points.
actually you said it was the bolded part in post 9.
i responded to that part ytrewq.
Firstly, given that this is a debate forum, I think you are being intellectually dishonest in deliberately not answering a straightforward question that was exactly on the topic of the thread.
i responded to the bolded part in post 9, just like you requested.
refrain from murdering, raping and stealing just because their God forbids them to do so. A belief in a God is not necessary for good moral understanding and behaviour.
maybe.
has there been any controlled experiments conducted, seeing as this is an "intellectual debate" and all.
Finally, I find your attitude towards animals quite sickening.
yes, those sacred cows make great hamburgers.
Presumably, you would be quite happy for you pet dog to starve to death when you went on hoilday, with no more care than if your potplant died. Fortunately I don't believe your attitudes here are shared by the majority of Christians, or people of other religious faiths. Here is something else for you to think about. Recently a politician (tho irrelevant that it was a pollie) disgraced himself by sniffing the chair of a female staffer after a meeting (damned butt-sniffing human), and 'upskirting' is a significant problem, meaning using miniature cameras mounted on shoes etc to film 'up the skirts' of unsuspecting women in public, and bestiality (sex between humans and animals) has been around a long time, and then you have the hide to tell me that humans are more moral then animals.
take your inderal dude, you are passing 1500
I'll take this opportunity to again ask another question from my first posting. Do you believe that you are more moral than myself, or other atheists on this forum?
i haven't a clue as to how "moral" you are.
Whatsit, if there is a genuine misunderstanding about you answering my bolded question in posting #9, and my subsequent re-stating of that question in slightly different words, then of course I accept that. However, I have looked very carefully at all our previous postings, and I believe my summary above of the question I asked, and your seemingly irrelevant answer concerning animal morality are entirely correct. You say you answered my bolded question in post #9 already. Can you please tell me in which of your previous posts you answered that question, and preferably quote you answer back to us as well for our information?

ytrewq: .....refrain from murdering, raping and stealing just because their God forbids them to do so. A belief in a God is not necessary for good moral understanding and behaviour.
Whatsir: maybe.
has there been any controlled experiments conducted, seeing as this is an "intellectual debate" and all.
'Maybe' means perhaps, but you are not sure, which is a fair answer. Strictly speaking, you only need to find one single atheist who has good moral understanding and behaviour, and my statement that ' A belief in a God is not necessary for good moral understanding and behaviour.' becomes correct. Of course it's OK for us to have different opinions, but in your 'maybe' answer I sense at least a partial admission that maybe some atheists really might be good, moral people. Well I hope that's what you are thinking, anyway, and I say in return without hesitation that there are plenty of Christians that are good, moral people.
I'll take this opportunity to again ask another question from my first posting. Do you believe that you are more moral than myself, or other atheists on this forum?
i haven't a clue as to how "moral" you are.
What a truly excellent and honest answer! Exactly the answer I would give if asked the same question about you. Now, as you know, I am atheist, and you don't have a clue how 'moral' I am, or presumably how moral every other atheist is who you do not know personally, so you are in no position to form a hypothesis that people need God to know what is moral.
has there been any controlled experiments conducted, seeing as this is an "intellectual debate" and all.
I'm not sure that 'controlled experiment' is the right term here, but there have been professionally carried out studies, yes, and I gave a couple of links, and both studies found little or no difference in the morality of god-believers and atheists. In my view, you need to take off your blinkers and discard your preconceptions, and actually talk to as many atheists as possible, and judge for yourself if they are devoid of morality. That is the kind of opportunity that a forum such as this gives you, if you really want to learn. I'm not taking the moral high ground, BTW. I wouldn't claim for a moment to be more moral than you are, but hope we might be at least similar, anyway.

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Post #44

Post by ytrewq »

whatsit wrote: ytrewq,
you are apparently missing the point, by about 50,000 light years.
morality is a learned behavior.
with that in mind, where should we learn our morals?
from another human?
or from "someone" that tops ALL of us.
can you see the connection here?
this is the reason i made the quote earlier:
if we cannot aspire to be like the gods, then we shall be worms.

this is the sole reason i say our morals come from a god.

surely you can understand that.
morality is a learned behavior.
.
Actuallly, there is a lot of debate about that, and from my reading it seems more likely that part of our morality is partly genetically given and partly learned. However, I think we can all agree that our morality is at least partly learned, yes.
with that in mind, where should we learn our morals?
from another human?
That is a very good question, well worthy of debate. As I said, some is almost certainly genetically given, but it is beyond dispute that some is learned. One could write a book on this, but here are a few ideas. Firstly, of course, morals are learned from parents. Much wisdom is handed down from generation-to-generation, and taught to children by parents, and the same goes for cultural beliefs and morals that do not necessarily have anything to do with religion. When children are very young, there is really no choice but to teach children fixed rules as to what is right' and 'wrong'. However, as childeren get older, there needs to be less emphasis on blindly teaching rules, and more emphasis and debate about why society has the rules, laws and 'morals' that it does. In other words, children need to be taught to think for themselves. There are many good ideas in the Bible, BTW, such as the 'Golden Rule', don't do unto others as you would not wish to be done unto yourself, but that principle is not unique to the Bible. Another guiding principle might be that, in general, laws should be structured so as to give the greatest happiness and best lives to the majority of people. Another principle, that I am rather keen on myself, is that a moral principle needs to be universal, that is, apply equally well to everyone. On that basis, for example, slavery cannot be justified because there is an asymmetry between the slavekeeper and the slave, and the same priciple also underpins the 'Golden Rule'. The same principle also says that it is not logically acceptable for you to steal (and many other things besides), because if it's OK for you to steal, then it must be OK for me and eveyone to steal as well. In other words, no individual (or group of individulas) can claim special rights., which includes of course the 'my opinion is inherently better than yours'. Keep in mind also that morals change with time. Many things that were normal and acceptable in the time of the Bible most certainly are not today. I made the point earlier than in fact we do not obtain our morals from the Bible (this is very easy to prove, if you have actually read an understood the Bible, and the OT in particular) so what we in fact do is choose the parts we think are acceptable today. And do you know what, Whatsit, I don't have a problem at all with using the Bible as a rich source of ideas on an appropriate morality for today. But don't kid yourself though, there is rape and murder enough condoned in the Bible that NO moral person today would accept.
or from "someone" that tops ALL of us.
There are two problems with that. The first is that many, many people doubt the existence of your God, including people of other religions BTW, so clearly your particular God is completely unsuitable as an 'absolute' reference. Please remember the guiding principle that YOU can't claim special rights just because you are you. If you are entitled to claim that your God has absolute truth and morality, then it necessarily follows that everyone else has the right to say the same of THEIR pet God or belief also. Sorry, but there is no way around that. The other problem, in the case of the Christian God, is that as I have said, the Bible is richly endowed with the most horrible morality imaginable.
this is the reason i made the quote earlier:
if we cannot aspire to be like the gods, then we shall be worms.
this is the sole reason i say our morals come from a god.
There are many faults in that reasoning. The first of course, is that you are putting complete blind faith in a single quote of questionable truth. If you are permitted to base you morality on such a single quote from your favourite book, then so is everyone else. Sorry, but there is not getting around that. The second problem is that the quote istelf is demostrable nonsense. Exactly which 'God' I wonder, noting the plural in the quote. Anyway, let's assume Yahweh, the Christian God of the OT. Trust me, no one would wish to aspire to be like Yahweh, a petty, bad-tempered, jealous, racist, murdering bastard of a character if ever there was one. You need to read your Bible :)

So you see, Christians are not the only ones to have thought about morality, indeed, I could sarcastically say that they are the only ones that haven't. :)
But that would be unfair, because your last posting quoted above was actually quite constructive, and asked good questions for discussion.

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Post #45

Post by whatsit »

there is no fault at all in getting our morals from a supreme benevolent being.
except it might yank your chain for some reason.

excuse me while i go and crap in my neighbors yard and copulate on their front porch.

animal have morals, what a laugh.
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Post #46

Post by Hatuey »

whatsit wrote: there is no fault at all in getting our morals from a supreme benevolent being.
except it might yank your chain for some reason.
As I have asked you to do before, please proof your god hypothesis before insisting that he is doing something about morals. If you can prove that god exists, atheists will then believe, but you'll still have to then prove that he has some connection to morality.

whatsit wrote: excuse me while i go and crap in my neighbors yard and copulate on their front porch.
You see, god can't stop you can he, just like he can't stop serial murderers and monsters that harm children. I think it's unreasonable to those things, because you wouldn't want your neighbor to do them, but you have to admit that god will let you, just like he allows ISIS and horrible acts every minute of every day. In fact, he seems pretty powerless when it comes to setting morality.

whatsit wrote:animal have morals, what a laugh.
Most social animals seem to have what we would call morals, and individuals within that system break that moral code and "sin." Why is that funny?

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Post #47

Post by whatsit »

Hatuey wrote:
whatsit wrote: there is no fault at all in getting our morals from a supreme benevolent being.
except it might yank your chain for some reason.
As I have asked you to do before, please proof your god hypothesis before insisting that he is doing something about morals.
do me a favor.
link to a few posts of mine that:
says there is a god
--and--
says i find the concept absurd or ridiculous.
If you can prove that god exists, atheists will then believe, but you'll still have to then prove that he has some connection to morality.
what would you find more questionable:
someone saying they have no idea about the existence of a god.
--or--
someone that categorically states there is no god.

personally i find the concept highly unlikely, but i CANNOT sit here and say it doesn't exist

you have to come to your own conclusions in regards to a god
whether you believe or not is fine with me.

my opinion is that atheists are not truth seekers, they have already made up their minds to something which they cannot know.
Most social animals seem to have what we would call morals, and individuals within that system break that moral code and "sin." Why is that funny?
the jury is still out on that.
from my personal experiences, animals do not posses morals.
in all great revolutions, there is one man with a vision.

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Post #48

Post by Danmark »

whatsit wrote: take your inderal dude, you are passing 1500
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Post #49

Post by otseng »

whatsit wrote: excuse me while i go and crap in my neighbors yard and copulate on their front porch.
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Post #50

Post by Hatuey »

whatsit wrote:do me a favor.
link to a few posts of mine that:
says there is a god
--and--
says i find the concept absurd or ridiculous.
No. Your case rests upon your implied hypothesis. Morals come from a higher authority, yet you have not proven the existence of the authority. You are behind, not those arguing against you.

whatsit wrote:what would you find more questionable:
someone saying they have no idea about the existence of a god.
--or--
someone that categorically states there is no god.

personally i find the concept highly unlikely, but i CANNOT sit here and say it doesn't exist

you have to come to your own conclusions in regards to a god
whether you believe or not is fine with me.
I have no idea. Most atheists, like me, do not say that god does not exist, but they simply have no belief in god because there seems to be little evidence for god. We say "there is no good," in the same way that we say there are no leprechauns. Without any evidence for leprechauns, there's really no point in believing; same with god.

whatsit wrote: my opinion is that atheists are not truth seekers, they have already made up their minds to something which they cannot know.
Your opinions aren't that impressive as evidenced by your posting behavior.

Atheists have made their mind up about god not existing in the same way that most people have their minds made up about Santa not existing. Sure, Santa might exist, but it seems highly improbably and we save time by simply saying that Santa doesn't exist. Same for god.

whatsit wrote:the jury is still out on that.
from my personal experiences, animals do not posses morals.
No, the jury is not still out on that. It appears that social animals utilize a form of moral code.

Your personal experiences are irrelevant. We have no idea if you grew up in a pit bull den with no experience or observations to temper that singular type of experience.

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