Can morality exist without a god?

It can be justified through science?

 

Christopher Hitchens is the mother fucking man. Huge props for the Chitch reference.

 

Of course.The human moral qualities of empathy /altruism are taught or shown to infants and children even by those for whom religion means nothing.Not by all,by any means,but by most.

 

Sure, like the Manhattan Project?

 

Or maybe that's warfare justifying violence...

 

U could justify a lot off nasty stuff with fear, u could kill a man in self defense because u wear fearing for ur own life. Maybe even nuke a country after all good defense is good offense I guess fear and religion do go hand in hand.

 

the fact that the indivudual feels like his specific life has a purpose. Whether or not it's true doesn't matter... In the end, believing in a god can help some people live a happier life... Might work for some, might not work for others. To each his/her own.

Nope, however, some people might grow up feeling as though they do need guidance by "god"... Provided they don't become wacko extremists, I don't see anything wrong with it.

not at all. We all can make moral decisions, whether or not we believe in god or organized religion. Although different cultures do things that might not seem to be morally acceptable in other areas in the world, we all have the ability to know when we did something that was morally wrong. We don't need an instruction manual to point it out to us.

 

God is a comedian playing to an audience too afraid to laugh.(voltaire).

 

A God is something arbitrary. It is, in my opinion, something created simply because people cannot understand the complexities of their interactions, feelings and consciousness, so they are more willing to believe an old guy with a beard with a set of rules.

Being moral or not can be translated to being right (in terms of doing "right), or doing wrong (aka, harm). And since the concepts of right and wrong are different from anyone, then I would say that it's best to feel for yourself what is moral and what's not. I'm guessing any religion should give you pretty good general guidelines (don't lie, steal, kill,...), but I don't want to be too lazy to explore it myself.

 

Define "Morality".

 

:rofl:

 

I completely agree with Rebel's first paragraph.

As far defining morality or right vs. wrong, here's my take:

(multiplied over time) Pleasure and pain are the only two things that matter. Comfort and discomfort are two lesser extremes of the exact same concept. As complex as brains and nervous systems are, I think theoretically it is scientifically possible (perhaps hundreds or thousands of years in the future) to measure any one entity's pleasure over a given time period. All we can do for the time being is guestimate these quantities ... but the theory is enough to continue the thought experiment. Considering any given action will generate a certain amount of pleasure and pain in multiple lifeforms, if you had a large enough equation you could determine whether an action is "right".

Example:
Your cat misbehaves and climbs onto the kitchen table. You smack the cat on the behind and it scurries off in discomfort. Your empathy kicks in and you feel bad for a few minutes. It happens three times before the cat learns not to jump on the table. Problem solved and it never happens again.

Now let's assign pleasure points. The cat's brain is much less complex than yours and so humans assume that cats are capable of feeling less pain. The smacking of the kitty costs the cats nerves (-5 pleasure points). It happens 3 times for a total of (-15 pleasure points) for the feline. The animal loving human is capable of agonizing over the pain of other sentient beings and she loves the cat very much. Every time she smacks the cat it really hurts her inside. It costs her (-10 pleasure points) each time for a total of (-30 pleasure points) even though she experienced no physical pain. These 3 individual actions generated (-45 pleasure points) ... BUT for the rest of the cat's life it is well behaved and that small amount of satisfaction of it not jumping on the table adds up to (+5 pleasure points) per year. If the cat lives more than 9 years the actions were worth the trouble. Let's say it lived 15 years like my cat, that's (+75 pleasure points) a net gain of (+30 pleasure points). The discipline was worth it in the end.

So basically as humans we're constantly estimating these values and if we could act completely unselfishly (not evolutionarily advantageous) the greater good of pleasure points is all we would be considering. If we were intelligent enough and had enough foresight we could very accurately predict these things and the world would become something of a utopia. Unfortunately although humans are far and away the smartest species on the planet so far, we are only equipped well enough to make the best decision a slight majority of the time, but this ratio is improving slowly.

This is also why squashing a fly isn't really morally wrong, it's just not complex enough to feel much pleasure or pain at all, it hasn't evolved to that point yet.

That's enough for now I hope it made some sense, let me know what you think.

 

That's how I classify myself.


Panentheism describes my beliefs the best.


I think that religion is the work of Satan, only serving to divide and embitter mankind.


Religion turns people against each other.


Find your own spirituality.

 

do what thou wilt---there is no such thing as good or bad but thinking makes it so

 

I see what u are saying do the bad for the right reasons if the good out weighs the bad then it is morally right, but basing it on pain=bad or pleasure=good is flawed.
Take a psycho man that takes pleasure in killing eg he kills someone instantly(no pain) the victim had no relatives and the victim will not be mist so from this scenario only points gained are the positives which would make the killer morally right.


The problem is that there is no such thing as universal code of morality so making an equation for calculating what is morally right or wrong is impossible what will work in one society will not work in another what will work for one person will not work for another.



In my opinion morality is a particular perception of the same situation or action as directed by specific groups or persons mentality.
There are common threads in morality systems, behavior that is accepted by all members of the group and this is the code of conduct the so called moral thing to do but it gets complicated when the guide to conduct put forward by a religious/law groups conflicts with the guide to conduct put forward by a society or ur own personal code. It all comes down to which of the conflicting elements of the moral guide the individual finds as most important.


For eg Joe steals a loaf of bread, to the shop owner it looks like an immoral action just took place but to Joe it was a moral action because he stole it to feed hes kids.
As u can see Joe felt that the moral thing to do was to feed hes kids hes personal code of conduct within hes family overpowered the code of conduct within society and law.
So he was morally right but if for eg Joe would of killed the shop owner he would have been morally wrong because it conflicts with the common threads in morality systems like not harming and killing other consensus beings.

 

Like Neon has said, it depends on whether or not a God exists. If we live in a world that was created by God, then asking this question would be meaningless because God would exist. If that were the case, then we cannot think outside the world of creation since morality would be as objective as God because we would be a carbon copy of God's sense of right and wrong. We received our morality from God and if God's being is infallible, complete, then so would God's morality. Morals that we received would be objective and true so going against that would make little sense. Since our morals are mere carbon copies, it would make more sense to follow the moral rules of God rather than other people. With this, we would would have a sense of right and wrong by using our common sense and reason, but if we are just carbon copies then our reason will sometimes be unreasonable even if we are not readily aware of why. In other words, we would have a sense of what is good and this sense can help us people to recognize the morals that God brings down in some way. So enough to recognize, but not enough to follow the morals of people.

If we went against God's 'guidance' for humanity then it would be illogical to do so and it could lead to problems even if we are left unaware of what these problems actually are until we actually correct them to see for ourselves why we were wrong in the first place. Even if at first glance everything seemed ok, but pushing the envelope may bring with it better results then what we can come up.

Not following this can spell out our destruction, even if we do not realize why at first. People would be well intentioned but sometimes good intentions pave a way to destruction/hell/et al

Like others have said, sometimes people do not know what they want until they actually have it. The same thought can be applied to OP questions.

That's how I see it anyway.

 

But my friend, you're not considering all the pleasure the person who died would of experienced in his future had he not been murdered. Not only that but eventually the news finds out that a serial killer is on the loose and you have to add (+1 fear point) across millions of people. That's a pretty damn negative impact in the long run. Making the general public feel safe is one of the most moral things anyone can do if they could do it due to the sheer numbers even if the effect on each person is small. Ya know?

In that case filling the belly of a hungry child is worth like (+500 pleasure points) for each child, and the shop owner won't be nearly butthurt enough to throw this net positive out of balance. If the shop owner saw Joe feeding his kids he would probably even feel all warm and fuzzy inside. The laws we enact are general guidelines, and they have to be enforced on everyone because we treasure fairness so dearly as a society. If the laws allowed for people like Joe to do this legally then it would be exploitable and selfishness would prevail in the end, screwing the shop owner royally. Because of the risks, only people like Joe who really need to do good with the bread will try to take it. Just because something is against the law doesn't mean it's immoral, each situation is unique. Maybe the best we can say is that more than half the time the law works well, but that's not half bad for a bunch of technically advanced primates. :grouphug:

Cheers!

 

Def are you speaking of a Deistic god (a.k.a. the spark that started the universe or "prime mover") or a Theistic god (one that intervenes in our affairs, sends the 10 commandments down to earth, and sets bushes on fire)?

Very important distinction to make.

 

Theistic.

 

So it's either Jehovah, Allah, Yahweh, Krishna, Zeus, Apollo, Yahweh or some other god that people have worshiped throughout history? Are you only considering the currently popular gods as potential candidates?