Think of two children. One “behaves” because he was properly raised, because he really cares about doing the right thing, because he has moral principles. The second “behaves” only because he’s afraid of being spanked. Which one do you think is the “better” child? The most moral one?
There are many possible reasons to care for other people. Empathy, for instance. Cooperation. Community. Belief in other people. Love. Respect. A sense of justice, of fairness. Wanting to make the world a better place. Does one really need a threat of eternal punishment as well?
In fact, when you say that “without fear of hell, people would kill, rape, steal, and so on”, aren’t you, in effect, saying that you would do exactly that if you didn’t believe you’d go to hell for it? That you, yourself, don’t see any other reasons not to kill, rape or steal?
(Note: please keep any comments related to the above question / answer, and not to other subjects, such as whether God exists or not. Thanks.)
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Tags: afterlife, atheism, atheism faq, hell, punishment
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There is ongoing research in primate behavior, and one theory is that what we call moral behavior is part of evolution. Working together as a team can be a survival advantage, and a team can’t function if every member is only looking out for themselves. What we call moral behavior-sharing, fidelity, honesty, etc. are necessary for a team to function. It is better explained by authors such as Frans De Waal, in books such as The Ape and The Sushi Master, and Our Inner Ape.
Our morality is decided in part by our heritage but probably mostly by the society we grow up in. I strive to abide by my moral principles not because someone told me too but because I have a sense of justice, and because society would fall apart if everyone did not. I believe that all morality is subjective (much because of the same reasons I don’t believe in God – no evidence to the contrary, no phenomena unexplainable without it), but I still see lots of reasons to behave morally.
As we are have free will and are conscious we always CHOOSE what we do. The fear of hell’s a pretty poor reason to behave correctly – and as I and the majority of people on Earth were not brainwashed with this fear we have no trouble telling right from wrong without it.
A god with a big stick is actually a demon.
You ARE god. Thou art the LIVING ONE! Wake up. It’s all in your hands. No heaven, no hell, but what we make of LIFE HERE NOW!
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“There are many possible reasons to care for other people. Empathy, for instance. Cooperation. Community. Belief in other people. Love. Respect. A sense of justice, of fairness. Wanting to make the world a better place. Does one really need a threat of eternal punishment as well?”
Empathy is just a feeling. It’s hard to work up empathy for an insurance company, for example, yet we still want insurance companies treated justly. Cooperation is used for both good and evil.
Our society puts constraints on our behavior. We fear being caught and punished for evil behavior and at the same time love the praise we get when we behave as society wishes us to behave. Those things are instilled into us from early childhood. So without God, our reasons for good behavior are fear of punishment and desire for rewards as imposed upon us from external sources.
God as the Law Giver provides a moral authority. We ought to have empathy because that is the moral law. We ought to cooperate for good because that is the moral law. We ought to have love and respect and to give justice because that is the moral law. God provides a foundation for moral action that is based not upon feelings or fear or desire for rewards but upon the authority of the Law Giver.
Matt
Empathy for whom? Not jews clearly, not slaves, not women, not non-believers… That is what this “god as lawgiver” decrees..
No, I will stay away from the evils of religion and religious rules (these are NOT moral guides or moral authorities!) and choose reason instead. It is our rationality along with our vulnerability which motivates us to be moral, and to examine morality to determine its nature. Religion simply tries to ride the coattails of morality, then tells the faithful that they must worship the priests and pay the priests, subject themselves to the priests, in order to be “moral” This is nothing but a disgusting power play.
Yes, empathy for Jews and slaves and women and nonbelievers. Love your neighbor as yourself.
Without God, there is no rationality; only feelings behind all such morality. What is it that drives you to act as you do? Vulnerability? Isn’t that fear?
Matt
To have empathy you must first recognize that these others are equal to you, rather than subservient. Slavery, which is explicitly condoned in the core XN beliefs, does not allow that the slaves are equal. So too for the treatment of women, and for the treatment of others who do not share the same fairy tale beliefs. This is what you’d have us believe is “love”
Vulnerability is not fear, nor any emotion, rather it is simply an objective fact. Surely you are not trying to argue that you cannot be harmed, or if you are actually trying to argue this, then surely you realize just how easy it is to disprove this assumption.
It is doubly impossible that “god” would be responsible for rationality given that 1. no such entity can possibly exist. and 2. Even assuming all of the empty rhetoric of the religion, thie “god” is pure faith, which as we all know is necessarily IRRATIONAL. The irrational does not create the rational..
As for feelings being behind “morality” this is only true with regard to religion. After all religion allows for no reason, no evidence, nothing at all from reality to enter into the belief, so all that is left is emotion. Most often this is the emotion of hate, based in the same fear which bolsters the faith which results in fairy tales about mythical impossible self-contradictory “gods” that will take care of you like a child.
Yes, I think you are right that to have empathy you must have some sense of equality. But empathy itself is an emotion and we can build empathy or dull our empathy so by itself, it is an unreliable standard for morality. You can easily see how, in practice, empathy fails us when it comes to honest dealing with institutions such as insurance companies.
Vulnerability itself is not an emotion, but an assessment of vulnerability immediately leads to fear of harm. We then act, not because we are harmed, but because of the fear of potential harm. But why should your fear of harm affect your moral decisions? For example, Thomas Jefferson feared economic hardship (i.e. found himself vulnerable to economic conditions) if he freed his slaves, so he didn’t. If you were in that same position as Jefferson, would you act likewise?
I know that I exist and I know that I was either created or not and I don’t have any idea of how to calculate the probabilities. If I was created, then there is a Creator. How do you know that entity, my Creator, cannot possibly exist?
If I am created, then there are some things about my Creator that seem reasonable. For example, I know good from evil. If I am created, it is reasonable that my knowledge of good and evil was placed there by my Creator. Therefore if I make a decision to seek my Creator (not knowing whether my Creator even exists), I am still not open to any belief.
Matt
You are incorrect in your claim that realizing the rather simple and obvious fact that we are vulnerable creatures, that is to say that we can be harmed, leads to fear.
As for Jefferson, you are again grossly in error. It was not economic hardship but rather government regulation which prevented him from freeing all of his slaves (you might know that in fact he did free some). In Virginia if you freed a slave you had to guarentee that slave would never be dependent upon anyone else for the rest of their life. In essence you had to pay the state the cost of that slave supporting him/her self for the remainder of their life, despite the fact that this money would never go to the freed slave. Jefferson simply did not have that kind of money (in fact he died deep in debt), nor were his assets at the time sufficient to cover even a fraction of the slaves which he had. Since he inhereted the slaves, the best he could do in that situation given the absurd governmental regulation was to treat the slaves as fairly as possible, to allow run aways to get away (with the pretense of chasing them only to avoid the state’s penalties) and to free those that he could afford to free.
I know that “god” is an absurd contradictory notion because of several self-defeating aspects, including but not limited to the notion of omnipotence. Furthermore the notion that there is a creator which was not created is itself simply absurd and adds nothing whatsoever to any explanation.
As for the idea that there was a source of your own personal creation therefore that creator must be the source of good and evil, well the previous counter-examples such as slavery demonstrate conclusively that this is simply false. However let’s look at another example, such as test tube babies. The creator is in a lab, and likely will never know the eventual moral agent. There is no connection between that act of bringing egg and sperm together. This lab worker could easily be a sociopath without any sense of good and evil, yet the eventual moral agent will almost certainly know of good and evil.
So you see there is no basis for the assumptions that 1. There is a creator, 2. That creator if it existed instilled any characteristic whatsoever. 3. That creator is “god”
You do realize that in now abandoning empathy you abandon your entire position right?
“As for Jefferson, you are again grossly in error. It was not economic hardship …” “… to free those that he could afford to…”.
If he couldn’t afford to, then most every reasonable person would say that it was an economic hardship on him to free them.
I give up. You’re just too ready to argue.
Matt
I was addressing your false implication that Jefferson kept slaves to keep a certain lifestyle (any other implication would not support the conclusion you were trying to support) and noting that it is not a matter of mere convenience or “economic hardship” but rather one of absurd legal barriers. This is a difference of type.
BTW this tactic you are employing of dismissing me as a person because I do not mindlessly accept your contradictory claims and desired conclusion is nothing short of an ad hominem attack. It in no way bolsters the position you wish to defend.
It’s strange that so many theists think that having an afterlife is so important. If the earth is God’s creation, shouldn’t it be perfect? I can already predict the excuses given for its imperfection (Original Sin traced back to the Fall and all), but that argument is fundamentaly flawed.
The problem with the whole belief in life after death is it belittles this real life, which as far as we can know anything, we are sure exists. If people believe that this world is just some kind of cosmic waiting area, or even a test, then what is the point in this world? A belief in an omniscient deity means that deity would already know exactly how we were going to act, before we were even born. Wouldn’t it be simpler just to put us in our right place (heaven, hell, purgatory), without all the useless suffering on this planet?
This belief in Hell also ignores the gross unfairness that such a system entails. Infinite punishment for finite sins anyone? Not only is the concept of Hell unfair, but as I stated above, that deity already knows where we are going. Sounds a bit sadistic if you ask me.
And finally I would be deeply suprised to see any study which shows fear is conducive to any kind of long-term morality, rather than just short-term prevention.
If we’re going to postulate that God’s creation is perfect, then I think we have to mean the entirety of His creation, not just our time on earth. For example, if there is justice after death, then that justice is also a part of creation.
I think that the point of our time on earth is to make a free will choice as to whether we want to love our Creator or not. I’m not sure whether God knows what choice we will make. I really don’t understand free will however.
I think heaven is a place where we will be with our Creator if that is what we want. I think hell is a place where we will be separated from our Creator if that is what we want. The only sin that matters is the sin of desiring to be separated from our Creator and the penalty for that sin is that we get what we want.
Christian morality is based upon the love of God.
“christian” morality is an oxymoron. Remember that xnty supports and approves of slavery, rape, murder, theft, etc. We know all of these to be contrary to morality. Some may call this treatment of others by the name “love” but it no more makes these actions loving than it makes them moral.
If Christianity supports slavery, rape, murder and theft, then you probably wouldn’t want to converse with such a person.
Being so hard over in your contempt for Christianty, I can’t imagine that you could possibly be objective on the subject. Consequently, I cannot see why I would possibly want to converse with someone who cannot possibly be objective.
Matthew: the point is whether Christiany DOES support slavery, rape, murder and theft.
According to the Bible, it does.
Historically, it does (the people who most vehemently opposed the end of slavery in the US were the church, and they did so for religious reasons — after all, God intended for slavery to exist, according to the Bible…).
You may say “ah, but both the Bible and all those people were wrong; MY god is a loving god”. Unfortunately, that will simply mean you made that god up…
Matt,
By your argument, then I must be contemptuous of squares because I recognize that they contain right angles. Your entire basis for your claims of negative bias on my part is nothing more than the fact that I am willing to take xnty at face value, at what it actually says.
Your tactic is simply ad hominem. You attack me because your argument has no merit whatsoever. Why not address the facts? Why not address the very nature of xnty? What is lacking in your argument that makes these civil approaches so undesirable to you?
[...] this Atheism FAQ entry, Without belief in an afterlife / fear of hell, how can people be moral?? The common argument (which theists keep using, without even noticing what it really says about [...]
We believe in god because we are told to believe not because we want to.Ever since I was a kid I was told to prise GOD.Yea what ever im a normal person, right and wrong ppl dont be dumb wtf is wrong with you huh!?Dont you get it you where programed like a computer and the best part is that the only reason you feel sad and mad is because you where programed those emotions duh!!!
You’re so right on the
“In fact, when you say that “without fear of hell, people would kill, rape, steal, and so on”, aren’t you, in effect, saying that you would do exactly that if you didn’t believe you’d go to hell for it? That you, yourself, don’t see any other reasons not to kill, rape or steal?”.
I used to believe and used this argument, but now don’t and feel no need to act morally except to help the weak against the strong. I do most things to put me first, so the religion was probably a front for my immorality (though I only care about helping depression etc. now I don’t believe).