Is religion required for morality and for people to behave morally?

[JimL]

No but God is required unless of course you believe that morality is flexible and changeable.

No morality is not dependent on god, nor are moral laws flexible or changeable. Murder for instance is understood to be wrong, because it isn't in anyones interests to be murdered. It can't both be right and wrong, right for you and wrong for others, and that understanding has nothing to do with, or have need of a god for it to be true.

[Papa Zoom]

No morality is not dependent on god, nor are moral laws flexible or changeable. Murder for instance is understood to be wrong, because it isn't in anyones interests to be murdered.

If I kill you I can steal your land and property and it isn't like that has never happened. By what standard do you say murder is wrong?

It can't both be right and wrong, right for you and wrong for others, and that understanding has nothing to do with, or have need of a god for it to be true.

Well I agree with you but you do realize that there are people who feel just the opposite? If you say something is wrong and it is not just wrong for you but for everyone, to which standard do you appeal? What is the source of this standard? Don't say we are because in some cultures they eat their neighbor and in others they love their neighbor. Who is to say which is right and which is wrong?

[Jichard]

I mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it.

You forgot to add any thought anyone gives it, including God. Otherwise, you're special pleading.

If something is good or bad in and of itself (it is wrong to kill babies for fun but it is good to feed the hungry) then those moral truths would require God.

Incorrect. It was was good or bad in and of itself when it would not require God, by definition. If X is Y in of X's self, then X does not need something else to be Y.

Otherwise it's just an opinion.

First, I think you're being a bit loose here with what you mean by "opinion". I'll explain here using something I wrote before:

One can have opinions regarding a fact. One can even have objectively true opinions. To see why, note that an "opinion" is basically just a belief; that is: thinking a claim is true. So, for instance, "I am of the opinion that trees exist" means about the same as saying "I believe that trees exist" or "I think that it's true that "trees exist"". Given this definition of "opinion", one can have an objectively true opinion. For example, a doctor's medical opinion that "you have cancer" can be objectively true. And, of course, one can have subjectively true opinions as well. For example, the following opinion of mine is subjectively true: "Jichard dislikes the taste of broccoli".

Second, facts need not be objective, since facts can be subjective. This is because "fact" means something like either:

1. a true statement, description, etc.
2. whatever it is in virtue of which a statement, description, etc. is true

For example, on reading 1, it is a fact that "dogs exist" since "dogs exist" is a true statement. And on reading 2, existent dogs are facts, since those dogs make the statement "dogs exist".
Now, both readings 1 and 2 are compatible with subjective facts. For example, on reading 1, it is a fact that "some people dislike rape" since "some people dislike rape" is a true statement. And on reading 2, existent people who dislike rape are subjective facts, since those people make statements like "some people dislike rape" true. This is why moral subjectivists can (and often do) still speak of their being moral facts: those subjectivists just treat moral facts as being a type of subjective fact. An upshot of this is that opinions can count as subjective facts."

So you're incorrect when you claim that without God, it's just an opinion. It wouldn't be the. There could be human opinion and the objective facts that make those human opinions true, regardless of whether or nor God exists.


Second, you overlook the fact that your God (if it existed) had opinions. And those opinions saying things are right or wrong in virtue of God's opinion would be subjectivist.

If there is no God, there's no reason to suggest that killing babies for fun is actually wrong - only that as a society we view it as an unacceptable thing.

Incorrect. There are plenty of reads that killing babied for fun would be wrong, regardless of whether God exists. You're basically engaged in a false dichotomy, where you act as if the only option are God or cultural relativism. That's blatantly wrong. There are plenty of other options, like virtue ethics, various forms of utilitarianism, and various forms of deontology. So please drop your false dichotomy.

[Jichard]

If I kill you I can steal your land and property and it isn't like that has never happened. By what standard do you say murder is wrong?

There are plenty of accounts of figuring out what's morally right or morally wrong, that are compatible with atheism and moral objectivism. For instance:

(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):

Well I agree with you but you do realize that there are people who feel just the opposite?

So what? There are people who think the Earth is flat as well, or that the Earth is 6000 years old. The mere fact that you can point out disagreement on a topic, doesn't mean anything.

If you say something is wrong and it is not just wrong for you but for everyone, to which standard do you appeal?

You've been provided some.

What is the source of this standard?

Irrelevant, since where a claim, standard, etc. comes from has no bearing on whether the claim, standard, etc. is true/false, acurrate/inaccurate, etc. For example, evolution happens is just as true when said by an educated scientist as when it's said by an uneducated 5-year-old. I think a lot of you Christians have the weird idea that somehow a claim has to come from a certain source (ex: a divine source) in order to be objectively true. That's not the case.

Don't say we are because in some cultures they eat their neighbor and in others they love their neighbor. Who is to say which is right and which is wrong?

Again, it's irrelevant who says it, just like it's irrelevant who says evolution happens. The question is:

is that claims true or false, and in virtue of what is is it true or false

not:

who said the claim?

[Jichard]

Where does this idea of unjust suffering come from? Just because beings can suffer why does that matter? Someone had to decide that suffering of sentient individuals is bad. But what if someone says it's neither good or bad? What if everyone but you think suffering is ok? Then what? Is it still unjust?

And there's one of the central problems in your position: you're a moral subjectivist, since you think someone has to decide that things are morally bad in order for them to be morally bad. That's like saying someone had to decide that things are dogs in order for them to be dogs. That's not moral objectivism.

By the way, you also just contradicted yourself back when you said things were good or bad independet of what anyone thought:

I mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it. If something is good or bad in and of itself (it is wrong to kill babies for fun but it is good to feed the hungry) then those moral truths would require God. Otherwise it's just an opinion.

[Jichard]

I mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it. If something is good or bad in and of itself (it is wrong to kill babies for fun but it is good to feed the hungry) then those moral truths would require God. Otherwise it's just an opinion.

By the way, you just contradicted you, since you moved from saying that:

things are good or bad in and of themselves

to saying that:

someone has to decide things are bad in order for them to be bad

Where does this idea of unjust suffering come from? Just because beings can suffer why does that matter? Someone had to decide that suffering of sentient individuals is bad. But what if someone says it's neither good or bad? What if everyone but you think suffering is ok? Then what? Is it still unjust?

Please resolve the contradiction.

[AlecWelsh]

I agree but by what standard do you get this idea of justice? That's what I'm driving at. If its source isn't God, then what?

Well the concept of fairness like justice is conveying standards of itself. I am not sure anyone gets to say something is fair or not. If I walk up and punch you and take the money you earned from your pay check who get to say I was fair or justified? Iam not sure even God could if I believed in him

I'm not sure what you thought I meant because I agree with the above statement by you.




So another way to say that is that it is unjust to kill babies. What is the source of this rule?



Apparently people do make this argument all the time. Babies will down syndrome are routinely aborted as are other children with "defects." So apparently those lives don't matter as much as "healthy" children.
[There is only very minor differences between a baby with Down Syndrome and one without. It is because they are so identical that many Down Syndrome Screening Tests and Markers for Down Syndrome have been developed.
However, a Down Syndrome abortion is very different in some respects. Down Syndrome abortions normally involve a wanted baby that has been shown to have Down Syndrome.

......researchers found that where abortion was readily available, the incidence of Down Syndrome dropped by approximately 40%, in comparison to areas where abortion was not more freely available. In other words, it appears from this that at least 40% of parents choose to terminate the pregnancy when a diagnosis of Down Syndrome is made. ] http://www.cdadc.com/ds/down-syndrome-abortion.html

The Nazis killed the Jews because they thought them inferior. Margaret Sanger definitely had views that some lives were more valuable to society than other lives. The history of the world shows this is true in every culture (or most). We may repudiate it but what makes us right and others wrong on this matter?

Yes but this is a clear birth defect that can be address at an early staged with no suffering to the child. The Nazi claim they were inferior with no basis. Bodies at times naturally abort a baby when there are complication so what makes it much different when humans step in as well based on the same logic? How are actually complications of pregnancy the same as living humans? I am not also saying that people born with Down Syndrome are less than equal just that nature has drawn the line at birth.

[Jichard]

Well that seems to be the question. Does morality depend on you and me and our collective views or is it something else?

You said you meant that by "morality", you meant something like:

"I mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it."

If that is what you meant, then morality does not need to "morality depend on you and me and our collective views or is it something else?" For example, take a non-moral statement like dogs exist. That statement is made by me and a number of other humans. But the truth of the statement does not depend on us. Instead, it depends on the presence of certain biological organisms. So the truth of this statement does not depend on you and me and our collective views or God.

This can be extended to moral cases, without one needing to claim that the truth of moral statements depends on you and me and our collective views or God. As I noted elsewhere:

Similarly, the moral realist can point to things like character traits (as per virtue ethics), effects of welfare (as per welfare utilitarianism), etc. as being the sort of things that make moral claims true or false. Here are examples of such positions:

(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):

[Teallaura]

Special pleading is only fallacious if there is no substanitive difference in the case. Saying God is categorically like Man is like saying Man is categorically like an ant.

[Papa Zoom]

You forgot to add any thought anyone gives it, including God. Otherwise, you're special pleading.



Incorrect. It was was good or bad in and of itself when it would not require God, by definition. If X is Y in of X's self, then X does not need something else to be Y.



First, I think you're being a bit loose here with what you mean by "opinion". I'll explain here using something I wrote before:

One can have opinions regarding a fact. One can even have objectively true opinions. To see why, note that an "opinion" is basically just a belief; that is: thinking a claim is true. So, for instance, "I am of the opinion that trees exist" means about the same as saying "I believe that trees exist" or "I think that it's true that "trees exist"". Given this definition of "opinion", one can have an objectively true opinion. For example, a doctor's medical opinion that "you have cancer" can be objectively true. And, of course, one can have subjectively true opinions as well. For example, the following opinion of mine is subjectively true: "Jichard dislikes the taste of broccoli".

Second, facts need not be objective, since facts can be subjective. This is because "fact" means something like either:

1. a true statement, description, etc.
2. whatever it is in virtue of which a statement, description, etc. is true

For example, on reading 1, it is a fact that "dogs exist" since "dogs exist" is a true statement. And on reading 2, existent dogs are facts, since those dogs make the statement "dogs exist".
Now, both readings 1 and 2 are compatible with subjective facts. For example, on reading 1, it is a fact that "some people dislike rape" since "some people dislike rape" is a true statement. And on reading 2, existent people who dislike rape are subjective facts, since those people make statements like "some people dislike rape" true. This is why moral subjectivists can (and often do) still speak of their being moral facts: those subjectivists just treat moral facts as being a type of subjective fact. An upshot of this is that opinions can count as subjective facts."

So you're incorrect when you claim that without God, it's just an opinion. It wouldn't be the. There could be human opinion and the objective facts that make those human opinions true, regardless of whether or nor God exists.

Second, you overlook the fact that your God (if it existed) had opinions. And those opinions saying things are right or wrong in virtue of God's opinion would be subjectivist.

Incorrect. There are plenty of reads that killing babied for fun would be wrong, regardless of whether God exists. You're basically engaged in a false dichotomy, where you act as if the only option are God or cultural relativism. That's blatantly wrong. There are plenty of other options, like virtue ethics, various forms of utilitarianism, and various forms of deontology. So please drop your false dichotomy.

I don't see it as a false dichotomy. I simply don't understand that in a world view that holds to the universe being an accident of nature and that we are all just DNA and electrical impulses in the brain, how that can account for moral truths? It's like I'm hearing "It's wrong to kill because it's wrong to kill!"

In the animal kingdom, a dominate male gorilla will kill off all rivals. That's just the way it is. Is that immoral? If not why not? Where do we humans, just a higher form in the animal kingdom, get this idea of a moral right and wrong and we act as if it's etched in stone somewhere. Unless there is a Supreme Being, I can see no reason to accept anyone's moral POV but my own.

[Papa Zoom]

There are plenty of accounts of figuring out what's morally right or morally wrong, that are compatible with atheism and moral objectivism. For instance:

(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):

I know there are theories but that doesn't mean they are true. On what basis should anyone accept any of them?

Irrelevant, since where a claim, standard, etc. comes from has no bearing on whether the claim, standard, etc. is true/false, acurrate/inaccurate, etc. For example, evolution happens is just as true when said by an educated scientist as when it's said by an uneducated 5-year-old. I think a lot of you Christians have the weird idea that somehow a claim has to come from a certain source (ex: a divine source) in order to be objectively true. That's not the case.

In a random universe that is essentially an accident and doesn't care one way or another that we exist, how can any moral theory be objectively true? Maybe we have different ideas about what constitutes objective truth.

[Papa Zoom]

And there's one of the central problems in your position: you're a moral subjectivist, since you think someone has to decide that things are morally bad in order for them to be morally bad. That's like saying someone had to decide that things are dogs in order for them to be dogs. That's not moral objectivism.

By the way, you also just contradicted yourself back when you said things were good or bad independet of what anyone thought:

That's not exactly true. I believe that truth exists independent of what I believe. And I don't see what you mean by a contradiction.

[Papa Zoom]

You said you meant that by "morality", you meant something like:

"I mean by what is actually good apart from any thought you or I may give it."

If that is what you meant, then morality does not need to "morality depend on you and me and our collective views or is it something else?" For example, take a non-moral statement like dogs exist. That statement is made by me and a number of other humans. But the truth of the statement does not depend on us. Instead, it depends on the presence of certain biological organisms. So the truth of this statement does not depend on you and me and our collective views or God.

This can be extended to moral cases, without one needing to claim that the truth of moral statements depends on you and me and our collective views or God. As I noted elsewhere:

Similarly, the moral realist can point to things like character traits (as per virtue ethics), effects of welfare (as per welfare utilitarianism), etc. as being the sort of things that make moral claims true or false. Here are examples of such positions:

(http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~alatus/phil12...ctivism.html):

But those are theories and why should I care? What makes them true?

[Papa Zoom]

By the way, you just contradicted you, since you moved from saying that:

things are good or bad in and of themselves

to saying that:

someone has to decide things are bad in order for them to be bad

Please resolve the contradiction.

Ok I see the confusion I caused. A thing that is good, like feeding the poor, is good because it emanates from the character of God. It isn't good because God simply commands it and God doesn't simply command it because it is good, it is good because it is a reflection of the very character of God. If something is bad, like murder, it is bad because it violates a standard that emanates from the character of God.

Without God or a Supreme Being of some kind, there is no reason that I can think of to accept an objective standard for good and bad. Someone somewhere decided that this or that is wrong. I think the moral theories show this to be true. On what basis should I accept any of those theories as true? I agree they sound reasonable and make sense. But what if I felt differently? Why should I care?

I'm probably not doing a very good job with explaining this. I'll have to get some more coffee and give more thought to it later.

[Jichard]

Ok I see the confusion I caused. A thing that is good, like feeding the poor, is good because it emanates from the character of God. It isn't good because God simply commands it and God doesn't simply command it because it is good, it is good because it is a reflection of the very character of God. If something is bad, like murder, it is bad because it violates a standard that emanates from the character of God.

This reply doesn't help you for a number of reasons, which hinge on your answer to this question:

What aspects of God's character/nature make God good?

If you appeal to certain properties of God (such as God character traits), then God isn't required anymore. As the Christian philosopher Wes Morriston notes:

""

Of course, you could give other responses, but they'll result in other problems I've gone over elsewhere:

Unless one opts for something like divine simplicity, then God has multiple, non-identical properties. For example, on one traditional definition of "God", God has the properties of being omnipotent, being omnipresent, being omniscient, and being omnibenevolent, amongst other properties. Now, you seem to be claiming that God has the property of being morally good. In response to this claim of your's, one can ask "in virtue of what does God have the property of being morally good?" You could answer this question in a number of ways. For example, you could claim that God's moral goodness supervenes on other properties God has. Or you could claim that God's moral goodness is identical to other properties God has. Or you could claim that it's simply a brute fact that God is morally good, and there's nothing more to say on that. Or... So let's survey some of those options:

1. You could say that God is morally good in virtue of other properties God has, such as God having certain character traits (ex: being fair, being merciful, etc.), God acting to promote the welfare of sentient life, etc. This is a very plausible option, and is the path taken by various Christian philosophers such as Wes Morriston. This option also makes sense of the following thought experiment:
   Imagine a vicious, psychopathic deity who was also omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, etc. This deity commands that people do vicious things (like rape and genocide), just because that deity enjoys watching the carnage. Is that deity morally good?
   The obvious right answer is "no". And option 1 explains why: it's because the deity lacks certain character traits, and acts in a way that willfully, needlessly harms sentient life. Option 1 also has the further benefit of making God's goodness intelligible. So instead of making vacuous statements like "God is morally good because God is like God" that rob "is morally good" of any meaningful moral semantic content, one can instead say that "God is morally good in virtue of God's mercy, justice, etc." That actually gives some content to God's goodness. Of course, this means forfeiting the claim that moral properties can exist only if God exists. After all, if non-God things have the features in virtue of which God was morally good (ex: having certain character traits), then those non-God things can be morally good, even if God does not exist.
2. You could say that God is morally good in virtue of other properties God has, properties which God alone has, such as God being omnipotent, being omniscient, etc. This move suffers from a number of problems. For example:
   A) It undermines moral arguments for God's existence and it leaves theists susceptible to the very claims they use to to support their moral argument. After all, theists normally try to get their moral arguments off the ground by noting the existence of moral properties instantiated by non-God things. For instance: claiming that saving someone in the Holocaust was morally good. However, option 2 undermines this move, since on option 2 that action does not count as morally good because only God counts as morally good and that action is not God. And that means anyone who things that action was morally good, will have a ready-made objection to option 2: point out the numerous examples of morally good things that are not God, including the action I just reference. Really, option 1 commits theists to position very close to moral nihilism, where they they deny the existence of moral properties such as being morally good, "being morally right, etc. except when those features are had by God.
   B) Saying that "God is morally good because God is omnipotent" implausible confuses might with right. And it makes no sense to claim that a being is morally good because that being is omniscient, or omnipresent, or... After all, as I noted when discussing option 1, a psychopathic, vicious deity could be omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, etc. yet it would make no sense to call such a deity morally good just because it had those features. Being knowledgeable, or being everywhere, or being powerful, or... doesn't make one morally good.
3. You could saying that "God is morally good" is a brute moral truth, and cannot be accounted for in terms of anything else. But this response also has it's own problems. For example:
   A) Option 3 makes God's goodness morally unintelligible. After all, on option 3, you can't specify what you mean by "is morally good" beyond just saying that it refers to one of God's properties. There's no moral content there.
   B) You've made claims like "God is morally good" largely empty, since on option 3, that statement boils down to saying something like "God has a property that God has". Such a statement would be true regardless of what God was. For example, it'd be true even if God was a vicious psychopath or a turkey BLT sandwich.
   C) Unless you want to indict yourself for special pleading, you'll be unable to object to an atheist's position simply by saying because the atheist appeal to brute moral truths. After all, you've just appealed to brute moral truths as well. For example, an atheist, hedonistic utilitarian might say that it's simply a brute, unexplainable moral truth "Pleasure is morally good". And if you say that hey, you can't to brute moral truths, since brute truths are not allowed, you'd be engaged in special pleading (Eric Wielenberg has made related point against William Lane Craig's position).
   D) Your brute moral truths introduce unneeded complexity, with little-to-no-compensating benefit (Wes Morriston has made this point before).

Without God or a Supreme Being of some kind, there is no reason that I can think of to accept an objective standard for good and bad.

One doesn't ned a God for there to be an objective standard, regardless of whether the topic is physics, biology, morality, or something else.

Someone somewhere decided that this or that is wrong.

Same false presupposition: no one needs to decide that actions are morally wrong, in order for those actions to be morally wrong, anymore than someone needs to decide that some animals are dogs in order for them to be dogs. To say otherwise is to a adopt a form of moral subjectivism, not moral obbjectivism.

I think the moral theories show this to be true.

They don't. For example, neither utilitarianism, nor Kantian deontology, nor virtue ethics require that someone decide actions are wrong in order for actions to be wrong.

On what basis should I accept any of those theories as true? I agree they sound reasonable and make sense. But what if I felt differently? Why should I care?

If you felt differently or didn't care, that would be irrelevant to whether or not the moral theories were true, just as it would be irrelevant to whether a scientific theory was true. What's you're doing is akin to someone responding to evolutionary theory is true by saying "But what if I felt differently? Why should I care?" This response is ridiculous since the mere fact that one thinks differently has no bearing on whether evolutionary theory is true. Similarly if one doesn't care about evolutionary theory; that has no bearing on whether evolutionary theory is true. So those questions are simply red herrings. Same for your questions; they are red herrings that have no bearing whether moral theories are true. Objective true caims are objectively true regardless of whether someone disagrees with them and regardless of whether someone cares.