Determining something is moral if you are morally inept

I'll try to make this as simple as possible**. 1. Theists believe that morality comes only from god. 2. Therefore, theists themselves cannot make moral judgments by themselves (i.e. without the aid/direction/help of god). So the question is: how can a theist determine that god is moral if the theist is incapable of making a moral judgment on his/her own?

I fully expect answers from theists along the line of "god tells me so." I also expect theists to try to turn it around and ask how atheists can know what is moral. This thread is not about how atheists determine what is or isn't moral. There are numerous, secular philosophies about morality that you can read about if you want to know how some of us make moral decisions. This thread is specifically about how theists can claim to not know morality without god, yet somehow know that god is actually moral.


**Note: This question is cribbed from Jen Peeples on an episode of The Atheist Experience.

 

Technically, the act of being connected to God is making moral judgments for oneself. It's the act of shutting down one's ego and understanding the true nature of morality on a deeper and almost instinctual level. It's not something you think or feel. It's something you just inherently know. It's easier to experience than it is to explain. But if you're trying to experience morality through cerebral means, you'll never get there. Because morality is not something logical. It's deeper than that. Attempting to reach morality through logic is nothing more than empty philosophy which ultimately results in inevitable sociopathy and nihilism. Which is what trips up most atheists. They have no concept of spirituality. Some do. But they are typically the minority.

 

Something that I asked you before, and you said you'd get back to me, Unifier, is whether the Golden Rule which Jesus endorsed in his Sermon-on-the-Mount,
particularly in it's negative form stated by Rabbi Hillel some decades before Jesus, is the essence of of morality as Confucius said it was? And if not, why not?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhHJ4DRZNZM&feature=youtu.be

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in time we will realize we were always connected to God, as we are all a part of God, everything is connected, it's an illusion that God is separate, the truth is God it within

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Correction, Unifier. It was in posts #106 and #127 in the Believe in Liberty thread that I asked you if you supported the absolute morality of the Golden Rule or the almost identical libertarian Non-Aggression Principle that is always wrong to aggress against or bully non-aggressive people, and you didn't say that you'd get back to me.

 

How can you know the morality that you're understanding through god is actually right if you're unable to determine what is morally right without that connection?

 

Wait, what? I wrote you out a long ass post on my thoughts on morality. Specifically addressed to you personally to answer some things you had asked me. And it was some of the most profound (*)(*)(*)(*) I've ever said in my life. And it was all completely off the top of my head. It's like I was figuring out where I stood as I was writing it, and as a result, that post kind of wrote itself. I was really impressed with it. I have no idea if you ever read it, but it's back there somewhere.

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Like I said, it's easier to experience than it is to explain. But if you're cut off from your own spirituality, you won't really be able to do either one very well.

 

Its a very good question. From the theist persepective, christian worldview, Romans says that the law is written on our hearts, thats why you'll find atheist, and other theist acting in what appears to be a moral way. Thats just my opinion from scripture.

 

Not about the Golden Rule that I can find. How about a simple yes or no? Do you think that it's absolutely immoral to bully people?

 

Does that mean morality is part of our very being as humans?

 

To bully? Yes. Although some people have twisted ideas about what bullying is. They confuse it with speaking one's mind, asserting oneself, or standing one's ground. Which is not the same thing at all.

 

Agreed. Speaking one's mind or standng one's ground is not bullying or coercing anyone. I'm talking about, among other things, infringing on a person's means of self-defense, coercing money from people to subsidize someone else's food or birth control,(and now we've lost the hard-core socialists who immediately recognize that their Big Brother government couldn't exist if people truly endorsed the Golden Rule). But it's a slippery slope for conservatives, too, who think that it's fine to tax people to fund a standing army to protect them whether the want one or not, and fine to prevent non-aggressive people from going back, forth, and sideways to wherever they want to go as long as they are not occupying othe people's private property. In this age of statism and nation-building, the Golden Rule is a truly radical principle that recognizes the individual.

 

Well, this is more of a practicality issue. You can't very well have an army that only defends some of the people. It doesn't really work that way. It's kind of an all or nothing deal with a nation.

Could you be a little more specific here? I'm not sure I follow.

 

It's a very radical position. Like "Tear down those walls, Mr. Gorbachev," it's Tear down all those fences and border crossings, Mr. Obama. In Europe it's gone beyond just tearing down the wall between East and West Berlin, Germany and France, which fought a lot of bloody wars, tore down their border crossings and it's now just "Welcome to France" and "Welcome to Gemany" and all the way through from Italy to Holland where all kinds of drugs are widely available, and nobody's talking about some kind of a drug war in Italy or Germany. Tear down the border stations between the US, Canada, and Mexico, and Yankee Go Home from the Mideast so that Mid-Easterners have no reason to hate the US. Like I said, it's very radical, and it's much more likely that we'll just the same old expensive and repressive foreign policy and border policy, only more expenisve and more repressive.

 

As a Deist I believe that God gave me a brain to use so I use it. I don't require a book to tell me right from wrong nor do I generally pray for guidance on what is right. For example I think it would suck to robbed... because of that I would never rob someone. God has never told me that to rob someone is wrong... I just use the brain I am blessed with and figured that out all by myself.

 

Yes, without going into long-winded evidence, I think that basic ethics are hard-wired, at least with regard to our own families, lessoning with distance from families, just as wolf pack members cooperate and will even play with other pack-members' cubs. Most humans tend to be decent unless abused as children or taught to hate others through military training and other propaganda. The more we travel and interact with strangers, the more we see them as being members of our own packs.

 

The staggering amount of pain and suffering contained in those few sentences inflicted upon countless others over the course of thousands of years should make one sick to their stomach.

I can’t really explain it I just know that burning someone at the stake for reading books that disagree with my religion just feels right. There is no real way for me to express how I know that enslaving others is the right thing to do. I can feel deep down in my gut that it’s not natural to be gay. I just know that my God and his morality is the truth and so going to war with the people who disagree is obviously the moral thing to do, you know for the sake of humanity. It’s blaringly obvious that forcing women to marry their rapist is the cornerstone of morality. Though my actions cause others to suffer I can take pride in them because on a deeper almost instinctual level I know I’m doing the right thing.

It’s unreal how oblivious your statements are.

See there is nothing, no record, no study anywhere that says logic leads to sociopathy and nihilism whereas the ground is soaked in blood from the morality of religion and ideology.

There is nothing more logical than the golden rule which is why it has sprouted up independently throughout history all over the world.

But religion doesn’t follow the golden rule as you have proven it says do on to others whatever you feel is right. There is nothing moral about that.

 

That's some pretty tough love you're giving old Unifier, but I gotta agree with you.

 

There is another part of this that brings into question the morality of a person who believes they don't really die. Sure a child dies and thats sad but if you believe they are in heaven, as happy as they will ever be, with friends and family even you have never met, in the presence of the greatest day care provider in existance, what is there to be sad about? Honestly why mourn such an event? How can people actually be upset that their loved ones are in a much better place than we could ever make this world? How selfish is it to be upset or even angry that they are no longer here when you will get to spend enternity with them in bliss? What is 70-80 years compared to forever?

They say Atheists have no morality because they don't believe in hell but the truth is knowing this is it, knowing this is the only chance we have, that once we die its over is a pretty damn good motivator to get things right. We have the incentive to live as long as we can and to spend that time free rather than in prison.

Theists are the ones who believe that they will live on forever and that even if the do bad things they only have to ask for forgiveness. There is an entire religion of people who think killing themselves and others is actually the fastest way to heaven.

I just don't think they think this argument through very well.

 

Not a very satisfying answer. People with very different moral compasses and incompatible faith memes could both use this justification as the bedrock of their morality, so it leads nowhere that is useful or reproducible or consistent.
The only thing it accomplishes is a way of embracing your own moral absolutes without having to justify them in any way, that true morality is beyond discussion or understanding.
To me, it's a complete avoidance of the topic altogether.

 

1) We are all human. And thus imperfect by design. Our differences stem not from incompatible faith memes but from our inevitable inability to fully grasp or accept the nature of morality in its entirety. The goal is not to be perfect but to make the best and most honest effort we can truly make to comprehend and accept as much as possible. This comes from surrendering one's ego and being open, not closed off.

2) The second part of your post as a classic, cynical, postmodern clichéd interpretation of what I have said. If you are truly interested in understanding my position rather than than just knocking it for not mirroring your own, I might suggest more listening and less judgment.

 

No, it shouldn't. Because it's clear from what you say next that you have no understanding of what I'm actually talking about.

^This right here is pure cynical ignorance. And it betrays not only an inability but a total unwillingness to even listen to what I am actually saying here. I wish I could say I'm surprised, but I'm just not. You have a very predictable and closed-minded attitude toward God, religion, spirituality, and morality. And despite likely fancying yourself a free-thinking intellectual, you are very much a de facto product of the culture in which you live.

Would you like to travel down the path of empty logical philosophy with me for a second? I can quite quickly and easily show you where your efforts inevitably lead to if you are still under the naive impression that they don't lead to nihilism and sociopathy.

Ah, (*)(*)(*)(*) it. Let's just do it here. Tell me, Vic, what makes the Golden Rule logical?

 

I always laugh when Christians say we can't judge god's morality because we're just stupid humans. So, we're stupid humans, but you're making the judgement that god's morality is good, even though humans aren't qualified to make that judgment. Just one of many double standards in apologetics.

 

I thought I did listen. I heard you say that morality was an inherent knowledge, not something felt or thought. That implies that you either know it, or you inherently don't get it.
If I'm missing something, explain it. Otherwise it is a way of claiming morality as something you are privy to, and others are not. Your suppression of ego has made revelation possible for you, and morality is something you get to own, and others are denying themselves, which relieves you of having to justify your vision of morality to anyone. You just "have" it, and others need what you have.

 

It's not inherent. It's something you either make an honest effort to connect with or you don't. Most simply do not. But anyone is capable of doing it.

Are you familiar with how the ego operates? Do you actually know what the ego is? Most people do not. This is why I'm asking.