“The question isnt can you be good without believing in God, it’s can you be good without God”(unknown). The morality on which we base our life on is based on the world around us, but the ultimate person which we base on is God. We are social creatures and like many others seek approval from our peers, in this case we seek approval from God whether we know it or not. It’s not possible to be good without God because without the structure, guidance, and compassion he offers we would not have a moral sense. Throughout history God has been a constant for all people no matter what their circumstances they are under.
God’s structure gives an objective reference point for moral character. If there is no God, then there is no moral reference point for which we rely on. Without God, we are left to rely on one person’s view, which is no more valid than anyone else’s. This is subjective morality, not objective, therefore it doesn’t apply to anyone else. It’s like wanting plain pizza over supreme, the preference is in the subject, not the object, so it does not apply to others. Which leads us to the Divine
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The everyday Atheist believes that there is no God, that if he did exist then why does he let all the bad stuff happen in the world. God gave us free will, which means he cannot interfere with our lives, therefore all the bad is a result of human sin. A majority of atheists turn to common sense or science for guidance. The common sense obviously didn’t come out from under a rock, it came from everyone else’s moal compases. Some will argue that we get our sense of everything from evolution, for instance when a bird warns all the others that there is danger near by. Part of that may be true to a certain degree, but it doesn’t fit the question ‘can you be good without God?’. Throughout history people's lives are shaped by Theists and Atheists opinions and whether they are true or
Bad things are bound to happen; it’s just a matter of when. I agree with his particular view on this matter, “Some are caused by bad luck. Some are caused by bad people, and others are silly an inevitable consequence of our being human and being mortal, living in a world of flexible natural laws” (pg.134). I believe the presence of God does not change the existence of good or evil, but may influence humans to have great faith, and therefore act accordingly. I do think people abandon their faith because of the problem with evil than for any other reason. It is certainly a test of faith, and temptation to unbelief. This world is way too random and unpredictable. Things interact in complex ways so their will always be room for the unexpected, and that’s why I think bad things happen to good people. But I don’t have the true answer, Kushner does not have the true answer, and I don’t believe anyone will ever have the true answer. Although I was raised believing in God and having faith, I don’t think there is a higher power interacting with the world causing whatever bad thing to happen. Like Kushner, I think God gives us the strength to cope with bad things when they come our way. Ultimately, I believe the nature of reality is blind as to weather you’re a good or evil. You could be a good person your whole life and then one day something tragic happens; you lose your job, your house
This counters everything that conservative Christians argue: that a society without God would be “hell on earth: rampant with immortality, full of evil, and teeming with depravity.” Neither of these extreme philosophies seem to be correct. A society that claims that there is no God, can, in fact be pleasant, as is evident with Sweden, Denmark and Scandinavia. However, a society without God cannot exist. This is because even if there is no external belief in God within a society, God still exists in that society. Camus once stated, “The silence of the universe has led me to conclude that the world is without meaning." But if this is true, this lack of meaning is simply a factor of Camus’s opinion, because if there is no God in society as Albert Camus and Zuckerman propose, there are merely opinions and people acting on those opinions, because an opinion without God has no weight as we do not know what is
Atheism is disbelief or lack of belief in the existence of God or gods, they reject religion as apart of not only a rejection of ignorance, but also a rejection of their religious family and association of religion itself, says Catherine L. and Caldwell-Harris who are published in the Department of Psychology for Boston University, Lesley College,University of Haifa, and Trinity College. This is a stark contrast to theism, which is the belief in god and is the case for many Americans. This demographic is about 83% of America’s population, according to the most recent census. About 16% of the population, or about 34,169,000 people are of an unaffiliated position, which would include Atheists, Agnostics, Humanists, and those of no religious stance. This number has only increased since 1990 which was about 14,331,000 in 1990 (United States), and will only continue to grow as more and more people come out as the nonaffiliated in the coming years (Caldwell-Harris).
The Divine Command Theory is an ethical theory that basically proposes that God is the sole distinguisher between what is right and what is wrong. The textbook describes that under this theory, God commands what is moral and forbids what is immoral. Critics of this theory state that if God is the sole decision maker of morality, immoral actions could be acceptable if He willed it, and thus, God’s authority would be subjective and arbitrary. However, proponents contend that God would not allow immoral actions because he is omnipotent and all good. To follow the Divine Command Theory, one must believe and trust that it is in God’s nature to do good, and He will not act against his nature. By believing in this, one would dispute the critics’ argument by proving that God his not making
Divine command ethics is a theory that states, that an action's moral content is equivalent to if it was commanded by God. It states that if God is all powerful, then he must also be all good. It then follows that if God is all good, everything He commands must be moral. It uses God as the only basis of determining if a particular action is moral. Moreover it states that an action cannot be moral if, God did not expressly command the action to be performed, this theory also does not allow an atheist to be able to perform a moral action even by mistake. Since the morality of the action depends entirely on if God would have commande...
God is good because the greatest good is understanding, and he must understand understanding in order to understand himself. Understanding is the greatest good, therefore the source of all understanding, God, must be
The idea of human evolution puts strong Christians and firm atheists at opposite grounds. Christians believe that God is the reason for mankind’s creation of changes, while atheists believe in the theory of evolution and gene pools. However, science does prove that evolution and genetics is a reason behind the changes throughout history of mankind, but there still lies reason to believe that God is the source for miracles and unexplainable diseases. As Vaughn wrote, “moral disagreements between cultures can arise not just because their basic moral principles clash, but because they have differing non-moral beliefs that put those principles in very different lights,”
If there is truly a God and the maker of this universe did create human beings, then in this perfect world that this perfect God made, I do not just see God’s wholly good but also the bad and ugly. God must not be omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent then and the definition of God is false and the existence of God
This is the understanding of a God which includes moral perfection; a God that simply created the universe and left is not whole enough for most theists (for if this were the real God religious morality would have an unsupportable foundation) (Blackburn, 2001: 169). This is the God of the Abrahamic religions. A God that is all knowing (omniscient) all powerful (omnipotent) and, as emphasized above, all caring or omnibenevolent (Blackburn, 2001: 169). Thus the Problem of Evil arises, as formalised below.
So God does exist because we have free will to choose our own actions, and we have moral codes that we follow determining what is evil and what is good. If there was no evil at all in the world, we would almost be like robots, fake human beings. You can say things would be perfect, and in the beginning they were intended to be perfect, that is until Eve was deceived by evil, and God took that away from us as punishment. With no evil in this world, how could one be free and have free will, to be able to do what they please to do, or eat what they want to eat, or see who they want to see? The whole point behind this is that God wants to find his true followers.
What is religion? Well according the Dictionary it is “a set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the universe, especially when considered as the creation of a super human agency or agencies, usually involving devotional and ritual observances, and often containing a moral code governing the conduct of human affairs.” But to a person who practices a religion it is much more than this definition, it is a way of life. Well then what about Atheists? What do they believe? Well many of them believe in this definition, in-fact most do. But do any believe that even though they don't believe in religion themselves, does it serve a bigger picture other than what the definition says. Yes! Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Karl Marx all have theories on why religion is more than just god’s and rituals.
mankind and that in his all-knowing mind knew we would fall into the hands of sin, so there is a truth in the fact that if evil did not exist then there would be no need for a perfect God to exist. … God could maintain a world without evil by continual divine intervention. An atheist will often fight for the idea that a perfect God should never have permitted evil to exist.
complete lack of it if the idea of God has not come into existence. To
God (it does not matter whether it exists in different forms or in different numbers because the basic concept of existence is same), is a source of moral strength, but it would seem ignorant to claim that those who do not have faith in God do not often live moral lives. There are, of course many atheists (believers of non-existence of God) who do not refute the principles of morality and are ethical because they realize their importance (either by having credence on any of the other ethical systems such as Kantian ethics, Social Contract theory and Utilitarianism). With the advent of modern liberalism, people have become rational (or at least they believe so). Although they condemn the acts of murder, child abuse, rape and ethnic cleansing but this does not make them more ethical than a believer of God because realization of good or bad is already progr...