Hello everyone. I'm an atheist, and i'm very interested in human morality. I've heard many of my Christian peers claim that without God there would be no morality. They claim there would be no right or wrong without God. I cannot help but disagree.
I would like to hear what you have to say about this topic and get the discussion going.
I would agree with your meaning, that one does not have to believe in in God to have moral understandings. However, there is a huge flaw in this entire primes, so much so that what we have here is a kind of false dilemma.
As is often the case, we need to refine some definition here, because we are dealing with what is moral or ethical, and I'm afraid the dilemma might very well be on the believers end more than the unbeliever.
Here is an easy way to understand the difference between morality and ethics. When we say morality, or morals, we are not really speaking of righteousness. (We being all of us) In other words, the word "moral" is not used to define Gods righteousness. It's only used to describe "what is". The word "ethics" deals with what should be.
The Christians Moral dilemma
When we speak of the morality of God, we are speaking about pure righteousness, a standard of morality unreachable, unknowable, and unattainable to it's highest level by any man, any human being.
In the purest sense, we can say that mans morality exist outside of God, as "relative" morality. We can say this is true for all man, Christian or not. Why is this true? It's true biblically in relation to God because NO man is righteous. This is clearly stated by Gods word. Therefore no man can say what is truly moral in the highest sense because he does not truly know, and is incapable of knowing in Gods fullness of righteousness. Therefore what is moral to any man is relative; relative to his understandings, within his own self.
What Christians are saying when we say we would not have our morality without God, is that we measure our morality by the standard of God, but even then we still don't measure up. What non-Christians, or non-believers recognize is that they have a sense of morality. So to a non-Christian/non-believer it seems clear that God does not provide them their sense of morality.
So what's the difference? The difference is in "relative ethics". Ethics being what should be. To the Christian, their morality is relative to God, and what is ethical to Gods righteousness. To the non-Christian their morality is relative to what is ethical to themselves, either individually or collectively.
However, Non-believers and believers may agree on what should be ethically moral (what should be moral) as well as what is moral. Murder might be a good example. A believer and a non believer could both serve on a jury in a murder trial and come to the same conclusion. However, our ethical standards, or what we might base our morally on are different.
If I believe in an all powerful God from whom all life, all goodness, all love, and everything that exist that is right and true emanates from, then my standard is God, prior to myself. If I don't believe in God, then I am relying on myself, or some combination of myself, and community only, for the standard of morality. BUT, both believers and nonbelievers have a moral dilemma. We've touched on the Christians moral dilemma, that being the unattainable righteousness on their own, now let's look at the
non-Christians moral dilemma.
The non-Christian, or non-believer in God (biblical God) solely sets his or her own standard for what is moral. This is to say there is no source beyond themselves for truth, just plain old common sense, or self will. To be fair, we see plenty of proclaimed believers doing the same thing.
It's important to note that theologically the bible describes Gods grace as the very thing that keeps the world in any sense of morality. "
There but the grace of God go I"; is a saying that means without Gods grace I am capable of any manner of evil. God is not making anyone evil, but withholds His grace to bring about His righteousness. We see this modeled in the relative morality of the nonbeliever to it's fullest, and the nonbeliever should agree since they are not under Gods grace by their own admission. In fact, I have a perfect example I would like to share with you to illustrate this very point.
These are the words of a non-believer that I am about to quote for you. He does not believe in God and believes that mankind is moral on his own volition. This is to say that mans morality is subject to man only. Who this man is will become clear as you read it, but he was asked by a reporter to explain his sense of morality in relation to his ethics.
"
Then I learned that all moral judgments are ‘value judgments,’ that all value judgments are subjective, and that none can be proved to be either ‘right’ or ‘wrong.’ I even read somewhere that the Chief Justice of the United States had written that the American Constitution expressed nothing more than collective value judgments. Believe it or not, I figured out for myself–what apparently the Chief Justice couldn’t figure out for himself–that if the rationality of one value judgment was zero, multiplying it by millions would not make it one whit more rational. Nor is there any ‘reason’ to obey the law for anyone, like myself, who has the boldness and daring–the strength of character–to throw off its shackles…I discovered that to become truly free, truly unfettered, I had to become truly uninhibited. And I quickly discovered that the greatest obstacle to my freedom, the greatest block and limitation to it, consists in the insupportable ‘value judgment’ that I was bound to respect the rights of others. I asked myself, who were these ‘others?’ Other human beings, with human rights? Why is it more wrong to kill a human animal than any other animal, a pig or a sheep or a steer? Is your life more than a hog’s life to a hog? Why should I be willing to sacrifice my pleasure more for the one than for the other? Surely, you would not, in this age of scientific enlightenment, declare that God or nature has marked some pleasures as ‘moral’ or ‘good’ and others as ‘immoral’ or ‘bad’? In any case, let me assure you, my dear young lady, that there is absolutely no comparison between the pleasure that I might take in eating ham and the pleasure I anticipate in raping and murdering you. That is the honest conclusion to which my education has led me–after the most conscientious examination of my spontaneous and uninhibited."
- Ted Bundy
http://saintcynic.blogspot.com/2009/02/serial-killerted-bundy-sums-up-moral.html
You may say you do not agree with Ted's ethics or his morality, but as a nonbeliever in God, and as a nonbeliever who has said you believe Morality exist outside of God, relative to each individual and not God ......you can not disagree with Ted Bundy because you have nothing larger to base Ted's moral ethics on. That is the moral dilemma of the atheist, but not the Christian.
