Why are you a Christian?

[Darius871]

See you there!

[SlowwHand]

Oh, no. Not me. Nope. nuh uh.

[trev]

I am a Christian because belief in and acceptance of Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord does make dramatic changes for the better in the lives of people including my children, helping them to do the almost impossible, because things taught in the bible continually prove to be the truth when applied to my life and the life of my family. In difficult times of my life, the guidance I have received from the Holy Spirit has proved invaluable in pushing through the difficulties.

[onodera]

Originally posted by Darius871
See you there!

Sloww is already in Hell. Texas is Hell on Earth.

[Max Webster]

I'm religious when its convenient.

[Tiamat]

Originally posted by onodera

Sloww is already in Hell. Texas is Hell on Earth.

That would be heaven on Earth

[Elok]

A multitude of reasons, not all of which I understand myself. Primarily, though, I believe genuine morality is inexplicable without some kind of supernatural agency, and find that the Xian faith offers the best answers.

[Arrian]

Primarily, though, I believe genuine morality is inexplicable without some kind of supernatural agency

That one always puzzled me. It's quite common, I find, amongst the religious, to think that w/o God, there is no morality.

This seems odd to me, of course, because I think there is no God and yet it certainly appears that we humans (to the extent I'm right about the no God thing) have come up with morality (with quite a bit of variety, surely).

I guess it comes down to exactly what you mean by "genuine" morality. What is the difference between guenuine morality and... fake morality?

-Arrian

[SlowwHand]

onodera and Max, get in line behind Darius and Rufus.

[DirtyMartini]

Originally posted by Arrian


That one always puzzled me. It's quite common, I find, amongst the religious, to think that w/o God, there is no morality.

This seems odd to me, of course, because I think there is no God and yet it certainly appears that we humans (to the extent I'm right about the no God thing) have come up with morality (with quite a bit of variety, surely).

I guess it comes down to exactly what you mean by "genuine" morality. What is the difference between guenuine morality and... fake morality?

-Arrian

[Elok]

Originally posted by Arrian
That one always puzzled me. It's quite common, I find, amongst the religious, to think that w/o God, there is no morality.

This seems odd to me, of course, because I think there is no God and yet it certainly appears that we humans (to the extent I'm right about the no God thing) have come up with morality (with quite a bit of variety, surely).

I guess it comes down to exactly what you mean by "genuine" morality. What is the difference between guenuine morality and... fake morality?

-Arrian

By genuine I mean the rough form of morality embraced by most civilizations: altruistic/egalitarian and constantly imperative (i.e., you should be good to others even when you'd profit by being bad and know you won't be caught). You can justify Rand's Objectivism without a deity, for example (that's what it's there for), but most people consider Rand horribly unethical. While the tenets of morality vary considerably from culture to culture, mostly as questions of whose interests trump whose, in any culture a man who steals another man's property is considered a "bad person." He may be considered clever or even grudgingly admired, depending on circumstances, but everyone feels that as a rule you *should* not steal.

The question they all fail to answer is "why should I be good?" The only imperative I believe you can assume from the ground up is self-preservation/self-advancement. Without something to bind the destiny of human beings together so that in hurting your neighbor you hurt yourself, immorality remains profitable under at least some circumstances. That common factor does not necessarily have to be a God; look at Buddhism and its concept of the illusion of the self.

Purely naturalistic morality "works" to whatever extent because people, to their credit, have a conscience, and are willing to stretch logic to obey it. People's actions do not have to be 100% logical, they just have to be able to convince themselves that they are so in order to live with what they do. There's this bit in Mill's "Utilitarianism," for example, where he raises the objection of "why should people act for the collective good instead of their own individual interests," and then basically scoffs it away: "what kind of horrible churl would not follow such a noble philosophy," something like that. It doesn't at all match the rigorous logic he employs in the rest of the book.

[Lorizael]

Originally posted by Arrian
That one always puzzled me. It's quite common, I find, amongst the religious, to think that w/o God, there is no morality.

This seems odd to me, of course, because I think there is no God and yet it certainly appears that we humans (to the extent I'm right about the no God thing) have come up with morality (with quite a bit of variety, surely).

I guess it comes down to exactly what you mean by "genuine" morality. What is the difference between guenuine morality and... fake morality?

-Arrian

Speaking as someone who is not religious but agrees with Elok's point (kind of), I don't believe that there is no morality without a supernatural agency, only that there is no meaningful morality without some sort of entity beyond this universe.

Any sort of system for morality we humans can invent will always be incomplete and will always be, essentially, a guess. Without objective knowledge of the nature of the universe, we cannot know what is truly universally good or bad. We can come up with things that are good or bad for humans, but we have no way of knowing if true morality has anything at all to do with humans anyways. Human-invented morality can be right only by accident.

Anything beyond the universe - a supernatural entity, a God - has the objective perspective necessary to either see what is actually moral and immoral, or the authority to define morality for those things which are subject to the supernatural (the natural universe).

[DirtyMartini]

Elok--

I'd say the something that "binds the destiny of human beings together" is the fact that we're all humans.

We are all in this life on this earth together and we're all essentially the same. I don't think that humans must believe in a supernatural force/being in order to make that leap. Sure, it's not easy to think like that, and I sure don't succeed as well as I could, but I don't think dividing up into Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, atheist etc. makes it any easier. If anything, I'd say it makes it harder: Many Muslims believe all the Christians and Jews are damned. Many evangelicals believe all Catholics are damned. etc. etc. etc. I'd say that makes the "binding of human being together" a damn sight harder than in needs to be.

Sorry Jon -- I know this wasn't supposed to be a debate thread.

Edit: clarification

[MOBIUS]

Why are you a Christian?

It's called 'accident of birth' in the overwhelmingly vast majority of cases...

Your parents are Christian, therefore you are too.

If your parents were Muslim, you would be a Muslim.

Yet another reason why religion is an absurd notion in my opinion, because by its very definition there is no free will involved at all for the vast majority of religious adherents...

[Blake]

Originally posted by Elok
The question they all fail to answer is "why should I be good?" The only imperative I believe you can assume from the ground up is self-preservation/self-advancement. Without something to bind the destiny of human beings together so that in hurting your neighbor you hurt yourself, immorality remains profitable under at least some circumstances. That common factor does not necessarily have to be a God; look at Buddhism and its concept of the illusion of the self.

Quite. Damn, once I saw the illusion of the self it no longer seemed so reasonable for me to believe that I could go around judging and persecuting beings. Heck, now I don't even kill blood sucking insects, I don't take offense at another being needing some of my blood to live, there's no need to take offense at such a thing! (and if I were to take offense, I'd have to take much offense at my sustenance habits, I result in unimaginably more death and harm than a blood sucking insect).
It brings with it, a tremendous sense of solidarity. We're all down here together and all beings suffer, lets not make conflict over trivial things.