If There is No God, is Murder Wrong? (a Reply to Dennis Prager)

If we are just going to assert things are self-evident, then it is self-evident that god doesn't exist.

 

Ah, but to what sort of self is that evident?

 

Yet entire cultures have not believed it to be wrong. In fact, the mass murder of sacrificial victims to the gods to appease them, as the Aztecs did were completely acceptable.

So, a culture can absolutely believe murder is not wrong at all. Where do we get the idea that murder is wrong? From the god of the Christians who claimed it to be wrong and a sin. An inconvenient truth. But you do not have to like it. LOL.

Religion, like it or not, has been a primary conduit for acceptable behavior, and morality. Generally speaking when individuals have thrown out the idea of a god, many times the morality of such a religion goes with it. LOL. At least some of the morality. Generally such things as fornication, adultery, you know, those behaviors which are driven by intense pleasure and gratification. LOL.

Yet if you do thought experiment, and you wanted to start a new society from scratch, and you thought it out really well, using logic, rationality and reason, you would take into account human nature itself. And so in order to keep conflict at a minimum, you would pass laws against murder, for otherwise you get the Hatfield and McCoys paradigm. You would also pass laws against adultery, for you get men killing one another from jealousness, in regards to their sexual mate, and of course you would pass laws against stealing what another man worked for. For all of these actions would create unnecessary conflict, and conflict within a group is bad news and leads to disorder and chaos. We prefer order over disorder, and only the stupid would prefer disorder and an unhealthy society. So, one can see why man came up with the idea of sin, punishable after death by the gods. I guess a last resort in trying to make selfish human beings behave themselves so as to keep the society intact and healthy. Which would have been very important in earlier times since numbers was a tool for the survival of the individual. In the case of the Aztecs, they could murder particular people, like the other tribe, but could not murder one another. They really seemed to enjoy cutting the hearts out of their victims. Of course their gods demanded it. And this shows how humans can be conditioned to be what we consider to be barbarians. Or conditioned to be good people, as some religions do today. Islam is the exception. But what would one expect from islam given the nature of its founder. This religion arose from the death of others, and this is still very much a part of this most satanic religion. But remember, the Jews were expecting a savior which would be a warrior, and lead the jews against their enemies. Christ was such a disappointment. LOL. But later on, the men who formed Christianity, organized it, made up for it. They killed for a couple thousand years in his name. They ignored what he taught of course, in order to do that. So really, what became Christianity was actually anti Christ. Ironic.

 

Now you have my interest. Explain please.

 

We let tens of thousands of Americans die on highways every year, what's your point?

They can believe it is not wrong in certain situations, yes. And Christianity is not exempt from this by any means.

1. You have to first prove God exists
2. You then have to prove why non-Christian groups still believe murder is wrong
3. You have to prove that there are no records predating Judaism saying that murder is wrong
4. You have to prove why all the people killed in the name of God were not, in fact, murdered.

I would argue that religion primarily came as a way to reinforce currently existing social norms.

Not entirely no. For example, a person may no longer believe homosexuality is wrong, but they may still believe stealing is wrong.

Yeah, and? I think you're trying to get an emotional reaction from me here. Something like "Oh no, how could anyone believe those things." But since you're just presenting them as bad, without any other backing, I'm only left to question "Why are those things so bad?" and "Why is God a necessity to believe those things are wrong?"

What are you going on about at this point? Like yeah, religions can be used to enforce morality in early societies. But Western culture has evolved to the point where we can construct logical and rational reasons outside of God to understand why these things are wrong.

You've pretty much refuted your entire point with this one paragraph.

 

I have objectively concluded that murder is not always an action that results in the best outcome.

 

If morality is subjective, then it takes nothing more than belief, on the part of one or many, to render any atrocity a moral act or vice versa.

On the one hand, I have no idea what connection there is between this and your claim that "subjective morality can be arrived at objectively." On the other, I wonder what makes you think patently moral acts always result in "the best outcome".

In other news, we also "let" thousands of Americans die of incurable diseases every year.

 

So you can't control yourself and need a god to make you be a tolerable person?

 

Don't forget god screwed up mankind the 1st time, even though he knew it before he created it.
And sent a flood to murder the entire planet, but for things on an arc.

 

Hopefully the voices one has in their heads.

 

Yeah, but that doesn't really yield any benefit, whereas highways do.

 

The point, obviously, was that comparing the highway death toll to institutionalized human sacrificed is retarded.

 

not really.

we're killing people for a benefit

 

Not sure why anyone would get their moral code from a Book that allows or at least allowed for conditional rape. Morality is easy for me... don't go around harming others... it ain't rocket science.

 

Not quite. He just hasn't really thought about it by himself, alone and independent from his religious indoctrination, to comment rationally about it. Put more simply, he's just spouting someone else's dogma.

 

Note how these Christian theists pretend that their religion has a patent, trademark, and copyright on mortality and ethical behavior. I suspect it makes them feel special.

 

Copyright on mortality? Oh, morality. I think they are just proud Christianity served as a conduit for morality, once it was no longer the religion of an empire. So how many atheistic organizations that seek to help the poor do you know? How many atheists have served prisoners in prisons? How many have had soup kitchens for the poor? Seems to me the militant atheists spend their time hollering about how morality has nothing to do with religion. Well, if we depended upon the haters of Christianity to do service work for the poor, more of the poor would starve. I will put the numbers of Christians who care for the poor up against the numbers of atheists any day of the week. You guys love to talk the talk, but seem to have big problems with walking the walk. You tear down, and offer nothing but hot air in return. Morality, especially caring for the poor, the sick, is not a big thing with atheists, and until it is, we can do without more hypocrisy. LOL

 

Well you might have done some research before spewing such emotional tripe.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friend...-atheists-a-new-study-puts-that-myth-to-rest/

http://thaumaturgical.com/a-big-list-of-atheist-charities/#

As long as you are on the subject of prison I have seen christian and other faith based people go into prison and work with the incarcerated. And not one speck of empirical evidence shows them doing a damned bit of good to lower recidivism. Although it could be argued that they are violating the first amendment be being allowed in to spread their ministries.

On the other hand prisons are filled with inmates who profess to have faith most of whom are christian. They did not convert or FIND religion in orison they just found time on their hands to more deeply explore and read about beliefs they came to prison with.

However try finding some atheist inmates. You might find a very few but they are statistically almost non existent in prison.

In terms of NUMBER of christians who do charitable work vs atheists who do the same of course there would be more christians simply because christians are a much larger population to begin with. But in terms of percentages you would probably be embarrassed by your pompous statements.

 

The rock on which the teachings of Jesus was based is the "Golden rule" - "Do unto others as you would have done to you - Treat others as you would be treated"

Jesus was not the first to use this rule. Hammurabi's law code had this rule. Buddha, Confucius and so on. The Rule of Law and the main principle on which this nation was founded is based on this rule.

If you like I can go through how this rule is derived. For now - "If you do not others to murder your, you then have a moral obligation not to murder others"

This rule comes naturally out of the "Social Contract". Construct by which "we the people" give authority/power to Gov't.

We do not need God to tell us that murder is wrong in order to figure out that murder is morally reprehensible.

 

Yeah, really.

No, we're not.

 

So you're saying that tens of thousands of people don't die every year due to highway accidents?

 

But, you know what a human being is...

God's Ultimate Creation​

Right?

 

Did you miss the posts about the Aztecs whose god(s) led them to believe that human sacrifice was good?

Do you choose to objectively ignore the writing of Martin Luther regarding the Jews?

 

I find it a bit scary that some people can't conceive of morality without the Christian god. The morality portrayed by the bible is interpreted in so many different ways that it loses a lot of its meaning. I see a lot of people both Christian and otherwise who feel that once they feel wronged it's justifiable to treat others like they are not human. Doctrines of hellfire and exclusion from the kingdom of heaven can justify that.

Morality is at its best value if it is sourced from a sense of empathy inculcated from birth by caring parents and community.

 

If people didn't die of incurable diseases how would they die?