God brings morals? the r33l morals??? I beg to differ. It doesn't require GOD for things to mean something, to have morals, or to live a righteous life, or even...to follow the teachings of Christ (or whoever, pick your mangod) as he is described.

The most degenerate, conniving, sniveling, backstabbing, intemperate people I've ever had contact with, were deep in the church. And the most boring, and the horniest, and the drunkest, you get the idea. The church is the r3al str33t. It's a cloak for some pretty disturbed indeviduals, hiding amongst the people of genuine faith, or at least honest curiosity or searching.

My monk friends up on Mission Hill who live their beliefs don't preach at me, they lead by example, and I'm touched by their humility and warmth. For those who like to "share" the word by pumping mini mcbiblical lessons, I'd like to see no more pamphlets as long as I live, written by idiots, for idiots. They describe the race to the afterlife like it's fisher price my first eternal contract.

So people, does it require GOD for one to have morals???

GOD is for scaring the bejesus out of you so that you act nice, otherwise he will fry your ass once you die.

fear is a hell of a motivator.

p.s. i always loved that 'original sin' thing. what a way to start...

God (and faith therein) is the cement that holds together the rituals, and strange customs, of a religion. Without God, the rituals are pointless, and the strange customs (ie no buttsex) fall by the wayside.

What's the god that holds pointless kata rituals together?

Here's something to think about. If one claims that morality is contingent to god, then we can ask "why did god decide on the particular moral code that he did"? For example, why did god decree that rape is wrong? Is it simply wrong because he said it is? That would make morality a mere arbitrary set of commands. If god didn't decree that rape was wrong, would it then be ok?

If god decided to declare rape was wrong, becuase it is wrong by some sort of moral standard (such as inflicting harm) then that means God is has no power over morality and invoking his existence in moral argument is moot. If there is a reason for god choosing this set of moral codes over another one, that means that the moral standard exists independently of god.

Of course, there are several further issues with the moral argument for god, such as the lack of a universally accepted moral system, the lack of morality displayed by the Judaic/Christian god in the stories, and the fact that morality can be explained without recourse to divine arbiters.

YEP! those church girls sure are fucking horny... good times.

you see there's this thing called humanism thats been blowing around....

God represents a final end. Many people believe that without this finality, trying to create a system of morality (as opposed to ethics or aesthetics) is useless since there is no final justification.

Modern law attempts to cirumvent this through theories of mutuallly guarenteed liberties and freedoms. I am free because you let me be free and You respect me because I in turn respect you by giving you your freedom.

The problem with this as we have seen, is that in many societies such reciprocation is not present.

We are moving more towards a big brother state where the State replaces God as the finality of justification and the origin of morals. We are substitubint one evil for another.

If you read the Bible, God does not try to set down morals. He gives practical advice for living in day to day situations. Over time it is the people who take those practical applications and turns them into moral doctrines. The same is true, perhaps even moreso fo the 'Letter of Paul'. God and Morality help free people from having to critically think in tenuous situations.

The year after I graduated high school I dated a Catholic High School senior.
We smoked pot and f*cked like rabbits. She was the horniest little girl I was ever with.
I am getting turned on thinking about her.

Anyways, back to the point.

The OP has valid points. The Catholic Church and the Boy Scouts (a Christian organization) have more child molesters than any place. AND, they cover it up!

God IS NOT a prerequisite to morality.

PS

How do you get a nun pregnant?

Dress her up like an alter boy!

If you read the Bible, God does not try to set down morals. He gives practical advice for living in day to day situations.

Uhm, I disagree.

http://www.morallaw.org/images/Dixie%20County%20Ten%20Commandments%20monument.jpg

Handing down morals is exactly what God did according to the Bible.

The problem is only 4 out of 10 are actually useful.

GOD does bring morals, at least every time He visits me. He brings them in delightfully woven baskets he made Himself.
I don't, however, always partake of them.



To be less nonsensical, I think the OP confused himself. In reference to the title, sure, God can bring morals. So can your plate of spaghetti, before it reveals itself as a monster and starts flying about.
Morals don't require these specific things, you can have morals without God, or any other deity, but they do have to come from somewhere. You aren't born with them. Your moral outlook is going to be distated by your parents, your friends, the TV, your pets, just your life experience in general.
And of course, you aren't instantly going to have morals just because you attend a regular ritual in some building, or you saw the Virgin Mary in your toast, or you actually have good parents. You won't even have the exact same morals as the person next to you, even if they're your sibling, raised the same way you were.

Also, to use some examples of yours, just because someone is horny, boring(wtf? why did you even bring that up?makes no sense at all), or a drunk, doesn't mean they're lacking in morals, though your own moral outlook is clearly going to have an influence on your opinion there.

Not sure I finished the nonsensical part yet.

Indy,
Those rules were meant to form a cohesive society (assuming God did speak to Moses) and reflect an ethics more than anything. These commandments must also be understood in the overall laws of the early jews which is far more complicated than the 10 commandments. Do you think these norms did not exist prior to the ten commandments? The setting in stone of these norms is exactly what I mean by turning an ethics into a morality. They only have force if you agree that God is behind them.

For those of you who are interested in a really good book on this subject and more, check out: The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

The history of the 20th century would suggest that God is in fact necessary for morality on the grand scale. Not because he exists, or our religious morality is right, but because the substitutes we invent for the same task tend to do a worse job.

I don't actually believe that, but sociology, anthropology, and psychology all have their own ways of formulating the fact that humans as individuals need meaning and human societies need their ritual glue to hold them together. So is our sort of positivist/humanist way of doing things going to work in the long term. Possibly, but everything from the rise of fundamentalism to the general acceptance of "superstition" (horoscopes, etc) says that the fight is far from over.

How do you get a nun pregnant?



**** her?

There are about 4 posts in this thread so far that can count for "critical/logical thinking". This thread itself is a counter-example against the argument that this forum and sociocide-minded topics will promote critical and logical thinking in bd.net. Sociocide fucking pleeeze.

Handing down morals is exactly what God did according to the Bible.

The problem is only 4 out of 10 are actually useful.
More than ten; see here (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_Ten_Commandments). How many people are aware of my favourite commandment, I wonder? No, not "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his ass, nor..." (which shows the biblical view of the woman as but one piece of the man's property), but "Thou shalt not seethe a kid in its mother's milk". For some reason, Christians never seem to tout that one as an example of the LORD's great moral authority.

In any case, I cannot but agree with Dawkins's description of the god of the Bible as "arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it, a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." Consider things like the Book of Joshua, with genocide, mass infanticide, etc., condoned and/or commanded by that same celestial bully.

In fact, given the above, it seems that either the Christian god was previously evil and repented (does God repent? (http://skepticsannotatedbible.com/contra/repent.html)), or they must subscribe to the notion that whatever God says is good, no matter what it is -- id est, there are no universal morals, merely the caprice of their deity, and by humanist standards he's not very nice at all, at all.