Only Atheists can be Truly Moral

There is much talk about whether or not Atheists can be moral people, for we don't have such things as the Bible to guide us, but think of this:

An Atheist and a Christian (or anyone of any religion-- i'll use 'Christian' here just to keep it simple) both donate the same amount to the same charity. I argue that the charitable action of the Atheist is more moral than that of the Christian, because the Atheist did so without any incentive or motivation.

The Christian has heaven to look forward to, so in truth, no good thing they do goes un-rewarded. The Atheist on the other hand, doesn't believe in an afterlife, and so they donate genuinely expecting nothing in return.

Does not the expectation of reimbursement negate the morality of an action?

yes! it does. i think athiests donates with a good intention in mind. so they are moral. they have a conscience.

heaven is a state of mind. eternal bliss. its not an an actually physical place (as i believe).

therefore, they are both correct.

but one must understand, when one does any work, one must do it, not for the fruites (aka, enterance into heaven, or a paycheck), but for the work itself, and they will be 'rewarded' in another way because they have commmited themselves to the work, instead of expecting the paycheck or heaven and gotten a bit sidetracked.


well that was off topic.
sigh. i have a sour (and sore) throat. yuck!

I agree that one *should* do good works from their heart, not expecting things in return, and I'm not saying that there aren't any Christians out there who are genuine givers, and would do so even without the thought of heaven, but the problem still remains.

If someone does something for 'the glory of god', and therefore with the intention of getting brownie points for heaven, the morality is taken away. I disagree that they are both 'correct' as you say.

hmm, perhaps. i mean
there are fundamentalist muslims who blow up buildings in the name and glory of God. perhaps in our eyes, we think of it immoral. but only God knows what TRUE morality is, that is something not decided by the conscience of man.

Ceridwen018 said:

There is much talk about whether or not Atheists can be moral people, for we don't have such things as the Bible to guide us, but think of this:

An Atheist and a Christian (or anyone of any religion-- i'll use 'Christian' here just to keep it simple) both donate the same amount to the same charity. I argue that the charitable action of the Atheist is more moral than that of the Christian, because the Atheist did so without any incentive or motivation.

The Christian has heaven to look forward to, so in truth, no good thing they do goes un-rewarded. The Atheist on the other hand, doesn't believe in an afterlife, and so they donate genuinely expecting nothing in return.

Does not the expectation of reimbursement negate the morality of an action?

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The mistake you make in your analysis is to assume the Christian has "earned" something through his Charity. He has not, as we are saved by grace, not by works. Our "works" are ordained by God in advance, and are merely evidence of God's grace at work. In fact, no one does any true good works on their own, as we are all corrupted by sin. If we do "good" things to make ourselves feel good, then our motive is sinful, and we must repent of our selfish motive. All true good works are of God. The atheist, corrupted by sin, obviously cannot do good works, either, unless and until he has been saved by grace.

See Ephesians 2:

1As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, 2in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. 3All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our sinful nature[1] and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature objects of wrath. 4But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions--it is by grace you have been saved. 6And God raised us up with Christ and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 7in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus. 8For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith--and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God-- 9not by works, so that no one can boast. 10For we are God's workmanship, created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do.

Our "works" are ordained by God in advance, and are merely evidence of God's grace at work. In fact, no one does any true good works on their own, as we are all corrupted by sin. If we do "good" things to make ourselves feel good, then our motive is sinful, and we must repent of our selfish motive. All true good works are of God. The atheist, corrupted by sin, obviously cannot do good works, either, unless and until he has been saved by grace.

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that may be what you believe. but personally i find it hard to believe highly intelligent good people will be considered 'sinful' just because they did notbelieve in God.

i believe no one is born evil or good.
only thier actions can be good or evil. this includes peoplewhodo or do not believe in God. cuz technically people can still do good works, and not believe in 'God' the way you do.


take this story for example. this princess does many good works. she is a devout hindu and prays and gives constantly and worships God. and shes happy. as life happens, her husband dies and she has no children. and she finds that she does not love God anymore. So she walks through the village to see the great sage. now heres a finely dressed princess walking through a crowd (which parts away to let her pass with a great distance) who are all dressed in shabby, regular clothing, with no jewlery.
the princess sees the sage seated, and he is covered in filth (exterior) but he is non plussed that an extravagant indian princess walked up to him. she asks him. "hello, i find that i do not love God anymore." he asks. "why?" and she explains how she had lead a good life, with good intetntions, and she worshipped God with her whole heart, but as life went on, she began to feel some depression (as put in medicat terms today).
the sage said:"so who do you love?"
immediatly her expression lightens up as shes says, "my neice, o my, hes the brightest little sunshine! hes soo fun, full of laughter."
and the sage says:"how can you not love God anymore?"
shes says: "HUH?"
he says:"Because of that love you showed towards your people and especially your niece it is like you have loved God."

el fin.

in this story, it talks about how all people indirectly and directly love God.
in hinduism, worshippers have freedom to worship God as the FAther, or Mother, or Sister, or Brother, or Son, or Daughter, or Friend, or even Lover. the ways people love God are so numerous. the princess loved God even though she thought she didnt!
Good works and a loving heart towards everyone is love for God, no matter how you think, or how they think.

so yes, atheists can be moral and love God *indirectly* even if they say NO.


make sense?

Gerani1248 said:

Our "works" are ordained by God in advance, and are merely evidence of God's grace at work. In fact, no one does any true good works on their own, as we are all corrupted by sin. If we do "good" things to make ourselves feel good, then our motive is sinful, and we must repent of our selfish motive. All true good works are of God. The atheist, corrupted by sin, obviously cannot do good works, either, unless and until he has been saved by grace.

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that may be what you believe. but personally i find it hard to believe highly intelligent good people will be considered 'sinful' just because they did notbelieve in God.

i believe no one is born evil or good.
only thier actions can be good or evil. this includes peoplewhodo or do not believe in God. cuz technically people can still do good works, and not believe in 'God' the way you do.


take this story for example. this princess does many good works. she is a devout hindu and prays and gives constantly and worships God. and shes happy. as life happens, her husband dies and she has no children. and she finds that she does not love God anymore. So she walks through the village to see the great sage. now heres a finely dressed princess walking through a crowd (which parts away to let her pass with a great distance) who are all dressed in shabby, regular clothing, with no jewlery.
the princess sees the sage seated, and he is covered in filth (exterior) but he is non plussed that an extravagant indian princess walked up to him. she asks him. "hello, i find that i do not love God anymore." he asks. "why?" and she explains how she had lead a good life, with good intetntions, and she worshipped God with her whole heart, but as life went on, she began to feel some depression (as put in medicat terms today).
the sage said:"so who do you love?"
immediatly her expression lightens up as shes says, "my neice, o my, hes the brightest little sunshine! hes soo fun, full of laughter."
and the sage says:"how can you not love God anymore?"
shes says: "HUH?"
he says:"Because of that love you showed towards your people and especially your niece it is like you have loved God."

el fin.

in this story, it talks about how all people indirectly and directly love God.
in hinduism, worshippers have freedom to worship God as the FAther, or Mother, or Sister, or Brother, or Son, or Daughter, or Friend, or even Lover. the ways people love God are so numerous. the princess loved God even though she thought she didnt!
Good works and a loving heart towards everyone is love for God, no matter how you think, or how they think.

so yes, atheists can be moral and love God *indirectly* even if they say NO.


make sense?

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This is not what I "believe", as what I believe has no sway on anyone. It is what the Word says, which is why I posted the long quote from Paul's letter to the Ephesians. Did you read it?

Finite beings living in an infinite universe are probably incapable of defining what is "good" and "just". Thankfully, we have an eternal, just and loving God who has sufficient perspective to do that for us.

i think God judges not on who believes in HIm or not as the Father or God, rather judge people on thier personality, values, deeds, etc. cuz as i said, what is God? if you bring it to that point almost everyoen believes in God indirctly or not.

quick,

"The mistake you make in your analysis is to assume the Christian has "earned" something through his Charity. He has not, as we are saved by grace, not by works."

Ah yes, but how do you achieve said grace? By favoring the lord? Alright, then it seems to me that by doing as god commanded and doing good works, you are acheiving grace am I right? Therefore, by the transitive property of the pearly gates, doing good works gets you into heaven.

If this is still a misconception, then I assure you it is a popular one.

"Our "works" are ordained by God in advance, and are merely evidence of God's grace at work."

Here, do you mean that you don't believe humans have free will? (neither do I, by the by, but I'm sure it'd for different reasons, hehe) If human's don't have control over their 'works', then how can god choose to award or not award grace, when he was the one who fashioned the manner of their lives in the first place? Are you saying you believe in predestination?

"In fact, no one does any true good works on their own, as we are all corrupted by sin."

Again, we see evidence of god punishing people for something that's his fault in the first place.

See here's the thing... ceridwen you said that atheists have no incentive or motivation when doing a good deed, unlike christians, who have the incentive of heaven. That's where I'd have to disagree. When someone does something good, do they not generally experience a feeling of satisfaction and happiness? Whether or not they believe in God. I know that personally, when I randomly volunteer to help someone, what's going thorugh my mind is not "this will get me into heaven!" but more along the lines of "This isn't a big deal, I can help them, they need help." I do not see how the incentives are on opposite ends here, but not too far away from each other in fact.

Okay, so the Atheist and the Christian both have a happy feeling to gain from volunteering, but the Christian has heaven as well (whether or not they think about it). That's where the scale is tipped.

Let's take a quick peek at the converted... those atheists who wre once Christian. Have their morals changed? When you think about it, theirmorals are based in the whole 'be good and you'll go to heaven' theory. So does the sudden lack of belief completely change their morality? Are they suddenly more moral?

The sudden lack of belief doesn't change how much volunteer work I do, or how I live my life. What it changes is my outlook. I no longer do it because I think it pleases god, but because I recognize it as beneficial to society.

Ceridwen018 said:

The sudden lack of belief doesn't change how much volunteer work I do, or how I live my life. What it changes is my outlook. I no longer do it because I think it pleases god, but because I recognize it as beneficial to society.

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So when you did volunteer work before, you didnt do it cause it helped other people, but solely cause god said you oughta help people? Is there a different feeling you get now from charity than before?

When I did charity work before, I didn't do it solely because I thought it would get me into heaven, but the idea was there, ya know? Now, the feeling has definately changed. I am much more self motivated.

The conventional definition of morality is a set of personal ethics. To be immoral, or to perform an immoral act, an individual must violate his moral code; in other words, an immoral person is someone who does things even though he knows they are "wrong." The inverse of this is also true. So, assuming that the Enron execs consider fraud to be "wrong", then their actions in purporting a fraud for the purpose of financial reward was immoral. Likewise, assuming that a Christian considers giving to charity to be "good", then his action of giving to charity is moral even though he expects a reward. As teapot_tall_and_yummy pointed out, atheists may also do "good" things with expectation of reward. Obviously expectation of reward does not preclude morality under its conventional definition. However someone who believes that all ethics are determined by God might be said not to have a PERSONAL set of ethics and therefore be an immoral person incapable of moral action.

However many theists (especially Christians) use "morals" to mean "ethics." Gerani1248 and quick seem to abide by this alternate definition. So for the remainder of this post, let us assume that:
morality is a set of ethical rules of conduct,
moral actions are the enactment of one or more of said rules in conjuction with requisite rules,
and a moral person is someone who conforms to all of said rules.

If one holds the belief that morality is defined by the divine, then atheists may or may not be moral people; it varies on an individual basis. If an atheist were to have and adhere to a set of defined morals identical to the divine morals, then that atheist would be a moral person. However the morality of some religions, including many forms of Christianity, make belief in the divine requisite for morality; these definitions of morality would preclude all atheists from being moral people.

Conversely, if one's definition of morality requires disbelief in the divine, this definition of morality would preclude theists from being moral people; only atheists could be moral people.Is there a logical reason to suggest such a definition of morality?

Ceridwen018 suggests that the expectation of reward may negate the morality of an action and that theists expect reward (am I interpreting correctly?). The latter assertion is false; Deists do not expect rewards for their "good deeds", however there are theists who do. Still, I can see no reason why these theists would be incapable of morality under this alternate definition.

you also have to realise that atheists get their morals from other world veiws i.e christianity

Atheist can be said to be more moral since they understand that the only rewards that they recieve for their charity are the warm and fuzzy feeling you get and some tax relief , Atheists can look back during dark moments and see all their good deeds as their own with out haveing being commanded to follow a set of rules one of whiich is love thy neighbor , christians can give and get that same fuzzy feeling and during their dark moments look back and say that it is all pre ordained and that they are doing the lords work but they have the commandments and doctrines that insist that they do these things so although the work is great it what they are deemd to do as christians , look at teh biblical stories for example christ walked all over rome during his life time , surely there were humdres if not thousands of people who gave him and his deisiples assistance during this journey , but who is the most recognised of these ? the good samaritan, a gentile who aided christ. think about it

I think a common mistake people have is equating good works with salvation. This is a trouble point in the Catholic church. The true act of doing good works is not done to gain salvation, but to glorify God. To be sure, God loved us so much He gave us the gift of His Son to fully pay the debt of our sin. In response to this love, Christian's are driven to love others not because they must, but because God first loved them. This love can be shown in a number of ways including good works. As far as morality in athiesm, it is very simple. God has given us a conscience and has given us natural law. Therefore, every person in this world has a basic knowledge of right and wrong, good and evil.

This depends on your form of Christianity. In some forms of Christianity, salvation is gained by accepting Jesus and by doing good works. In other forms of theism, such as Buddhism, Islam, and Judaism, salvation is gained almost exclusively through good works.