Do you have any idea how many people derive their entire concept of morality from theism? Trust me when I say, you do not want to pull that piece from the Jenga tower.
You bring up good points. In today's times, the morals most religions provides to their followers I am grateful for but religion also has not so good moral times. Christianity was not always peaceful, and has killed many.
I wonder why most people can't land on good morals without religion telling them they need to do x or get consequence y.
I am not atheist because I do not know what is after, I don't know even if I can know. I do know that I do not have the answer and I do not have to know the answer. So maybe this is why I don't have to replace it with some other beliefs to fill the void. You are 100% correct most people need to center their life around something, and removal would break many unfortunately..
I approach it in terms of the following reasoning. I would like to hear a different take on it, or a different understanding.
What is morally good is so because God decrees it. Mortal people are incapable of determining absolutely what is "good" or "evil" because any given person could make a mistake defining or understanding any given principle it could be based on.
Only a hypothetical Supreme Being can fully and perfectly understand concepts such as justice, selflessness, because even honest, well-intentioned mortals disagree on such matters. Any given mortal or mortal-run entity, such as a government, may be wrong about any given matter. The harm of this can be mitigated through the concept of individual rights and bottom-up governance, but it is still based on a mortal understanding of "harm" and does not even perfectly solve the problem.
The second factor is consequence. Absent some existence and justice after death, the idea of something being morally good or evil loses a great deal of appeal. However one gauges evil, if evil exists, a lot of it is probably being committed and will remain unaddressed as it's perpetrators and victims both silently fade into obliteration. "Morality" then becomes something uniquely human, that nature and the universe itself have no reverence for.
This is not meant as evidence for God's existence, rather it is why I understand morality in an exclusively theological context.
Do you have any idea how many people derive their entire concept of morality from theism? Trust me when I say, you do not want to pull that piece from the Jenga tower.
You bring up good points. In today's times, the morals most religions provides to their followers I am grateful for but religion also has not so good moral times. Christianity was not always peaceful, and has killed many.
I wonder why most people can't land on good morals without religion telling them they need to do x or get consequence y.
I am not atheist because I do not know what is after, I don't know even if I can know. I do know that I do not have the answer and I do not have to know the answer. So maybe this is why I don't have to replace it with some other beliefs to fill the void. You are 100% correct most people need to center their life around something, and removal would break many unfortunately..
I approach it in terms of the following reasoning. I would like to hear a different take on it, or a different understanding.
What is morally good is so because God decrees it. Mortal people are incapable of determining absolutely what is "good" or "evil" because any given person could make a mistake defining or understanding any given principle it could be based on.
Only a hypothetical Supreme Being can fully and perfectly understand concepts such as justice, selflessness, because even honest, well-intentioned mortals disagree on such matters. Any given mortal or mortal-run entity, such as a government, may be wrong about any given matter. The harm of this can be mitigated through the concept of individual rights and bottom-up governance, but it is still based on a mortal understanding of "harm" and does not even perfectly solve the problem.
The second factor is consequence. Absent some existence and justice after death, the idea of something being morally good or evil loses a great deal of appeal. However one gauges evil, if evil exists, a lot of it is probably being committed and will remain unaddressed as it's perpetrators and victims both silently fade into obliteration. "Morality" then becomes something uniquely human, that nature and the universe itself have no reverence for.
This is not meant as evidence for God's existence, rather it is why I understand morality in an exclusively theological context.