God, an addiction

The mind infected with religious morality at such an early age is unable to develop the adult morality the rest of us seem to possess.
I too have frequently heard this question asked by believers - apparently they cannot conceive of the idea of behaving themselves from their own morality, since they don't have one.
It's almost as if they are jealous of us.

One thing is very different - we don't get forgiven for the evil we do, we have to live with it the rest of our lives. We get no reward after this life for behaving ourselves, and the punishment is today (or soon).

Really, that these people would think unbelievers are free to rape and pillage and steal and murder ... there is something wrong with these people.

It's easy to understand how the evolving hominid which became homo sapiens would find the need to sometimes cooperate with others of its species in the name of survival and at other times would act in total and ruthless selfishness toward the same end. Most species, from ants to antelopes, have occasion to act collectively for the survival of individuals and survival of the group. They are not acting "morally" when they work together to build a nest or to fend off predators. This is hardwired instinct. It helps to explain the complexity of human nature and it helps to explain why early religionists, with no comprehension of evolution, would come to portray humans as having an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other.

Fortunately for the world, science has successfully undermined the simpleminded religions - the Abrahamic cults, mainly Christianity and Islam.

Christianity and Islam have had a good 2000 year run preying on ignorance and the ignorant. This ended for Christianity in Europe with the development of science. It is now looking for the ignorant and uneducated in Africa and South America.

Islam - a strange combination of ignorance and intolerance - has been picking the lowest lying fruit for a 1000 years as apparent in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Now is the time for science, logic, and deeper & truer spirituality - not supremacist, intolerant cults like Christianity and Islam that proselytize and force their views on others. This results in conflict, violence, and suffering.

Now is the time for Vedanta & Hinduism. After 1000 years of anti-Hindu propaganda, many are not prepared to hear the wisdom or absorb the deep & complex monistic philosophy which is consistent with science. Now is a good time to start; at least some will benefit.

A new age of rational spirituality is again arriving, and Hinduism and Vedanta will lead the way again.

Herb could not have said it better. He is the Robert Green Ingersoll of the 21st Century! Harold Saferstein

I have witnessed unethical behavior from pious people and great acts of generosity and kindness from non-believers. What about people with psychoses who claim to be Christian?

Morality clearly is not dependent on one's religious beliefs.

Is it an innate characteristic to be good? Is being good a by-product of our genetic makeup? Or is being good determined by our upbringing? If those questions have any truth to them, then if there is no God, who determines what is good or bad? Of course, we have the basic understanding that somethings are considered bad, such as: stealing, killing, lying, etc. But what if we implement those previously named "crimes" in different a context; stealing to eat or feed children, killing in self-defense, or lying to prevent a tragedy. Are these "crimes" still bad? If they are not then who determines what is good or bad? We surely cannot believe we have the ability to accurately judge, without having all the pieces to the puzzle, or the intentions of the person that is trapped in the situation. I truly believe that there is a God that upholds the standard of good and bad. My faith in the "goodness of humanity" is not that strong.

If you believe that god is known through a series of dictates, you can argue the dictates are more or less good. But if you believe God is truth itself, then goodness is based on truth (though it may not be a simple truth). If goodness is based on truth, than the closer we Realize truth the Gooder we get. Now if you are an atheist that believes in truth, you can be gooder. If you are a theist that worships truth, you can be gooder. If you are a theist that worships a doctrine, you may or may not be gooder.

hariaum

To those who have a code of ethics based on an awareness that we are all "in this together", I say, "Thanks for being my brother or sister".

To those who take comfort in a god-belief, I would not deny you what makes your life more satisfying; and I only hope that you can have your God and still base your treatment of me on an understanding that we share the same hopes, fears and universe.

Hello Jason75,

I have a different take on God, though I am in agreement with your ideas on our "promptings". God for me is not the entity spoken of in the Bible, or any other Sacred Text or religious philosophy that espouses an individuated Presence.

God is Consciousness, or Awareness, of the highest order. It is the Life that we draw from, Life that is self-aware, conscious, Is. It is the Sea of Being that we are of, as we Are. Spirituality is a term that many use for it, as it's nature is not dense and physically based even as we inhabit a physically sourced body as vehicle in our "life".

It is us that are individuated from Union or Unity or Oneness, suffused in All. We "personalize". God is unpersonalized.

Therefore, the "promptings" that you say we experience and pay attention to or do not may be "God", but more appropriately they are "Us".

You and I are prompting ourselves to follow.... ourselves. Whereto, one may ask? For my two bits, (along with all the my above spouting), back to Union each soul aims.

Of course people can be "good," loving, caring and compassionate without having a belief in God. I have known many! What I would argue, however, is that the underlying promptings to do good are from God, whether we recognize it or not. When we choose to follow those promptings (urges, whatever you want to call them), we feel good, as the author points out. When we choose to ignore or rationalize away such promptings we feel bad. That's my two cents.

God bless!

I have had the privilege of getting to know a good many non-believers, including most members of my immediate family. It seems to me that all of the atheists that I know are more moral and trustworthy than those who profess to be very religious. One could easily compile a long list of christians, jews and muslims who were among the most evil people to have ever lived. I for one tend to avoid people who wear their religion on their sleeve. If someone hands me a business card that proclaims "A Christian Business", as if this assures he is honest, he can be sure that he won't get my business. Al Parish, anyone?

For those Christians who believe that we need the Bible for our morality, they need to read the Good Book a little more closely. I hope no one living today takes the lessons of the Bible as a basis for their moral decisions. If they do, then we're in serious trouble. The God of the Bible is certainly one of the most petty, vengeful, and blood-thirsty characters ever to have appeared in print.

"Without a god, where do you get your morality from?"

Same as everybody else, I got most of mine from my parents, and the rest from my friends and my interactions with the world around me. Why is this such a challenge for theists to understand?

The largest cluster of atheists in the world is in China — on the order of a billion of them. If this "where does your morality come from" challenge had the remotest shred of plausibility, China should be an absolute cesspool of murder, lust, hedonism, extortion, brutality, and other crimes. Instead, it's one of the most conformist societies on the planet.

Yeah, yeah, and I can see it coming from a mile away — "You've just proved that atheism leads to mindless robots!" That's the sort of "logic" you always get from people who can say, with a straight face, that "faith can move mountains", when it's never been observed to EVER move even so little as a grain of dust.

Great piece. Once Americans come to realize that God-belief has nothing to do with morality, hopefully more people will be willing to "come out" as being atheists, humanists, agnostic, etc. Secular Americans have been reluctant to identify as such, because society has an unfair bias against nonbelief.

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones. I am not afraid." -- Marcus Aurelius