Some say morality without God is just borrowed rules with no foundation. Others say doing good for a heavenly reward isn't even real goodness. So where does being 'good' actually come from?
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Add your commentOf course you can. I don't help a stranger because a book told me to, I help them because I can imagine being them. Empathy predates every religion by about two million years.
my grandma prays every day and is the most judgmental person i know. my neighbor is a hardcore atheist and shovels everyones driveway in winter without being asked. tell me again whos closer to god
If your only reason for not stealing and killing is fear of hell, you're not a good person, you're a dangerous person on a leash. That should worry believers, not atheists.
reading 19 comments deep and realizing nobody changed their mind even slightly and we'll all do this exact debate again next week. and somehow i'll be here again too
I'm a believer and I'll happily say yes, you can be good without religion. What faith gives me isn't morality, it's meaning and a reason to keep going when being good costs me something. Different question.
The question assumes religion makes people good. Look at history. Some of the cruelest acts ever committed were done by deeply religious people who were 100% certain they were the good guys.
The kindest people I know never argue about this online. They're too busy actually being kind. Just an observation about who shows up in threads like this.
raised super religious, left it, became NICER honestly. when i stopped doing good for points and started doing it because people matter, it felt real for the first time
And what grounds it for you? 'A powerful being said so' is just might makes right with extra steps. If God commanded cruelty tomorrow would it become good? If no, then good exists independently of God anyway.
Easy to say empathy predates religion, but where do you think your sense of 'good' even came from culturally? You're drinking from a well your grandparents dug and pretending you found water yourself.
As someone who's been on both sides: the most peace I ever felt was the day I stopped needing a cosmic referee to decide that cruelty is wrong. I just... knew. And that knowing was enough.
And some of the most monstrous regimes of the last century were explicitly atheist. If we're throwing history grenades, that one lands too. Bad people use whatever banner is handy.
without an objective source, 'good' is just your opinion vs mine and might makes right. you can live a moral life as an atheist but you cant actually ground WHY its wrong to be evil. thats the real gap
athiest here, never stolen, never cheated, volunteer every month. wheres my crisis of meaning i was promised lol
correlation isnt causation and you know it. those societies also inherited centuries of religious moral scaffolding before they went secular. you cant kick away the ladder and act like you levitated up
Plenty of secular societies have lower crime, more charity, and happier people than deeply religious ones. If religion were required for goodness the data would look very different.
Goodness isn't about belief, it's about behaviour. I'll take a kind atheist over a cruel believer any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Anecdotes go both ways though. My grandma also prayed every day and was the kindest soul who ever lived. Your one neighbour doesn't disprove a billion people's source of compassion.
Now THAT is the most honest comment here. Morality and meaning are two different things and this whole debate keeps welding them together.
Euthyphro dilemma in the wild, beautiful. People have been arguing that exact point for 2,400 years and this comment section will not resolve it tonight, bless us all.
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