Does theism lead to immoral behaviour?

[Subduction Zone]

Honestly, the more time I spend on RF reading the posts of some Abrahamic theists here in the religious debate forums, the more I believe that atheists do have a rational morality compared to those who profess to believe in God. If I did not believe in some things that I consider to be supernatural for personal reasons, I'd most likely be an atheist by now. If they are trying to promote their religion in a positive manner, then I think that they are failing at it.

I have seen moral theists. We have a few here. But they are not Bible thumping evangelicists that claim that their version of God is right no matter what, even if it does make God a very wicked being.

 

[Audie]

That post is as daft as the topic!

Unlike what you do I based that comment
on observation. To you, that no doubt is
a weird concept.

 

[Audie]

I cannot say much about either situation. Give me ten years to think about it.

Spend a few of those years in China?

 

[Ella S.]

There's no such thing as "theism alone," though. Any real-world example of theism is going to be a belief in a specific god - or set of gods - with specific characteristics, back story, etc. More often than not, the theism will come as a package deal with a theistic organized religion.

Personally, I'm good with including any belief, behaviour, or whatnot that relies on acceptance of the existence of one or more gods as part of the scope of theism's impact.

There's also no such thing as "atheism" alone. There are LaVeyan Satanists, Buddhists, Humanists, Existentialists, and so on. As soon as we start accepting all theistic belief systems as "theism" we have to start accepting Stalinism, Machiavellianism, and Social Darwinism as "atheism," too.

I think that's an unnecessary and unproductive generalization to make.

 

[Kelly of the Phoenix]

since the secular latter, will give you more freedom to be immoral

Wow

 

[Heyo]

Atheists are more moral because we are not saddled with a false morality as most theists are. We tend to have a rational morality.

Now, that is an interesting thought to behold as it states a possible mechanism for why atheists could be more moral than theists.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

So sorry to hear that. The Christian message taught me to love myself and to love others. I think religious people teach people to hate themselves.

Christianity is a religion, those who are Christian are religious, so what you say doesn't make much sense.

 

[viole]

Inspired by this thread:

Does Atheism Lead to Immoral Behavior?

I'd suppose this depends on what you view as moral behavior but I thought I'd ask the question to see what people would say. It is easy to justify one's personal morals but I'd like you to consider the world at large. Is the world becoming more moral or less moral? And, does this have anything...

www.religiousforums.com

Sauce for the goose and all that.

My personal take: yes, theism often - though not always - leads to immoral behaviour.

I don’t think it does, in general. But religious belief can be used to justify immoral behavior.

but, of course, that assumes moral realism. Ergo, that the sentence “act X is evil”, can be objectively true, and eternally so. For instance, for most people today, burning heretics at the stake must look like pure evil, while it cannot be excluded that some of those perps a few hundred years ago, had the best interest of the victim’s soul in mind. So, from their POV they were moral.

so, who can say? Probably, the only evil is a virus of the mind that seems to erect firewall against logic around itself, in otherwise rational persons, and can therefore be considered like a form of pathology. Only after that extraction, it can be said if the patient was born evil or not, and what contribution the virus gave.

however, in my experience I did not see a strong correlation. The so-called evil Christians i met, were just “evil” people that used Christianity to justify their POV, or to enforce their power. That is due to the highly flexibility of belief systems like Christianity, which can be used to justify basically everything.

ciao

- viole

 

[Shadow Wolf]

The aversion of the Chinese government to allow
expansion of Christianity should properly be seen
in this light.

The Chinese government has an aversion towards a fart if they think it makes the party look bad. They are so overly zealous in censorship (because dictatorships like that must be) it's no wonder they have this aversion and created a forbidden fruit (I met someone who went their just to smuggle in Bibles and preach. He wasn't a good person).

 

[Shadow Wolf]

For example, a child in public schools in the USA, who proclaims to be religious, will have both teachers and indoctrinated students applying peer pressure or worse.

When I quit being Christian it just served to make high school even worse for me than it was because it gave people another reason to hate me. Someone I even thought was a friend said I was possessed by a demon.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

I speculate that people with hostile tendencies are
inspired & inflamed when religion feeds their worst
natures with certainty & evil prescriptions, eg, death
dealing fatwahs, religious war, hatred of the other,
the need to lord power over others.

That is true, but what is far more atrocious is how it teaches those who aren't to be that way, which is made easier with all the threats of hellfire and eternal damnation from a god who describes himself as jeous and angry.

 

[Revoltingest]

That is true, but what is far more atrocious is how it teaches those who aren't to be that way, which is made easier with all the threats of hellfire and eternal damnation from a god who describes himself as jeous and angry.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

with religious people who were partially seduced by Atheism and Liberalism, since the secular latter, will give you more freedom to be immoral.

How so Christian of you with the contemptuous, premature judgements that assume everyone just wants to sin, so much so it's a leading cause of Christians leaving the church.

Both Atheism and Liberalism, as witnessed on this and other religious discussion sites, work to undermine religion. I

Then why are there so many Liberals of various religion, including Christians?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Now, that is an interesting thought to behold as it states a possible mechanism for why atheists could be more moral than theists.

How do you observe rationality? What does it look like and so on for dimensions, color, form and what not?

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Calvin should meet the Freeman brothers. I don't see him and Huey hitting it off, but Calvin and Riley I could see destroying the neighborhood, lmao.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Why? Where does he say or imply that "the Almighty" does interfere with human affairs? (Which would make him a theist and forced to return his deist card.)
What he is doing is critiquing Christianity (and by extension, theism), just like atheists do - and probably for the same or similar reasons.

He wasn't criticising theism. He very much believed in an Almighty, a Grand Architect of sorts who created the Universe and set it all in motion. And when he specifically calls out atheism I wouldn't try to redefine things to put him, and those like him, into a catagory they themselves would have rejected. After all, many of the Founding Fathers were Free Masons amd Deists and the Free Masons don't allow atheist as a prerequisite of membership is belief in a deity.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

There's also no such thing as "atheism" alone. There are LaVeyan Satanists, Buddhists, Humanists, Existentialists, and so on. As soon as we start accepting all theistic belief systems as "theism" we have to start accepting Stalinism, Machiavellianism, and Social Darwinism as "atheism," too.

I think that's an unnecessary and unproductive generalization to make.

Would we need to do that? Why would we consider those things "atheism"?

I mean,

1) AFAICT, none of them even require atheism.

2) It seems absurd and chauvinistic to me to frame things done by people who aren't theists as "consequences of atheism."

On the second point: would you say that the water pollution associated with golf courses, for instance, is a consequence of not playing baseball? How about bear attacks in national parks while people are camping? Both of these things are "consequences" of not playing baseball in the sense that if someone played baseball instead of engaging in those hobbies, the impact of those other hobbies wouldn't have happened.

Framing things done by atheists as "consequences of atheism" suggests a bizarre and IMO unjustified focus on theism - or the lack thereof - as the defining characteristic of a person or a belief system.

 

[Heyo]

How do you observe rationality? What does it look like and so on for dimensions, color, form and what not?

That's the easy part. I worry more about a definition of "morality" that allows us to judge the religious without imposing our subjective definition on them.

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

That's the easy part. I worry more about a definition of "morality" that allows us to judge the religious without imposing our subjective definition on them.

I generally approach it from a viewpoint I got from Matt Dillahunty; I can't remember where he got it from (Dan Dennett, maybe?): morality concerns actions that affect the well-being of thinking agents. Actions that improve that well-being are moral and actions that diminish that well-being are immoral, all else being equal.

Some of the terms here aren't defined with absolute certainty, and that's okay. Dillahunty drew an analogy with nutrition: we can have reasonable debate within certain limits about whether one diet is healthier than another while also recognized that arsenic or a rock are not nutritious for humans.

 

[Heyo]

He wasn't criticising theism. He very much believed in an Almighty, a Grand Architect of sorts who created the Universe and set it all in motion. And when he specifically calls out atheism I wouldn't try to redefine things to put him, and those like him, into a catagory they themselves would have rejected. After all, many of the Founding Fathers were Free Masons amd Deists and the Free Masons don't allow atheist as a prerequisite of membership is belief in a deity.

I get that deists would feel more connected to theists than to atheists but when you start to rationally compare them, there is exactly one difference between a deist and an atheist (and a pretty inconsequential one) while there are hundreds of difference between a deist and a theist. Theism, or more precisely, the implementations of theism, called religions, bring a lot of baggage with them you have to believe (and often you have to believe opposing things at the same time). Deism rejects all of those beliefs but the one of a creator god.