Can Morality Exist if There is No God?

On Thu, 17 Mar 2005 07:45:38 -0800 (PST),

Anonymous wrote:
>So can morality exist even if there is no god? I say that it
> can, and is "real", and serves us all as a society... Morality is a social
> contract of sorts, and, in total, does things like keep your kids relatively
> safe...

Depends on what you mean by "morality." The social contract you speak of sounds more like ethics than morality, but it's a semantic distinction, I suppose.

If you begin from a naturalistic perspective--and have faith that there is no supernatural reality--then morality is a human/societal/natural construct, no more or less valid than the rules by which bees and birds and slime molds and boulders act. This gets us back to the basic problem; if our existence/thoughts/etc. are the result of only-nature then they are ultimately based on the random motions of atoms and cannot be said to be either good or bad. This holds true if you are speaking of an individual or a society, so one cannot say that Hitler or Stalin or Gandhi or Mother Teresa did things that were good or bad. "Might makes right" rules the day (although "right" is meaningless).

The only way there can be a true "good" or "bad" is if those things are defined from outside the natural system. It needs a supernatural mover, although not necessarily the Christian God.
If God is real, then what he does, as the Creator, is--by definition--Good. His Will defines what is good. That's why the Christian definition of sin is so broad. A sin is not just something that goes against the Ten Commandments, it's anything--thought, word, or deed--that goes against God's will.