Up@dawn 2.0

Tuesday, September 20, 2016

Atheistic Morality (H3)

There seemed to be some confusion about the difference between the nature of sin and our sense of morality. While all immoral acts are sins, not all sins are immoral acts. Morality is relative, and as I have previously stated before, varies from person to person. By definition, sin is "an immoral act considered to be a transgression against divine law," while morals are "concerned with the principles of right and wrong behavior and the goodness or badness of human character." The preoccupation with sin only pertains to religious people, who's sacred texts create their morality. Different cultures have different sets of morals based on their spirituality.  Without religion, they seem to have no sense as to where they get their morality from. However a rise in western atheism has created a conversation about morality and sin. Everyone is a sinner, but immoral acts are only considered sins by their varying religions. While I am personally religious and do have a set of morals derived from the sacred teachings that belong to it, I have many atheist friends who can still be considered people with good morals. Without religion, immoral acts can be derived from life experiences, family teachings, societal influences, philosophical teachings, and many other sources. While those influences may have been backed by religion, some immoral acts are not bad because a higher power said so, but because they would otherwise cause harm to another, and we as a society have deemed it bad.

8 comments:

  1. (H01) I really enjoyed this explanation because it makes perfect sense when coming from a nonreligious background.

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  2. Are all immoral acts indeed sins?
    I'm just curious because it would seem that plenty of acts deemed immoral by secular society are deemed non-sinful and moral by multiple religious texts.

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    1. (H3) Well then you have to define immoral which is a very personal call. I might say it is immoral to drink period, or even to look at a woman if she is not your spouse (I mean this literally), that in no way makes immorality though.

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    2. I would say no, not all immoral acts are sin because immorality is seperate from religion and sin.

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  3. (H3) It's funny you should mention that. There actually is some evidence that human beings are actually softwired with a baseline sense of write and wrong. So it is possible that many peoples and creeds hold the same ideas of write and wrong, making them universal you could say, because we are programed that way initially.

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    1. I don't disagree with you, i'm just more for the idea that religion is not the key to morality. And there are definitely (i'm talking more than just general morals, by the way) differences in morals between different religions, and you can still have good morals without being religious.

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    2. I agree completely. Morality and sin are two completely different things. Sin is not always immorality as immorality is not always sin. One could be immoral without sinning and one could be moral and sin. If both of these were put into the same definition, then religion would completely rule morality and therefore, law.

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    3. (H3) I agree. Religion, however, is a good example because the many religions hold in common certain idea of right and wrong, which point to the fact that morality isn't specifically attached to religion. If you look at all major religions, and really all I am aware of and understand the moral system of, they hold in common certain ideas about right and wrong. The fact that so much can be held in common across broad gulfs of space, time, circumstance, and culture, points to a reasoning for morality that goes beyond the religious and is in fact a quality of the human character.

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