Well, at least that’s an argument. But it relies on a definition that most would find dubious: the idea that one can only be moral if one is perfect. Further, it relies on equivocation between “being moral” and “having morality”. Since the core of your argument is that definition and that equivocation, it’s a problem for you.
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But what about the other way around? What if the objective moral agent says that slavery is morally wrong, for instance, but all the human beings in the society around you said that slavery was morally good? What do we do?
Issue an Emancipation Proclamation like Lincoln did.
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I find the question of whether atheists can live moral lives to be kind of an odd one.
What do we mean by “moral life”? Is that living by the Golden Rule and helping old ladies cross the road? In this sense I’m sure that atheists are quite capable of leading moral lives. But in that sense I’m a little puzzled why Christianity, in particular, would be strictly associated with a higher level of morality. Jesus was “notorious” amongst the Jewish leaders for hanging out with the “sinners and tax collectors”. Martin Luther wrote that the Christian was simultaneously saint and sinner.
But if what we mean by “moral life” is sanctification (the process of being made holy, or setting aside of oneself in subservience to God) that is closely associated with what Jesus called the kingdom of God or kingdom of heaven, then I think atheists are probably by definition not included.
These two articulations of “moral life” are not completely separate. One would hope that as the Christian becomes “more like Christ”, they would also begin to “love God, love your neighbor as yourself”. But I think it’s probably a mistake to equate morality with sanctification.
TL;DR I know a quite a few nice atheists and lots of jerky Christians, but that doesn’t mean that Christians aren’t called to more Christ-like, and therefore moral, lives.
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Co-incidentally:
3 posts were split to a new topic: John and Dale
Well since you’re asking me as I am, and not a hypothetical me who is part of this set of everyone who believes slavery is right, obviously I don’t think slavery is good so in this instance my morality aligns with the objective moral agent and I think we should abolish slavery.
Yeah the problem is I’m not at all convinced God’s morality as depicted in any religion is actually about human well-being. They seem to be more about God’s well-being. I don’t see why I should think that’s something I should care about.
You may define God’s morality to be objectively good, but then I’m going to say that your definition of objectively good is not something I am at all persuaded I should care about. What is good about it? What is objectively good about God’s morality?
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Sure we can. If you are overwhelmingly much more a good person who do very good things, than you are a bad person who do only mildly bad things(maybe you once stole a piece of chewing gum in the supermarket), then I’d say on balance you are a good, not a bad person.
If you drink a glass of ½ pure water mixed with ½ impure water, then in reality you will consume a full glass of impure water.
Bad analogy. There are no good reasons for why we should think morality is like water in this way.
If you are a mix of good deeds and bad deeds, we cannot call you moral.
Sure we can. Some people are moral people, because they are people who do very morally good things and rarely do any immoral things. And when they do, they are only mildly immoral. And the morally good things they do usually aren’t somehow degraded or worsened because of the immoral thing they did.
You don’t have to be able to run at the speed of light to be fast, you don’t have to win the fields medal to be smart, and you don’t have to be perfect to be moral.
It depends on what you do and how often you do it. And even then it’s difficult to sort of sum up a person’s character in a single word. We are some times good people, and some times not so good, and some times some people are really bad. We are not any one thing consistently throughout our lives.
If you want to try to sum up a person’s character like that you probably need some sort of scale that goes from worse to better. A person who once kicked someone on their shins, and then spent the rest of their life doing charity, is a better person than a person who spends three out of seven days a week assaulting random strangers and stealing their possessions while never being selfless. Their actions are not equally bad and they don’t commit them with equal frequency. One is better than the other.
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Completely disagree, but I certainly won’t stop you from trying. It could only help us all…
Is it? It’s not really puzzling why it would be considered to have a higher level of morality by Christians, but is that what you mean?
Moral according to the definitions of your religion, or moral in the general sense? I saw that you noted that atheists (and presumably theists of other stripes) can’t be included in your religious definition of morality, which I fully understand. But I’m a little confused where that dividing line begins and ends for you.
You should not confuse well-being with happiness or joy. God placed his moral law in the heart of men so that by following it they can reach true happiness, not necessarily well being.
Are you serious ? Do you think that Jesus gave his life on the cross for God’s well-being?
So morality is about happiness. Whatever is good is good because it makes us happy. Okay, then what do we need God for?
I don’t believe that actually happened, no. And last I’ve heard from Christians, God is still alive and doing well. It’s also a really strange thing to have happen. Someone temporarily gets himself killed so that… what? He can give others an eternal life of happiness? Couldn’t he do that already without the torture and execution theatrics?
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I disagree. If an objective morality went against everything humans believed in then the objective morality is not worth following. As @Rumraket mentions, horrible things can happen if people ignore their own sense of morality and follow what they believe to be an objective morality. If morality comes down to following rules then we are no better than a robot or a dog.
I would be curious as to the difference you see between well-being and happiness/joy. Also, I don’t see why you would need to believe that God put moral laws into our hearts in order to be moral.
Still stuck on the Euthyphro dilemma, I see.
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That would mean people who belong to other religions are immoral. In turn, they would think you were immoral for not belonging to their religion. It doesn’t make sense to me that morality depends on which religion you belong to. More to the point, it more than demonstrates the subjective nature of morality since morality is being determined by one’s subjective choice of religion.
In my experience, you are judging Christ’s commandments using your own sense of morality and judging them to be moral. Atheists are using that same judgment, just without the religious tie-ins.
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Is there any sense where, assuming the hypothetical objective moral agent, you would potentially align your morality to some degree with the objective moral agent. I’m thinking something like, if you approached an issue where you didn’t have a clear moral stance before hand and you had a history of alignment with the objective moral agent (they seemed like a reliable source of moral authority), would you feel justified in aligning your moral sense to that of the objective moral agent?
In other words, would there ever be a time where, maybe because you are uncertain, you would be willing to adjust your moral sense to something outside of yourself?
I know this is super hypothetical and I’m not trying to trick/trap you, I’m just curious.
@John_Dalton, thanks for the good questions.
While I expect that a Christian won’t be a serial killer, I do expect that a serial killer can become a Christian and because I don’t think Christians are cookie-cutter robots I don’t think that they would turn into Mother Teresa in an instant. I would think that if they truly decided to follow Jesus, then things like murder would no longer be an option in their thinking. Christianity is a call to a higher level of moral behavior, and we expect the Holy Spirit to work within us, but there is no guarantee we’ll all achieve the same level of morality (this side of heaven, so to speak). So individually, I would hope to see a progressively higher moral life in the Christian. On the aggregate I’m not sure what to expect statistically between Christians and non-Christians. Perhaps Christianity appeals more to those who have farther to go.
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I think most of us are sophisticated enough to understand that Christians sin, and finding a Christian who sins in no way invalidates Christianity. Knowing what is moral and being moral are not the same thing.
What if God decides that murder is moral? What then? We don’t have to dig to far into the Old Testament to find instances where God ordered people to commit genocide, even asking people to kill children. Would that now be immoral, where it was moral before? Does God’s morality change through time? Do we say it isn’t murder if God orders it?
In my experience, on average we are all equally flawed. We just happen to take different paths towards improving ourselves.