Um, did you happen to read the previous discussion before making this post? I don't want to sound rude, but the topic focuses mainly on the arguments from evil many atheists make about God's supposedly immoral behavior and how they often seem to assume either that God as portrayed in the Bible is evil (which requires that morality exists with which we can judge him) or that God contradicts himself by declaring something to be evil and then doing it himself. The topic has never been about how concepts of morality could arise in the human mind without God putting them there.Butterfly wrote:Addressing the question of the title of this thread, “Morality without God?”, I find it quite easy to trace out the origins of morality without the need of a divine source.
Once consciousness arose in animals the next step was self-consciousness, the state of being aware of oneself...from the point that humans became aware they naturally connected the idea of right and wrong using themselves as the model for morality.
When one is aware of disliking something done to their own selves, one then projects that dislike onto others, hence the birth of the "Golden Rule" or "Morality". Self-consciousness is the state from which morality was born, that is what sets us apart from all the other animals...the ability to project our own feelings and desires onto another being and know that it is either right or wrong because of our own awareness.
Self-awareness also gave birth to the idea of purpose and beginnings. Naturally when one is aware of their own existence, the question emerges...where did I come from, and what is my purpose? Thus, the idea of a creator who formed us for a purpose naturally arose, since our origins are hidden from our understanding.
Sin, like morality is a concept, not an “objective fact”, which emerged out of the consciousness of man. Without the self-awareness of the human animal “sin”, like morality does not exist; it is not a law or principle upon which life is built. The concept of sin arose solely from the state of self-awareness of our own selves, and the idea that somehow the desires of our humanity are innately bad.
If morality exists as a “truth” in the universe in the same way as say the Pythagorean Theorem does then why has mans concept of what is moral continued to change with time, and consciousness level? Take for instance the biblical passage in Numbers 31, where Moses orders the Hebrew soldiers by command from God to kill all the male children and women who are not virgins, and then proceeds to give the remaining 32,000 virgins girls to the Hebrew soldiers to keep for themselves…by today’s moral standards killing women and children and taking people as slaves is totally unacceptable and immoral, yet the Hebrew’s in biblical times seemed to think God allowed such behavior.
Num.31:1-2 And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying, Avenge the children of Israel of the Midianites: afterward shalt thou be gathered unto thy people. Num. 31:18-19 Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves.
There are countless other examples in the Bible where acts that are considered immoral by today’s standards are commanded and condoned by its God. Morality appears to come solely from the emergence of self-awareness and the ability to reason, there is no need of a “Divine Source” as the author of morality.
On a somewhat related note, the examples of extermination of other nations such as those you've just pointed out have already been mentioned, as has the rather simple answer that when God, for instance, ordered the destruction of the inhabitants of Palestine, he was not doing evil.
I don't mean to nitpick, but your question "If morality exists as a “truth” in the universe in the same way as say the Pythagorean Theorem does then why has mans concept of what is moral continued to change with time, and consciousness level?" doesn't make sense to me. If objective morality exists, then human understanding of it has no bearing on whether it exists or not. Humanity has understood physics in different ways through the years, but that doesn't mean that the laws of physics themselves are inconsistent or don't hold outside the human mind.
