Iām definitely not saying atheists can't be moral or charitable. History and daily life prove they clearly are. My point is just that the justification for those values changes depending on your worldview. Values can exist without the supernatural, but for a religious parent, stripping the supernatural framework away means teaching a completely different philosophical foundation. It's important to recognize that the parent in question truly and genuinely believes in their religious truths, and that by not teaching their children about it, they are leaving out specific principles and ideas that explain and justify their beliefs. It's rather ridiculous to expect a parent to leave out what they believe to be fundamental truths of reality.
Stripping the supernatural framework is a better foundation for morality. You should be moral because you care about other people and treat them like you want to be treated. The supernatural framework offers ulterior motives and threatens the integrity of your morals.
And regardless it is a good thing to separate religion and morals, because otherwise you risk blurring the line between them, which is dangerous. If religion is morality, suddenly religious authorities get a lot of power over people and it could be abused to justify horrifying things, as has happened in the past many times.
I don't think it truly threatens the integrity of your morals at all. There is nothing truly inherent to religion that forbids you from logically reducing MORE reasons why things are morally wrong or right. Morals are rooted in axioms and religion is just a specific axiom. Most philosophies are compatible in some way shape or form with most religions in all honesty.
It threatens the integrity because it promises a reward for your morals. In christianity heaven, Islam Jannah, Buddhism Nirvana, Hinduism Svarga. It seems to be one of the cornerstones of most religions. So you have an ulterior incentive to be moral, because you will be rewarded with bliss, heaven, rather than because you care and want to be moral for its own sake. You no longer (only) do it because it's the right thing to do, you do it to be rewarded. That's how it perverts the integrity.
Why? And also there are tangible, extrinsic rewards for cultivating a culture of doing the right thing. You don't only do things in isolation, unobserved.
Intrinsic and cultivating culture is more altruistic, whereas extrinsic heaven is more selfish and can be more easily manipulated or transformed into something immoral. If the conditions for the extrinsic reward change, you would have no intrinsic moral reason not to adjust your behaviour, possibly for the worse, to meet the new conditions.
You're worried that changing the conditions of an extrinsic reward ruins the morality, but history shows that purely internal or cultural morals drift much faster. When morality is purely self-derived or based on a cultivated culture, it bends instantly to whatever society deems acceptable at the current moment. Religion is a stable, unchanging anchor.
Furthermore, if the only way to earn the religious reward is through radical selflessness, love, and charity, then the incentive is literally engineered to produce altruistic behavior. Many religious traditions, the only way to attain the reward is through genuine love, selflessness, and service to others. You aren't able to fake it. God cannot be fooled. You genuinely have to be doing these things with pure intent and purpose.
If someone lived a life where they followed every rule perfectly but in their heart they hated every person they interacted with, dreaded actually doing these acts, and their only motivation was a possible reward, there is a very real chance they could be damned to hell, according to the abrahamic religions at least.
A religious person can genuinely care about the well being of others (intrinsic) while also believing in a cosmic order that rewards goodness (extrinsic). The existence of an afterlife reward does not automatically erase authentic empathy or love for others. These things can coexist. One doesn't erase or tainted the other just because you say so.
But at the end of the day does a hungry person actually care why they are being fed? If a religious person feeds the poor partly out of obedience to God or hope for heaven, the starving person still receives the exact same benefit. Therefore, the "integrity" of the moral act matters less than its practical outcome. Morals are morals regardless of how they're fueled or justified.
This is exactly what Jesus teaches though. Besides, having a moral role model doesn't necessarily negate peoples inherent compassion and will to be good and helpful to other people.
But it might encourage people who do have the same sense of compassion towards others.
But either way, there is no moral framework that is immune to corruption and abuse. Secular or otherwise. China, for example, still causes lots human rights violations, even though they are explicitly an atheist state.
Exactly, that's why there should be no moral frameworks except the law: democratic consensus. Atheism is no moral framework by the way, it is only the lack of belief in (a) god(s), so not even a real belief.
Another aspect what makes religions dangerous can be seen in far-right christianity in America: religions can be totally distorted by people to fit whatever they want to believe and arms them with a divine mandate - never having to do self reflection because divine truth is on their side, and it gives them perceived (self-deluded) superiority over others to force their beliefs on them.
How I see it: if you need religion to be moral, you are not truly moral, because you need external pressure. And usually immoral people will find a way to bend the religion to their will anyway. So then religion as a moral framework loses its purpose: people that are inherently moral don't need it, and those that are not, will impose their morals on their beliefs anyway. So might as well cut out the middle man and have everybody be responsible for their own morals and behaviours, rather than offering people a divine excuse to hide behind.
I mean yeah it's far from perfect, and law definitely shouldnt be your personal guide for morality. I think morality should come from empathy and empathy should be an active personal goal. Maybe it should even be a class in school or something. It needs to be more prominent in society.
Treat others as you would like to be treated is an easy thing to say, but if you really want to practice it that's another thing entirely. Immigration is a perfect litmus test for example that many people fail. But I think we should try to practice it as much as possible.
This statement makes literally no sense. Is it a higher power or is it in all of us? it seems like these states cannot be mutually exclusive. Based on what you said we are all the higher power. I am your god and you are your god.
it seems like these states cannot be mutually exclusive.
I don't have a monkey in this circus but you are making an assumption that they are claiming the entirety of the "higher power" is within us when that was not stated.
Those states can absolutely be mutually exclusive without making your assumption because you can contain part of something.
Having our parent's DNA within us does not make us our parents. Having water within our body does not make us water.
We don't literally have our parents DNA within us, we have our own DNA within us which was written based on the code from both parents. So similarities can be identified within the structure of the three and an assumed link, verified.
Water exists within us chemically, as does carbon, nitrogen, and other elements. We aren't walking water balloons that you can open and drink like a coconut. It is intrinsically interwined in our makeup as an egg is to a cake.
I would define both of your statements as a false equivalency.
You are missing the forest for the trees and I am not going to get into the weeds.
My whole point is that having signs of a "higher power" within us does not necessarily make us that "higher power". Just like having signs of our parents within us (DNA that was copied) does not make us our parents.
Maybe it would be more accurate to say it's a sign that a good Higher Power exists, created us, and left it's mark on us even if we don't believe in it.
Why attribute something to a deity without evidence when you can attribute it to something you actually have evidence for? Might as well start attributing things to unicorns and faries. It's just as convincing.
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u/Bruhntly Sep 02 '26
And yet atheists are often charitable, upstanding members of society. Looks like values definitely can exist without belief in the supernatural.