Morality: The Problems With Faith

[NeoGreen]

http://www.defenseofreason.com/morality-the-problems-with-faith/

Morality: The Problems With Faith

1) Misperception of reality
The less a person or group’s beliefs are based in evidence and reason, the more dangerous their ideas become because their responses will be further out of sync with the actual nature of each situation. This means their actions will be more useless, counter-productive, and misdirected; and therefore their ideas and reactions will be more and more fruitless or dig society’s problems deeper.

2) Faith REPLACES morality
It means that ultimately, suffering must and will be ignored whenever faith demands something else. This is because we retain faith in that specific moral code and methodology no matter what, and therefore it always takes precedence. This undermines the whole point of morality which is to reduce suffering. Faith therefore, is antithesis to morality.

3) Faith means moral beliefs are highly arbitrary
As humans we have two options to determine what our moral beliefs will be:

Either we follow some allegedly God-given rules, or determine moral beliefs ourselves using our own reason.

If we choose the first option – to follow some alleged God-given rules instead of using our own reason – then we have some problems. All moral beliefs become inherently arbitrary because we have no basis to determine which god or gods to follow or what their commands are. This means that human beings are still deciding what morality is, whether gods exist or not.

4) Comparing the results of rational and religious morality
Theists like famed apologist William Lane Craig make the claim that without belief in God, no act, however heinous, can be condemned by an atheist. But that claim dies with this one question: What makes bad things bad?

If an act has no qualities that make it bad other than the fact that God forbids it, then what is actually bad about those actions? Objectively, one can’t say anything is bad about them, and therefore it shouldn’t be condemned by God either! And conversely, if an act does have other qualities that make it bad, then God is irrelevant because the act is still bad due to those factors.

5) Faith makes everyone right and no one wrong
If blind faith is the standard for truth, then anything and everything is true and anything and everything is moral. This is because anyone who has faith has met the requirements to declare what is true or moral, and no one has any basis to deny the validity of their belief.

With faith, anything and everything is morally justified.

[MineralMan]

1. Hence the sometimes-seen meme from the 60s:

KILL A COMMIE FOR CHRIST!


Of course, that was used satirically in most cases. But it was very pertinent.

[trotsky]

2. "anyone who has faith has met the requirements to declare what is true or moral"

Right there in a nutshell is the problem with faith-based morality. It's a pity how few believers understand this.

Great article.

[TlalocW]

3. My problem with faith is

That there is no belief that can't be arrived at using faith. Belief in God, belief in Allah, belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster, etc. For every Christian that is 100% certain by his faith, there is a Muslim just as firm in his. Faith gets you nowhere.

TlalocW

[Duppers]

4. "Determine moral beliefs ourselves

...using our own reason."

This hold true even among most christians, yet only in the fact that they cherry-pick the Bible which is proof that even they choose, in significantly less ways of course.

Even so, reason and logic are weak with this group in most facets of their lives. They seek a big daddy to tell them how to think.

Many people would sooner die than think; In fact do so."
- Bertrand Russell

"This is true of so many, particularly on the right. They prefer to be led and to have others 'think- for them rather than to do the difficult work of critically thinking for themselves. This is why religious fundamentalism goes hand-in-hand with right-wing politics: people of that mindset want to be dictated to, because they are too cowardly to live fully realized lives."
- DUer volstork

They parrot unexamined dogma.

- d

[guillaumeb]

5. With patriotism, anything and everything is justified.

[NeoGreen]

6. Correct, just like faith...

...and I have to note, you apparently committed another "own goal" with this "three'fer":

1) Another Strawman fallacy by introducing Patriotism to be knocked down,

2) Another apparent attempt at "whataboutism",

3) And yet again another "own goal", since 'yes' I have criticized Patriotism often with the following quote:

'My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile.'
Patrick O'Brian
Master and Commander

which could easily be re-written as:

'My dear creature, I have done with all debate. But you know as well as I, faith is merely a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my religion, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my religion is always right, which is imbecile.'

With faith everything and anything can be justified.

At this rate you might actually achieve your apparent goal of silencing Atheists, since you're doing our work for us in your latest couple of posts: https://upload.democraticunderground.com/1218283339 .



And for the record:
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/123026104
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/100210139655#post2
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1218&pid=256901
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1218&pid=247200
https://upload.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1218&pid=237745