Do You Need Religion to Have Morals?
Alan Shlemon of Stand to Reason responds to an atheist’s challenge: “You don’t need religion to have morals. If you can’t determine right from wrong, then you lack empathy, not religion.”
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You’re right, morality is entirely subjective. Even slavery. Slavery is not objectively wrong, it’s just most people subjectively agree that it’s wrong, and that it’s implications contradict basic human rights, etc.
We subjectively believe it is wrong because we would not like it if it were to happen to us, so we elect governments that alight with OUR subjective beliefs on morality regardless of religion.
It’s ALL entirely subjective, make no mistake about that. Nothing about morality is objective as it is just a way for us to determine what WE believe is right and wrong, hence why there are different things considered rude or in appropriate in different parts of the world.
You do not need religion as a basics to form opinions on morality. That’s ridiculous. There were laws before Christianity, Judaism and Islam so OBJECTIVELY that is a false assertion.
That’s how you correctly use the term “objective”, by the way. When something is a matter of absolute fact, not what YOU think.
Its insane that you make the slavery argument.
Leviticus 25:44-46
As for your male and female slaves whom you may have: you may buy male and female slaves from among the nations that are around you. You may also buy from among the strangers who sojourn with you and their clans that are with you, who have been born in your land, and they may be your property. You may bequeath them to your sons after you to inherit as a possession forever. You may make slaves of them, but over your brothers the people of Israel you shall not rule, one over another ruthlessly.
Colossians 4:1
Masters, treat your bondservants justly and fairly, knowing that you also have a Master in heaven.
Exodus 21:1-36
“Now these are the rules that you shall set before them. When you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing. If he comes in single, he shall go out single; if he comes in married, then his wife shall go out with him. If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the wife and her children shall be her master's, and he shall go out alone. But if the slave plainly says, ‘I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free,’ …
Ephesians 6:5-8
Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart, rendering service with a good will as to the Lord and not to man, knowing that whatever good anyone does, this he will receive back from the Lord, whether he is a bondservant or is free.
Titus 2:9-10
Bondservants are to be submissive to their own masters in everything; they are to be well-pleasing, not argumentative, not pilfering, but showing all good faith, so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our Savior.
Opinion…opinion…opinion…
What is my moral foundation as a non believer? Well I base it off of wanting to promote well being for myself and others since certain behaviors have been shown to work and be constructive such as not lying or not murdering leading to a more stable community of people less likely to perish as well as the fact that I care about other people as I do with myself since they give me both material and emotional support. Its really that simple, you don't really need a god to determine what's right or wrong for you and others. Sure you could say that my initial empathy and pragmatic thinking was given to me at birth by a god like everyone else but all that is for now at least is an assertion that can't be proven or disproven either way, its worthless to talk about since nothing can come about it when you keep making your god unfalsifiable.
This has been reasonably answered many times.