kinda obsolete those religious morals wouldnt you think?
now try
www.atheists.org
http://www.atheists.org/atheism/About_Atheism
The answer is yes. Morality is inborn to human animals. Like many other species, we have a natural aversion to killing each other without cause or provocation.
Furthermore, if "god" exists...
(1) Then "god" created everything that exists, including extreme evil. This "god" does nothing to intervene with that evil. Thus, this "god" is evil.
(2) This "god' requires worship. This "god" must be vain and insecure. Thus this "god" is not worthy of worship.
(3) This "god" created humans as his/her supposedly "chosen" race. This "god" then allows humans to suffer. Thus this "god" is petty and cruel.
(4) This "god" created everything, yet "everything" includes this "god." You cannot create yourself. Thus, this "god" cannot exist.
OK, so I've been seeing a lot of arguments about the morality of God. Usually posted by atheists, usually they fall into the two categories above. I think it's worth explaining.
1) God has done some bad things (ordering killings, etc) therefore is not good
2) Evil Exists, therefore God is evil, since God created everything.
So, the answers:
1) God's morality is not ours, and We cannot Judge God.
Start with the first of these arguments. Humans cannot point at everything God does and say "God did it therefore it's acceptable." The reason? Because God and humans have different functions. Namely, if I went out, bought a gun, and shot someone trying to rob a store, I'd be a vigilante, but the police do it all the time. Or if I went to death row and killed everyone there, I'd be a murderer, because only a court-sanctioned executioner can do that. I could continue, but I think the point is made.
The second point should be familiar to anyone who has actually read the bible. And by actually read, I mean read looking for answers, as opposed to trying to find holes. Both the book of Job and Ephesians 9 explain this theory quite well, but I'll restate here: We cannot Judge God, namely because we are not him.
Consider the following scenario: you have a dog, who, you've just found to have cancer. The kind and stage you don't recover from. As that dog is dying painfully, often it's better to consider giving it a shot so it won't suffer. Now, the dog, probably, doesn't know the cause of it's suffering, but it does know that you've stuck a needle in it and shortly afterwards everything's starting to go dark. I think it's totally reasonable for the dog, who has been my friend and companion for its whole life, to feel angry at me. But was I wrong for giving the shot, I who knew that the dog was doomed?
You see, God, if he exists, is omnicient. If people were more logical than they are, they'd realize that they won't always understand all his actions. The same way an amateur chess player will not always understand why world champion Garry Kasparov makes the moves he does, or my Dog doesn't understand why I'm killing her.
Hell, one could make the same argument about cancer cells who think that the doctor in charge of operation and chemo is the very devil himself
2) Unfortunately, the problem with evil is that we exist.
I fully believe that, if God were to try to abolish evil, he would begin by annhiliating the entire human race. If I point a gun at someone else, and pull the trigger, fully knowing what a gun is and what it's meant to do, it never made any sense to me to blame God for that person's death or injury.
If God wanted to save that person's life, he'd be forced to break into physical law a little bit. AKA a miracle. So say, every time someone tries to shoot someone else, they get hit by a bolt of lightning. And every time a plane was going to crash, gravity would reverse and people would float.
But tell me, living in a world like that, what would happen to physics? Would we actually be able to understand our universe at all? I think it far more likely that we'd still be hiding in caves and thinking that Lightning was a sign that God was displeased with us.
People ask another question too, though. Why are humans (at least partially) evil, if God created us? The answer is choice. If humans were ever to truly be more than puppets to God's will, we had to have choice, and, unfortunately, that means the capacity for evil.
I personally believe that God's highest morals are choice and consequence.
