Originally posted by Evy_O
Lastly, many religions define morals and preach about peace, love, compassion, making us better people 😄
For hundreds of years, Christian apologists have argued that without a belief in a god, basic social structures would disintegrate and people would no longer find reason to act morally.
The question is whether or not belief in any god or higher power is required for morality and social stability.
An examination of history makes it evident that believers in gods can be very violent, especially when it comes to other groups of believers who follow different gods.
Another interesting fact to point out is that the claim doesn' t actually require any god to really exist. If social stability and morality are only achieved with believing in a god, even a false god, then the theist is claiming that human societies require massive deceit in order to survive. Moreover, the theist is arguing that a society doesn' t actually need their god, since any god will apparently do.
A more fundamental objection, however, is the implicit portrayal of humanity which such a claim makes. The unspoken reason why humans need some god to be moral is that they are not capable of creating their own social rules and, hence, require an eternal rule-giver with accompanying eternal rewards and eternal punishments.
How can a theist possibly claim this when even chimpanzees and other primates are clearly capable of creating social rules? The theist is attempting to create ignorant children out of all of us. In their eyes, we are apparently incapable of running our own affairs; worse yet, only the promise of eternal reward and the threat of eternal punishment will keep us in line. Perhaps this is actually true of them, and that would be unfortunate.