Quote:
Originally posted by Dragonlich
chavos: Did you ever read about Kant's solution to such moral questions? He manages to find a logical and non-religious way of determining what is good and bad, and is able to show that these values are indeed absolute.
Or what about the humanist idea: do to others what you would want them to do to you (sort of)... this leads to a rather clear and absolute morality: I do not want to be murdered, so murder is wrong; I do not want to be lied to, so lying is wrong; etc.
It is clear that there are indeed absolute moral systems without a God. Hell, even the Buddhists have a moral system, and they do not worship any God. Morality is what you and your culture make of it. I suppose one might say that a well-written system of laws is in fact a way of describing what is good and what is bad; i.e. it's a moral system, and it can be interpreted as an absolute system if you follow the letter of the law.
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I would agree with chavous on this one. You cannot have a Universal and Absolute ethical system without a God which is above it.
I already explained my views on ethics earlier in this thread. I believe in "personal" ethics, rather than absolute ethics.
Kant proved nothing. He showed that a logical,
complete and
objective system can be created to govern ethics. Quite a profound statement, but it misses the point entirely. All systems of knowledge (e.g. mathematics) are based on a series of axioms. A
complete system is one where it is impossible to dervive to contradictory truths from the set of axioms. So we have a complete system of ethics...but a MAN MADE system of ethics. There is no way to prove that this system of ethics is "true", only that statements can be tested against its axioms...i.e. that somehting is right or wrong within that system. It does nothing to show that that system is universal.
Now I will admit fully to not knowing a whole lot about Kant. So if I am incorrect in my above statement, please elaborate.
Anyway, for the rest of your post I agree with you. Atheists can live perfectly principled and moral lives. But the point is, that these humanitarian concepts cannot be deemed to be absolute.
Persoanlly I believe that the core ethical message of christianity provides a very good basis for a system of ethics: "wouldn't the world be a great place, if everyone was nice to each other?". Unfortunately this core message has been hideously bastardised over the centuries, which is what gives religion its bad name.