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What I have never understood, is how can you not take the Bible literally and just kind of pick and choice what part to belive or not to believe.

How is this process of picking and choiceing from the Bible and 2000 years of Christian history not the same as making up your own morality (as most secularist do).

Seems to me, that the only thing 'being Christian' is (outside of the institution), is that you take some more of your morality from the Bible compared to all other books.

What is it that keeps you Christian? Why not just go all the way and look at all books and history to make up your own morality?

The idea of believing that every word of the bible is literally true is a very modern concept. The need for interpretation, for understanding of the changing meaning of words and practices, has been accepted since the early church fathers. It's not supposed to be easy - this is the crux of faith. If it were indisputably and provably true than you would not be capable of free will. Jesus rebuked Thomas for failing to believe even when presented with him being resurrected, pointing out that most will not have anything close to that level of truth.

There are different fundamental truths that you need to accept to "be Christian", it's been discussed for centuries - probably the most accepted would be the Nicene Creed.

> How is this process of picking and choiceing from the Bible and 2000 years of Christian history not the same as making up your own morality (as most secularist do).

"Doctor, I understand the point of the rorshach test, in theory- but this inkblot clearly depicts my mother having sex with the postman. It's completely unambiguous."

> What I have never understood, is how can you not take the Bible literally and just kind of pick and choice what part to belive or not to believe.

The idea that Christianity is about the Bible is a relatively view of part of the Protestant community that many Christians who don't hold it view as a form of idolatry.

Christianity is, in other models of Christianity, about a personal decision to come to God through Christ; the Bible is a uniquely useful tool in this, in those views, as a collection of works about the relation of God to humanity, and particularly (in the NT) about Christ and his teachings, which, understood properly (which may not be literally for all parts; just as much of Christ's teachings are explicitly parables, much of the rest is often viewed as illuminating metaphor rather than factual history or commands) is understood, in those views, to free of moral error. In many such views (including the long-standing view of the Catholic Church) it is one of the two main sources of the faith, alongside sacred tradition.

The idea that the Bible is the sole source of Christian truth, or that it is entirely literal, are novel and minority opinions within Christianity. (The groups holding them are more relatively prominent in the US, and definitely more political prominent in the US, compared to other Christian groups than they are globally within Christianity, but even so there are quite large segments of American Christianity that don't follow these relatively newfangled approaches.)

> How is this process of picking and choiceing from the Bible and 2000 years of Christian history not the same as making up your own morality

Everyone is using their conscience to make their own decisions about morality, even literalists. That they choose to accept what someone tells them the canon is (about which there are disagreements among Christians -- and the canon favored by literalists is, like literalism itself, a recent change from the historical canon), and to accept that someone tells them the canon must be approached literally, and to accept the authority of a particular version or translation of the canon to be taken literally, and to then either choose their own or choose to take someone else's guidance on how to read the amibiguities are contradictions that arise when the text is viewed literally -- all of those are choices. Its kind of dangerous to think that the decision to delegate accept someone else's word for how to make these choices stops them from being choices.

Christianity, whether with or without literalism, doesn't evade the need to make decisions about morality.

> Seems to me, that the only thing 'being Christian' is (outside of the institution), is that you take some more of your morality from the Bible compared to all other books.

Except for those holding to a rather extreme version of the (also new) doctrine of sola scriptura, Christian's don't generally believe that books (whether one or many) are the sole source of morals.

> Why not just go all the way and look at all books and history to make up your own morality?

What stops someone from being Christian who considers all sources (not just books) in informing their conscience. Note that neither the Nicene nor Apostle's Creed -- generally held by mainstream Christians as the uniting features of Christianity -- makes more than a passing reference to Scripture (and that only in regard to the alignment between it and Christ's Passion.)

What keeps someone Christian -- or fails to, if it withers -- is their belief in God, Jesus Christ, and the Holy Trinity, not their dedication to a book.

    > As a counter-point let me ask a non-religious person,
    > what makes an act good?

You might be interested in reading The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris for an in-depth start at an answer to that question.

It's a secular look at morality and how we can reason about morality without a foundation of unscientific ideas (e.g. the existence of a deity).

In essence it makes the point that the religious idea of morality driven by a god with a big stick in the sky who'll discipline you if you step out of line isn't moral at all, and neither do most religious people actually adhere to it in practice.

E.g. we're not stoning homosexuals or burning witches as we once were, and it's not because the scripture changed, but because of secular progress despite of scripture. How do you decide which instructions to cherry-pick from the Bible or whatever piece of scripture it is you believe in?

He essentially defines an act as "good" if it's a net increase in human happiness and well-being. Burning people to death of persecuting homosexuals, not so much. Looking out for your fellow man so he'll look out for you. Note that this isn't the same thing as reducing morality to hedonism.

Anyway, I'm doing a poor job of paraphrasing the gist of that book so I'll stop. But if you're genuinely interested in what constitutes a good act or moral behavior in the secular sense there's a lot of well-researched and interesting works you can read on the subject.

> He essentially defines an act as "good" if it's a net increase in human happiness and well-being

That seems a very poor and weak definition.

1. It focuses on human as only a human can be happy.

2. net increase is relative, so this is relative to the author's life/view of the world.

3. Well-being doesn't mean anything. Does he defines it too?

    > That seems a very poor and weak definition.

It's not the definition. It's my poor recollection of a book I read over a year ago for the purposes of a HN comment. I'm not trying to establish some all-encompassing holistic definition of morality right here in this comment chain.

I'm just replying to the religious OP (@cmdkeen) that if he's interested in what secular people have to say on the subject of morality there's a lot written on that subject. I found Sam Harris's book on it interesting, but it's certainly not the first or the last word on a secular definition of morality.

Having said that I'll elaborate a bit more on my poor recollection of the book.

    > 1. It focuses on human as only a human can be happy.

I think for the purposes of the book, yes, but there's nothing intrinsic about his idea of morality that's isolated to Homo Sapiens. If you wanted to maximize human and canine happiness you could do that too to some degree.

    > 2. net increase is relative, so this is relative to the author's life/view of the world.
    > 3. Well-being doesn't mean anything. Does he defines it too?

He argues that this largely isn't the case.

The basic idea he's putting forth is that there's actions you can perform which will make people happy (e.g. being nice to them) and sad (e.g. subjecting them to genocide).

Obviously this is not a single-axis spectrum. So he's setting forth the argument that happiness can be attained similarly to how we maximize the performance of a hill-climbing algorithm.

If we were in real-time able to monitor the net happiness of every human (and also animals, if you insist) and tweak our societies so that net happiness would go up we'd arrive at a moral society.

So thus we can say that some societies are more moral than others. E.g. every modern western state would be morally superior to the Mongol empire by this happiness ratio we can say the society is "better", and once we have a metric we can work to maximize happiness in our own societies.

I think the main hole someone who's religious would poke in this would be "but that's not morality, you're just optimizing for hedonism!". I think to some degree that's true, but from what I've read of secular literature on the subject the idea of "morality" is pretty much discredited.

It's based on the notion of absolutes, usually handed down by some deity. Once you get rid of that (because deities don't exist) what do you replace it with? Some combination of "don't do harm" and "let's make everyone happy" most likely.

jdright raises some good points. Which is kind of the point, no-one has come up with a good "right" way to live or act and it is often even harder without a theist grounding to decide on some pretty major points. You can clearly construct ethical philosophies but it is very hard to compare them to others and say whether one is better than another. Especially once you start getting into "brains in vats" territory.

Plus going back to burning witches and stoning homosexuals, really? Firstly there's some really interesting language translation behind "suffer not the witch to live" - in that isn't what it really says. Burning people has to be seen in the context of history and politics.

It isn't about "cherry picking". Different traditions have their basis, I'm not sola scriptorum, the CofE believes in "scripture, reason and tradition". But in all cases it is about looking at scripture as a complex document full of metaphor, stories and allegories. Then making an argument based on that which can be debated, discussed and a conclusion arrived at - and one that can later be decided as perhaps wrong. What you also need to bear in mind is that significant parts of what Jesus is recorded as saying is pointing out areas of religion where the Jews had become caught up in process or tradition rather than the underlying message.

I'm just giving you a book recommendation pertinent to your question of how a non-religious person might define "good".

Another commenter in this thread, @marcosscriven, also linked to The God Delusion. It's been a while since I read it, but I remember it being quite informative too.

    > no-one has come up with a good "right" way to
    > live or act and it is often even harder without
    > a theist grounding to decide on some pretty major
    > points.

This is just something you're asserting without arguments. Proponents of secular explanations for "morality" would argue the opposite.

There's no innate compelling reason for why Reasoning about morality from a theist background would be easier. I think all evidence points to the contrary.

Perhaps you disagree with that, but we could have a more interesting discussion if instead of blindly asserting our positions we'd back them up with some arguments, don't you think? :)

There are a lot of societies on the planet today that have little to nothing to do with the Judeo-Christian tradition or are otherwise without a scriptural moral tradition.

Do you really think those societies or their members are more inherently immoral? At best the idea is naïve, at worst xenophobic and offensive.

    > Plus going back to burning witches and
    > stoning homosexuals, really?
    > [...]
    > It isn't about "cherry picking".
    > Different traditions have their basis,
    > I'm not sola scriptorum, the CofE believes
    > in "scripture, reason and tradition".

I wasn't mentioning homosexuals and burning witches to rile you up, but rather as an extreme (but I feel appropriate) example of how much of scripture is at best the source of ambiguous instructions when it comes to moral issues.

You're quite correct that the moral tradition of Christianity doesn't stop at scripture. I'm not only agreeing with that, but suggesting that that post-scripture process is actually the only relevant process by which we arrive at moral truths.

Why is it that we've decided to put more emphasis on some stories in scripture than others? That really is largely a process that can best be described as cherry-picking. How do we decide what to cherry-pick?

I think the evidence is clearly on the side of the secular argument that humans are social animals, therefore we need to exist (mostly) peacefully in groups, which gives rise to "moral" principles like not screwing with your neighbor least he screws with you back.

Scripture is really just an adaptation of these principles in the form of stories and allegories. Those stories are important to reinforce those ideas in society, but to say that they're the primary source is putting the cart before the horse.

"He essentially defines an act as "good" if it's a net increase in human happiness and well-being."

John Rawls, one of the foremost liberal philosophers of our time spends the bulk of his most famous book arguing agains that very idea. My take away is that from a secular perspective it is impossible to argue from first principles what is good and bad. It's also obviously not a very strong argument. If there was a tiny country that did dispicable things to it's citizens but it had nuclear weapons, by this argument, the 'good' thing would be to allow those citizens to continue to suffer rather then have the world intervene and potentially be obliterated in a nuclear war. However, the citizen's of that country would still be correct to say that the rest of the world was unjust.

Thank you for your honest answers.

Let me respond to your counter question.

I'm considering myself as an atheist. I graduated law and (but) I'm currently working in IT.

What I found about myself and my own beliefs ( good vs. bad ) is basically a consequence of thousands of years of human civilization absorbed and morally embeded in human beings and in logically written laws.

So basically what I believe doing is good or what I believe doing is bad is defined purely based on logical concepts, incorporated mostly in our legal systems. Yes there are different legal systems, there are different cultural standards, but if you take a look at it, I bet :

1. Every legal system punishes killing, stealing, frauds, etc.

2. Every legal system has an exclusion of the first rule : self-defense, non-voluntary ( accidental ) steal, etc.

3. Every legal system also regulate the civil rights of people agains other people. ( Continental Law states that for a divorce there is a blame that might lie in one of the partners, based on this the other claims compensation - imagine cheating ).

So yes. You can find multiple examples for the most of the actions and you will see that they are mostly regulated.

e.g.

1) You found a passport on the street - By law you are obliged to return it to police ( good deed )

2) You drink a beer on the street - Based on the law you can decide if this is well received or not ( In Berlin it's pretty much everywhere )

etc.

For all other actions, that have no consequence in society and which are not regulated. I choose based on my own opinion and mood.

e.g.

1) Should I give a penny to that homeless person? Well If I feel in the mood, I would, If I don't I probably won't do it today.

2) Should I talk back to a rude person? If I feel really offended, I will most certainly do, usually I don't give a F.

Ethics and law are two very different things. An act can be lawful and yet not good, an act can be illegal and yet good. Rosa Parks broke the law when she sat in her seat. I'm not saying that had she been an atheist she couldn't have acted, merely that you don't obey the law just because it the law. Plus almost all legal systems have a Judeo-Christian basis thanks to history, colonialism and international trade. Even more than that most are either Roman, English or Napoleonic - so hardly a pluralistic background.

The concept of "no good without religion" has a pretty decent intro with both sides at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secular_morality#Morality_requ...

Personally utilitarianism, often held as the secular morality, threatens to go down some really dark paths and has done so. You could easily see how things like eugenics (widely practised in the West until the Nazis put it beyond the pale) became popular, and it was the Catholic church who led the fight against it.

Yes they are very different things, but they don't contradict [1] most of the time. According to legal theory of positivism [2] what is written rule is a set of validated moral laws.

And indeed, as I said my way of thinking gives me huge library that suggest me what to do and what is good and what is bad.

Most importantly I think that human beings ( and animals in that matter ) have really big spectrum of emotions that we carry over thousands of years that are not here today, because we need to fight them.

Fear can save your life sometimes ;

Anger ( adrenalin ) can make you a better fighter in time of trouble ;

Jealousy sometimes give motivation of doing good deeds ;

etc.

If the results of those emotional decisions are not regulated by law and only by moral ( of your cultural ancestors, family, education, etc. ) then I really think it's up to me to decide, otherwise we will all be copies of the moral we inherited and there will be no change at all

1 : http://www.law.harvard.edu/faculty/shavell/pdf/4_Amer_Law_Ec...

2 : http://www.iep.utm.edu/legalpos/

> Creationism and biblical literalism are relatively recent "innovations" in some Christian traditions.

This isn't really true. You're right that metaphorical interpretations are very old, but so are literal ones. The catholic church, who pioneered some great non-literalist interpretations, also used to excommunicate you if you didn't believe all of humanity shared a single male ancestor named Adam.

Pick a random medieval christian peasant, and ask him whether the Ark was a real boat, and let's place wagers on what his answer will be.

The genesis stories were literal before they were metaphorical, and opinions about the relative percentages of fact to metaphor have shifted wildly based on century, region, and denomination.

> > Creationism and biblical literalism are relatively recent "innovations" in some Christian traditions.

> This isn't really true. You're right that metaphorical interpretations are very old, but so are literal ones.

The existence of some literal interpretations is not literalism. Literalism is the doctrine which excludes any metaphorical interpretations, and it is, in fact, relatively new (and mostly isolated to a subset of Protestantism, not general to Christianity.)

I stand by my position that the existence of interpretations that said the bible is a history book and the events in it occurred as depicted, is not relatively new. If you use the term "literalism" in an academic sense that means something subtly different, then fine. The fact remains that creationism is definitely not even remotely new.

What makes you decide some bible rules are good and others less good? Same answer, probably.

Will give my take at it. There is no thing as "a good act" or "a bad act" because these are absolutes. What I _believe_ true is "to act good/bad to". Because they are relative to the recipient(s)[anything sentient/alive/other term] of the act to say so. So as a baseline rule, considering myself a "good" person, I try to follow the known (and even religious) saying of: treat others the same way you want them to treat you.

Richard Dawkins expresses this well: https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=grccDzrTWLUC&pg=PA259&lp...