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Comment by moshegramovsky | Hacker News Reader

Was society better in the past when it was more religious? If you think so, maybe you could give a hint about how far back we might look. 50 years? 100 years? 250 years?

Is there a threshold for belief in God that you think is necessary for a healthy society? 50%? 75%?

It's not true at all to state that morality has no grounding without a "higher power". (See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics)

For example: belief in a higher power simply isn't required to allow people to make their own medical decisions. Belief in a higher power isn't required to give someone food.

It's absolutely fine to propose religion as an ethical framework, but I don't think it can possibly make sense to propose it as the only ethical framework, or to propose that society will become worse if humans "move away from God".

There are plenty of good alternatives.

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You're missing the point. You're in good company though. I watched Christopher Hitchens make the same mistake in a similar discussion with Dennis Prager. A number of others in this thread are also doing it. The video link [1] below lays it out pretty well (also points out that A. C. Grayling had the same misunderstanding). Anyway ...

It's not that you need God to be moral. It's that you need an objective "higher power" as the source of that morality.

So I totally agree with what you wrote there, but you can't make a sound argument for a moral position without God or some objective higher power.

> "Belief in a higher power isn't required to give someone food."

So it's a moral duty to give a hungry person food. OK. I agree. Now we could have an exchange where you try to make a strong rational case for that, during which I will ask "why?" an annoying number of times until we get to the part where it's clear there is no basis for the moral duty absent a higher, non-human, source.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cp9Nl6OUEJ0

> until we get to the part where it's clear there is no basis for the moral duty absent a higher, non-human, source.

Casual sneaking in of "non-human" here, when a powerful human would fit just as well.

Your issue is that there often isn't a basis for anything at all except "seems to work". That's why we have the joke about the 5-year-old who keeps asking "why", exasperating its parents.

That we don't have a complete rationally-grounded framework doesn't imply the existence of God or even that it's good to act as if such a being exists. Insisting otherwise is basically a god-of-the-gaps argument.

You don't need any ethical framework, religion or otherwise, to allow people to make their own medical decisions. Not to give a hungry person food, nor to do anything to improve anyone's life.

I do understand your argument, and I definitely agree that some set of non-self "objective higher-power" can be very helpful. Like a personal or societal code of ethics. Bodies of law are an attempt at that.

I simply don't agree that our society will become worse the more we "move away from God". It's totally fine if "God" is how you want to do it. But not everyone wants this, and the development of secular philosophy, laws, professional ethics, and personal ethics are excellent substitutes for people who don't believe.

Not to mention, secular alternatives still allow people to practice their religious-based ethical framework without forcing others to do so.

Giving someone in need some food lestens suffering. That lestening of suffering is an observable and easily mentally modeled outcome rooted in the mundane world.

Acting so that we decrease suffering, increase wellbeing, and otherwise reduce harm is moral in and of itself without any higher source.

My own moral duty in that case is rationalized quite simply with the thought that if I were in that position, I would want other people to offer me food.

Why is that better than being selfish?

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