Why do people say you need God to be moral?

Question

If you'll only do the moral thing because of a threat of punishment from a sadistic God, perhaps religious people are the worst representatives of humanity!

Answer 1

because god determines what morality is, and human morals are nothing more than warped morals set down by god.

Answer 2

They don't say you need God to be moral. They say you need God to get any reward for it after you die.  

Answer 3

Perhaps those who say such things are they, themselves, the ones who need outside governance.  Personally, I need no outside direction to do what is right.

Answer 4

"A sadistic god"..are you joking? go get together with your atheist buddies and discuss science.

Answer 5

I agree with you 100%.

Answer 6

Never said it.  I know plenty of nonreligious people with morals.

Answer 7

Mainly because people are generally weak and need something to be scared of to do as they are told.

Answer 8

Are you trying to imply that people who believe in God only do good things because we fear punishment? That's as presumptuous and inaccurate as those who claim that atheists are immoral.

In general, people who fear punishment will avoid behaviors they think are bad, but will most likely not do things that are good. In other words, somebody might abstain from s*x before marriage or not do drugs out of fear of punishment. You might even get people to go to church or give money to their church.

Even people who try to avoid bad things don't usually do so out of fear of punishment. I try to avoid sin because I know it displeases God and I love God with all my heart. It's like how people don't want to disappoint people they respect and love; it's not out of fear of punishment. Also, when a religious person does something like buy a homeless person a sandwich, volunteer, go on missionary work, or protest a war, it is not out of fear. It is out of a desire to serve God.

By the way, studies show that religious people, in general, volunteer more and donate more to charity than atheists.

In addition, the fact that you think Christians believe that Hitler is in heaven shows that you really don't understand Christianity at all. If you'd like some clarification, which you really need, please feel free to email me.

Answer 9

The Christian position is this...

we do NOT do things out of fear of judgment, this is at the core of being forgiven... we have been changed by God and want to serve Him because it is right.

Even if you don't think my testimony is true you could at least acknowledge that this is my delusion and give us credit for following God because we are ever grateful and desiring to see God's will happen in our hearts and lives.

Assuming that you are NOT deliberately misrepresenting Christians.  All of those I know who are in Christ are much more moral now than before (and that is an understatement)

More moral, without fear of going to h**l.... this seems a good thing to me.

The problem with Atheism is not that atheists have morals (that is merely interesting since it is also what a biblical worldview would expect based on Romans 1).  The problem is that you have no reason to believe that morals are objectively true and you couldn't assign REAL right and wrong to any actions... nothing is genuinly evil and nothing is genuinely good...

Hitler is the moral equivelant of Gandhi in your worldview.

You don't need to believe in God to BE moral, you need to beieve in God to HAVE moral truth.  Otherwise morals don't represent truth

EDIT - Hitler was no Christian... the word does stand for something...

but my Christian standpoint still sees a difference between them... yours couldn't actually say anything is wrong with sending anybody to h**l.

Answer 10

Because they need it and they assume everyone else needs it.

To intelligent beliefs, in christian view, Hitler is MORE moral then Gandhi, why? Because Hitler was a christian and he would be forgiven for whatever he did. Gandhi, one the other hand is a Hindu, god hates Hindus, to it, Hindus are false gods. In your life you had never heard of that? That is because you are not in the atheists position, we are the ones that get these accusation, not you. Don't believe? Type "Moral without god" in the the textbox for "Search for questions" and click "Search".