See, what you need to realise is that if God isn't there, then it's a moral free-for-all with no true values or purpose at all.
So sparky if god was not there to threaten you with eternal damnation in hell fire, you would have no morals.
Sigh. More non-sequitors...
It is not a non-sequitur.
You said life without god would be moral free-for-all. Hence if you did not believe in god you would have no morals. Very myopic view.
Which firstly isn't what you said. You ascribed a particular motivation ('threaten you with eternal damnation') which is completely irrelevant to whether morals exist for a Christian.
Secondly, I said that if God doesn't exist, morality doesn't exist because there are no true values - not that 'I wouldn't
have them (and someone else still might)'. You could also call this a moral 'free-for-all' in the sense that anyone's view of what is moral is equally as valid as anyone else's.
If you don't believe this is true then all you need to do is provide some evidence for a 'true' value - something that you can point to that would show that something that matters to you should matter to me also.
But perhaps you can tell me what evidence exists to support your 'morals'?
What evidence exists to support your morals? The bible? Is that evidence?
We haven't talked about my evidence. I could be wrong - maybe God doesn't exist - but it still doesn't mean that you have any grounds for believing that morality exists.
If your conscience tells you to kill someone, then you would be treated as a criminal or a put in a psychiatric ward.
Which wouldn't make it wrong. Just a question of balancing risk and reward. This is an argument from consequences and is, you guessed it, a logical fallacy. It doesn't not count as evidence for why killing someone is 'wrong'.
Of course the reality is that even in our own society people who kill others are not caught and in other societies it may even be encouraged. Does that make it right in those other societies?
However the bible does tell you of a God sanctioning the killing of men women and little boys (but not the virgins). A god that sends a bear to kill children because they they tease a bald prophet. A god who demands human sacrifices.
And you come here talking about morals and the conscience?
Yep. Somehow your emotional outrage doesn't qualify as an argument either.
In societies without the bible, there is total chaos and mayhem with people living utterly immoral unethical lives?
How do you know their lives aren't immoral? What is your evidence for the standard that you are using to judge that?
Hold on. You said there will be no morals in a society without God. All I asked was if there was total chaos and mayhem in godless societies.
You have to show and prove their lives are immoral and your definition of immoral.
No, you called the chaos and mayhem being 'with people living utterly immoral unethical lives'.
You used the word 'immoral', not me. So I asked what is your basis for this claim. I haven't called them immoral, I have said that if God doesn't exist, morality doesn't exist so there would be no basis for calling them either moral or immoral - everything would be amoral. Somehow you don't believe in God but think morality still exists. So I am asking you for the evidence that it exists.
You are mixing up a purpose in life or any purpose in any endeavour we undertake, with the irrational believe in a non-entity who you cannot prove exist.
Life is a reality. Any sane person can envision a purpose for what they want to achieve in their lifetime. What they want to do. That is their purpose.
Of course they can. People can make up in their heads whatever they want to - they can say 'morality exists because it exists in my head' or 'the fairies at the bottom of the garden exist because they exist in my head' or 'I have a purpose because it exists in my head'. But these are all, equally, irrational non-entities with no relevance to anyone else at all.
So if someone says 'my purpose is to become as powerful as possible so that other people do what I want them to' - they are just as 'right' (and wrong) in that purpose as the person who says 'my purpose is to save the planet'.
But because all the evidence shows us that our heads mislead us much of the time, it is rather shaky to invent yourself a purpose and then live according to it - only to later to discover that it didn't lead you where you thought it would. Our imaginations are pretty unlimited so there are an infinite number of possible 'purposes' for us. How do you know you have the 'right' one?
Of course, none of this is how we normally talk about 'purpose'. Only for humans do we suddenly seem to think that purpose can be self-determined. If I create something, it exists for the purpose for which I created it. Its success or failure is judged according to whether that purpose is achieved or not. We interpret the bahaviour of living beings through the 'purpose' of replicating their genes. Then suddenly, for humans, we break all the rules and 'purpose' becomes something that you make up for yourself.
Their life exists and the purpose to which they want to put their life also exists.
These are not parallel claims. I can measure their life's existence through objective tests that others can experience and repeat also. There are no such tests that can be applied to their 'purpose' which is entirely self-created.
You do not need Jehovah or Jesus in order to realise your purpose in life.
In such circumstances, your 'purpose', like your 'morality', is not something that you 'realise' as if it already existed and you just have to find it out. It is entirely a product of your own imagination.
However believing in a god who sends himself to get sacrificed by the people he created so he can forgive those people for the sins they commit against him IS IRRATIONAL.
Maybe so but it doesn't help you to escape from your purposeless, amoral existence.
Topic: Readings from the "Holy Book"