Consider chess. There are certain fundamental 'rules of the game' that define it. An 8×8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc. Now, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.

However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board. It's usually a bad move.

Note words like "shouldn't" and "bad". They are value judgements. They prescribe 'oughts'. But they are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come? From the combinations of two things – first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules.

We have physical laws, and we have human desires. "Oughts" – strategic rules – morals – arise from those two things. Some basic game theory, and voila – cooperation, etc. I contend that I am ethical and moral, that people in general are ethical and moral, because the alternative is running naked in the woods fighting over scraps of food.

I'd say that "love" and "kindness" and "selflessness" and "empathy" and "charity" and "compassion" are just as objectively real as "don't sacrifice your queen early". And for the same reason, though on a vastly more complicated – and more humanly important – scale.

I say, very simply, that our ideas of right and wrong came from us – human beings – who decided somewhere along the line that as social beings, it is simply to our collective advantage to be good rather than be otherwise.

Yes, I believe that a person can "sin" without any eternal consequences. I do not believe in or acknowledge a heaven or a hell. So why don't I steal? Or kill? Or commit adultery?

I don't do these things because, A) I have no compelling reason to do so. Honestly, I have never felt any reason to do so. Have I been attracted to women other than my wife? Yes. So why didn't I just go have sex with them? Well, I didn't because I don't want to hurt my wife and because I don't feel that the short term pleasure of a sexual encounter are worth the potential consequences of being caught. I work in retail and I handle large quantities of money every single day. Yet I never feel even the slightest temptation to take so much as a penny. Why not? First of all, because it's not my money. It doesn't even seem like real money to me. It's more like Monopoly money. And, again, the potential earthly consequences of getting caught stealing don't seem worth the risk.

B) I also don't steal, kill or cheat on my wife because I recognize that if everyone did so, there would be chaos. I don't want to live in a world where everybody steals, so I do my part (as a member of society) by not stealing myself.

Ultimately, I firmly believe (yes, the B word) that all such behavior began with just this kind of thinking, albeit at an unconscious level. Primitive humans saw that there was utility in having such rules, but they didn't understand where these ideas came from. As we know, people believed for a long time that all ideas were the product of divine inspiration (the Greeks began their Epics with an invocation to the Muse). Not understanding how they arrived at the conclusion that "moral" actions were preferable to "immoral" actions, they attributed these ideas to a deity.

God is not necessary to ethical behavior or to happiness.

I am glad that you have found your own path to happiness, Jen. But don't make the mistake of thinking that just because YOU need God that anyone else does, or that he is real.

But either way, your sentiment is nice, but it's not the reality. We do agree that killing other people is OK if they threaten to weaken the species. It's not as simple as you made it, but if, for example, a dictator supposedly has weapons that could harm us, we don't bat an eye when tens of thousands of innocent civilians are killed. You and I may personally not approve of this, but it's still "endorsed" by society and many people think it's "good", society (this one anyway) says thinks it's good.

Try this: Free will is having the ability to choose other than what or how we are motivated to.

If not by your motivations, then what is your reason for choosing the way you do? As I understand it, intent is important when considering moral questions, and your intended result = the result you want, or are motivated to attain. Also, your motivations are by definition the reasons why you do things. Add a non-motivational reason for doing things (what you are suggesting free will is) and any action you take by your free will is essentially random, with no reason or intent behind it. So, while I accept it is possible that this type of free will exists, it does seem to be fundamentally contradictory to attach any moral dimension to its use in decision making. A will that is both free and leads to culpability appears to be a contradiction in terms.

Myron said:
I have no obligation to be perfect, or to know everything, but I do have an obligation to be as good as I can.
—
That’s straight-up Catholicism there. Just add the realization that “as good as I can” is a moving target, and the requirement to repent of your imperfections. My goal is not to label you as a Catholic, but to affirm what you have in common with us.

I suspect that many, if not all religions take the position that you don’t have to know everything, but you do have to try to be good. And I do treat “my best” as a moving target. It seems like common sense. I’ve found it’s served me well, though, and I’m glad to see that Catholicism recognizes the value of sensible practices .

On the other hand, it would be problematic for me to accept the idea that I should repent of my sins unless and until I was reasonably sure that there was a God there who would listen. Unfortunately, our common-sense common ground extends only so far. I do recognize the value of considering the things I have done wrong in life, attempting to correct my behaviour, and making amends to as many people as I can who I may have harmed. These are practices which again seem like common sense to me, and I think would have many of the benefits of the type of repentance you are suggesting.

As for proof, I think it is contrary to love to saddle you with a proof you are absolutely incapable of disbelieving.

I wouldn’t ask for a proof like that. Of course, as a human being I can believe just about anything I want, and equally, I can deny belief in just about anything I want, no matter how obvious it may be to others that I’m wrong in either my belief or my denial. Also, I’ve spent considerable time since I first posted my ideas on this blog discussing what I think with people of different religious and non-religious backgrounds. What I’ve learned from that is that you can only be certain you have “absolute proof” of anything if you’re fooling yourself. Considering the arguments made by Descartes, it is impossible to be certain of any proof you think you may have. But what I have also found is that many people have a set of assumptions they treat as certain and unquestionable. Religious people often do this with a belief in God, strongly atheist people do it with a belief that the laws of physics cannot be broken (no miracles happen, ever). Materialists do it with the non-existence of free will and the soul. Etc. The thing is, many people, whatever their viewpoint, think that theirs is the only logically consistent set of assumptions (because they treat them as facts, not assumptions) when in actuality, it’s possible to logically construct or adopt a set of beliefs with either God or materialist atheism as its basis, and the beliefs hang together logically, and you can go about your life fairly successfully.

The point of saying this is that I now know that any measure of “proof” I have is only as good as the assumptions I start out with, which I can’t prove, and have to be taken on something like faith (even if it’s faith that physics can’t be broken) if I want to feel certain of the truth.

I think it’s better to be uncertain, continually look at the world through both materialist atheist and more spiritual eyes, and just accept that I don’t have the answer as to which one is right. That way my eyes are open, and I don’t do anything particularly stupid under either viewpoint, like joining a cult or denying the possibility that God might exist. All of this is to say, I’m not looking for certainty, I realize that’s unrealistic. What I would like in the way of proof is reasonability, the same as I look for for any other “proof” in life, and unfortunately God has not even deigned to give me that much. So I consider it reasonable to believe many, many things (although on any of them I could be convinced I’m wrong) but not in the type of God Christianity supposes. On the other hand, the sort of God outlined in my post, who doesn’t need to intervene because it’s already got control of everything through physics, seems entirely reasonable to me. That gives me a feeling of hope, peace, joy, and even, when I take a moment to appreciate the world around me, a feeling of closeness to God. I don’t think you’ve understood this from my post, but non-interventionist doesn’t mean uncaring or callous, or unconcerned with the world. Your religion teaches people to both pray and leave things in God’s hands. I prefer to act as best I can, and do the second thing with anything I can’t do anything about. Assuming God exists, he’ll take care of anything I can’t, and if he doesn’t, he won’t, but neither will I, because I can’t, so I’d have to accept what I cannot change.

By conversing with those in heaven, we get closer to them and thus to God.

I have tried conversing with God, and people who I used to know who, if the Christian religion is correct, are now (hopefully) in heaven. Unfortunately a conversation needs to be two-way, and I didn’t get the sense that anyone was responding.

What that tells me is that you don’t understand heaven, which is unity with God. Can you imagine unity with the being you earlier described.

No. Can you explain why I as a reasonable person should think that such unity will occur? The belief in a God does not require the belief in a soul, or any form of afterlife. I can get to the point where a belief in God is reasonable through considering the seeming intelligence behind physics, and considering the possibility of a first cause (although that argument leads to a paradox, it has intuitive appeal since every other answer to “how did the universe happen” also leads to logical problems). But that’s as far as I get. As for miracles, I’ve heard people claim all sorts of them, many of which I’ve had better explanations for than “God did it”. So the credibility of miracles is damaged in that way, and also it strikes me as odd that God will do good things for a small, small, small minority, but leave so much suffering in the world. Christians can blame this on sin, but the fact is that small children dying of starvation and malaria have not committed sins sufficient to warrant their suffering, and I have not done sufficient good to warrant my privileged position in the world. So if God intervenes, He doesn’t appear to be doing so very frequently or very fairly. A deist God who provides purpose to the suffering of the world makes more sense to me than a God who cures a few people of a few things but leaves the vast majority of the world to suffer and die.

I don’t mean to offend anyone with this, I’m just stating my beliefs as they are, and so opening them up to challenge.

Samuel Skinner said:
That is even dumber. The bible was supposed to be the guiding light for mankind and God OUTSOURCED it! To Asia no less! Such shoddy craftsmanship- in my days people took pride in the work they did and if tyou wanted something done right you did it yourself.

Nope, sorry. The Catholic Church is the guiding light for mankind. Hence the logical necessity of infallibility. The Bible is just one of her tools. And since we are part of God’s creation, He intended to entrust its composition to certain of us in the first place, the ones He made right for just that job.

and:
I don’t belive in free will because the term cannot be defined without being incoherant.

Try this: Free will is having the ability to choose other than what or how we are motivated to. I figured that one out from St. Augustine’s reconciliation of predestination and free will.

and:
As it is morality is a choice. If you can give a reason for a person to be moral, they aren’t being moral. It has to be from ones self!

One chooses whether or not to behave morally; in that, morality is a choice. The rest of this seems to suggest that morality cannot be taught or transmitted, a position I find to be without merit.

Myron said:
I have no obligation to be perfect, or to know everything, but I do have an obligation to be as good as I can.

That’s straight-up Catholicism there. Just add the realization that “as good as I can” is a moving target, and the requirement to repent of your imperfections. My goal is not to label you as a Catholic, but to affirm what you have in common with us.

and:
So what about “God has to hide his work, because if he didn’t… ” followed by some explanation? Maybe, but I think probably not. Not that I’m a god, but if I was, and I had the power to create the entire universe, and the genius required to make it actually a relatively workable system, I think I could figure a way to reward people for believing in me, and prove my existence to those who didn’t believe at first.

The rewards are things like hope, peace, joy, and love — I know I have more of these as I seek greater closeness to God. As for proof, I think it is contrary to love to saddle you with a proof you are absolutely incapable of disbelieving.

and:
Now I ask you, do you find it likely that a being like that would find it worthwhile to stick his finger into the universe and change something to answer your prayers? I say no…

Unless, of course, He wants to because He loves us. It is certainly no strain upon His resources. And there’s evidence of Him doing so — all the miracles documented by the Church and particularly, the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints.

Humility, by the way, is not some sort of self-denigration, but rather an honest and true assessment of our abilities and worth — seeing ourselves exactly as God sees us, no more and no LESS.

The point of prayer is not to change God, but to change US. By conversing with those in heaven, we get closer to them and thus to God.

and:
I can imagine heaven, which tells me it’s not on god-scale, which means it’s probably not true.

What that tells me is that you don’t understand heaven, which is unity with God. Can you imagine unity with the being you earlier described?