Without religion, would you still have values?

Statistics show that countries with lower religiosity have higher societal health, e.g. lower crime rates, lower teen pregnancy rates, lower abortion rates.
So the answer is, whithout religion people would have better values.

I don’t have religion but I have values. Scares the hell out of me when people say they don’t understand how atheists can have morals. If the only thing stopping you from mass murder is fear of hell, there’s something wrong.

I was basically raised without religion and I have values. I never understand these questions. Probably the majority of fluther is not religious and atheist.

Of course. Values don’t come from religion. They come from interactions with others. Given enough interaction, we figure out rules that make our interactions work best. Then we call these values. Religions get “values” from exactly the same place: real life experience.

Values and ethics can be developed and instilled just as deeply and perhaps more so through reason. I’d rather have people doing what they ought because they believe it is the right thing to do, not just out of fear of retribution or hope for reward. After all should they ever overcome their fear or lose interest in the reward what will they have to fall back on if not reason.

I seem to have plenty without trouble. If you need an outside source for your values, you’re in trouble.

Of course.
Values are derived based on the environment you are in while you are raised. They are mostly formed through upbringing by your parents (or lack of parenting).

I think it’s important to consider that while we can talk about this as though it’s a hypothetical, we do have somewhat of an experiment available to us, as @ragingloli mentioned. We shouldn’t have to scratch our heads too much to figure out if it’s possible. We can contemplate or argue about why this is, but that’s another topic. For example, @Skaggfacemutt: “If there was no fear of retribution from god or society, do you think people would still have values?” – I would argue that someone doing (or not doing) something out of fear of retribution hardly qualifies as “values”. Nobody would consider me an ethical person with good values if the only reason I didn’t murder my wife was because I don’t want to go to jail.

^^^...or have her uncles and brothers then stone you to death.

@ragingloli That makes sense to me. The tighter a person is being controlled, the more they fight it. Less control, less rebelling. That is one theory, anyway.

Look at the riots in the taking place right now in countries with strong Islamic values. I rest my case.

As an atheist and a moral person, I am offended by your question. (Not really, I’m not that easily offended, but you get my point..)

@syz Well, I am an atheist and a moral person, so don’t see how any question could be offensive. Asking questions is an exchange of ideas. I wasn’t accusing anyone of anything.

There is a dilemma, dating back to Plato, that has been posed to theists:
Does God do things because they are right or are they right because God does them?”

If we accept the second case then what is right is just an arbitrary decision by God, with no necessary grounding in what we instinctively believe to be moral.

If we accept the second case then God is not free, but must slavishly adhere to a moral code. That means that we can eliminate the middle man (God) and follow the same rules.

We can conclude that either morals have no intrinsic merit or that God is unnecessary for following them.

I think values come from interacting with role models and from experience—definitely not from religion. Some religious people will have humanistic values and may say it’s from religion and religious ideals might support their values, but religion does not create values.

When I got accidentally pregnant when I was 19, the people who treated me the cruelest and ugliest were the most devout “Christians” in my community. Definitely not Jesus-like, those people. The ones who treated me the best were just people with good life-loving humanistic values, regardless of where they thought their values came from.

@syz Probably if the main question was worded, “without religion, would we still have values” people would not react the same way. Using “you” makes a person more likely to think the OP is talking about you specifically. I use you also a lot to mean all or everyone, and some people don’t like it.

I am without religion and certainly have no fear of heavenly retribution. I have very strong values. And I highly resent it when religous people question how someone can be this way without a mean old bearded guy in the sky looking into every aspect of one’s life to keep them on the straight and narrow. It assumes that those of us who don’t follow a specific religion, or are atheists/agnostics, are naturally bad and untrustworthy because we don’t feel the need to have this entity in our lives. It’s rediculous, infantile, insulting, and if they choose to live under the stern gaze of this strange mythical father, no problem. Just don’t force it on me or even judge me to be among the naturally evil, and at least make an attempt to understand how the non-religious can still live good lives without the threat of retribution from a Supreme Being whom I consider, as He interpreted by Judeo/Christian/Islamic literature, meets every criteria for insanity.

Like many who have answered, I am not religious and I still have values (and value).

I need to think more on the repercussions of having no societal retribution.

I do.

There are too many news reports of bad behavior from people who are highly religious to think they all have better moral values than those who are non-believers. Perhaps a better question might be, “Whose moral values are stronger, those who acquire moral values because the church says they must; or those whose values are an integral part of their nature without having religion involved?” .

I grew up in a strict religious environment, and all my friends were from the same milieu. As we grew up, one or another of my friends would occasionally drop the religion. More often than not, they’d then kinda go wild, a reaction to all of those years of repression.

Part of it was that they had never really had to form an autonomous moral compass. All they had had to do until then was conform to the rules. But now that the authority from which those rules derived their force was brought into question for them, they lacked an inner sense of direction.

People who stayed in the faith and observed those tailspins felt justified in thinking that without the religion there’s no morality, which made them cling even more assiduously to the faith. In reality, though, it was the external, authority-driven nature of the moral training these “stray sheep” had received that eventually failed them.

Morality is applied compassion. You can go through the motions of morality without having developed the character, just as you can follow numbered footprints on a floor and look like you’re dancing. But is that really dancing?

I steal, kill, and sleep with women, tell them I’ll call them, then don’t. Atheism for the win.

Only if their ego or the law kept them in check.

I do. But I am just me.

My religious beliefs had nothing to do with my values. My values were acquired as I grew up as an adolescent. It had nothing to do with church.

I’ve watched the first two episodes of the show, and find it fascinating. Those kids are just doing what many kids (religious or not) do when first out from under their parents’ control… going a little wild. They’re not necessarily abandoning their values, they are experimenting and trying to find out who they really are. They’re trying different things on for size. In doing so they will determine, in time, what their own values really are.

On a side note, I find it utterly reprehensible that the ‘values’ of the communities they left behind (even their own parents and best friends) include shunning these kids forever, just for daring to leave. Religious values my ass.

I am not religious and still have values. It’s called caring about others and learning how to make yourself happy without hurting others or being a d*ck.

People who think you need to have a religion to be moral scare me. You need to be threatened with eternal damnation in order to not hurt others? That’s messed up and sounds sociopathic to me.

I think I am more moral than these Christians because I do not need to be threatened with my life in order to treat people with dignity and respect.

Having religion sure hasn’t helped the amish with values or morality as far as animals are concerned. They are big players in the puppy mill game, which is a disgustingly cruel and inhumane business. I have seen them beat their horses unmercifully as well.

I do think though that fear of punishment was a great deterrent for me as a kid and probably to a certain degree as an adult. The punishment was meted out by parents, teachers, police, god etc. So for me, religion did have a role to play determining moral values which have carried over into my adult life. For example, I do not steal because I have to right to covet my neighbor’s goods. And because I don’t want to go to jail. Acknowledgement of that makes me either shallow or honest!

I guess I asked this question because I am an athiest, but I still care about what kind of person I am, and I don’t really understand why I care. As far as the Amish, I was also appalled that they would “shun” their own children, and kick them out of the house, for simply talking to the wrong person or some other crazy “transgression.” How cold! No one, religious leader, politician, or even the cops, could tell me to shun my children!

I am fiercely independent, have my own set of values and beliefs, and don’t buy into anyone else’s ideas just because they are “many” and I am “few.” No fear of retribution from any source could make me do or think something that I don’t want to do or think. I thought I was in the minority, but it sounds from the answers that I got, that there are many like me. :)

I was about to ask you @Skaggfacemutt whether you were aware you just bitchslapped the entire atheist community with your question, but then I saw your comment that you’re an atheist and decided to just <facepalm>

Good day to you.

I am an atheist and I an struck by the half-truths and bold-faced lies the Christian Right (who seem to be neither Christian nor right) use to smear all who do not walk in lockstep with them. Yes, atheists can and generality do proclaim their won righteousness. They shout it from the righteous.

Values/morals have nothing to do with religion in my opinion. Actually, I find many religions themselves to be immoral.

[Mod says]: Just a reminder, this question is in the general section, answers must be helpful and on topic. Thanks!

Religion has not helped muslims have any more morality or value when it comes to the torturous methods required to slaughter meat for their table. Their treatment of animals is abhorrent.

Haven’t read any of the other answers yet, but will after I post.

I do not believe in God and have no religion. But I have values. My values are based upon what I see demonstrated as good or perceived to be good (based upon my experience and knowledge and advice from people that I believe to be intelligent and compassionate) for me, my family, my society, my planet, the other beings that live on my planet and my universe. But not necessarily in that order.

I cannot conceive of doing things simply for the fact that there would be no punishment or I would not get caught. I do things to be helpful and useful that hopefully cause the least amount of pain, or damage to myself and the other beings in my world and universe. If that’s not considered values, I don’t know what is.

@Skaggfacemutt Here is a Link that I think you will find interesting. It discusses much of the same questioning.

@rojo Wonderful link! I like the way the article shows that morality is both an innate function and a factor that shapes religion, but religion is also an collectively directed concept. Hard to explain, but the article does a good job.

@rojo Thanks for helping me understand myself more without attacking me. :)

Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right. In my experience, a large percentage of atheists and agnostics do what is right because that is what they want to do. A large percentage of the religious do what they are told to get a bigger better deal for themselves, (Heaven instead of Hell). Doing what they were told was the genesis of the Christian on Christian massacres of the 1st through and 4th centuries, the Dark Ages, the Crusades, the Inquisition, the witch hunts, the child abuse horrors in the Catholic Church, and the cult wars of today. You be the judge—if you accept that the the “judge not” commandment reiterated so often in Christ’s teachings was not meant to be taken seriously.

@ETpro Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right. “Whose” right are we talking about that is morally right? If I thought it was morally right to lynch African Americans, eradicate Native Americans from a particular valley, or rape the females of the enemy towns my nation’s soldiers invaded and the society I came from felt the same, who is to say that was not right, and how would they prove it?

@Hypocrisy_Central That comment wasn’t directed at any particular religion or any single “who”. It is about how things actually work. The rule of reciprocity tells us what is right. Do unto others as you would have them do to you.

@ETpro The rule of reciprocity tells us what is right. Do unto others as you would have them do to you. Where did that rule of reciprocity come from? There are those who’s golden rule is ”get those bastards first then they won’t be able to get me later”. Why are they not correct? It makes logical sense. Who can say they are wrong to think it or to do it less someone else have more might to enforce a different ideology or belief.

@Hypocrisy_Central I believe you have just defined the positions of the two parties and the state of the union at this time.

And why it is too….

@Hypocrisy_Central We want to survive not just as a single human being but as a species. We want to pass on our genes, but we also want our kids to inherit a better world than the one we came into. Given those imperatives that all but psychopaths share, kill or be killed does not make logical sense, whereas the golden rule does.

On a number of issues, many use traditional religion to come to conclusions that are immoral – racial discrimination, gender discrimination, religious discrimination (and religious wars), global warming, environmental destruction, anti-science and economic elitism. Of course, these perverse ideas do not strictly follow from belief in God, but from twisted interpretations of religion. Suppose though that there was no biblical text that could be used to back up these positions. We would be forced to discuss these views on their own merit. This could lead to a whole new social movement. In fact It already has

As a Christian, I’m often stuck in the middle. I am an environmentalist, believe in the US having national health care, and support immigrant
rights. I believe that the God I
serve wants us to care about these things. Unfortunately
many, but not all, of my fellow
Christians think the US needs
stronger borders, no national
health care, and why should we care about the environment. Often I find
myself explaining why I feel
that God cares about these things. I think that this is sad, and am working with in my community to change things.

I would still have values but with religion I am a more moral person. I did things when I wasn’t religious that I would not do now.

I think that sometimes it is easier to be beholden to a group or an idea about a deity than it is to be beholden to yourself. This is a fine way to reinforce your morals when your morals dovetail with the religious morals.

But there will come a time when religion and morality seem different, and at such a time, it can really mess up your head. Then you begin to wonder who you are again. It can be bad. It can depress you. It can make you question your ability to continue to exist.

I think that’s a dangerous hook to hang your hat on. Especially for some people. People who are different to begin with, and don’t know where they belong and feel quite separate from most of society. These people are better served, I believe, by learning to accept themselves rather than by trying to conform to a group. It is only through acceptance that you can allow yourself to be who you are and you can stop the constant battles of trying to fit a lobster pot into a kline bottle.