I (32m) started seeing prostitutes when I was 20 and have done it on and off up to my current age. I find the lack of sexual and emotional connection lures me into to seeing them even when I say I’m going to stop. Whenever I am doing decent financially I end up going back to seeing them. I try to be a spiritual person and read the bible and not lust over women but it can be a struggle and mental battle. Does anyone else have this same bad habit?
You can also act morally out of love for God. A moral act is a moral act regardless of intention. The alternative is no morality at all. And in that case, you’re either following the law out of love for your state and/or fellow human, or because you don’t want to be sent to prison for breaking the law.
The alternative is no morality at all. And in that case, you’re either following the law out of love for your state and/or fellow human, or because you don’t want to be sent to prison for breaking the law.
You’re going in a circle there. If individually define moral action as “an action that cannot be derived from anything but some kind of supernatural being”, then yeah, you can dismiss anything else on normative grounds. But then what’s the point of asking “How can something be morally wrong if there is no God?”?
If there is no god there is no other responsibility than your own. No destiny or gods plan to hide behind, no comfort that people who suffer now will have a better place to go to when they die. You either act like a decent person now or you mess up the only chance people have at a nice life. Once you accept that, there is only the choice to help others or at least minimise the damage you cause just by being there. People who would not realise that on their own won’t improve with religion. They are the kind that would only use religion to judge others and decide the infidels lives don’t matter.
There is enough humanist morality that does not include god and a lot of pretty decent morality that comes from non Christian philisophy or religion. If you want religious people who really act good look at the Sikh. If you want a set of humanist morality rules that have nothing to do with the christian god look at the tenets of the satanic temple.
The Satanic Temple has seven fundamental tenets:
One should strive to act with compassion and empathy toward all creatures in accordance with reason.
The struggle for justice is an ongoing and necessary pursuit that should prevail over laws and institutions.
One’s body is inviolable, subject to one’s own will alone.
The freedoms of others should be respected, including the freedom to offend. To willfully and unjustly encroach upon the freedoms of another is to forgo one’s own.
Beliefs should conform to one’s best scientific understanding of the world. One should take care never to distort scientific facts to fit one’s beliefs.
People are fallible. If one makes a mistake, one should do one’s best to rectify it and resolve any harm that might have been caused.
Every tenet is a guiding principle designed to inspire nobility in action and thought. The spirit of compassion, wisdom, and justice should always prevail over the written or spoken word.