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Originally Posted by CompleteDegen
It's quite simple, actually. We choose to obey laws out of a drive to have a civilization. Utilitarianism and respect for persons are two philosophical morality systems that don't require a god, and you can derive all of our national laws from combinations of these two systems. It is better for everyone involved to have a cohabitative, cooperative civilization. Reduces suffering, increases productivity, among a myriad of other reasons. That is why we have and follow laws. God need never enter the equation.
The other reason is we are naturally empathetic creatures (demonstrated chemically, I believe), that gives us an aversion to causing harm to other people. Of course, not everyone experiences this, and not everyone follows societal laws, but the logical framework is in place for why we should. God is unnecessary, and if He is necessary for you to behave in a manner respectful of other people, that makes you morally inferior to the rest of us who don't need Him.
Or maybe really good and pure people are more likely to have a connection with God, and want to serve others, because it is in their heart, apart from legalistic and judicial commandments to do so.
See?
It's easy to just assert things and speculate.
2. As for other posts-- I don't think you understand the dilemma, as you keep wrapping up the question in an emotional or subjectively human context.
If I have goosebumps, and a feeling that God is in the room, does it mean that God is in the room?
Anyway, this thread is going nowhere. For all of the verbal scrambling, the personal assaults, and the self-righteousness displayed here, nothing of substance has countered this view:
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You silly, bipedal apes.
You are nothing more than an aggregate of interacting atoms amidst a soup of gluons, quarks and strange and non-strange matter.
Isn't that right?
How do you justify anything in such a predicament?
How do you do so objectively?