Books or thought leaders that teach morals in a non-religious way?
(Jordan Peterson, obviously, but are there other good ones?)
People say that morals aren’t derived from religion. I agree.
Did religion ever encourage morality?
Or is the fact that our society is becoming less Christian related to the immorality taking over our streets, colleges, schools, and broken homes? Other contributing factors?
Welcome! Good questions.
Christians say that the decline in morals is due to increasing secularism in society, but in my opinion it is mainly because of the purposeful destruction of morality through Marxist “critical theory” propaganda and bogus front groups and movements based on it, that have been taught for years in our schools and universities.
Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism was a great basis for morality, but sadly, because of the resistance to it from both the religious, who rejected her as an atheist, and leftists, who rejected her support of capitalism and individualism, did not become widely accepted.
Welcome, IndianaKate!
Good questions.
I too think the teaching of god-worshiping religion is itself immoral because it is a lie. In addition, the two with the largest following - Christianity and Islam - teach immorality (Islam now being far worse in practice than contemporary Christianity).
To name a few ethicists - from top of the head first thing in the morning - whose teaching was not in the name of a religion - even though some of them believed in gods of one sort or another:
Socrates. Diagoras (“the first atheist”). The Stoics (they had various religious beliefs but a philosophy not dependent on any). The Epicureans (atheists, and my favorites, especially Epicurus himself and Democritus).
Kant. Hume. Spinoza.
Ayn Rand.
Then there is a pandemonium (= gathering of devils) who preach immorality - murder, torture, the “beauty of evil”. Most of them are French, some are German (eg. Nietzsche).
For an introduction to the most prominent devils, many of whom have become very popular with American academics, see this post at The Atheist Conservative:
https://theatheistconservative.com/the-cultivation-of-evil-the-sickness-of-europe/
The vicious ethics of the French devils - of Michel Foucault perhaps most of all - are a main contributing cause of the immorality embraced by the global Left, and of the moral hell that is spreading now in America.
WELLCOME IndianaKate !
Welcome IndianaKate!
There is nothing better than being the person, whom you want your children to become. Books are fine, but children are learning all the time from the behavior of the adults with whom they associate and most from the adults whom they love and trust.
Found this list quickly:
and I hope this is okay, all sites for this book were sellers:
And a forum on a parenting site:
I don’t want to discourage anyone from reading anything, but I’m astonished that the guy who selected the five books included The Brothers Karamazov. It bears an intensely religious message. It tells us, through Alyosha Karamazov, that we must behave as the Russian Orthodox Church tells us to. That is Dostoyevsky’s deeply felt belief. His morality is the moral teaching of the Church.
He is a great novelist. The Possessed (also called The Demons or The Devils in English translations), displays profound understanding of the mentality of the nihilist terrorist. Its characters foreshadow the anti-human revolutionaries of the 1917 Russian revolution.
But for all his insight and genius, Dostoyevsky was, illogically, a believer. (Same can be said of Solzhenitsyn.)
Haven’t read that novel. Just found this on that search engine…
Thanks for the input.
Did you omit a link?
No, I meant what I previously posted as the “this.”
Stefan Molyneux is an atheist who makes rational arguments for morality.
https://www.freedomain.com/podcasts/
He supports:
Peaceful parenting
(What he calls) Real time relationships
Having children at a younger age in a committed marriage
Universally Preferable Behaviour
He is anti-state schooling (and anti-state in general).
Actually I heard that Stefan Molyneux isn’t an atheist anymore.
He has been talking more favourably of Christianity of late, but he is still an atheist. His book “Against the Gods” is still available: