Does society need God to be moral?

I don't believe in God, never have, and have always scoffed at the thought you need to believe in judgment in the afterlife to be moral. But I have come across an argument that has left me wondering. Essentially, it is one thing to believe something and another to act as if you believed it.

Take the Christian criminal. For example, South American drug cartels tend to be very Catholic. They have religious tattoos, jewelry, icons and partake in prayer. They obviously believe in Christ and his miracles, and they believe in an afterlife, and yet they murder and sin on a regular basis, with the knowledge that judgment will come from God and they will surely go to hell. They act as if there is no afterlife and no consequence to their actions.

Now an atheist, like myself, believes in no afterlife. After death there is nothingness. My body will decompose and all memory and even knowledge of my existence will be forgotten in a few hundred years. I may as well have not existed- it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. There is no grand scheme. Only birth, short life, then eternal death. And yet i make sacrifices all the time. To get to university required the sacrifice of short-term gratification and material pleasures, for a long-term future. But the only future there is for me is eternal death. So why bother. I'm acting as if there was some afterlife. As if there was a God judging me. I can say I believe that life has no meaning, but in sacrificing short-term pleasures and immoral vices I am acting as if there were a God and life did have meaning.

So basically while individuals can claim not to believe in God, a moral and just society must be built as if God existed. Otherwise we would have anarchy.

yes, you do, otherwise you get a society like Sodom or a people like Judah when they were following the heathen nations.

people's morals are usually influenced by what our society's morals are, especially for the younger generation.
here's a thought I had, God's morals have never changed, they have been the same since the beginning,
society's morals however, change every generation or so, now we condone things that weren't condoned 20 years ago and the other way round too, and I can guarantee that in future generations, things that we now believe to be moral will become immoral and the other way round too. my thought is, which generation was right? is what we currently think is right and wrong now actually correct? or our we "ignorant", "small minded" like the future generations will probably call us?

Do you think the Jains are as immoral as the inhabitants of Sodom? Or Buddhists? Or Hindus? Or Taoists? Or Confucians? Or Stoics?

Do you think the Jains are as immoral as the inhabitants of Sodom? Or Buddhists? Or Hindus? Or Taoists? Or Confucians? Or Stoics?

I have no idea who the Jain's are.

I don't believe in God, never have, and have always scoffed at the thought you need to believe in judgment in the afterlife to be moral. But I have come across an argument that has left me wondering. Essentially, it is one thing to believe something and another to act as if you believed it.

Take the Christian criminal. For example, South American drug cartels tend to be very Catholic. They have religious tattoos, jewelry, icons and partake in prayer. They obviously believe in Christ and his miracles, and they believe in an afterlife, and yet they murder and sin on a regular basis, with the knowledge that judgment will come from God and they will surely go to hell. They act as if there is no afterlife and no consequence to their actions.

Now an atheist, like myself, believes in no afterlife. After death there is nothingness. My body will decompose and all memory and even knowledge of my existence will be forgotten in a few hundred years. I may as well have not existed- it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. There is no grand scheme. Only birth, short life, then eternal death. And yet i make sacrifices all the time. To get to university required the sacrifice of short-term gratification and material pleasures, for a long-term future. But the only future there is for me is eternal death. So why bother. I'm acting as if there was some afterlife. As if there was a God judging me. I can say I believe that life has no meaning, but in sacrificing short-term pleasures and immoral vices I am acting as if there were a God and life did have meaning.

So basically while individuals can claim not to believe in God, a moral and just society must be built as if God existed. Otherwise we would have anarchy.

Is a god believing individual can commit sin but then ask Jesus for forgiveness and all is forgiven then what is holding back said individual from sinning?

I don't believe in God, never have, and have always scoffed at the thought you need to believe in judgment in the afterlife to be moral. But I have come across an argument that has left me wondering. Essentially, it is one thing to believe something and another to act as if you believed it.

Take the Christian criminal. For example, South American drug cartels tend to be very Catholic. They have religious tattoos, jewelry, icons and partake in prayer. They obviously believe in Christ and his miracles, and they believe in an afterlife, and yet they murder and sin on a regular basis, with the knowledge that judgment will come from God and they will surely go to hell. They act as if there is no afterlife and no consequence to their actions.

Now an atheist, like myself, believes in no afterlife. After death there is nothingness. My body will decompose and all memory and even knowledge of my existence will be forgotten in a few hundred years. I may as well have not existed- it makes no difference in the grand scheme of things. There is no grand scheme. Only birth, short life, then eternal death. And yet i make sacrifices all the time. To get to university required the sacrifice of short-term gratification and material pleasures, for a long-term future. But the only future there is for me is eternal death. So why bother. I'm acting as if there was some afterlife. As if there was a God judging me. I can say I believe that life has no meaning, but in sacrificing short-term pleasures and immoral vices I am acting as if there were a God and life did have meaning.

So basically while individuals can claim not to believe in God, a moral and just society must be built as if God existed. Otherwise we would have anarchy.

In that case, your assertion that "otherwise we get a society like Sodom" is based on ignorance.

Sodomall.

God and religion are not the same. I am talking more about the idea of God as a form a judgment afterlife. Organized religion should certainly be separated from the state. I am saying whether the idea of 'God', that is a judgement after life, is needed in a moral society.

To the point you raise about Christianity simply being a license to kill, you should read 'The Grand Inquisitor' (or better yet the whole karamazov brothers). Basically the burden Jesus places on man is too much for us to bear. Every single human being on this earth is flawed, every single one immoral in some way. It is impossible to imitate Christ, the perfect man, and we will surely live a life of many sins. It is therefore necessary for there to be forgiveness in religion, otherwise we are all hopeless of reaching heaven. You say some people abuse this, and this is true, but these are the kind of people who sin regardless of whether they thought they could get away with it. And ultimately God is the only judge.