HOW SELF-LOVE REFUTES THE MORAL ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Religion says morality comes from God and his authority. He is supposedly the reason why it has a command feel. This does not work at all and makes a laughing stock of morality. Religion realises that and that is why it seeks to condition children in schools and to use politics for its own ends. That is why religious people and secularists who see through it are targeted for hate and condemnation and abuse.
Self-love is the thing that has to be there for morality to be even possible. Unless you love yourself you cannot consider morality important. How can you be moral if you hate yourself so much that you think it is okay for people to hit and abuse you? Or if you just think you matter so little that they may do that?
And these by implication insult other people too for you say they can be the same as you if they want to be.
Self love cannot be an obligation or commanded. It cannot be a moral requirement for it has to be totally free and done because it is beautiful not because it is commanded. And it should be automatic and spontaneous. We all love ourselves perhaps in a confused way at times so it does not need commanding.
You cannot command somebody to enjoy their coffee for that defeats the purpose. Thus the persons who love themselves are doing something far more important than morality. Thus those who argue that morality in the form of God alone matters or is supreme in importance are doing you moral and psychological harm.
Religionists say they get their values from God and not themselves. Self-love is so central to how we approach things so that is simply a lie. If you identify problems of evil such as,
the innocent suffer
the innocent are corrupted by evil temptations
the wicked thrive
earthquakes etc happen
how lies at times are never overthrown ever
how depression is set up to tell the person they are worth nothing
how God supposedly commanded adulterers etc to be stoned to death
all of these attack our self-love.
Religion blackmails you by saying that if you reject God's worthiness of devotion and love over evil, you end up with no reason to hold that morality is anything other than imagination and opinion.
[To use suffering and evil that come from plagues and other natural causes as ammunition to get you to affirm morality is a form of bullying. Doing that is showing you are morally deficit.]
Opinions may be right but because you are only guessing you don't know. Opinions are not as good as facts. They endanger facts and make too much noise so that you may not hear the truth.
So you are threatened with being accused overthrowing good if you deny God because of evil. You are told that you are left with a problem of explaining good. And the other side of the coin is that you end up with no reason to call anything evil.
Interestingly evil to mean anything has to describe something a person is. Evil is not a threat unless somebody becomes it. Then religion as coherent as ever says that we must see evil actions as something good people do so we cannot define anybody as evil. This is despite Jesus telling individuals of his generation that they were evil and that nobody is good but God. All this nonsense would, if it could be traced to a possible revelation from God, show that morality is not objectively true and God makes it up.
What is your thing? Pointing out evil and challenging it? Or pointing out good and living it? One will matter to you more than the other though they are in effect two sides of the same coin. Whatever, do not forget this:
A God inventing morality is not only inventing good but also inventing evil. A person who clearly, even if they don't confess, uses a God to invent morality with is also inventing good and evil.
Self-respect never mind self-love shows that God is unnecessary for morality, morality is overrated and its loving face is a mask.
