In recent years the belief in hell has waned among Protestants partly because of the difficulty of locating it in space but more from the conviction that a loving God would not want to condemn anyone — even a hardened sinner, to say nothing of a kind and
highly moral person who is not a Christian — to endless torment.
Furthermore, the alternative that you state should have proof of its effectiveness in producing
highly moral people, for example, better than Mother Teresa.
Jesus sometimes offended
highly moral people by befriending tax collectors.
Not exact matches
Observer, I would be the last
person to say that there are no
moral non-Christians, or that ALL Christians are
highly moral.
Penn Jillette makes this observation about god, claiming to be
moral, doing things that would be considered
highly immoral if done by
people.
Belief in God or the practice of religion is not necessary in order for
people to be
highly moral beings.
Its vastness, its diversity, on the whole, its lack of discriminating judgment as to what may be called sacred — so that it includes both the
highly moral and the base — make it a literature difficult for
peoples of Hebrew - Christian backgrounds to appreciate fully.
Ah, the sickeningly sweet (like decay) of the self righteous special
people, blessed by god for their
highly moral stance.
Belief in God may not be necessary in order for
people to be
highly moral beings, but the real question is: Can you rationally justify your unconditional adherence to timeless values without implicitly invoking the existence of God?
Nevertheless, the mainline churches constantly generate within themselves smaller groups of
highly motivated
people who are at work on the frontiers of
moral advance.
There is, for example, a tradition of libertarian thought which argues that
people (can) establish
moral rights to
highly unequal amounts of private property and income in a state of nature.
That said, that concept of a «credit score» traveled rapidly to insurance, because
moral character is
highly correlated with how a
person drives.
People (the public, the media, and so forth) naturally wonder, if only 1 percent of all ethicists, spiritual leaders,
moral philosophers, other philosophers, «wise women and men», and so forth are speaking out in ethical /
moral terms, then those ethical /
moral arguments must truly be «not all that important», or «
highly controversial and not broadly accepted», or «only held by theoretical folks», or whatever.