Can We Live a Moral Life Without Believing in the Existence God?

Human Person is subjected in a several notion as the science and philosophy defines any

dogmas regarding in it.“The concept of person has its own network of social, legal, cultural and

moral institutions and practices”1.As philosophy defined what is man, it provides a variety of

suppositions as reads: man is rational animal which does connote that man is primum inter pares

among all contingent being as it is endowed with intelligence, man is a social being which is a

supposition that stresses that man is a sociable being, hence, the knowledge is not confined

within himselfand enabling himself to progress by means of apportioned learnings, and the

reference point of this term paper man is moral being.

“Morality in its technical definition, it is the set of customs or manners and it makes

claim upon each of us that are stronger than the claims of law and takes priority over self-

interest”2. Furthermore, morality does prominently figure and encompass laws and legalizations

where can be elucidated that morality as the universal idea which circumscribes the internality

and the externality of the actions in itself.

Suffice to say that its foremost concern is the rectitude of the human conducts toward a

specific thing, phenomenon and person and therefore, its necessary implication is that man holds

not just a usual responsibility that we are accustomed with, this is the responsibility as agency

where the human being is accountable as the reason and cause of something, more so a moral

responsibility which is the necessary consequence of man’s intellect and will where it is

1
Simon J. Evnine,Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008),
3.

2
Barbara MacKinnon, Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues, Concise Edition. (Wadsworth:
Clark Baxter Publishing, 2009), 288
commensurate to the responsibility as duty which is defined as holding a moral obligation to

something which is a moral target. Thus, to be moral is to deliberately conductoneself such as

manners, etiquettes, and deportmentswhich comports to the proprieties which is conducive to

everyone’s welfare. Morality corresponds in being good, virtuous and just which are

commensurate to the rational dimension and personhood of a human being for one must have an

ample awareness and understanding what is moral.Virtue and vice and parity and disparity are

well cohered in the inherent rationality of man. Therefore, Morality per se must not be confused

in the rationality of man which is reckoned as the pinnacle of its very nature.

As Spinoza accentuated, “to provide an ethics an unequivocally rational foundation. He

puts forward an ethic consisting of habits of mind and behavior to which he thinks one will

inevitably move to the extent that one has rational insight to human situation and is under the

control of that rational part of one’s nature which gives one unity as a personality.”3. Wherefore,

Kant’s attestation is plausible and may corresponds to the former as reads. “For he does not

allow that there can be someone who genuinely asks himself what he should do in a moral way,

but whose answer is in terms of what is only one of various logically coherent morality”4.

Moreover, man’s rational voluntary action is motivated to be materialized because of

ourlonging for good and our abhorrence of vices, and our idea of goodness and vices are

emanating from our rationality. Practically speaking morality is well- founded in our

fundamental understanding of good as objective good which does characterized as goodness

which is saturating the act of appeasing the welfare of every individual collectively.

3
Timothy Laura S. Sprigge, The Rational Foundations of Ethics (Cornwall: TJ Press (Padstow)
Ltd, 1988), 82.
4
Ibid. 99.
 And rationality is entirely realized because the essential biddings of reason is adhered and

observed by doing such thing.Practical reason has the salient part to be played in the realm of

morality, “human beings not only gaze on a world of things but also become the participants in a

world of action.”5, as we are situated in the world, man must not just be passive on what thing

occurs, we are perforce to participate in such way that we are treating human beings as well as

things with considerateness.Practical reason in a strict sense is an aptitude of human person to

reconcile and to settle what is action must and ought to carry out. “Since in the Critique of Pure

Reason6he (Immanuel Kant) argued that the domination of reason over the world of sense must

be complete”7

“The ability to tell right from wrong is just as innate as all other attributes of reason. Just

as we are all intelligent beings… perceiving everything as having a causal relation, we all have

the access to the some universal moral law.”8 .In employing practical reason we are formulating

precepts which are collectively pertinent in human beings. In this sense human beings has the

inherent and necessary feature of carrying out just, good, and moral actuations. Consequently,

even without the credulity in the idea of the Supreme Intelligence governing the world, we can

materialize aforementioned propositions. And as Kant emphasized the belief in God would just

5
Samule Enoch Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy: Eight Edition
(Philippines, 2008), 284.

6
Critique of Pure Reason- a treatise which is vaunted by Immanuel Kant stressing and figuring
out the indispensability of practical reason in the realm of the entirety of human nature such as freedom
and morality.

7
Paul Guyer, The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 21.

8
JosteinGaarder, Sophie’s World (London: A Phoenix Paperback, 1991), 276.
be conducive to be more virtuous, subsequently in having stating this we have the innate essence

of being good9.

For instance the indigenous people who are not initiated in any variety of education and

have not been oriented in the notion of God even but they are doing so for the sake of preserving

the environment, those people are not even pronouncing such statements as reads: We are

reforesting the mountain because God says so, they prefer to accentuate that they are doing so

because there would be necessary implication of manmade calamities and devastations. Ample

to say that they would prefer to practicality and to the innate feeling of doing good. but a query

arises as I endorse this notion, where or to whom we derive our innate notion of good? is the

good that we are affiliating to is the real good? perhaps these would be the real issues to be

reconciled with.

9
Man as Essentially Good- One of the four theories about the notion of goodness, Goodness is innate property of
human person and thus evil is merely encountered in man’s environment, sociality and therefore it really bears a
mutual exclusivity in man’s nature.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

Simon J. Evnine,Epistemic Dimensions of Personhood. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008)

Barbara MacKinnon, Ethics: Theory and Contemporary Issues, Concise Edition. (Wadsworth:

Clark Baxter Publishing, 2009)

Timothy Laura S. Sprigge, The Rational Foundations of Ethics (Cornwall: TJ Press (Padstow)

Ltd, 1988)

Samule Enoch Stumpf, Socrates to Sartre and Beyond: A History of Philosophy: Eight Edition

(Philippines, 2008)

Paul Guyer, The Cambridge Companion to Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,

1992)

JosteinGaarder, Sophie’s World (London: A Phoenix Paperback, 1991)