Out of all the concepts that we looked at and read about, I think that one that convinced me the most would be DIT. But, I will say that I am a Divine Independence Theorist AND a theist. I do believe in God and I would consider myself a pretty religious person but I wholeheartedly believe that a person can be moral and have a good heart whether or not they believe in God. I feel that morality is 100% independent of God. I think that that’s one point that some of the atheist readings that we’ve read should have acknowledged. I think that there are a lot of people who will agree with me, saying that there can be belief in religion and belief in morality regardless of God. My personal opinion is that a lot of people who believe in God do great things to help the world, such as Mother Teresa, and that non believers also do great things that benefit society, such as Stephen Hawking. Morality is not dependent on God, yet I still do believe in the existence of God and a higher power. I think that God is just used as a guiding source for others and as a backbone for us humans to use in times of desperation. I think that the ideas of DIT, being able to be moral and having us humans evolving and figuring things out on our own is the most convincing topic.
I completely agree with you. I also consider myself as religious but I believe that morality is independent of God and is an innate feature of human nature (and therefore I find myself to be a divine independence theorist as well). However, I also believe in the cultural relativism theory to an extent, that different people can have different morals based on culture. All in all, though, I also agree that it is perfectly legitimate for someone to believe in God yet believe that morality is independent of a higher being.
I also agree with you. I believe morality exists on its own, completely independent of any God. If a perfectly good being does exist, he/she/it would follow and command what is already good and moral, not create an objectiveness goodness. This explains why people who don’t believe in God can still be good people, because if the Divine Command Theory were true, then the only way to be a good person would be to follow God. We know, and you have given an example to support this, that there are many people who do not follow God that are good people.
I agree that believing in DIT and being a thiest is possible and makes sense. I think that some or many thiests are tolerant of other religions and people who are not religious. I also agree that thiests and non-thiests can be moral, but your example of Stephen Hawking doesn’t have to deal with morality. Yes, he has bettered the scientific world, but none of that really relates to morality. A philanthropist or a humanitarian, such as Angelina Jolie, helping the world and its people, would be an example that relates more to morality.
Not to sound like a broken record, but I agree with you. I am a religious person and am also a Divine Independence Theorist. I think all the proof you need is the Old Testament. God slaughtered, plagued, and all-in-all punished people for their non-belief. If we were Divine Command Theorists then we would have to believe these things to be moral because God condoned them. But God would clearly be a tyrant in this situation, something that a Divine Command Theorist could not argue against. For this I believe that DIT is the right way to go and that morality, whether God exists or not, is independent of God’s existence.
I too agree with and believe that I am a Divine Independence Theorist. One thing I thought interesting with all these posts was how many of us considered ourselves DIT. This seems important from a generational perspective because while most of us and probably the rest of our class is comprised of DIT, many Divine command theorists do exist in the world which is why we are divided on so many issues. But I think there is a rise in DIT because the new generation is so independent and generally has more freedom than previous generations.