You can study what you believe? Do you mean you believe something without realizing it?
Like I said, you're good at asking lots of questions.
If it is a matter of what I realize, I realize absolutely that God the One who
"calls the things not being as being." Without God conceptualizing
anything to me is out of the question. Our
being comes out of God and our
moral being comes out of our Creator in whose image man was made.
I am pretty sure about that. Alternative explanations make less sense to me.
In fact our ability to argue against God is an ability that we would not even have at all had not God bestowed such an ability on His creatures. [edited]
That is what I realize. How to logically convince others of that is another matter. If you wait long enough and allow someone to talk more and more it is usually the case that you can find something not quite consistent or rationally a problem.
I have given my own views on morality many times. Basically it comes down to compassion for others and the balance between that and personal interest. Generally it is morally correct to always do whatever benefits others, with the allowance that one may use excessive cost to oneself as a valid excuse not to do so.
Virtually all of the Christian (if not theistic) arguments I have heard agreed with what you believe here.
THAT is not the problem as some thinkers have pointed out.
The deeper question is, is this simply an arbitrary preference for you to think this way or is there a more meaningful underlying cause for you thinking this way ? This is how I have always heard the issue debated.
You say "Hey. I am no believer in God or gods. But I think we should treat others with respect, love, as they would be benefitted. We should take thought for what is not harmful to anyone. We should take caution against anything that would do harm to anyone."
No problem. Practically we all agree ! But WHY is there this feeling in us? Why not do dirt to everyone ? Why not be totally selfish? Whose going to call us to account ? Who is going to discover our secret crimes ?
The fact of the matter is that I DO, and you DO sometimes do harm to others while no one is looking. I had loads of trash to get rid of. I looked around this way and that and left it in a dumpster that belonged to some company. Technically that was not a public dumpster.
My leaving trash at that dumpster probably caused some laborer to have to work a little harder the next day. That may have been a harm to that trashman. That may have not been a benefit to them.
So we do do what harms others. We transgress against others. We don't want to. We may not like to. But we do.
But WHY are we concerned about them ? Because it is the right thing to do ? Perhaps. But evolution doesn't care about what is the right thing to do. It "cares" only for what will facilitate survival. What will further the organism's life seems to be the only "concern" of the evolutionary process.
Evolution couldn't care less about TRUTH or what is RIGHT. If the blind and purposeless process could "care" at all it would only be about what will make a hardier organism to beat the odds against extinction.
So we can say we simply choose what we think is a better way to live - not to do harm to others.
It makes far more sense to me that we are designed that way by a Moral Agent who intends to call into account, enforce, judge, forgive, pardon, reward or otherwise punish with complete knowledge of our circumstances and choices. That is a moral God Creator.
That is a stronger ground for WHY we have the desire to act in a way towards others. And it does not require that the actor BELIEVE in God or not.