What's More Important - Morality or Faith?

[FOsteology]

Is it better to be moral and faithless or faithful and lack morals?

[Hawks Feather]

Personally I believe if you have (and practice) faithfulness you won't have to worry about a lack or morals.  And if you have no morals, I doubt that you have much faith.

Jerry


Edit:  If this is a pick one and not an actual question, then I go with Faithful to our country and the lack of morals. This will allow the person to wipe out those who are not faithful to our country with no remorse. 

[Okanagan]

Is it better to be moral and faithless or faithful and lack morals?

While listening to a lecture on this topic, a friend sitting by me leaned over and asked, "In basketball, is it better to be in shape or to know the rules?"

Rather than opine on which is better I am gong to sidestep to the larger question of whether it is possible to be moral without faith:    It depends of course on who defines morals.  If a person defines his own morals, then it is possible to be perfectly moral without reference to anything else.  Also, faith can have many meanings but it appears in your post to mean a system of belief, such as Islam or Roman Catholicism, so that is how I am using it.

If there is a standard of what is moral that comes from outside of the person, then it is less likely but still possible to be “moral” without holding to a faith (to a point anyway).

I believe that there is a universal moral standard, and that normal humans have a built-in indicator that points them to that universal standard.  People who claim no faith still have this “moral compass”  and some do a pretty good job of following it. 

Every normal human struggles to some degree with matching his actions to his own moral standard, because self interest sometimes appears to conflict with the action called for by the higher standard.  Faith can help clarify the standard and motivate a person to follow it. 

Biblical Christian faith is unusual among world religions in that it matter-of-factly denies that anyone can perfectly uphold the standard, and then gives two remedies for that failing.   If accepted, grace forgives the failing, and if accepted, God himself enters the person to boost his ability to do the right thing.

[snafu]

Faith. Without faith you don't have jack.

[pitw]

Guess I'll vote for morals.  As I enjoy reading history it seems there were[and is] a lot of folk with faith who had no morals.  Only thing I have faith in is Ma Nature and Gravity as they always work.

[FinsnFur]

Some people have no morals so it's pretty tough to have faith in them.

[Todd Rahm]

Faith,

If the claim faith but have bad morals, then they really don't have faith at all.

[HaMeR]

“To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to society.”


― Theodore Roosevelt

[HaMeR]

May or may not be applicable.

“Excellence is an art won by training and habituation. We do not act rightly because we have virtue or excellence, but we rather have those because we have acted rightly. We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”


― Aristotle

[FinsnFur]

That was deep Glen

[HaMeR]

    Aristotle said it. I just used the old Copy/Paste feature here. 


Besides,, we all know I aint that smart. 

Somehow,, one day,, I opened my email & found I had an email from the below link. I opened it & it had a quote of some sort. Been looking at it everyday since. I didn't search for it. It was just there. 

http://www.thoughtful-mind.com/index.php

[Okanagan]

Aristotle was pretty smart.  I was doing some teaching in my early 30's before a wiser man than I convinced me of what Aristotle said, though I had not seen that quote till now. 

[johnoh]

I think your faith defines your morality.. And it is an individual thing, that is basis of why people do what they do.