Yes, I do understand, but I don't agree that one needs to believe in God to either show such love for others or do good and know right from wrong. (btw I personally do believe in God and I believe that one can know what is right and wrong through one's conscience - even if that may not always be clear and may differ depending on the situation - and even if we get it wrong sometimes.)
But that is the point. Conscience is subjective, influenceable, changeable and unclear. If I continually ignore my conscience, eventually it stops speaking to me. As a result it is not true to say that you can 'know' right from wrong based on it. No matter what our conscience tells us, as rational beings, we tend to ask 'why?'. So there is no escaping the need for external evidence if you want to claim that it is actually right or wrong. Otherwise, you 'feel' right or wrong - i.e. it is a preference for certain types of behaviour - you don't 'know' it.
But if God has told you nothing about himself, what possible relevance does he have to your life?
What you are saying is of course similar to what Muslims say - and the sort of thing that I used to believe. Namely that one cannot really ever truly know right from wrong without having the 'objective' source of God (and in their case the Qur'an).
In this, they are correct. Like you said, not everything is bad or evil about Islam
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But Christians (and Muslims) disagree within themselves about many issues of what is right and wrong - and the ones they agree on (such as don't murder, rape, steal etc...) are things all humans agree on.
And? The fact that people do not agree, does not mean that there is no truth. And no, not all humans agree on these things. I was recently living in Afghanistan where it would not be unheard of for a family member to see the rape of the woman in another tribe to be the 'right' way of restoring their honour. Same will murder.
And there are things in both the Qur'an and Bible (such God in the Old Testament demanding the slaughter of whole peoples including women, children and animals etc... ) that I would say are wrong and immoral.
Sure you would. But your subjective assessment does not mean that it is actually wrong or immoral.
Finally how does one know the Qur'an is the word of God or Jesus is the son of God and died on the cross for us?
I'm not claiming the Quran is the word of God. For Jesus, there are several people who say they heard his claims, saw his death, saw him rise again and died maintaining that they had seen this. You can read their stories and judge for yourself. My point about morality is that given my own conscience and the place of love in my 'moral urges', such a story brings my experience to a complete whole and, if I accept it, I end up with no dissonance between what I believe about reality and what I observe about myself.
Forgive me for my use of the word 'subjective'. Let me try again. That God showed his love by sending his son to die for people is not an inescapable conclusion one must come to after examining the facts or scriptures or by any other set of actions or rational or logical research. In other words it is quite possible that sane, sincere and reasonable people may find such a belief to be unbelievable.
I didn't say it was. My claim here was that a 'godless' solution leaves more problems than it solves. I find the person who claims to rely only on rational and logical research but then says his conscience is an adequate guide to right and wrong is being inconsistent. At a fundamental level, what you live by is neither rational or logical. Perhaps you could tell me what rational or logical research has led to your belief in God.
Believing in nothing can always be justified is rational. You just set your standards of evidence such that 'rational' excludes pretty much everything. The problem is actually living that way. If you can live as you believe, I think you've probably turned a wrong corner along the way.
Yet if such a belief is so essential to knowing what is right or wrong - then why has God left it seem so unbelievable to millions - or billions of people - like me?
You'd have to ask God. But given what has been said so far on this thread, I can't see that the alternatives are particularly convincing either.
Topic: Why the world makes more sense if you take god out of the equation.