True Morality: The Immorality of Religious Morality

by SuchaWistfulEye in Religion, April 2, 2009

“With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion”. -Steven Weinburg What is nature of true morality as opposed to natural, traditional, and theistic morality? The skeptics argue not only for atheism, but even anti-theism. The science of evolution, the sense of humanism, and the Ten Commandments serve as starting points for this exploration of religious morality.

Atheistic and Theistic morality

“You’re missing the point. God tells us what’s good and evil; without religion-without Christianity, I mean-we’d all be, like, savage and immoral!” I’m an atheist, and this is all too common. Without hubris, I’m inclined to regard myself as, pretty much, a good person, in fact, continuing to attempt to avoid the same, I would venture that I am a person of higher morals than many Christians-or rather, should I say, many believers of any denomination. The dangers of specific human examples are too great; I should note that I am not a moral exemplar-just more so than is god! who, as Bryan Emmanuel Gutierrez states the case, “should be executed for crimes against humanity”! I am, to say the least, not a little unnerved by that many religious types seem to think the opposite, that either all morality is the product of there being a divine presence or that god’s say on all matters moral and immoral are final. Proponents of the former stance should note that there seems to be something universally human (as opposed to Christian, or whatever) about the split between morality and immorality which science has pretty much proved, and that such does not correspond to much of what the bible (or whatever) suggests is moral or immoral; those who argue the latter is defensible need only look at the evil both recommended as good in the holy books, the morality that so-called holy men have circulated in history, and ask whether religion does what is morally good now then try to justifiably re-state the supposition.

One may, I think, safely assume that there is egg on that theist’s face. (One could of course suggest that no-one knows god’s will, that in actual fact even the holy books are mere guesses but not only does that undermine the single and fairly meaningless piece of evidence for the existence of god-that is, people have always believed in a god, there must be one, right?!-it also doesn’t lead where theists often desire: lack of evidence doesn’t suggest god, it suggests lack of evidence. Evidence for god’s existence and “his” morality must be sought, I’m afraid a “God of the gaps”, that is finding god where there’s little concrete science, is both rather pathetic and even less credible than sticking to scripture!).