Does religion provide us with "ideal" morality?

[trotsky]

Or is religion unnecessary (and perhaps even an impediment) to determine morality?

[democratisphere]

1. No. Many so-called religious leaders have absolutely no morals.

Morals come from self.

[guillaumeb]

2. It provides a moral code.

Is religion necessary to lead a moral life? If by religion you mean a formal religion the answer is no.

[trotsky]

4. It has been claimed to be an "ideal" one.

Do you disagree with that claim?

[guillaumeb]

22. We all have our own concept of the ideal.

Agreed?

[trotsky]

26. The claim I read said NOTHING about it being a personal concept of the "ideal."

It just said "ideal." I think that's foolish and wrong.

Agreed?

[guillaumeb]

30. No.

Using the terms foolish and wrong are inappropriate.

[trotsky]

39. So you're up to your usual tricks to avoid answering the question.

You have directly contradicted yourself from the other thread.

My work here is done. All can see your hypocrisy.

[guillaumeb]

42. Time to declare victory, and note the humiliation.

Consistency is not necessarily a virtue.

[trotsky]

45. When you behave so consistently dishonest and vicious,

you shall receive the appropriate response. If you could just behave like you think a Christian should, I think you'd find I'd be a lot nicer to you. Or perhaps that's the problem - you ARE behaving like you think a Christian should.

[guillaumeb]

47. Blame others for your responses?

An interesting tactic.

[trotsky]

49. Interesting re-framing and diversion.

Weak, but interesting.

[Mariana]

52. I don't agree, Trotsky. It's not even interesting. nt.

[trotsky]

53. Yeah, you're probably right.

Pretty much expected nowadays.

[AtheistCrusader]

40. Another frustrating ball of jell-o that must be moved uphill.

[Voltaire2]

6. How about informal?

[guillaumeb]

23. As in unafilliated but spiritual?

Is that your meaning?

[Voltaire2]

24. You used the phrase formal to avoid

answering the question. So how about answering it without any qualification.

[guillaumeb]

25. No, you inserted an adjective.

If you had been more specific I would not have asked for qualification.

[Voltaire2]

28. Huh?

Is religion necessary to lead a moral life? If by religion you mean a formal religion the answer is no.

You qualified religion by answering for the subset “formal religion”. The part left out is “not formal religion”. Or in common English “informal”.

So is religion - the entire set of the category of religions both formal and informal, necessary to lead a moral life?

[guillaumeb]

31. What is necessary to lead a moral life is to live by the social standards

of morality.

[Voltaire2]

32. So you wont answer the question.

I’m shocked.

[yallerdawg]

33. You DO know...

you're not talking to me, right?

[Voltaire2]

35. Wtf?

[yallerdawg]

37. I just noticed a similarity to our frequent conversations.

I didn't mean to startle you! (warrants a Wtf? )

[guillaumeb]

34. I did answer the question.

If you do not understand, ask and I shall attempt to clarify.

[Voltaire2]

36. Is religion necessary to lead a moral life?

[guillaumeb]

38. No. What is necessary is to lead a moral life.

But morality, as we both know, is not innate, it is a learned/taught process.

[AtheistCrusader]

41. Pass. Social Standards have evolved considerably, even in my lifespan.

I pick my morals very carefully, and fuck what society happens to find moral at the moment.

[guillaumeb]

43. Every society defines morality.

It has always been so.

[AtheistCrusader]

44. Which has led to horrific human rights abuses.

Sorry, I don't do the 'group think' thing, and have always stood by that. (Sometimes taking lumps for it)

[trotsky]

46. Then what is religion's role?

You have claimed that religion provides an "ideal" morality. You have also backed away from that claim. Very difficult to figure out exactly what you mean here. You seem totally unable to defend your thoughts on this topic.

[guillaumeb]

48. The role of religion?

Ask a believer. In my view, religion gives a philosophical framework. Note that I said "a" framework, not "the only" framework.

[trotsky]

50. And earlier you called that framework "ideal."

You can't even make up your mind what it is you believe. LOL

[trotsky]

17. Interesting that you haven't answered yet.

Do you agree or disagree with the claim that religion provides an "ideal" morality?

[guillaumeb]

55. Ideal for who?

[trotsky]

56. YOUR WORD.

YOU USED IT.

You have to tell US what YOU meant.

That's how this works, gil.

[AtheistCrusader]

54. Most religions do 'provide one'. Most of them are mutually exclusive and incompatible.

So, good luck with that.

[bitterross]

3. Clearly, no.

There are religions that endorse violence against non-believers. There are religions that mandate genital mutilation of baby boys and girls.

Religions have traditionally been tribal. Tribes reject entities from outside their tribe. Either by shunning and ignoring them at the low end of the scale or by violent attacks and wars at the upper end of the scale. Religions reinforce this tribal mentality even in the current age when we don't live in small tribes any longer.

We do not need religion to have morality. If morality didn't exist before religion then I don't see how humans would have made it to the point of inventing religion. What I mean by that is this. Humans had to learn to evolve to the point of cooperation before language evolved. This required some basic morality. Not killing one another, not stealing from one another, sharing, etc. Those morals were with us before there were gods and goddesses.

[trotsky]

5. Considering that some other animals display an awareness of ethical behavior and morality...

yeah, I think it's pretty clear religion isn't necessary. And sometimes it even gets in the way.

[Act_of_Reparation]

7. Obviously not.

A cursory examination of common, normative morality reveals it to be more than somewhat dissimilar from the morality prescribed by religious texts despite a majority of people being of religious persuasion. We quite clearly get our morals elsewhere.

As for it being ideal, that would be another resounding "no". Religious morality is inflexible and largely immutable. It attempts to provide us with one-sized-fits-all, bumper-sticker-sized answers to complicated issues that--if we ever are to sort them out--must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis.

[sinkingfeeling]

8. No. Not even close.

[NeoGreen]

9. Maybe for a time in history it provided a "code"...

...but post enlightenment, its validity has been reduced to near zero.

As a "moral" code, religion's role can be summarized in the following meme:

[Fresh_Start]

10. I'd vote for its an impediment for morality

as witness all the people who thinking lying and life with trump are perfectly fine in order to have a slight chance of making abortion illegal.

When you can say that someone was chosen by god to lead, then you can ignore all of the tough decisions about morality.

[safeinOhio]

11. Morality depends on context.

It’s all gray.

[Flo Mingo]

12. I suppose it depends on how you define religion

I believe religion probably developed as pre-science homo sapiens tried to explain what could not be understood at the time. Things like thunder and lightning, volcanoes and earthquakes were credited to a superior-to-humans being in the sky.

The stories, repeated over and over, became lore, lore became truth, truth became "religion". Natural disasters would be an angry "God" expressing himself. Rituals were developed to appease those angry Gods in hopes of sparing their lives, crops, etc.

Man was taught to be grateful to the Gods for the earth's bounties and BAM, the concept of gratitude is born. Now, we all know that gratitude makes us feel better and more positive about the world, even when there are volcanoes and earthquakes and shit.

So now they start to feel the results of gratitude and ascribe that to a happy God. So now, by this time, mankind is thoroughly sold on the notion of Gods. Gods of harvest, gods of good hunting, gods of good sex.

I'm sure nefarious people have existed though out time. And I'm sure some barely upright, hairy toed dude (or dudess) noticed that people were really, really into that shit and decided to see how they could take advantage of that. Hey, people are desperate for food as winter approaches. See how they're "praying" to the Gods for help with the hunt. Let's tell em, we can speak to the Gods. Let's convince them to listen to us because we know what the Gods want. Let's tell them the Gods want us to have the best of the harvest and slaughter because we bring them the word of the Gods.

Then shit got all fucked up. What started as a reverence or fear of natural events turns into a dogmatic, suffer now or burn in hell later way to control the masses and give them a reason not to question their subservient status because they were told that's what God wants. Why, cause you pissed him off.

So, no. Religion is not provide us with ideal morality. There is too much baggage associated with Gods and goddesses.

The ideal morality is us, knowing we are the Gods and Goddesses. And we are creating all the time, as the Gods do. Creating our own earthquakes and hurricanes. Creating our own bountiful harvest. Creating our own reality.

Father, Son, Holy Ghost
Thought, Word, Deed
Mind, Body, Spirit

The holy trinities of creation.

We create our own morals, mostly from what works for us and what doesn't. The universe responds in kind.
That's ideal morality.

[trotsky]

16. "We create our own morals, mostly from what works for us and what doesn't."

I think that's spot on. Even people who claim to follow a religion do this, without realizing it. Liberal believers reject the more ridiculous and deplorable parts of their holy texts by rationalizing them away. They are comparing "biblical" morality to an external source, and in doing so are unknowingly acknowledging the external source is where their *true* morals come from. Not their religion.

[mia]

13. "The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated."

My interest in this topic comes from graduate studies in the 70s and 80s as a student of Developmental Psychology. Moral Development was a hot topic back then and it's good to see it discussed here. I hope that you find this more recent article interesting.

The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it necessary for morality? Do moral inclinations emerge independently of religious intuitions? These debates, which nowadays rumble on in scientific journals as well as in public life, have frequently been marred by a series of conceptual confusions and limitations. Many scientific investigations have failed to decompose “religion” and “morality” into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted parochial conceptions of key concepts—in particular, sanitized conceptions of “prosocial” behavior; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. We argue that to make progress, the categories “religion” and “morality” must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that shape and constrain relevant cultural variants. We adopt this fractionating strategy, setting out an encompassing evolutionary framework within which to situate and evaluate relevant evidence. Our goals are twofold: to produce a detailed picture of the current state of the field, and to provide a road map for future research on the relationship between religion and morality.

Keywords: cognitive science of religion, moral foundations theory, prosocial behavior, cultural evolution


It is simply impossible for people to be moral without religion or God.

—Laura Schlessinger (quoted in Zuckerman, 2008)


Faith can be very very dangerous, and deliberately to implant it into the vulnerable mind of an innocent child is a grievous wrong.

—Richard Dawkins (2006, p. 348)


The question of whether or not morality requires religion is both topical and ancient. In the Euthyphro, Socrates famously asked whether goodness is loved by the gods because it is good, or whether goodness is good because it is loved by the gods. Although he favored the former proposal, many others have argued that morality is dictated by—and indeed unthinkable without—God: “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” (Dostoevsky, 1880/1990).1 Echoing this refrain, conservatives like to claim that “declining moral standards” are at least partly attributable to the rise of secularism and the decline of organized religion (see Zuckerman, 2008)....

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4345965/

[trotsky]

15. I guess it comes down to, were people able to cooperate and be good to each other...

before they invented religion?

And I think the answer to that question is obviously yes. Religion was one way to codify the "rules" that we had already figured out.

[MineralMan]

14. I think religions simply reflect cultural mores.

Cultures create religions. It's not the other way around.

[Act_of_Reparation]

18. Partial credit.

I think the influence goes both ways. Broader culture shapes religion, and religion shapes the broader culture. I don't think the two are completely separable, but they are distinct. Especially in pluralistic cultures like ours.

[MineralMan]

19. You're right, of course.

For example, Christianity, which developed in one culture, is the dominant religion in many other places. The morality it defines, has more or less become the morality of those other places.

Good point.

[Act_of_Reparation]

20. I think Roman Catholicism in Europe is a really good example of this process.

Compare, say, Spain, France, Italy, Poland, and Austria. These countries have strong Catholic histories and traditions, but they all have a distinctly local flavor. Catholicism was introduced to these regions and changed the local cultures. Over time, however, the local cultures also changed the aesthetic, focus, and practice of Catholicism to where a tradition in one locale would seem alien in another.

[MineralMan]

21. It's all fluid, albeit a fluid with a very high viscosity.

Changes occur slowly, as a result.

[procon]

27. I'm always suspicious of anyone who has to be forced into being a person

of upstanding moral character by the threat of torture and death.

[Iggo]

29. It provides a framework to lay your morality over.

Bad or good, ideal or no.

[Eliot Rosewater]

51. Just look at the behavior of most american Christians or those in other

religions which discriminate in a big way.

Not only does not provide morality but fights with it usually.