Does religion corrupt morality?

[Napoléon]

Yes I can but being the bible there would be passages that directly contradicted these stances. The biblical authors hedged their bets.

There's passages that contradict laying with a man to be an abomination? There's passages that say slavery is a sin?

I don't think they hedged their bets as much as you like to think. And besides, that wasn't actually my point. My point is, if there wasn't this stupid shit written down in the first place, it wouldn't be used as an excuse to do stupid shit.

[robvalue]

People seem to like taking something nice Jesus said and claiming that overrules whatever inconvenient passage they don't agree with.

[Pyrrho]

Well I don't know about the US, but over this side of the pond in the Church of England the emphasis is on the happy clappy "lets all be friends" passages of the bible and by passes all the stuff that doesn't conform to that view. Intolerance is in the bible and of course if that's what your pastor, preacher, vicar wants to expose you to then that's what they will do. Over here, overwhelmingly, they don't. Some people study the bible, find out how shit it is and leave. But a lot of people read the bible (other religious texts are available) and go "I need to double down on the hatred". The sad part is everyone is right. If you want to get peace and light from the text you can, if you want to get hatred and oppression thats in there too. Ambguity and conflicting messages seems to the mainstay for lasting religions.

He was talking about the RCC. Dying in Western Europe fortunately, but still strong in many paces and still causing harm

I was not thinking about one specific religion or denomination.  In the U.S., there are plenty of obnoxious protestants, in a variety of flavors, who promote hatred and bigotry.  But you are right, the RCC is obnoxious and evil.

As for the Church of England, I confess to knowing little about it.  But somehow I doubt that it is a good thing for one's morality, though I also imagine it is very, very far from being the worst religion.

I happen to think it is good for one's morality to be willing to question everything, to enable one to weed out problems that one may not have noticed previously, and to also notice more consequences of one's actions than one may have noticed previously.  I do not think religion promotes clear and reasonable thinking, and it does not promote questioning everything.  But those are the ways that one discovers flaws in one's thinking, and enable one to correct mistakes.  Religion tends to cement things in place, and to impede making corrections that would improve one's morality.  So I think that religion is always bad, though obviously some are far, far worse than others.

[Lemonvariable72]

Of course you aren't, most Christians are decent people, that is the scary part. The reason religion make people less moral is because it replaces reasoned responses with "God said so". For example in the case of gay marriage, most atheists come to the reasoned conclusion that what two consenting adults do in the bedroom is no ones business and that to deny them marriage is unfair. The argument we have been dealing with from the side that wants to keep it illegal is " God said homosexulity is wrong" and when ask why its wrong, well just look at this forum as morality has done to death here.

So you believe a decent person knowingly and voluntarily donates money to an organization that protects child molesters and enables them to molest more children?  And you believe a decent person knowingly and voluntarily donates money to an organization that causes AIDS and other venereal diseases to be more widespread than they would otherwise be, due to opposition to condom use?  And you believe that a decent person knowingly and willingly donates money to an organization that condemns many poor people to greater poverty by denying them access to birth control, thus causing them to have more children than they can afford to properly care for?

These are questions, but I am interested in how you can reconcile such things.  Perhaps you are using the word "decent" in a nonstandard way?

Yes I do and think that's the scary part of it. You see they are ingrained with this religious morality very young most of the time, and the only difference I think between myself (raised deeply Christian) and a devout Catholic is that once I reached my 20's I started to approach claims with skepticism and I eventually turned this on everything, including my own Christianity.
Now because I can understand what events and influences caused me to be an atheist I can certainly understand how other sequences may work to make people remain theists. But here is where its gets complex. When I stopped being a Christian I had to think long and hard about what is moral and why I should be moral. My personal system is simply reason and empathy combined with the golden rule and a dash of moral utilitarianism. But now I realize I was using secular morality in my life as a Christian everyday, just like every other Christian does when making important decisions. This is especially true in modern Christianity. So yes I think that most Christians are decent people because for 90% of their lives they really use the same moral systems we use and largely ignore their religion the 10% that they use the religion that is truly horrorifying as that is what leads to things like Catholics donating to support pedo priests and opposition to gay marriage. But they don't do it because they are evil, but misguided into thinking evil is actually good. And we as humans are all vulnerable to the same thing, and best way to gaurd against that is to watch for it and do your own thinking. But if we demonize others that have fallen into this trap we set ourselves apart in our own minds and make that much easier for ourselves to be manipulated.

[Pyrrho]

... So yes I think that most Christians are decent people because for 90% of their lives they really use the same moral systems we use and largely ignore their religion the 10% that they use the religion that is truly horrorifying as that is what leads to things like Catholics donating to support pedo priests and opposition to gay marriage. But they don't do it because they are evil, but misguided into thinking evil is actually good. ...

Doing evil crap 10% of the time is something that would automatically get me to not call someone "decent." If we call everyone "decent" who intends to do good, but is "misguided into thinking evil is actually good," we will end up saying that many white supremacists and members of the KKK are decent people, too. I do not think that is a good use of the term "decent."

Perhaps it is just a difference in terminology, as we agree that religion is a corrupting influence on morality.

As for the idea that anyone can be wrong and anyone can be misled, that is true, but one does not need any extra help being corrupted by religion. One can make more than enough mistakes without it.

[ScepticOrganism]

If you claim it for the what, you have to accept it for the more. If there are "good bits" in the bible or any of such books, you are under the intellectual obligation of admitting the wrong bits in it as well.

[Whateverist]

If you claim it for the what, you have to accept it for the more. If there are "good bits" in the bible or any of such books, you are under the intellectual obligation of admitting the wrong bits in it as well.

I think it tends to be the evangelicals and born-agains in the protestant branch of xtianity who insist on reading the bible like a lawyer.  As a book of stories it is reasonable to disagree about the best interpretation and point of the stories.  Whether and how much is based on historical figures needn't even come up.

[Wyrd of Gawd]

I've noticed that it hardly matters what the religious texts say, all that matters is what people think they say. The two are increasingly not the same.

Just chiming in to say that I disagree with this. 

It does matter what the texts say. If the bible explicitly said homosexuality was okay, and that using condoms was fine, or that it wasn't a good idea to own slaves... well... maybe you can see where I'm going with this.

Well, to be fair about it there are passages in the Bible and in the Koran telling people not to abuse the poor but some people still pee in their faces.  People will always follow their own rules to satisfy their own desires.  Bigots will always use their favorite ethnocentric Middle Eastern Jewish or Arabian religious fairy tale to oppress people they don't like.

[Lemonvariable72]

... So yes I think that most Christians are decent people because for 90% of their lives they really use the same moral systems we use and largely ignore their religion the 10% that they use the religion that is truly horrorifying as that is what leads to things like Catholics donating to support pedo priests and opposition to gay marriage. But they don't do it because they are evil, but misguided into thinking evil is actually good. ...

Doing evil crap 10% of the time is something that would automatically get me to not call someone "decent."  If we call everyone "decent" who intends to do good, but is "misguided into thinking evil is actually good," we will end up saying that many white supremacists and members of the KKK are decent people, too.  I do not think that is a good use of the term "decent."  

Perhaps it is just a difference in terminology, as we agree that religion is a corrupting influence on morality.

As for the idea that anyone can be wrong and anyone can be misled, that is true, but one does not need any extra help being corrupted by religion.  One can make more than enough mistakes without it.

Yes, but kkk memeber actively seek to harm members of society, most christians don't. Take catholic lady here as an example okay? (I hope you dont mind) she has demonstrated to us that she is mostly a kind and patient person. She also sees the catholic church through colored glasses, she likely sees the catholic as in line with her own moral values of kindness and patients, but because of preconceived notions, doesn't even really see the evil that it does. I hope this doesn't sound condescending as I am basing this on my own experience, but I don't think she sees the true harm in the pope saying condoms are a sin or the shuffling around of pedophile priests. This is because as a christian she sees the catholic church that she wants to see instead of the one that is there. This is as a christian she has never taken that secular morality (which she clearly uses) and applied it to the actions of her church. I say this because I went through as a christian believing the bible taught love, equality for women, peace, and kindness. Then as I was having some doubts I reread the bible with less certianty in it. Then as I was reading exodus I had a hard time reconciling the story with god being all knowing and it hit me. without even realizing it I had applied my already established secular morality to gods actions in the story and I could not come to any conclusion except that god was evil. After that the flood gates opened and I began to remember all the text from the time i'd previously read the bible. Unfortunately Christians haven't had that experience and they see in christianity what they see instead of what is. Another example, is if we take one our resident protestants, say GC, the catholic church could be transform into a organization devoted to the highness goodness possible and he still would think it was evil.
So in short I say christians are decent people mostly because they like most people of any kind work out of a evolved sense of gregariousness and cooperation instead of malice like say the KKK.

[Napoléon]

Well, to be fair about it there are passages in the Bible and in the Koran telling people not to abuse the poor but some people still pee in their faces.  People will always follow their own rules to satisfy their own desires.  Bigots will always use their favorite ethnocentric Middle Eastern Jewish or Arabian religious fairy tale to oppress people they don't like.

Missing my point.

It's not that there are good passages in either book. It's that there are bad ones.

And funnily enough the good ones don't discount the bad.

If you magically had a book that was just full of nice stuff, maybe we could go around saying it was all down to people's fucked up 'interpretations'. But I don't really think it's a great argument when there's already plenty there to justify bad behaviour.