Does religion corrupt morality?

[Pyrrho]

Bold emphasis is added:


Do you mean by that, that whether someone's morality is corrupted by religion depends on whether the person really believes their professed religion or not?

Someone might profess to be religious, due to social pressures (such as to please a family member, or to avoid execution if one lives in Saudi Arabia, etc.), without believing religion at all.  In such a case, since the person is not actually religious, their morality is not corrupted by their religion (since they really have no religion).  But that is not a counterexample to the idea that religion corrupts morality, since the person is not really religious.

Your position appears to be that the more religious someone is, the more their morality will be corrupted by it.  Is that what you mean to be saying?  If not, what do you mean?

People can believe strongly without knowing the details of what their religion actually says, they only listen to the edited highlights dished out in the place they worship. It's the one who take it home and study it and then find out they shouldn't do this and they should oppress that are the problem. It's not about strength of belief as much as is its about depth of knowledge and acceptance of that knowledge of what the texts actually say.

Your position is interesting in that you seem to think that being more reasonable about religion leads to worse results.

The thing is, the edited highlights often get people to be worse.  For example, the edited highlights in church often get people to have an overzealous hatred of gays.  As Vorlon13 likes to say, Jesus condemned divorce in three gospels, but Jesus never mentioned homosexuality at all.  But one does not usually get a sense of that just from highlights in church.  Additionally, many people end up rejecting their religion because they take it seriously and examine it.  Those who don't think about it are far less likely to notice the absurdities and contradictions.  So I think you are mistaken about the people who do not bother to study their religion.