Religion is often touted as a good sense of morality. "If you don't fear god, then you can rape and murder all you want!" some religious people like to say. Of course this ignores that Atheists aren't killing people in droves, and our jails don't have a disproportionate amount of atheists either. But that's not the point here.
One can easily look at the Old Testament, and see some of the flaws with the system of morality. Rape was okay, so long as you paid the girl's father. Women who weren't virgins were worthless, and were stoned if they married and weren't a virgin. Many will be quick to argue that "That was just the culture of the time." And there in lies the problem. "That was the culture of the time." If religion is such a good source of morality, these people would have started seeing women as equal human beings.
Let's move a bit closer, however. Slavery. Not the biblical slavery (which is apparently okay because that was the culture of the time too. And it wasn't THAT bad! At least not as bad as modern slavery). First of all if modern slavery is worse, then modern slavery was developed during a period of Christianity. Which means that these same 'moral' people developed a system of slavery even worse than the goat herders two thousand years ago did. The same people that were happy to stone a woman for not being married before having sex.
And when slavery came to an end in the United States, religion was used to prop it up. Racism and Bigotry have been propped up by religion time and time again. Interracial Marriage, Gay Marriage, Slavery. And how about Xenophobia? Christians like Ann Coulter hate Mexicans. They hate anyone from a different country. She's certainly not alone either. And even if you don't consider her a 'true Christian' because you love the no true Scotsman fallacy, she considers herself one. And their thoughts on the poor? They consider them 'lazy' and 'moochers', regardless of how well they know any of the individuals. Sometimes based on a couple of anecdotal pieces of evidence. There are certainly enough Christians who aren't remotely charitable, and are completely greedy.
But let's not focus just on Christianity. How about Islam? Their treatment of women is tantamount to the treatment of second class citizens. They have their own views on how they aren't mistreating women. Given a thousand years or so, when it's looked back on, if Islam is still around then I think Muslims of the future will look back on their past much like Christians of today do on some of the terrible things done.
One can easily point to Atheists who have done bad things as well. But I don't believe any sense of religion would have made those people more moral. Not when we have so many people today who look at things like the death penalty, stand your ground, kicking people out of your country, preventing two consenting adults from getting married (Forget Gay marriage, they were against interracial marriage at one point, and even as recently as 10 years ago the religious argument was made against interracial marriage)
So how is religion a good source of morality? It seems to me that people are either moral, or they are not. And there is little correlation between religion and good morals. You have good religious people, but those people don't seem to be the type that would rape, kill, or steal if they didn't believe in a god. Some will claim they got their idea of their morals from religion. But again, most people see slavery today as immoral and religious texts do not teach that. How about equality for women? Instead of getting their morals from religion, people tend to mold their religion to fit their morals. Which doesn't make for a good source of morality at all.
One can easily look at the Old Testament, and see some of the flaws with the system of morality. Rape was okay, so long as you paid the girl's father. Women who weren't virgins were worthless, and were stoned if they married and weren't a virgin. Many will be quick to argue that "That was just the culture of the time." And there in lies the problem. "That was the culture of the time." If religion is such a good source of morality, these people would have started seeing women as equal human beings.
Let's move a bit closer, however. Slavery. Not the biblical slavery (which is apparently okay because that was the culture of the time too. And it wasn't THAT bad! At least not as bad as modern slavery). First of all if modern slavery is worse, then modern slavery was developed during a period of Christianity. Which means that these same 'moral' people developed a system of slavery even worse than the goat herders two thousand years ago did. The same people that were happy to stone a woman for not being married before having sex.
And when slavery came to an end in the United States, religion was used to prop it up. Racism and Bigotry have been propped up by religion time and time again. Interracial Marriage, Gay Marriage, Slavery. And how about Xenophobia? Christians like Ann Coulter hate Mexicans. They hate anyone from a different country. She's certainly not alone either. And even if you don't consider her a 'true Christian' because you love the no true Scotsman fallacy, she considers herself one. And their thoughts on the poor? They consider them 'lazy' and 'moochers', regardless of how well they know any of the individuals. Sometimes based on a couple of anecdotal pieces of evidence. There are certainly enough Christians who aren't remotely charitable, and are completely greedy.
But let's not focus just on Christianity. How about Islam? Their treatment of women is tantamount to the treatment of second class citizens. They have their own views on how they aren't mistreating women. Given a thousand years or so, when it's looked back on, if Islam is still around then I think Muslims of the future will look back on their past much like Christians of today do on some of the terrible things done.
One can easily point to Atheists who have done bad things as well. But I don't believe any sense of religion would have made those people more moral. Not when we have so many people today who look at things like the death penalty, stand your ground, kicking people out of your country, preventing two consenting adults from getting married (Forget Gay marriage, they were against interracial marriage at one point, and even as recently as 10 years ago the religious argument was made against interracial marriage)
So how is religion a good source of morality? It seems to me that people are either moral, or they are not. And there is little correlation between religion and good morals. You have good religious people, but those people don't seem to be the type that would rape, kill, or steal if they didn't believe in a god. Some will claim they got their idea of their morals from religion. But again, most people see slavery today as immoral and religious texts do not teach that. How about equality for women? Instead of getting their morals from religion, people tend to mold their religion to fit their morals. Which doesn't make for a good source of morality at all.
