Sacrificing our Moral Compasses

[Jenny A]

Well I meant more from a Christian's point of view, like the reply example I gave in quotes in my OP. A Christian that openly and honestly states God determines right and wrong, even if their own moral sensibilities disagree, is surrendering their morality to their god.

And? Yes, I think that the omniscient creator of the universe knows better than I do. From a Christian POV it makes perfect sense to surrender to god's morality.

Exactly. That's why I find religious morals dangerous.

From the atheist side of the question I see people doing one of two very dangerous things:

1) Coming to their own moral conclusion. Supporting that conclusion by either personal revelation or by cherry picking scriptures. Then refusing to argue about whether it's moral or not because it's the word of god. The person using this method may honestly think they found their morality in scripture or through revelation, but given the way religious morality changes with the times (just a few decades behind secular morality) I think it is really just personal morality disguised as god's morality.

2) Following scripture literally, which as most of it was written in a time much more barbaric then present western civilization (and a lot like parts of the current middle east) and applying it to modern western civilization can lead to horrors, i.e. rape a virgin gain a wife, is barbaric.

Method one, often results in the same moral standards as secular society. But when it doesn't, the theist will not budge because god is on his side--or at least so he thinks. Homosexuality, abortion, birth control, and a number of other issues fit this catagory.

Method two leads to bad places because there is really shitty morality in the Old Testament and in various places in the New Testament. The morality of the Koran for humans interacting with humans, is if possible worse than the Bible.

Also much of the "morality" in the Bible has to do with worshiping god, rather than man's interactions with each other. For example, the first three of the ten commandments deal with honoring god. The Koran is similar in that much of its morality concerns the worship and honor owed to Allah. That's fine if the theist makes that a personal morality only, but not good if he tries to legislate the rest of us into fallowing it. It can and often has lead to religiously motivated warfare and terrorism.