Gunter Krieger

Religion has always played a part in society, but the question I pose is...does religion actually make moral upstanding people or is that assumption simply a stereotype. Many believe that having faith in a god, wether it's Allah,Buddha,Jesus etc etc leads people to having better lives than those without religion.

The argument goes that people who grow up with a religion like Christianity, develop a moral code of what is right and what is wrong. By believeing there is a god and a heaven and hell, believers are more likly to do good than others who are not involved with relgion. I agree with this to a small extent, but i believe people without a religious back ground are just as moral and sometimes even more moral than Christians for example.

Christianity is a prime example of religion and the influences it has on people. The Bible is filled with laws and parables about how people should act and what they should say (The Ten Commandents anyone?). However, simply because their there dosent mean a Christian will follow them. After all everyone makes mistakes and tend to "forget" their morales at times. Just because a person is religious dosent mean their a moral person. Look at the BTK killer for example. He murdered dozens of people over the course of several years and it turned out he was a head elder at a Church!

Atheists are always given a bad reputation for believing in "nothing." Many argue that since Atheists dont believe in a deity they do as they want without fear of retribution from a divine power. They have no set of moral's because its "every man for himself" (social darwinism) instead of the Christian "love and care for one another."

This view of Athesists and non religious people is totaly absurd, and I will dare to say many of them have better values than people following religious institutions. Just because they may not neccessarily agree with religion and many of its laws like dosent mean their horrible moraless people. They may not of grown up surrounded by the Church, but they learned their morals from much the same place as any Christian would...their parents, siblings, role models etc...Atheist parents can teach their kids of what is good and not just as well as Christian parents. The ways they teach morals are just alittle different. Besides, basic morals are "programmed" in us anyways. For example killing is wrong. Wether your a "god fearing" person or not chances are you agree with that. Same goes for stealing and cheating (these just so happen to constantly come up in the Bible as being sinful). Just because you may not believe theres a god up there dosent mean you dont have basic morals.

A big issue for me to are the attitudes of religious people compared to non religious ones. Many religious people from the first hand experience I've come across tend to de humanize or place less value on those who dont have faith in God. Their simply going to hell and thats that. I grew up in Christian schools and I've come to the conclusion that moraly, Christians are just as bad as those without religion. They just cover up their mistakes and "sins" more carefully and be hypocritical to others for their own bad choices. It always seems to come down to the "im gonna do what I want...I can always repent for my sins later" attitude with religious people. They proclaim the glories of their religion and how their "good" people than later that day go against their beliefs simply to get ahead of others and make themselves look good.

You dont have to believe in God in order to be a good person. It's what you do in this life according to your own ideals (not some collection of letters later combined and made into the Bible) that determines the person you are. And personaly, I would be more proud of a person who cares for others and has a set of great morals who didnt believe in God then one who did. After all the non believer dosent have a book and clergy telling them whats right and whats wrong, they have to explore those questions themselves.

tecoyah

Does Religion Really Make Moral People?....obviously....NO

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Self-Banned

Arcana XV

No, religion does not make people more moral.

I think that we all have an internal moral code that lets us know instinctively the difference between right and wrong. This moral code is very easily reprogrammed, however. Extremist religious dogma does that, so does extremist political doctrine.

Different societies around the world and all through history have held widely different values and morals, regardless of whether these societies were secular or religious. There is no evidence whatsoever that the presence of religion makes a society more moral, in other words "better", than a secular one. In my opinion, in many respects, religion has made things a lot worse in a lot of places and this is true of ALL religions.

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"Yes, but are you a Protestant atheist or a Catholic atheist?".- Northern Irish joke

Tashah

A good portion of accumulated moral wisdom derives from scripture, but religion in and of itself does not guarantee a personal morality.

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John1234

If you take a look at those that call themselves Christian who support a senseless and unprovoked war on an innocent people that has caused near 1,000,000 deaths...
I think you will find your answer.

Religion can however, help guide good people into becoming better people.
And not all branches of Christianity are corrupt.

There are millions of true Christians that would never ever condone mass murder.
And there are some such as the "Jehovah's Witnesses" that would not even support a just war for a good cause.
In their case their religion literally does "make moral people", due to the way they have such strict requirements and will actually remove you if you fail to follow the teachings of the bible.

The bible is a very good source of top notch morality.
In cases of corruption the religion is not to blame, the followers are simply not following.

Hatuey

No. Religion is the result of a human need for structure and survival. It gives us a false sense of order in our lives. However if we suddenly decided to depart from that religion we'd still have the same order in our lives. Are atheists less moral then religious people? Are people who've never had strong beliefs more likely to kill then those who have strong beliefs? It's impossible to tell. It is my opinion that religion isn't a determining factor in morality. If you suddenly stopped believing would you engage in acts deemed immoral by society? Would you start using drugs? Sleeping around etc? No.

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Is Intolerant Because He Won't Let The Intolerant Run Other People's Lives.

A_Wise_Fool

Why would you say that? If someone were to "stop believing" that would deminish reasons which compell a person to act more moral. Hence the person, relative to himself, would inevitably be less moral.

Take for instance one of those reasons being God's retribution, or bad Karma or what have you. If you are religiously motivated to uphold a moral standard solely, and Im sure there are some non-'preprogrammed' morals in every religion which are only upheld as a result of a belief in that religion, from the idea that breaking that moral standard will cause you something udersirable, then of course loosing that motivation will cause you to uphold that moral much less often.

Lets take telling white lies as en example. Religious person belives that something bad will happen if he continues to tell white lies and that is only because he believes in religion. So when he stops believing in said religion will he lie less, the same amount, or more? The only thing that happened was loss of motivation to lie less, so that would mean lying more hence being less moral.

Another thing, quantitatively this person really is loosing a set of moral principles by turning away from religion; thus he is less moral by that standard.

Qualitatively he is just dropping one set of morals while keeping the ones he wants, presumably. So he really is just "keeping 5 morals a day instead of 10," but now he's keeping up 5/5 every day and of course that is easier than 10/10 each day, so he just became more moral by ditching religion. How bout them apples?

Lachean

IMO we bring our morality to the scriptures, cherry pick the passages that resonate with us, and ignore the barbaric antiquated ones.

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"The original, and still the best!" - Grifter

Cephus

Of course not. At best, it might make you *ACT* more moral, but in reality, I think it probably makes someone less moral if we examine one's motivations. Is it more moral to help someone because they need help, or because you're trying to score brownie points with an imaginary friend in the sky?

I vote for #1.

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I'm not anti-religion, I'm anti-hypocrisy.

Blog me! http://BitchSpot.JadeDragonOnline.com

Thelost1

You assume that lying is at all times immoral. I tell white lies all of the time to make people feel better about themselves.

Is making people happy immoral? Is telling a very young child that you believe their art to be excellent an immoral thing?

According to the Ten Commandments: Yes.

The value of morality is not equal to the number of rules and laws. A person who lives by the golden rule makes the same number of moral decisions as a person who lives by the Ten Commandments. They just base them on one law instead of ten.

This increases moral flexability greatly (lies made to spare people's feelings are alright, for example), and allows for a kinder society.

Of course, all of this is irrelevant in the face of either nihilist or absolute morality.

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Emphasis added.

"The religion of one age is the literary entertainment of the next."
~Emerson