Religion and morals

• Sam Harris notes that while Martin Luther King is revered as one of the best examples of what a Christian should be, he wasn't loving and non-violent because of Christianity. He traveled to India to learn non-violent resistance from the followers of Ghandi (a Hindu)...who learned it from the Jains, who emphasize not killing anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jainism

• Sam Harris: "If you think that it would be impossible to improve upon the Ten Commandments as a statement of morality, you really owe it to yourself to read some other scriptures. Once again, we need look no further than the Jains: Mahavira, the Jain patriarch, surpassed the morality of the Bible with a single sentence: 'Do not injure, abuse, oppress, enslave, insult, torment, torture, or kill any creature or living being.' Imagine how different our world might be if the Bible contained this as its central precept. Christians have abused, oppressed, enslaved, insulted, tormented, tortured, and killed people in the name of God for centuries, on the basis of a theologically defensible reading of the Bible.” ME: The golden rule is also beaten soundly by this quote.

• It's easy to come up with an objective measure of morality without the bible. As Sam Harris puts it, it boils down to the happiness and suffering of creatures who can feel such things.

  • It's easy to judge Hitler as immoral by that measure. ME: It's odd that Christians and the Christian church of that time had such a hard time with that one (more to come later on)!

  • By this measure, much of what's in the bible is immoral. If you don't believe me, check the verses section.

  • Slavery also clearly fails this moral test, yet it's clearly endorsed in the bible as shown in the bible verses section. As Sam Harris points out, slavery is the biggest AND easiest moral dilemma we've faced. Pretty much everyone accepts that it's an abomination to kidnap, shackle and own other people. The bible utterly fails as a moral compass on this simple issue. It clearly supports that immoral institution and even provides a handbook of sorts that includes rules about beating slaves, relative worth of men and women, etc. – see the verses section. It even gets affirmation in one of the 10 commandments (envy).

    • The end of slavery in this country had to be militarily forced onto some of the most pious Christians this nation has ever known.

• Repeated from the faith section: There was a morality study done by George Tamarin on a group of Israeli children. They were split into 2 groups, and one group was given the story of Jericho (Joshua of the bible killing everyone in a city to claim the territory because god told him to), and the other group was given the same story with the names of the people and places changed. Each group was asked if Joshua's character behaved rightly. Because of their religious upbringing, the children found the original story of Jericho perfectly acceptable. When they did object to something in the story, it was about “contamination” and other concepts they were taught instead of a proper moral response. The children in the other group (with the version of the story with names of the people and places changed) had a proper moral response. More can be found at http://saltysleveen.blogspot.com/2007/01/joshua-jericho-genocide-and-fallacy-of.html and other places.

  • Clearly, the religious education of these children caused them to view a story of genocide as acceptable and even good...as long as it was their god ordering the massacre and carried out by their people. This is an example of how religion can completely nullify morality, and it's done it over and over, generation after generation. Do I need to go over the number of religious battles in the world and how each side dehumanizes the other?

  • My wife's view on this study is that the kids given the unaltered story answered as they did because of “familiarity bias”. Even if that were a factor (or even the ONLY factor), does anyone see the problem with exposing children to a story of genocide enough that they become desensitized to it? Again, indoctrination of children is the problem here. Repetition of this type of story is another example of how morals are eroded by religion.

• Read up on the archdiocese of St. Paul and the deliberate, repeated relocation of sexual predators to fresh hunting grounds. ...In god's house!

• Repeat from the faith section: Religion is big business that employs lots of people...and it's tax-free. If you don't think it draws more than it's share of the immoral, you're sadly mistaken. I'll share lots about that later, but do a web search on Marjoe, an evangelical con-man. Here's an example link: http://www.vice.com/read/marjoe-director-sarah-kernochan-talks-about-her-incredible-doc-on-the-evangelical-conman-456. Everything, down to the timing of the music, can be manipulated to maximum financial effect. Do you feel taken yet?

• The Vatican bank - This was formed to hide the Catholic church's financial transactions with Hitler. It was doing transactions with both sides in WWII and then had to cover its tracks (as well as it could) once one side lost. What's more, the church actually cashed out the insurance policies on the Jews the Nazis killed. Christianity's depiction of the Jews as "Jesus killers" made it easy for the church to support one of the worst scourges in history.

• It didn't stop there. The catholic church actively hid high-ranking Nazis being pursued for crimes against humanity.

• Jim Hall asked this question: Do you believe Jesus is the only way? If so, what should the fates of Holocaust Jews and Catholic Nazis be?

  • Note that Hitler was a Catholic of good standing.

• Jim Hall again: If you are the lone survivor of a plane crash, do you thank your deity for sparing you and not hold it accountable for all of those who died?

  • Me: We are all in this together (if you prefer, “we are all part of god's creation”). This sort of event should not make you feel good about yourself or your god.

  • Me again: I've seen this a lot where the faithful thank god that they were spared the suffering another person or family endured. I think it's a dual sin: false pride AND a lack of compassion...especially if the sufferers believe differently than you. From there, it's a slippery slope to seeing a sufferer as somehow deserving of what they got because they took missteps in god's eyes. From there, one can even go further and expect, wish or even participate in the comeuppance of those who are clearly violating god's rules – like homosexuals, atheists or simply people who believe differently than you. We naturally subdivide into groups of “us” who are against a “them”. Religion is amazing effective at creating these divides and giving people justification to fight and kill each other.

• The catholic church actively discourages use of condoms in African nations. They're even against it when one spouse has HIV and the other doesn't! Clearly, "morals" have gotten in the way of doing the most good - the chance to save lots of people from a terrible disease. How can this possibly be right???

• There's Christian opposition to using the safe, effective HPV vaccine because it would remove a deterrent to premarital sex. Those Christians would rather have 5,000 women die annually from cervical cancer than lose that deterrent...all because of concern about what the creator of the universe thinks of what we do while naked.

  • Indications are that a number of Christians would oppose use of an HIV/AIDS vaccine on the same grounds. Clearly, they have no moral objection to suffering and death.

• Do you think religion holds people back from lives of crime? Do you think it has ANY bearing on how people act? Sure, there are some good things done that are credited to religion, but we certainly don't need it to do good. Good people generally do good, bad people generally do bad, but if you want good people to do bad things, religion is almost always behind it.

• We had to have morality before your religion came along if we were to have built civil societies. Many religions and philosophies that came before Christianity had advanced moral structures.

• Would you really have no civility and no concern for others if god/big brother wasn't watching? If so, you're a sick fuck and are clearly the exception. That's called being a sociopath.

• Do you really need a book to tell you how to be moral? When learning math, do you need a textbook to tell you that 2 + 2 = 4? Do you need a book to tell you it's wrong to torture and kill innocent people? Even monkeys feel empathy for each other, and we all feel badly for children getting hurt and any number of other similar things that tug at the heartstrings. The bible is even worse at morals than it is at science (see the bible verses section). Empathy is the root of morality, and it clearly crosses religious and non-religious lines. I assure you, even a soulless atheist like myself feels it. Truthfully, I think it's worse or deeper for someone who can't think it's part of god's plan or that there must be a reason for it. I don't have those defenses and realize it's up to me to help. I also don't have the empathy-numbing effects of the us-versus-them mentality that religions cultivate by their very existence.

• How do you feel about genocide, slavery, death sentences for minor crimes and many non-crimes and the keeping of women “in their place”? If you don't approve of something in this list and seek to be honest, you MUST question the bible...assuming you want to be honest. Add on the crusades, the inquisition (500 years of torture and killing). These are things Christianity did. They rival anything going on in the Muslim world right now.

• Did you know that the Spanish inquisitors were the most adept at torture? Obviously, this was done in the name of god and church to keep the church's power over believers and non-believers alike (a simple accusation was a death sentence). Plenty of the faithful also died as part of this. Does that seem worth it to you?

• If you are anti-abortion but not anti-war, how do you justify your conditional value of human life? The ban on stem cells was particularly hypocritical since there were plenty of fully-formed human beings to be saved (or have their lives dramatically improved) by that research. The wondrous potential of stem cell research was stymied by concern about 150-cell blobs (AKA blastocysts...http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blastocyst) that don't have neurons, much less brains that can think or feel. Meanwhile, there are fully-formed human beings with severed spinal cords and terrible diseases that could benefit greatly from this research. Again, false "morals" got in the way of the greater good. Note that a blastocyst structure is not specific to humans. All mammals produce them. You would not be able to tell the difference between a human one and a dog one. A woman's body discards many, many, MANY blastocysts naturally that either don't form correctly or don't implant. If we are to account for these properly in a religious context, that's a whole lot of odd little baptisms and funerals! We'd also have to view God as the most prolific abortionist out there.

• The good book isn't so kind. Anyone with a hate complex can find support for whatever psycho stance they feel strongly about. Gay haters, for instance, need to take responsibility for their own issues and not leverage the bible. It's the difference between holding a sign that says “God hates fags”, versus one that says “I hate fags”. Speaking of that, I saw a comment about homophobia – that it's really “I'm-a-homo-phobia”. Anyone who worries that a gay person can convert them might just be gay.

• The archdiocese scandals, the money-making schemes, the fact that divorce rates among Christians are just as high as for everyone else... Clearly, being “in god's house” or getting god's blessing doesn't make a lick of difference. Baptism also has the same null effect. Christians may argue about free will, but keep in mind the godless have exactly the same free will choice between doing good and doing bad. I think the good atheists do should count double because we don't do it out of fear.

• God is depicted as supposedly beyond our judgment, but it has very human emotions that I think we CAN judge. The emotions are those of a childhood bully...the jealousy, the rage, the drive to dominate. I hold god in contempt. Only the worst of us were truly created in his image, but fortunately most grow out of that.

• Where does the focus on victimless crimes fit into morality? Blasphemy, consensual sodomy and homosexuality, drug use (competition for the church?)... These crimes are like debts without creditors. Why the concern? I think it comes from a love of judging even though you'd think god would be big enough to fight its own battles.

• Does a god who demands blood sacrifice appeal to you? If you have a moral pulse, it should be offensive to you.

  • Much of the OT (and even most of a version of the 10 commandments) focuses on how god loves his blood sacrifice...kill the animal this way, smear the blood that way...oh, baby, I'm getting hot now! Here kitty, kitty, it's time to appease god!

  • Jesus himself is quoted as saying he's not here to change the OT rules, which were largely about animal sacrifices and capital punishment for minor crimes. If followed at our current population level, we'd run out of animals to sacrifice in atonement for menstruation alone.

  • Jesus himself was supposedly the ultimate blood sacrifice. See, same old vengeful OT god. For this god, there always has to be blood, and it will happily take the blood of its own son. Love is conspicuously absent from most of the bible.

  • How about communion by eating the body and drinking the blood of christ? Does that (and the animal sacrifices) sound a bit cult-like? Well, that's because it is.

• As In general, we're becoming more civilized, tolerant and moral as time goes on. We're growing up. In general, we're becoming more civilized, tolerant and moral as time goes on (take the continued work in civil rights and the increased acceptance of homosexuality, for instance). Religion brings us back toward the morals of the distant past that we have progressed well beyond. It both requires and sustains ignorance and the uglier side of humanity to believe such things.

• Imagine if we become advanced enough to have a global government that could treat all of us the same, intervening in natural disasters, managing food supplies, halting violence, etc. (You know, doing all of the things a loving god should be doing...but without the superpowers.) (Libertarians: please forget about the negative connotations of government for a bit. : )) Such a government, charged with protecting humanity (often from itself) would be a powerful force for good, but anything like it is pie in the sky at this point. What role would religion (the most divisive force on the planet) play in such a government? I think the answer would have to be NONE. What's more, could such a government form while we have different religions pitted against each other? If it did form, how should such a government react to genital mutilation of children, to the split religious school system in Ireland that's keeping the hatred and violence going there, to scriptures about martyrdom or killing all non-believers, to intentionally traumatizing children at "hell houses", to honor killings (the Muslim policy of killing female family members who are raped)? Wouldn't such a government have justification to stop such unhealthy practices for the sake of humanity and even try to enforce the eradication of many religious teachings, if not religion itself?

• Let me return to the topic of honor killings. It's a practice in the Muslim world where a raped woman is deemed unclean and is killed. Really. Clearly, religious beliefs block an empathetic response. How else can men kill these women instead of comforting them? I assume it's not a genetic difference with those people but rather an illogical belief that's circumvented the normal moral and intellectual reasoning and compassion via faith.

• IF we credit belief in religion with bestowing morals (although we've already discredited that line of thinking), what part of the belief system gives those morals? Does believing in a virgin birth make you a better person? How about believing you're sinful and in need of redemption? How about believing that your creator wants to drown you or destroy you in a fiery pit? I'd put my money on actively working to build yourself up and choosing what you stand for. Again, it's VERY easy to use happiness/suffering levels as a moral guide in many areas.

• Do you feel a threatening father-figure is needed to keep you or others in line? If so, then you underestimate yourself and humanity, and you may be part of a cycle of abusive relationships.

• Shuty argues that Christians as a whole love to censor and tell others what they can and cannot do and that this is to protect their own fragile belief system. ME: People telling others what's right for them is a pet peeve of mine. The certainty of some people that they know what's best and others don't (especially for themselves) makes me want to hit things. Usually, these people aren't very bright because they don't know how to reason and don't realize how weak their position is. They always think they won, regardless of reality. ...Most of us crave knowing we're fighting on the side of good and are fighting the good fight. That's why many movies and stories depict characters that are clearly good or clearly bad. In the real world, if you really take a close look and think things through, nearly everything is in shades of gray, and that can be a little frustrating because there are few absolutes and so many things are situational. As compelling as “us versus them” is, nobody's 100% right, and what you're left with is having to work and negotiate with others that you don't agree with for the common good.

• Early Christians were destroying pagan temples (and I'm sure worse), the inquisition was FROM biblical teachings, as were witch hunts (sorcery is listed as a crime in the bible), the continuation of slavery is well supported in the bible while abolition is not, etc. The church persecuted people with “radical” ideas like the earth is round, the earth goes around the sun, and there are other planets out there. IT WAS AND IS ABOUT POWER AND CONTROL. In most cases, the church has less power than it did (generally being separated from the State), but it's just as capable of being wrong AND absolutely sure about it as it was before. How can people so close to god act so immorally? That all powerful god doesn't even have a moral pull on people inside its own church. Yes, I know, people can still choose to sin, but it's surprising that they can have the rules (and supposedly god itself) right in front of them and still break them with abandon. It goes to underscore the fact that the church doesn't have a monopoly on morality...quite the opposite in fact. Do you know of any other organizations that run interference for child molesters, allowing them to move around and attain new victims? Disgusting!

• As Sam Harris points out, many who claim to have been transformed by Christ's love are deeply, even murderously intolerant of criticism. The most disturbed will site verses from the bible. Let's be clear, these people are behaving very, very poorly, and they find support in religion.

• As Sam Harris points out, the “red” states have much higher crime rates than the blue ones. This is precisely the opposite of what you'd expect IF religion had a positive effect on morality. However, the crime rates and discrimination are precisely what you would expect if you look at the violence and intolerance in the bible.

• Some people believe that believing (having faith) is itself a moral virtue. How is a person improved by believing the implausible without evidence? We've already demonstrated that being in god's house or close to it doesn't impact morality, and we can assume most of these people (thinking specifically about priests molesting children) believed what they were preaching on Sunday. I think a far better character-building exercise is to figure things out for yourself and to think logically and rationally about what you're all about and what you really do know and don't know.

• Belief in nonsense is not a virtue, especially this batch of nonsense.

• (This one's repeated from the Quotes section but deserves a closer look.) Albert Einstein: “The word God is for me nothing more than the expression and product of human weaknesses, the Bible a collection of honorable but still primitive legends which are nevertheless pretty childish.” Christians took many different immoral angles to try to claim that Einstein was in their camp. He absolutely was not. He used the term “god” a few times to talk about the design of things, but he disavowed belief in a personal god numerous times and was very frustrated with Christian attempts to twist his words. They just wouldn't leave him alone.

• Dwindling in Disbelief counts 25 million killed in the bible. Shuty skipped over the majority of these needless, violent deaths because of redundancy. My Bible Verses section, in turn, skipped over most of the slaughter Shuty mentioned. It's UGLY. The killing/raping/revenge to love/kindness/respect ratio in the bible is about 1000:1.

• If humans suddenly forgot everything we knew, the priority would be to learn language, agriculture, science, and how to operate all of the machines and mechanisms we've come to rely upon. Of all the things we'd need to relearn to survive, religion would be dead last. Yet, religion often comes first.

• The 10 commandments:

  • As noted in the bible verses section, even the 10 commandments have multiple versions and are often unclear. One version is almost entirely taken up with the details of animal sacrifice - which should offend your modern sense of necessity and of right and wrong.

  • There's nothing amazing in any of those commandments – nothing that makes anyone with an IQ say “Huh, I never thought of that...great rule, god!”.

  • Those rules were for the JEWS alone, and Jesus did nothing to contradict that idea. He even reinforced it (again, see the bible verses section). Look at what the Israelites supposedly did to the peoples around them: they coveted their neighbors' stuff and killed many of them in a fashion that would make the Nazis proud. When the bible talks about loving thy neighbor as thy self, it clearly meant just the Jewish neighbors. They clearly didn't apply the same rules to the other people in their area, and Jewish kids are still taught that the slaughter was sanctioned by god...and therefore the genocide was perfectly moral and acceptable. Of course, that was before the NT (Paul, specifically) opened up Christianity to non-Jews because the Jews weren't listening.