A-moral?

[Maelstrom]

Some people say there's no morality without religion. If anything, you have true morality without religion. With religion, there is only a set of rules you must follow, supported only by an appeal to a vague authority whose morality you can never fully comprehend. "because the dude upstairs said so."

Without religion, you discard this weak appeal and begin to look at what morals people have and why they choose to follow them. Why do we have them? What purpose does this serve? What are the alternatives, what are the drawbacks? Where did this come from. Who said that? What is the context? Here, we begin to have understanding instead of merely institutionalized tradition.

I don't believe in a religion, so I suppose I don't believe in 'morals' so to speak. But I do *believe* in consequences. EVERY action has one.

Discuss:

Do you agree or disagree? Why?

Comments, examples, etc?

*for lack of a better word

[Yuki]

Mmm. I believe 90% of people, religious or not, draw their core moral beliefs FROM religion.

Killing wasn't bad until you were confronted about it, and religion made everyone feel like it was worth confronting while definitely classifying it as "bad", which can be said for a lot of things.

That said I definitely do not believe religion is any sort of moral core, base, etc, just that it's " Beliefs with a side of premade morals!". While I've no opinion on Christianity, I can at least say I think the "Christian Mindset" is one I'm happy can be summed up as "Be nice to people and something nice will happen to you when you die", rather than "God hates fags" or "Non-Christian heathens will burn in hell, convert them or burn as they will".

While those are both prominent in media, that's only true because the media focuses on Loud and Controversial rather than The Reality and Middle Ground. The majority of religious people I've met are tolerant, nice people.

I don't believe religion covers morality very well, nor do I agree with all of the morals present.

I think women should have the choice to abort, and that human life does not outweigh suffering, though popular religions may disagree.

Nihilism too good.

[Phoenix]

I agree with Hark. Given the fact I did 5 years of private school,knowing the bible inside an out and be called a "child of the devil"(First,Middle,Last name all have 6 letters in it). With all this I never found a reason to go church or to pick up a bible ever since I left private school at the age of 12( I'm 19 now). I grown to realizing that with or without religion of any kind in my life wouldn't change the fact that I'm a gentleman/extremely kind person to others

Religion doesn't make up who you are all it does is give you guidelines on how you should live your life.

[Guest]

^ This is probably accurate enough.

Well I mean there could be a religious moral to something, and a normal moral in which people act upon.

A religious moral in saying someone decided to be a good Samaritan and helped an old lady across the road or pulled a priest out of a burning church or something, I don't know. Or he sacrificed something for the sake of his Deity. Just these things

While in a normal moral you could have, someone doing something good for another person to strengthen their relationship/friendship. I.E buying them a gift, doing a favor for them, something that can gradually increase your relationship/friendship with a boy/girl.

I'm an atheist, but I constantly use morals as examples for other people to help each other out. It's about the good feeling and the rewards for both of you afterwards, so if you differentiate the morals, you can still do the morals that you want. Whether it's religious or not.

[Zen]

I don't exactly have an opinion for this topic, but I do have a concept from George Orwell's 'Nineteen Eighty-Four' that'll probably fit:

"Whatever that is bad, can only be defined as being as such by means of comparison to that which is good. Thus, to eliminate all that is bad, theoretically one would first have to eliminate all that is good."

[Guest]

This could raise another question, do people even take morals into consideration before doing something?

[Maelstrom]

Good and bad are relative. Relative to how the consequences affect you, and relative to how the consequences affect others. That is how we define 'good' or 'bad.' Everyone has to make a balance between themselves and other people.

And so, one could say capitalism tips the scale in favor of the individual, where idealistic socialism is tipped in favor of the multitudes. There is no black and white moral to it, good or bad. They are simply different based on the particular order of priorities.

[Vslightning]

I think most everyone has morals, aside from murders, and some thieves. I don't think just anyone would really feel right about going and killing someone. Although, like someone else said, I think a lot of the morals they follow are from a religious origin.