Religion doesn’t create morality ….our humanity is the foundation of morality. Give the power of being human the ability to love life. Do you love life? Do you want to kill right now? Even if God said not to love would you, could you love your wife, your dog or your son less? That feeling within, that conscience or that burning feeling in your chest is your humanity. That person on your shoulder telling you not to do wrong is within you, and that regret you feel and can’t get rid of far after a wrong has been done is part of what makes you human. Your morality, created by God or not, your natural state of being human is what guides you and 99% of those around you.
Religion doesn’t create morality and nor should religion usurp your innate feelings to care for your fellow man – humanity IS the foundation for morality. We should not lose sight of the fact that we are moral by nature, for the sake of prosperity and civilization we always have been. Under hundreds of religions there is a common thread, preservation of life, and the dignities and freedoms that come with such life. Give the credit of being moral back to the people and allow we the people to love life for life’s sake, not based on an order by God.
With or without a greater being watching over us the essence of this observation is that we are humans and we want the best for ourselves and our loved ones as humans, innately. If we assume that ‘without a higher power guiding us all is lost’ then we are invariably saying that we are all bad people innately and we are only acting good because we don’t want to receive judgment or punishment, which actually is just plain saying we are bad people. So why try to be good, we aren’t ‘fooling” god…do you think you can fool god? I mean we are living a lie if we are innately bad unless someone demands we are good. I guess my problem with that line of thinking is that I think I’m a good person that wants what’s best for my friends and loved ones, without being scared into that feeling. I mean did you get forced into loving your child?! I would hope not, you are probabl a good person whether or not someone told you to be. Yes you make mistakes and yes you need guidance but over time it seems like guidance stopped being guidance at all, it became more like mindless slavery and lack of credit to how great of a person you are innately, as a human
If the only thing keeping one man to the next civil is something outside of that man then what are we protecting when we “try” to be good? You can’t force good out of someone. It’s simple: Do you love life? Do you enjoy being alive, do you enjoy living? You should. Without any denomination or oath do you have the will within you to face another human and kill them without remorse or conscience? For those that have no remorse, which I firmly believe to be the infinitely small minority of people out there, I would bet that there is no thread of consistency among them by race or religion, most likely it is their environment that has left them without a ‘moral compass’ as it isnt a lack of doctorine but the over empahsis in adobting a more negatively focused doctorine that can be found any where a person is willing to take a message out of context. Even worst, their misguided beliefs could only be exacerbated, and often is, by their choice of interpretation on what God intends for them to do. Religion has not stopped atrocities on man. Some may argue that it has been the fuel for hate in most cases throughout history. I love the moral compass that is found within relgion. This compass can indeed help guide you in times of doubt or lack of pupose and hope, but it is not the compass but the legs of man that does the walking.
At this point those on the extreme right believe that the lack of religion is indeed the lack of morality, but that perseption lacks a faith in man kind and I beleive the more and more we disect man, humanity, and morality from one another and give all the credit of purpose or goodness to religon we will end up losing ourselves and what maks us beautiful and human. For the most part it is baseless as even the most devout person with mental problems could not repress those problems from within, strictly through their religion alone. The written word can help remind us, re-inspire or re-solidify our love of life but we must re-invigorate our understanding that we as a people are indeed good and no doctrine will keep the bad minority of the world out. It is paranoid, selfish, ascetic, and overall negative.
If religion did indeed “create” morality then let us rely on that creation now within us once again, and let us be moral for morals sake as we were born/created to do so. I was once told by a devout conservative that I scared him because I did not broadcast or adopt a specific doctoring or religion that I believed in, in his words “how can I be sure you wont decide to kill tomorrow if you chose to without knowing what set of rules it is you abide by, a written doctoring”. I responded with “How can I be sure that since you have fragmented your fundamental human morals from a written doctrine/faith one day you won’t hear/read what you believe is Gods word that instruct you to kill me. Won’t you act on that guide as a devout follower without question or rebuttal, in essance dyning your instinct not to kill. Ins’t it more interesting that many have killed against their better judgment or concious in the name of some higher power?” I don’t think this man was a bad person, but most of the worlds most heinous atrocities were constructed in this manner, from women to black, to Jews, to gays and beyond fanaticals only have power when man abandons their own personal beliefs in their innate perspectives on love, life, humanity and our resilience. It feels like we have lost faith in humanity far before anyone can truly argue that we have lost our faith in religion and good.
Sean Shadmand 