Often one hears from the religious side that one cannot have morals without god or holy scriptures, and they seem to be baffled how you just dont run around killing people torturing them and whatnot.
Morality is a part of us a part is imbeaded in our genes, a pack of wolves does not eat and kill each other because its counter-productive to their society.
And a part of it is learned from our social interactions when we are children and it evolves as we grow up. If we where to grow up in ancient Rome we would find it perfectly socaly acceptable that people are killing each other in an arena for our enjoyment, or if we grew up in an ancient Israel tribe we would find it perfectly acceptable to beat a slave to an inch of his life, our behaviour in that instance would also be religiously and morally idealised, as we where adhering to the rules of our religion. Because we would grow up with that kind of behaviour all around us. Nowadays we find that kind of behavior wrong because our culture evolved. We have decided that slavery is wrong, that hurting people is wrong, that killing is wrong, and we did it without any god telling us too, no we did it in spite all manor of religions told us the exact opposite. Only a few centuries ago the Christian religious doctrine was that the only way a black man can get in to heaven is as a slave.
But what i believe most religious people who claim that one cant have morality without god really mean is that we do not have anything to strive fore in a moralistic view, why should someone strive to do better to be nicer to help others if there is no reward waiting for us at the end of our toils.
I believe one needs no reward to to good to be good to strive to better ones self, if as a society we accept that we are all better off if we all try to do better. We are better off if some of us dont act greedy and hoard money and possessions for the sake that they have more money and possessions then you, sure we all have desires to have stuff but most uf us would be happy with a million in a bank account, we would still work and gain income but we would not be hoarding millions uppon millions of dollars having so much that we would not know what to spend it on how many private islands does one need anyway. how many cars ... We are all better off if we adheare to the rules and laws we make and if these rules and laws adheare to the opinions of the majority of what they should be nowdays the lawmakers are just inventing crimes and making it easier for the rich to get richer and the poor to get poorer.
What we should strive for as a society is to better ourselves in every way also intellectually nowadays in the views of the majority if one strives to learn say 10 languages, or understand some topics like say quantum physics are viewed as strange behaviour its better to have a drink take a nap on the couch and go to church on Sundays because that is what god wants from you he hates when you doubt his perfect book with its perfect explanations.
Or reward for doing good and being moral would be a better world now, not a fictional world after we die.
While i do believe that religion played a mayor part in to making humanity what it is now it was needed when humanity was still young it was the first way to construct a basic guideline on how to behave in a society but nowadays religion is counter-productive we can do much better then the framework of religious morality allows. Just take a look at the middle east their freedoms hampered because of a 1400 year old book about a magic man in the sky, people stoned beheaded, killed bombed because they do not behave exactly as their book prescribes.
Christianity, One woman's lie about an affair that got seriously out of hand
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