purpledawn writes:
The secular world has standards of right and wrong.
Various groups religious and nonreligious have standards of right and wrong.
This board has standards of right and wrong.
Individuals even have their own standards of right and wrong.
Some people put more rules on themselves than others and I agree that doesn't make one "more moral" than someone who doesn't need as many rules.
I don’t believe it makes someone ”more moral’ to believe in more rules, but I can see 2 different viewpoints, and I don’t know which I actually believe (though most likely siding with the latter):
- Religious law (I think mainly from an Islamic and Jewish viewpoint, having grown up with muslims, and discussing Judaism online for long periods of time) brings the entirety of life under the authority of God. This includes civil and domestic practices too. This elevates otherwise ordinary moral laws by giving it a Divine endorsement.
- If you worship God and submit completely, it can feel easy to believe that all morality comes from God. Which means that something morally acceptable only gains this status because of God’s endorsement of it. Accordingly if God suddenly told you that killing unbelievers (for example) equalled Good, then you would have to accept this and act on it, or else you would question the veracity of divine morality.
In this way, I feel more inclined to have a moral atheist (who believes in moral good because of his/her own reasoning) watching my back than a fervent religious believer who may very well turn into a slavering, mass-murdering rapist beast at the say-so of their God .
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