Religion and personal morality - A contradiciton in terms?

Question

This is something of a "which came first?" debate. In religious terms did the faith arise due to the morality of the individual or is an individual's moraltiy based on the boundaries of their religion.

Short Point: I'm not stating that those not forming part of a religious demographic are not moral. This is specifically in relation to those who are members of a major religion and the morality of those as a whole.

Answer 1

Could it be we are most of us born with an innate sense of morality and religious leaders and politicians exploit that sense for their own ends and it is the same sense of morality that makes us accept, albeit grudgingly, their lies as we assume them to be as moral as we ourselves are?

Answer 2

Well it's something the christian practioner struggles with. They have their own beliefs and ideas based on experiences and perceptions that conflict with what they're trying to accept as right or good. They often are a contridiction and if they weren't then the inidividual would simply be christ and not christ like or christian.

An individual's faith comes first and then they're asked to accepting the rest of the stuff hook line and sinker

Answer 3

There is a difference between religion and the bible.
The bible's laws and guidelines are protective.Yes even the one about not eating shellfish was for a protection not to make people subservient through fear.Religion used fear later.Hellfire and purgatory have no scriptural basis but were used as a money making scheme by religions.

Answer 4

I have no religion, and I do have morals.
So I think it's the first one.
Religion was partially created for people who don't have such good morals. Supposed to scare people into being good... people should be good for the sake of humanity, not because they're scared of 'hell' or something like that.

Answer 5

They could well have totally separate origins ...morality from the fact the we are social animals (dogs don't tend to murder each other either) ...religion from our need to make sense of the world (ancient religions were sometimes quite immoral, involving human sacrifice etc)

Answer 6

Even those who claim their morality comes "from the bible" clearly don't get their morality from the bible. Because how else do they know what to obey from the OT (10 commandments) and what to toss out ("eating shellfish is an abomination").

To make THAT determination requires getting morality from "someplace other than the bible".

Answer 7

religion was created first. if there was no religion then where did your morals come from? even if you aren't religious now they have been instituted in society for so many thousands of years you can't say you didn't get them from a religion.

Answer 8

I think the religion was first. Obviously, there are moral people who are atheists, however their rules grew on tradition somehow - tradition which is mostly based on old religions...

Answer 9

I would believe that faith came after man. sorry, not to be insensitive to the Christian faith, but to create faith the people had to survive and prosper to have enough time to respect such a way of life.

Answer 10

i have morals and standards i live by but i dont ever call on an imaginary friend to help me out or tell my troubles to so in my case there is no first or second place to be had