is there any relation between religion and morality?

Question

should these two words even be grouped together?

i don't care a $hit about what any religion tells me to do.....don't preach here

R.G:.huh???

Audrey V:..i think people of ALL religions want us to believe they have moral values, when none of them do..

Answer 1

Very little. The religious people try and confuse the difference, believing their religion is the source and standard of morality. The truth is most religions don't act very moral and much of the wars and hatred in this world is in the name of religion. It is time for us to make sure these two concepts are completely judged separately.

Answer 2

yes there is , but the two words can not be grouped together..

if you have a 5 years old child , and you have no idea how to make him learn to do good things or stop him from doing bad things ..

you will tell him a story about an invisible monster in a dark closed room in your house
" if you do wrong , darkness monster will eat your felsh"
"if you do not do as I order , darkness monster will come and get you"

you may order your child to do good things .. don't kill , don't steal , don't lie , do good to every one , love your parents .. etc

you may even tell him about another "being" - an Angel - in another room , full of bright light and toys he love
" you get in that nice room , and play with all the toys with that great and lovely Angel , only if you do as I tell you "

is there any morality in that ?
sure there is

but does that guarantee that your child will grow up as a good human being ?
no , he may grow up and be a serial killer !

is the darkness monster , or the good looking Angel , a true story about true creatures ?
maybe , maybe not

maybe you are crazy and you really saw the monster and the angel and you believe they are in these rooms
maybe there is no monster or angel , but you are clever to use some tricks on the little child to make him believe you

but that's not the point !

the point is , you created a belife system for your little child , the main goal of that system , is not to make him learn any knowledge or wisdom directly
you only want him to do what you want because you believe that you know what's good or bad for him more than he does

that's what religion is all about !
and sure there is morality , but that's not the point !

Answer 3

There is no relation whatsoever between the two, but unfortunately the religious folk never see this. They believe they are 1) bad/sinners, born into sin. 2) They need an imaginary god to tell them what is right--and spread this idea of what is right and how to live to all others.

Nothing is more harmful than having an unquestioning devoted belief in something false; believing a lie---especially a lie which throughout centuries has caused so much suffering and destruction.

You just gave me an idea for a question. :D

Answer 4

Well, you are in the R & S section so you should expect religious people to answer you.

But there are kinds of morality. That which is natural and that which is divine.

Natural morality is the type that promotes survival, peace...these are things that we naturally do to in order to function in society. We don't kill our neighbor or children, work hard, obey laws...the morality comes from our instinct to survive and prosper. The motivation is self-serving.

Religious morality can look the same on the surface but the motivation is not self-serving but God-serving. Instead of putting what I want as my basis for all I do, I am to put what God wants (which can be at odds with what I want) first.

Answer 5

That is a great question. Answer: Absolutely not. Morality and religion are totally separate. Just look at 911 - They were religious nut cases. Or Jim Jones, the Crusades, etc. One could argue that there has been more violence and war caused by religious belief than anything else in the history of mankind.

Answer 6

Moral decision making occurs quite separately. Most moderns agree slavery is immoral. Beating your children to death is immoral. Killing someone for their religious conversion or deconversion is immoral. Slaughtering captive women and children is immoral. Making sex slaves of POWs is immoral. Punishing children for the wrongdoing of parents is immoral. The Bible approves all these things, but you don't see Christians and Jews going out and doing such things as a rule, because they have made a moral decision, even if a subconscious one, that trumps their religion's supposedly inerrant and eternally valid word of God. They will argue that they "are no longer under the law", they will engage in the most strained and illegitimate exegesis to explain these things away, but in actuality they share our species' common aversion for and taboo against harming others when it isn't a matter of survival, and sometimes even when it is. We have that from living together and the empathy for each other that has made us an adaptable species, and not from religious indoctrination.

Answer 7

People of a certain religion want you to believe they have moral values, but in all realiry, no one actually follows these all the time.

Answer 8

Religion likes to claim morality, but they are totally separate. That is why the basic frame work of morality is always the same no matter the culture or religion.

Answer 9

If there is no God, then there is no Supreme Being to which we must give an account—no Judgment Day, no heaven or hell. If this is just a great cosmic accident, then there is no such thing as "morality" (there is no right or wrong, no good or evil). We should live by the saying, “Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die.”

But if there is a God—well, that’s a different story. Are we an accident, or the image of God? Are we without purpose, or have an eternal goal? Do we live like an animal, or like a child of God? In the end, is it dust, or eternity?

There is an interesting anthropological argument that is known as the “moral argument” that is connected to this. The argument is this: Man has within him a moral nature, a sense of “oughtness”; where did it come from?

You see, there arises in all of us, in any culture, universal feelings of right and wrong. Wherever you go, people in every place and every walk of life, say things like: “That’s not fair.” “How would you like it if someone did that to you?” “That’s my seat, I was there first.” “Come on, you promised.” When people say things like that, they are appealing to some kind of standard of behavior which they expect the other person to know.

The other person doesn’t say, “forget your standard,” but almost always tries to make an excuse to show that they really didn’t go against the standard. As C.S. Lewis said about this standard, “...the moment anyone tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses as long as your arm.” You know, there are reasons why you should be let off the hook. That time you were unfair to the children was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the money came when you were very hard-up. You never would have promised that if you would have known how busy you were going to be. And then comes the argument between these two people. It is clear that they both believe in a standard or they couldn’t argue about it. You can’t argue that a football player committed a foul unless there is some agreement about the rules of football.

If morality is simply something learned from our culture, as they want us to believe, then why are the moral teachings of the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Indians, Greeks and Romans so very similar? C. S. Lewis talked a lot about this. Has there ever been a culture where people were admired for running away in battle? Or admired for being selfish (even though they might differ about who you should be unselfish to)? Men have differed on things like whether you should have one wife or four, but they have always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked. In the words of Thomas C. Mayberry, “There is broad agreement that lying, promise breaking, killing, and so on are generally wrong.”

And whenever you find someone who says they don’t believe in right or wrong, you will find them going back on it a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you break one to him, he will immediately be complaining “It’s not fair!” Even a thief gets upset and feels wronged when someone steals from him. As it has been said, “If there is no God, no atheist can object on moral grounds if I want to kill him.”

I had an atheist friend some years back that I would always argue creation/evolution with. One day he came in and told me how mad he got from watching a documentary on the Holocaust. I can’t remember exactly what I said, but I thought, “Why are you so mad; it’s just survival of the fittest, right? You don’t even believe there is such a thing as right and wrong.” You see, no matter how much he denies it, he feels that standard as well as I do.

So, where did it come from? We don’t see it in animals. Oh, they sometimes act nice to each other, but even that is subjective (it could have been misinterpreted) and a far cry from what we see in humans. A dog doesn’t feel guilt from stealing another dog’s bone. Apes don’t sit down and talk about morals and ethics. If an ox gores a man to death, it is not arrested, tried, and condemned to the electric chair. We recognize its inability to make moral judgments and so we might just confine it in a sturdier pen and warn people to stay away. If we evolved from animals, how did we come to be moral creatures?

Could non-moral matter combined with time and chance be an adequate cause for this? If people are merely products of physical evolution and “survival of the fittest,” why do we sacrifice for each other? Where does courage, dying for a cause, love, dignity, duty, and compassion come from? This seems to be the opposite of what evolution would produce; in a struggle for survival, will the existence of a conscience help or hinder survival? As John Adam has said, “...according to the evolutionary principle of survival of the fittest, a loving human with a conscience is at a great disadvantage and would be unlikely to have survived the evolutionary process.”

Answer 10

well...some people get their morality from religion. I'm an athiest and when i was open with people about it, quite a few would say something like "how do you know whats right and wrong without the b$%^$????"

something to think about is all the devout people who have no personal sense of morality and are only moral because they have a diety imposing consequences if they obey its dogma.