Does religion lead to moral goodness?

Question

Does one's religion or religious values lead to inherent goodness? Is one's ability to be "good" independent of one's religious manifestations?
What do you think?

Please, no rants, just an orderly, educated discussion.

I suppose you should also answer,
How do you define a person as being morally good?

Answer 1

Not always. Sometimes it does the very opposite.
Some religions have actually been intended to do the opposite. Others are neutral about morality. Even religions that promote moral goodness do not necessarily produce that.
In the case of Christianity, the claim is that moral goodness is the fruit of the Holy Spirit residing in you - if you try to live by a moral law on your own, you will fail miserably. Which doesn't mean that you will have no moral goodness without the Holy Spirit, by the way.
I like to draw an illustration from a comparison between a Christmas Tree and a fruit tree. You decorate a Christmas tree with balls and other ornaments, but you can't eat those, and they don't produce seeds from which to grow other Christmas trees. While a fruit tree produces its fruit from its own life . and this fruit, while not being as glamorous as what you find on a Christmas tree, is more useful, edible, and helps in reproduction of other fruit trees.
We are like those trees. Sometimes by religious efforts we can, in some cases, manage to put on morality. But it is usually not all that satisfactory in the end. We need a Life within us that will urge us on to better morality, giving us those desires. The Christian claim is that the Holy Spirit does that. That is why it is legitimate, when someone shows no love for others, and lives a life totally contrary to Christian principles, and yet claims to be a Christian, to say: "not a real Christian". It isn't that they just don't manage to produce the ornaments. It is that they do not have the life force within them to produce the fruit.
EDIT: I very much agree with D2T's comment.

Answer 2

No, I believe people have an inherent sense of right and wrong (except for the insane). If it harms someone or something = wrong.

There was a recent study done with babies that showed they preferred people who helped someone carrying things and opened a door for that person over the person that held the door shut. This is long before the infants could be aware of a religion.

Answer 3

Many religions claim to own morality, but there are tons of historical examples of how religion has advocated violence and religious people have killed in the name of their god. I would argue that the majority of people are born with an innate sense of good and bad, some of us just chose to follow that inner voice, some don't.

Not to mention that there are religions that are neutral on morality. And what about those religions that advocate human sacrifice? Christianity had their crusades, the Romans (and how many gods did they have!) had their gladiatorial games and throwing people to the lions, the early schisms led by Luther and Calvin literally led to blood running in the streets. Heck, the Greek gods which we spend so much time learning about in high school were the pettiest, greediest beings around, and were no model of moral rectitude to their followers.

I think many argue that you need religion to know good or bad, but how many times do we see good religious folk go wrong? You can't watch the news without seeing young children molested by priests, ministers having mistresses, orthodox Jews killing politicians they don't agree with or Sunni killing Shi'ia and vice versa. How has religion helped the victims of these crimes?

I think religion is good for giving people a sense of purpose, of being part of something bigger, helping people through tough times. But to argue that one cannot have morals or be a good person without it, or that one is automatically good with it, is simply ridiculous.

Answer 4

I can't answer for everyone but I as for me I think I am a better person for my beliefs. I try to live by two things that Jesus taught. Do unto other as you would have them do unto you. And love thy neighbor as thyself. I do know people who are good law abiding citizens that arent religious and some religious people who dont live by the things they should.
I think that it is mostly because of the way we are raised and the values that are instilled in us growing up. I think most of those can be traced to a religious belief of some type, or lack there of.
In some people it is a fear of the law. People who believe they will be locked up if they dont obey the law will not do wrong based on that. If you want to get really deep you can say that most of the laws come from religious teachings.

Answer 5

Anyone can be good or evil. But for those who are part of Christianity, and want to follow what God teaches, we are taught to live a good and moral life. Where Christians, and virtually any other religion goes bad is when a person has a moral code of conduct that they forcibly impose on others. Because when you force others to abide by a code of morals they don't agree with, their heart is not in the code and they will then follow only the code if they will be punished for not following it. So, in my mind, religion can lead to moral goodness, because you do it to please God. But when you do it out of fear of punishment or because you are force to do it, it is nothing more than rhetoric.

Answer 6

No, the Word of God does. The Lord touching a person's life leads to moral goodness. When the Lord moves in everything that is not of Him leaves. Reading His Word gives us instruction on how we should live our lives. Religion is man made. God's Word is given to us directly through the Bible.

Yes, one is able to live with moral values independent of religion. However, no one is good enough to save themselves. This is because ALL have sinned and fallen short. This is why we need a sinless Savior to atone for our sins. The return to Bible principles is what we all need. Sometimes religion tends to twist what God has to say. This should make us want to go to the source and find out what God has to say for ourselves.

Answer 7

No, I don't believe that religion leads to inherent goodness. A very religious person can still be a bad person.

Answer 8

Observable good behavior is not sufficient for "being" moral. Morality includes motive. Most people would agree, I think, that neither fear of punishment nor hopes of reward are worthy motives for being moral.

However, most people overlook good feelings of self-esteem/ego boosting as rewards; but they certainly are rewards. Also, the bad feelings that our conscience may inflict on us when we misbehave are most certainly punishments.

Society trains us to behave in certain ways much like we can train a rat to behave in certain ways. This society training is not morality; rather the training results in giving us our set of feelings we call conscience.

Once feelings are properly accounted for as rewards and punishments, there is nothing left. And what moral obligation do we owe to obey a feeling? None. So we do what we feel like doing and THEN set our standard for goodness so that we fit our invented standard. This is how criminals plotting their next crime can think themselves to be basically good.

Morality has to include a moral obligation to a higher moral authority than just ourselves else we will just do what we feel like doing and self justify ourselves afterwards.

Answer 9

Demons can even manifest "goodness". remember the Tree of Knowledge? Its fruit was of good and evil, but both produce death.

Goodness in the eyes of man or morality has NO eternal value. Because Jesus said there is really only 1 who is good. True goodness means having zero sins.

Even if someone was 99% sin free, that 1 sin, makes them not good.

Therefore Jesus must be our righteousness. And by letting Him live through us true goodness can manifest.

Answer 10

I read some research years ago that indicated religion had no bearing on personal moral conduct. That has also been my personal experience. Christians, Jews, Muslims and Hindu's are no more moral or immoral than any other faith group.
Maybe Buddhists are different but I doubt it.