Are some religions more moral than others?

What about non-religious people?

What, do you think, is most formative in developing a sense of morality?

I think that morality is instilled in us by our daily experiences and the environment in which we are raised.

The fact that some of the most prevelant moral guidelines are also found throughout religion is a product of the universality of these guidelines, rather than the guidelines being a product of the religion.

Thou shalt not kill was probably a moral dictate long through those 40 thousand years before it was put in a book.

Therefore saying that our morality is based on the ten commandments is incorrect, as it is the ten commandments which were based on our morality. (add in some stuff about staying true to only one god! and you have the commandments)

Morality can be best understood by viewing it from two facets.

The first is the mechanism that is within us that influences behavior. Guilt and shame are examples, and are major players in moral behavior. Empathy can be said to be a mechanism, although it is more a mental process than a chemical process.

The second is the determination of what is right and what is wrong. The more fundamental rules we live by are determined by evolution. Evolutionary Stable Strategies(ESS’s) emerge as guidelines by which species behave and fall into niche’s that have far more survivability than the alternatives. For example, killing your children would not be an ESS. The behavior would weed itself out of the gene pool within the very first generation.

A less extreme example is sharing food with a member of your tribe who isn’t closely related to you. This is a stable strategy due to a few reasons, one being that successful hunts are sporadic endeavors, and sharing is insurance for the future. Another is that if you have food to share, you must be a successful hunter so will attract a mate.

Although some behaviors have evolved into us, they aren’t absolute, and are only provisional. This isn’t relative morality. The majority of the population behaves in tune with these behaviors, though some have no qualms about killing their own children. Variety is the bread and butter of evolution, so anomalies can be expected.

For many behaviors, an authority figure’s presence can influence a person to behave morally. Studies have shown that even making a person think about their mother will elicit guilt and cause them to act morally. Religion short circuits the authority response by making people believe that they are constantly being watched by God. One would think this should make religious people behave better, but that’s not the case.

Studies have shown that on trivial moral behaviors such as tipping a waitress or returning a lost wallet, religious people were less moral than non-religious people. After thinking about his for a bit, I’ve formed an opinion of my own. I think that under the constant shadow of authority that religious people think they stand, the guilt/shame moral mechanism becomes less effective. With constant authority, people become immunized to an extent to the effects that authority has on their moral behavioral mechanism.

As for the cherry-picked commandments of religion, many are byproducts of ESS’s that we have evolved. Imagine the guilt when you’re caught taking someone’s property. Such guilt is in no way dependant upon religion. Others are the product of reasoning in much the same way modern people create laws for the legal system. There is reasoning behind some rules that follows directly from the desire to live in a more stable society.

Excellent post, Interbane. Two thumbs up!

It's amazing to me that people assume that morality stems from religion. Though religion can reinforce moral behavior it seems pretty clear that the churches simply embraced what was already moral behavior, codifying it into its own tenets.

You certainly hear enough people claiming that morality is the domain of religion.

"how can there be a right and wrong without god? Everything is relative."

clearly, everything IS relative, but there are definite rights and wrongs.

To the sun, if the whole planet were incinerated in nuclear war, it would hardly matter.

To people, that would be a bad, bad thing.

If your neighbor kills a mouse in a trap, depending on a variety of things, it may be a good thing in your mind, a bad thing, or not matter in the least.

Animal activists will say she should have trapped and released it, people who fear germs might applaud it, and i simply would not care.

Other things are quite easy to find real, tangible reasons why they are the right thing to do. Interbane's post points to several good examples and reasons for doing them.

I think the universal yardstick for what is good and what is bad boils down to things that contribute to the success of the group are good, things that detract from the success of the group are bad.

working hard, having productive business, raising good children, being faithful to your spouse, helping the community, producing entertainment such as art, literature and other forms are all good because they contribute to the stability of the community.

stealing, destruction of property, killing, irresponsible parenting, deception, and adultery are examples of things that disrupt the harmony of a group and detract from their success.

I believe this rule is easily applied across all cultures.

Everyone will have a view on this question, but if the purpose of asking is to get an answer that has anything approaching scientific rigor...good luck. We could get a little closer by specifying what we mean by morality (actions/behaviors reflecting the Golden Rule?), but then there's the bigger problem of defining religion operationally. Just what will religion or being religious be determined to be? There are too many possible answers to make quantitative research possible. No prospect of using control groups, either, because of the confounding variables problem. We could go about this qualitatively, I guess, but the purpose of qualitative research isn't to get definitive answers. We're not stuck, exactly, but I feel we should accept that there will be only "views" on this problem. Views are a combination of our experience, subjective state, and evidence that we select. They are not all equally valid just because they are subjective, but they always will bear the marks of subjectivity and thus relativeness as well.

I don't expect to submit this thread to any scientific journal.

I asked to spur conversation and to see what people's idea of morality is, and how they view it in relation to their religion, or lack therof.

Global Ethic Foundation is one organization who's efforts are primarily to identify common moral foundation and ethical agreement among the different religions of the world. I think it's an excellent resource.


Global Ethic Foundation: For Inter-cultural and Inter-religious Research, Education and Encounter
http://www.weltethos.org/dat-english/index.htm

Declaration Toward a Global Ethic
http://www.weltethos.org/dat-english/03-declaration.htm

Global Ethic and Religions
http://www.global-ethic-now.de/gen-eng/ ... gionen.php

johnson1010 wrote:I don't expect to submit this thread to any scientific journal.

I asked to spur conversation and to see what people's idea of morality is, and how they view it in relation to their religion, or lack therof.

Sure, I understand this. Sharing views can be interesting. I wasn't annoyed or anything by the question. Maybe some frustration did come through over the generality of our discussions of the topic over the past year of my participation.

Peter Singer wrote an article about this very topic. I almost always find myself in agreement with Singer. The article is called Godless Morality. The following quote is great and sums up my feelings on morality and religion.

Our evolved intuitions do not necessarily give us the right or consistent answers to moral dilemmas. What was good for our ancestors may not be good today. But insights into the changing moral landscape, in which issues like animal rights, abortion, euthanasia, and international aid have come to the fore, have not come from religion, but from careful reflection on humanity and what we consider a life well lived.

In this respect, it is important for us to be aware of the universal set of moral intuitions so that we can reflect on them and, if we choose, act contrary to them. We can do this without blasphemy, because it is our own nature, not God, that is the source of our morality.

Here is the link to the whole article:
http://www.utilitarian.net/singer/by/200601--.htm