Site note: I’ve almost completed the layout of my crafts domain! I think that’s a relatively big step because layouts have been the biggest hurdle for me lately. The content part is always much easier to do. So yay, progress!

Anyway, here’s another reason #1239073 why believing in a religion is not necessary. Sam Harris mentions it very succinctly in his book Letter to a Christian Nation and I think it’s so profound and simple that I’m shocked that secularists don’t use the argument more often. Many religious people, and even those who aren’t very religious, cling to the idea of religion because they argue that religion gives the foundation to their morality, that without believing in a Supreme Being(s) that would cause people to do unspeakably immoral things.

But even on a logical level, their reasoning, especially from those who are not very religious, can so easily be shot down. Let’s take the bible for example. Many Christians say their morality comes from whats written in the new and old testaments. Without this guiding force to tell us how to be moral, they say, nothing stops us from going out and plundering and I dunno, raping puppies. However, many many things said in the Old Testament are quite abhorrent; for example, stoning of adulterers, stoning of naughty children, actual promotion of genocide etc etc. Even in the New Testament, for example, Jesus had no problems about keeping slaves so long as you treat them nicely.

So alright, many moderate believers then say, well OBVIOUSLY with such a change in context, we can’t talk what’s been said literally. Via renewed interpretation and just ignoring certain parts of the texts, we can still get the gist of what morality should be. But that’s the thing. The actual ability to pick and choose shows our moral intuition stems from OUTSIDE the texts! What we feel should be kept and what should be ignored (or reinterpreted) doesn’t come from the Bible, it comes from hardwired notions of altruism and social and developmental forces. These driving forces are within all of us and it’s simply false to attribute them to religious institutions.

Linked with this is the idea of why we do moral things. I doubt that in every day life, people behave morally because of religion. As Richard Dawkins mentioned, do we do good for the sake of it, or for fear of some dude/dudette(s) in the sky? Do you help an old lady across the street because you feel the urge to, or because you fear you’ll be punished spiritually if you don’t? I really think it’s the former.