Your statement, JayJamJah, is pretty absolutist, so it's easy to debate, but I agree, for the most part.
What Cardboard Adolescent said about murder, etc. I don't think an individual would have to look for "Thou Shalt Not Kill" in the Bible in order for them to not murder everyone around them, I think that would just be a natural part of any society based on the covenants talked about by Hobbes.

I think that's an opinion that you're entitled to, but I completely disagree with it. I also think that it's an incredibly broad statement and unless you've read the entire Bible, cover to cover, and found objection with every single word in it, then you can hardly believe that for yourself.

I don't think religion can lay any sort of claims to creating morals. I personally don't think any religion is legitimate and anything more than ancient sham. Some of them are just obvious combination of more ancient practices (just look how much Christianity borrows from Paganism) and the arguments for them hold no weight. There's no evidence whatsoever Jesus was a real person and I've even heard people insist that the absurdity of the story of Jesus lends credibility to his existence. But I don't think the tenacity of an idea makes it worthy.

Back to the subject: the ancient Greeks contemplated morality more extensively than the writers of the bible and they were doing this centuries before Joshua. I believe morality ultimately goes back farther than that. I don't have any doubt that somewhere back in history ancient humans were in a group (we're social animals after all) and some of the members failed to act in the best interests of their group and as a result they all died. What I'm saying is I think morality is a selected trait that has progressed along with humanity and as a result of this has been implemented into many religious texts.

Morality is complex though, it's subjective and varies from culture to culture. Even among the western countries it differs (mostly just America and everyone else.) Normalcy isn't consisted with morals and they're constantly changing and being argued and refined or stripped away. I think socially most governments battle is to try and find a balance between understanding the needs of others and protecting their freedoms and rights. Which is a very difficult problem, I'd love to accept all religions even if I think they're wrong but accepting Islamic radicalism would mean accepting the the abuse of woman and accepting others would mean accepting human sacrifice and accepting Christianity would mean accepting brainwashing and accepting Catholicism would mean accepting molestation, etc.

I guess this is why I'm very interested and passionate about Atheism and Agnosticism and the destruction of organized religion. It's not something I will ever see happen but I strongly believe in accepting faith as the basis for morality you'd then have to accept that everyone is going to use faith as their moral base. You can't believe in Jesus and all his ideals and then attack someone when they fly planes into your buildings; that's completely and utter hypocrisy and they're behaving, in their minds, no worse than you are when you tithe. They are just doing what you're doing, eschewing rational and reason and following their own mythology with in their minds justifies violence and the use of guns just like in your mind it justifies banning gay marriage.*

I think morality is something that is constantly changing and we need to learn to adjust. By adjust I don't mean reinterpret the bible. If you asked Jesus how he felt about abortion he'd have no idea what that even was. We've westernized a fictitious and old dead Palestinian's teaching and it's completely absurd. He wouldn't know how to deal with the moral questions we face today, he'd have to be completely reeducated and everything would have to be explained. I really do hope though that one day we can stop treating morality as something with a basis and as something objective. I hope we can start treating it as an on going human discussion as to what's productive to us as a society. The history doesn't matter: it use to be acceptable to enslave another human being. We can't even trust the morality of our founding fathers, let alone Jesus, Muhammad, God and Joe Smith.

*This is the main reason I agree completely with JJJ's statement. You have to accept 9/11 as a moral act if you're going to base your decisions off the bible unless you're you have conditional and hypocritical morals, in which case your moral foundation is shaky. Though if you need an old book that was written by men who didn't understand how the human body works or know what electricity is you probably don't have a very firm foundation to begin with especially when that same book is so incredibly open to interpretation you can justify anything: from homosexuality being immoral to stabbing the obese with swords.

The first paragraph you wrote is pretty questionable, but it's interesting what you said in the second paragraph about ancient Greeks and contemplation of morality.
In a couple of his writings, Bertrand Russell compared the morality of ancient Greeks to that of Jesus, basically posing the question, "Was Socrates more moral than Jesus?"
If you look at all of the teachings of both individuals, for the most part I would say yes.

Pertaining to Jesus, I would have to say putting people in Hell for eternity for almost anything other than being completely perfect Christians (according to the Bible and Ten Commandments) is the biggest display of lacking morality ever.


Good thoughts.

Sleepy jack, you sum up my beliefs quite well with your second paragraph. Quite simply, without morality as something innate within human beings, we don't make it this far. Period. Religious texts with moral instructions didn't always exist throughout the course of human history, so it's quite obvious to me that natural selection advanced this inherent sense of morality due to its potential to keep us alive.

Not really, morality is not for survival. People can live but not really live, you know?

Morality isn't for anything. It works, so it stays.

Purpose is something you make for yourself, nothing can work unless you see it as a working force. Morality is a much better tool for understanding, not merely keeping warm dead animals in ones stomach.

Aren't you contradicting yourself to say that morality is not for survival, and yet also say that purpose is determined on the individual level? By the way, I never said morality was for anything. I fail to see your point, although that could be my own lack of experience with philosophy at work.

People can believe whatever their twisted minds can conceive, which is a point of this thread. The point is that since human mental and physical ideas having a set purpose, the same could be said of humanity. Not created for a specific purpose, but the gun-smith seems to find purpose for himself in making an object with no direct purpose. The same could be attributed to the idea of God.