Thursday 16 June 2011

Separating Religion and Morality

Back in high school I was somewhat religious. Truth be told I was agnostic but my best friend cleverly used peer pressure to lure me to cell group where we would plan bombings in the name of Allah talk about Jesus. One of the issues that kept cropping up was morality.

See, when you believe in Jesus Christ, you follow God's morality which is lain out in the bible. So believing in God means that you have morals and ethics. But what happens if you don't believe in God? Well they really have no reason to follow any rules or morals at all since they don't believe there will be celestial consequences for their unethical actions.

Sound familiar? I'm not the only one who has been subject to that line of reasoning and I'm sure I won't be the last. I knew right from the start it was a load of Evangelical Bolshevik (pardon my French Russian). I only had to look at my god-fearing christian cousins to know that morality was not dictated by the belief in god. They would lie, cheat and steal all week long but their sinning was all okay, because Jesus died for their sins, all they had to do is go to church and pray for forgiveness.

Clearly, when christians can frivolously sin and when non believers can do good deeds then morality and god are mutually exclusive. Right?

Perhaps, but I for one can't shake off the feeling that their might actually be some people out there who only do the right thing for fear of God sending them to Hell. And this is very dangerous thinking, because as soon as they stop believing, then they start murdering people. Which is interesting because I can't think of any examples of this type of thing ever occuring.

Neverthelesss, Neitsche did follow this line of thinking. He came up with a solution. Instead of living for Jesus, live for yourself. That's not to say don't believe in God/Jesus/Allah etc, just make sure that you believe in yourself as well. Be the hero of your own story; do good things because you are an awesome person. Not for some higher power.

13 comments:

  1. Neitsche was a very wise man :)

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  2. Yeah its sad when people base their morals off an old book. Whatever keeps them happy I guess. It also seems like some Christians cannot except that people actually understand morals without religion!

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  3. religions a tough one! I am personally an atheist but went to a primary school that had a daily prayer, this was used, in my opinion, to create a nice environment in the school. whether or not kids listen is different! but the idea was to use it as a way of teaching morals to children at a young age. I have obviously grown up and made my own choices from my thoughts and opinions, but could it be that some of our basic morals come religion being taught at a young age? who knows :')

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  4. Like this. I don't think that you need religion to make you "good" and 100% YES -- people who are "good" only because they fear God are the same people who will use excuses (drinking, drugs, the DEVIL) to do something horrible and then blame their misdeed, weepingly, on things outside of themselves.

    Pearl

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  5. Why do we even have a religion...we know past gods are now myths but yet we have current ones...

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  6. It's pretty funny because a lot of people like to paint themselves the portrait of a perfect person, as long as he or she doesn't subscribe to any religion, but as well all know very well, everybody lies, steals and cheats. :P

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  7. Isn't believing in yourself another fantasy? As in isn't the existence of a self itself a fantasy? I seriously think most of our actions are, for the most part, determined by something completely different than ourselves, be it social norms, our subconscious, our previous education or just the people we're interacting with.

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  8. I don't think I need to go into detail about how my heart leapt when I saw from the title that this wasn't going to be another post where you embarrass yourself with your nerdy Starcraft obsession. (Hint: It's not surprising you're single. I mean, STARCRAFT?)

    *I promise I'll stop bitching on Starcraft in the not so distant future. (:

    Anyway, I think I might be one of those hypocrites who obey laws for the sake of NOT going to hell. I really don't want to get raped by Satan, so...the logical decision is to try to get into heaven and be buddies with big J.

    But on the other hand, I find the concept of religion to be both comforting, manipulative, and intriguing. I am, however, convinced that the world was created by a supreme being, although WHAT kind of omniscient deity he is is something I'm not quite sure about.

    Whether he turns out to be a sock-knitting bigot or the little elf who resides in Mars building vaginas out of Legos...I'll stop speculating now.

    I actually promised myself that I would straighten up/hold on to a belief when I turn 25 and I'm "ready" to BOTHER thinking about all this crap.

    I mean, I'm a kid, and it's sort of my obligation to watch porn and say something mildly intelligent like "dude. YOUR MOM" when someone asks me about my opinions.

    Also, I just realized this was a really long comment, but hey, it's not troll, so...congratulate yourself. :D

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  9. Yeah, it sucks that us non-believers actually have to suffer the consequences of the things we do - would love to be absolved for any misdeed I do, no matter how many times I do it.

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  10. yeah, I struggle w/ this also. Bible Bangers who look down their noses and speak to you like your a child about to burn in hell. I don't have time for it. All I ask from people is to give me their best shot and I will give em mine. I couldn't imagine being a di&khead my whole life.

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  11. heh funny someone got on the train preaching about the bible it was annoying

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  12. Nietzche was indeed a genius... his books were very heavy going though. O_O

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