Morality, religion vs non religion.
Something that gets discussed in the religion vs atheism arena is morality. Is morality objective or subjective? In a way it’s kind of always subjective because if you ask someone what morality is they will only be able ot give you what they think it is.
Here’s what I think and I’m fully aware that I could be wrong so this isn’t me trying to state something as fact and then lord it over you, it’s just me saying my opinion.
There is such a thing as objective morality. The morality of religion is not it.
Religious morality is subjective to the God of that religion. It goes back to the age old problem. Does God command good because it is good, or is it good because He commands it?
If it’s good because He commands it then it’s subjective morality because if god commands someone to shoot a baby in the head with a sniper rifle (which is objectively wrong, in case you were wondering) then somehow in the mind of the shooter, they are doing something good.
But, if God commands something good, (like, oh I dont know maybe saving the baby instead of shooting it?) because it is good, then from the atheist perspective there is something higher than God, objective good.
However I would argue that God commands good because HE - IS - GOOD He is the source of good itself and so incapable of commanding something that is not good.
This means that He would never command anyone to kill innocent people least of all babies.
It is the highly political and subjective morality of religion that compells extremeists to do what they do, not the objective morality of God.
But how to tell the difference? It’s not like…
It’s in our programming.
Yes. Yes it is in our nature at least for most of us to tend toward what is objectively good, or at least it seems that way for me, and I believe this innate morality comes from God. I believe He actually knew what He was doing when He created us.
I think religion might be partially inspired by God but I don’t think that there is a single religion on earth that hasn’t been corrupted to the point where anyone who takes the religion too seriously will end up moving away in certain areas from what is objectively good.
This is further bulstered by the fact that certain things they do actually are objectively good and commanded by the religion which makes people think that everything they do for the sake of the religion with good intentions is objectively good.
Let’s open a can of worms…
LGBT+ and morality.
Here’s the thing. Again, this comes down to perspective. Firstly, I think if there were no such thing as pride parades where people literally have sex in the street and walk around naked in frot of families and even children and instead just acted like normal people and loved who they loved, religious communities would have far less of a problem with the LGBT+ community.
Something the religious community should realise though is that this all started precicely because of the condemnation of non heterosexuality by the Abrahamic faiths. Sexual orientation is not a choice. That is a fact and the sooner religious people realise that the better it will be.
However, how we choose to act IS a choice. I’m not saying gay people shouldn’t be with who they love, I’m saying the whole thing has gone too far.
Sex in the streets at pride parades, identifying as animals… it’s gone too far. I’m sorry but you’re not a wolf in a humans body. In the case of transexuality where a person born in a male body identifies as a woman and visa versa studies have been done on brain structure and those studies found that the brains of trans people more closely resemble the structure of the genders they identify with. So if someone in a male body identifies as a woman they may actually have, essentialy, a womans brain.
This aligns with what trans people have been claiming. However, this does not mean (in my opinion) that a trans woman is 100% a woman. Essentialy they are a kind of hybrid, a different kind of hermaphrodite, not 100% male, not 100% female.
If someone wants to change their body to align with their brain then I think at the very least that is a lot easier than changing their brain to align with their body in some cases. Like everything though, it’s not just a simple black and white problem.
But now i’m going off on a tangent. Is varience in sexuality and gender identity morally good or bad?
Again, it depends on which version of morality you are using to address the issue. This is what i’m trying to point out.
That religious people and non religious people are arguing about the morality of topics like this using two different definitions of morality.
The religious person is defining morally good as ‘whatever God says it is’ and the non religious person is defining morally acceptable as ‘I didn’t have any more choice in this than I did in the geography of my birth or the color of my skin so it cant be morally wrong.’
Please note that I’m separating sexuality from the act of sex, contrary to some religious peoples ideas they are not the same thing.
Sexuality is not something you do, it is somehthing you are.
Religious people sometimes like to frame sexuality as a choice of preference and I’ve heard them sometimes use cars or food as example. But lets run with that for a second.
Think of your favorite food. You’re all time favorive dish that say only your Mum or someone can make just right, for me that might be the pies that my Mum makes. She makes these lovely meat pies with a pastry flower on top from scratch and they win every single time!
Now think of what could be the absolute worst possible meal you could ever eat, something you find truely and literally revolting, lets say a live insect and worm salad with a sauce made from blended worms.
I think it’s safe to say that you might hate the second dish and if you’re me you would definitely love the first one.
Think of what you would list as your best and worst dishes as vividly as possible, vividly enough to elicit real emotions about them.
Done that? Great, now swap them over. Love the dish you hate and hate the dish you love with the same level of emotion.
I dare you to eat the dish you hate and enjoy it as much as the dish that you loved, and then look at the dish you loved and find it so revolting that you almost throw up but then you dont because that would mean wasting all those delicious worms and insects you just ate.
Can you do it? You cant can you. If you don’t even have a choice in what food you prefer what makes you think that you would have a choice in what gender you find romantically actractive.
There is a differnce that should be pointed out here though, I think in the case of food preference is alot more to do with nurture rather than nature whereas this is not the case with sexuality.
People who are gay or bisexual but live in highly religious areas will not often come out because they fear not only judgment but death. If a gay person lives in a country where they can be openly gay and not be killed for it then they are more likely to come out and live according to their nature.
This means that there will be more openly gay people in more liberal societies not because of how they are raised but because of the fact that they can be themselves without fearing death.
From the non religious perspective, sexuality is Amoral. What do I mean by that? Sexual orientation is as moral as the number of centimeters in a mile, the color of a telephone or the hight of mount everest or in other words ABSOLUTEY NOTHING!!!
This is the issue though. People are using different definitions of morality and then argueing about what is morraly good or bad.
First clarify what you mean by morality and get on the same page with that and then you can move forward.
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