How can anyone claim that their religion is moral?

[dubouis]

I think of many religions as having a moral basis. Too bad there is no God or I'd join in.

In b4 lightning strike.

[Dogtanian]

I think of many religions as having a moral basis. Too bad there is no God or I'd join in.

In b4 lightning strike.

If it did happen it would be completely random chance  .

[gagalady]

Religion is just something that you can "grab on" if you lose faith in everything, otherwise people would just kill them selfs if there would be nothing to believe in. It just makes people more calm. Am I right?

[bitkanu]

Religion is just something that you can "grab on" if you lose faith in everything, otherwise people would just kill them selfs if there would be nothing to believe in. It just makes people more calm. Am I right?

you are right if you follow your religion you get peace in your heart bcoz you become true man

[TrailingComet]

Nobody can. Everybody does.
The absurdity that is organised religion

[dogechode]

Religion is just something that you can "grab on" if you lose faith in everything, otherwise people would just kill them selfs if there would be nothing to believe in. It just makes people more calm. Am I right?

I think it has way more to do with manipulation and control, but yes there is certainly a "teddy bear" aspect to it. I think that is more a reason why people go along with it, rather than the inherent purpose of religions, or the reason why they were created / modified.

[noviapriani]

Moral people may or may not think they are moral. Immoral people may or may not think they are moral. What you think ultimately doesn't matter. What God says is good is good. Who are we to judge he who created & sustains us....

[counter]

I think people can claim their religion is moral because they have standards they live by and would like others to live by so people didn't run around in chaos doing horrible things.  I think the topic is a bit misleading in some ways and almost feels like the OP just want to bait people in for some type of arguemnt..  Just saying what I feel is potentially what could happen, not saying it is fact.

[noviapriani]

what you think ultimately doesn't matter. What you think has no effect on if you are actually moral or not. God isn't even in the picture. one believes in a
God, and typically absolute authority with that; then morals have been constant.

[dogechode]

My idea of morality is very simple at it's core and doesn't require religion. It basically consists of:

-Don't steal
-Don't rape
-Don't intentionally injure or kill a person unless necessary to defend yourself or other people they intend to harm
-Don't torture or kill living creatures needlessly

You don't need a special book or a god or a person claiming to be your direct link to God in order to follow these.

[yatsey87]

My idea of morality is very simple at it's core and doesn't require religion. It basically consists of:

-Don't steal
-Don't rape
-Don't intentionally injure or kill a person unless necessary to defend yourself or other people they intend to harm
-Don't torture or kill living creatures needlessly

You don't need a special book or a god or a person claiming to be your direct link to God in order to follow these.

What about cheating?

[golem]

Cheating could broadly fall under the category of theft aka stealing.

[Dogtanian]

Cheating could broadly fall under the category of theft aka stealing.

Not if he means cheating as in infidelity.

[dogechode]

Actually I read a book once where a man explained to his son that the only sin he believe in was theft, and that all other sins that were valid were essentially derivatives of theft. I agree with that logic to a degree. To me infidelity (meaning you are in a relationship with an agreement that neither of you has sex with any other person, and you violate that agreement) would be a form of stealing. This is sort of hard to explain in words. By the same logic scamming/conning someone is stealing (that's easier to understand implicitly.)

[zolace]

I'm going to go back and define morality again. Morality is behavior that is acceptable in a culture by that culture. Having relations with your cousin is acceptable in some cultures, but not in others. Therefore, morality is subjective. Moral absolutes are defined by where one is at, culturally. All over the world, every day, cultures kill other cultures because their moral code tells them that what they are doing is okay and good for their culture. In Rwanda, the Hutu's killed almost a million Tutsi's. Why? They didn't like them. They just wanted to get rid of them. For 10 years, Hutu's killed their neighbors. They couldn't readily get guns, so the used machetes for their primary weapon. Now, I'd like to know, how to you come to a point in your life where you look at your moral compass and it says, "It's okay. Take your machete and go to town on those people". Here in America, if someone kills someone with a machete, it will make the network news lead story. That's just one death. I'm telling you this to illustrate that the Hutu's had morals. Their morals included killing every Tutsi that they encountered.

This scenario is what happens when man defines his morals. This why I do not wish to leave the moral making decisions up to my fellow man. This scenario has happened thousands of time over history. Jews, slaves, Serbians, Cambodians, and even the Aztecs, were victims of another culture's own self proclaimed morality.

This is why, I embrace Christianity.  So I say that my morals come from my faith. My faith says that the number one commandment is to love God. The 2nd commandment is to love your neighbor as you love yourself. That is the Christian belief. When Christians kill witches, or Jews or homosexuals, or non-Christians, they are not following the teachings of Christ. Islam also teaches love above anything else. Islamic fundamentalists pervert their teachings and kill in the name of Allah. They are not morally right.

[dogechode]

For the record, I was raised Catholic. The issue I started to have with Catholicism/Christianity in general, is that they will typically tell you that it is not 'a-la-carte,' you have to accept the whole religion or none (I am simplifying it but that is the basic point they state.)

Well, I agree with some Catholic beliefs (don't kill, don't steal, love your father, etc) but some of them are just outright silly to me, and more importantly - I firmly believe that very few Christians are following some of these rules. The most obvious example is the no pre-marital sex rule. Come on, seriously? How many Christians do you think follow that rule? Maybe 5%? And I don't think this is just a recent modern trend.

I also straight up refuse to believe a lot of the biblical stories. Ok so God makes the world, God makes man, God gets mad that man isn't doing what he wants them to do, so God murders 99.99% of them. But then tells us don't kill each other because that is bad. Right.

Abraham goes through a lot of fucked up things, to satisfy God's desire to "test" him.

Job basically loses everything and suffers horrifically for the same basic reasons.

Is that the kind of God we should be 'worshiping?'

The gay marriage thing poses a problem as well. Science and history tell us pretty clearly that there have been homosexuals basically for as long as there have been human beings. If God is all-powerful then why would he make a certain percentage of humans be inclined toward doing something he has a major problem with? We have pretty effectively proven at this point that most gay people don't "choose" to be attracted to the same sex. It is almost certainly a genetic trait.

As I started to learn about other religions, especially in college where I took several classes on them, I found that they all have this built-in hypocrisy and/or rules that I have a major problem with. They all include rules or practices that I find it extremely hard to believe that even the majority, let alone all, of the practitioners of those religions are following. I could list about a thousand examples for Jews and Muslims but I will refrain from doing so. It's not necessary as I am sure everyone reading this can think of obvious examples.

I do believe that there was some kind of higher power responsible for, or involved in, the creation of life. I just don't think that any modern religion I have heard of is an accurate explanation of how it happened or what our response should be. I think they are all more or less just evolved systems of control.

[theskillzdatklls]

Using logic vs people involved in religions does not work. Just end this discussion permanently.

[hilariousandco]

Using logic vs people involved in religions does not work. Just end this discussion permanently.

As long as we all agree that there's almost certainly no gods and move on  .

[zolace]

Using logic vs people involved in religions does not work. Just end this discussion permanently.

As long as we all agree that there's almost certainly no gods and move on  .

If you or others don't believe in god ,doesn't mean that He doesn't exist,people complicated everything by inventing religions !

[hilariousandco]

Using logic vs people involved in religions does not work. Just end this discussion permanently.

As long as we all agree that there's almost certainly no gods and move on  .

If you or others don't believe in god ,doesn't mean that He doesn't exist,people complicated everything by inventing religions !

I think the fact that he doesn’t exist gives a pretty good indication that he doesn’t exist. You having faith that he does exists doesn’t make him so either.