Sunday, May 11, 2008

Religion claims to have the copyright on morality. "You have no basis for morality. Without God, there is no reason to be moral. The Bible is THE source of morality."

I've heard this so many times, it's making me nauseous . Anyone who thinks this obviously hasn't read the Bible recently. The Bible condones genocide, infanticide, and the death penalty for picking up sticks on Shabbat. Need I say more?

Fortunately, believers don't really believe the Bible is a good source of ethics, or at least most of them don't actually do what it says. They tend to cherry pick through it and find verses like Micah 6:8 that promotes justice and mercy, completely ignoring the fact that their God killed the firstborn of Egypt, which included innocent babies, to prove that he was the greatest God around. Though they may not like to acknowledge the fact, overall, their morality has developed with the Moral Zeitgeist of the rest of the world. Nonetheless, they cling to an ancient book and ancient ideas about morality. This is a reason for alarm.

Morality is a worthy subject of investigation. So I've started a research project on it. I'll give updates here on my blog as I go along and post some of the insights I've gathered. I lean toward biology and evolution to give the most solid and evidenced arguments for morality. Any recommendations will be highly appreciated.