Morality Can Be Maintained Without Religion

Morality Can Be Maintained Without Religion

Since we are born, our parents start to raise us the way the want us to be. They show us how we should behave in society, culture, traditions,religion and moral values. Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are right and those that are wrong. Often, people refer to religion like a form(if not the only one) of teaching moral values to people in society but they fail to understand that religion is not the only way to teach such things. Religion is not needed for knowing how to behave like moral persons because because most of atheist and agnostic people behave normally in society without following any type of religion. Moral values can be taught in many other ways and even though religion helps explain why we need values, it also can bring some negative things like discrimination.

Religion is surely an effective form of teaching moral values to people and explaining why we need them. Wayne Jackson wrote on his article some facts stated by Myers:

“[In one] U.S. national survey, frequent worship attendance predicted lower scores on a dishonesty scale that assessed, for example, self-serving lies, tax cheating, and failing to report damaging a parked car. Moreover, in cities where churchgoing is high, crime rates are low. . .In Provo, Utah, where more than 9 in 10 people are church members, you can more readily leave your car unlocked than in Seattle, where fewer than a third are.”

In the opposite side, religion has brought some issues to society like discrimination, homophobia

and the fight between religion and laws (rights). This damages our society and could lead people to do not act morally when expressing their points of view to the ones who think differently. Most followers, as an example, of Christianity those not respect other religions thoughts and beliefs, making them seen like they are wrong, they are crazy and even that they will be punish for eternity. In this world, the churches, mosques and temples teach doctrines that show us how to act morally but it also divide people from each other. How does that work?

Nord and Haynes said: “We have argued that character education cannot (implicitly) give the impression that religion is irrelevant to morality. Even young children should learn that important moral virtues and values can be found in the world's religions.” (43) and those are some very important statement for this argument. They are clearly saying that values and moral virtues can be found in the world's religion but they are not saying that it is the only way to find them. Morals can be taught or can be learn thanks to society, culture, evolution and education. Religion can be seen as a facilitator, one explanation of what does moral values are and why do we have to act morally but not as the “perfect guide” to it.

By saying that morality and religion is directly linked, we might reasonably expect all religions to have the same moral codes or them to be very similar but they are not. The thoughts and beliefs differs a lot between religions and also does their moral code. But ignoring that fact, if we were to say that morality is fully dependent on religion, meaning that is also directly connected to a superior being, then we had to figure out this question: Is something good because a god commands it to be good; or is it good because a god agrees that it is good? If the answer is “because a god commands it” then as Leibniz says “Why praise him for what he has done if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary?”. This means that if he controls what is

“good” and “evil” then he can do anything and he will still be considered as “good”. In other

hand, if the answer is “because a god agrees”, then he is dividing right from wrong according to the humanity and global morality, commending what is good and punishing what is bad. Now, with this option, a new question appears: If God does

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