| [ |
mood |
| |
 contemplative |
] |
In one of my groups, someone brought up a question along the lines of: without religion, would there be morals in our society? I thought it was an interesting topic. so i wrote:
----------------
This is a difficult subject, because morality is entirely relative. To me, the most 'moral' people I've met have been non-religious people, free-thinkers. Now, I know there are many religious people in here, I don't mean any offense, I'm not saying one way is better. But at least understand where I'm coming from. People who grew up without any religious influence (or the minimal amount possible in today's society) create morals based on their experiences, what they see. They sort of "learn" morals. On the other side are those who are devoutly religious. Their morals are in a sense handed to them. Not all of their morals, because as humans, of course our experiences will shape our beleifs. As I said before, morality is relative, and all of these statements are based on MY interpretation of "morality," which I imagine differs from everyone else's.
Based on the fact that people who grow up without religion develop their own morals, then yes, a society without religion would have morals. They may not be the morals you want, but they would still be morals.
With respect to laws: in the beginning, it probably would have been much harder to get a whole population to follow man-made laws without using religion as a tool to instill fear.
I don't think our laws would be the same if there was no religious influence in the beginning. Some would be the same. I mean, most people, even with the smallest sense of right and wrong, understand that killing another person is bad. So it makes sense to create a law that makes murder illegal. But what if, and i'm going to use a stupid example here, someone decided to outlaw blue shoes. You wouldn't just accept it, you'd want some sort of explanation (hopefully). So then that person might say "because blue shoes are bad." Then you just have to take that person's word for it. It then becomes based on that person's mastery of persuasion. Which, in my opinion, explains many of the laws/acts tolerated by our government in the past, and even today. I'm not going to bring up the controversial topics of today, but just think about it. How many things would be allowed/would not be allowed, based solely on common sense and respect, if it weren't for someone coming up with a catchy argument against it? And again, religion plays a big role here. Religion then becomes that person with the catchy argument. And albeit, i've heard some pretty good arguments.
Someone will say "all people should be treated equally." And you'll agree. Then someone else will say "well, until they've done something to forfeit that right." And you'll say "yeah, that makes sense." And then people will start arguing about what kind of acts deserve denial of that right. Someone's argument will be more pursuading than another's, and before you know it, women won't be allowed to vote and there'll be slavery.
----
|
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif?v=88.8){kind=small}
crazyfancies's journal