Weekly Poll: Is Religion Necessary for Morality and Ethics?
Most religious believers tend to connect religion and morality in such a way that one becomes unthinkable without the other. Thus true, genuine religion necessarily makes one a more moral person while being a moral person signifies that one has and requires true religion. None of this is correct, though – the connection between religion and morality is at best incidental. If we assume the existence of a god, even a god who has many of the traditional qualities of classical, philosophical theism, there are no particular moral values which we can derive from that premise. Not even the quality of omnibenevolence on the part of such a god allows us to conclude that we should not kill, steal, or lie. To see how, just consider the Ten Commandments and ask yourself which, if any, necessarily follow solely from the premise that such a god exists and has revealed itself to humanity. The mere fact that a god desires what is good for us does not mean that we are obligated to do what is best and w
