Theists often claim that their religion is necessary for morality. Obviously this is not the
case as
most people are good, decent people whether they believe in gods or not. Actually, nontheists
get their morals from the same place as theists: human compassion and empathy.
Christians, for example,
do not get decent morals from the Bible.
How do I know this? Because the god of the Bible is one
of the most evil creatures in all of mythology.
He ordered the wholesale slaughter of many innocent people, often singling out
women and children to be
murdered (see
just about anywhere in the Old Testament); he punished people who worshipped the wrong god by
ordering "their little ones" to be "dashed to the ground" and their pregnant women to be "ripped open" (see
Hosea 13:16);
he ordered his warriors to commit genocide, and they murdered every Midianite man, women, and child
except for the 32,000 female virgins that the warriors were told to "save for yourselves"
(see Numbers 31);
and he created a place called hell which he uses to torture people who he dislikes for all eternity.
(For more information on the Bible god, see
Bible Atrocities,
Murder Most High, and
Is the Bible God Good?.)
Most Christians, at least in this era, do not do these types of things.
Instead, they have applied their own moral standards to weed out and ignore those parts of the Bible
that don't fit in with their values. The claim that the Bible can serve as the ultimate moral
guide is patently absurd.
Does organized religion help society? Protestants and Catholics are murdering each other in Northern Ireland.
Adolf Hitler was a Christian
whose actions were consistent with the evil Old Testament god
(see Hitler's Christianity).
More recently, Christians have carried out a genocidal campaign against Muslims in Kosovo.
Islamic terrorists have murdered many innocent people in order to further their goals.
Christian terrorists have attacked abortion clinics in the name of their god
(these hypocrites call themselves pro-life; they
may be pro-fetus-life but their actions prove that they are very anti-human-life).
Religionists often point out that some atheists, particularly communists, have also committed evil
acts. This is true enough. There is, however, an important distinction to be made: Theists have
been inspired by their religion to commit
atrocities, while communists have been inspired to commit atrocities, not by their lack of belief in gods, but
by their political beliefs and desires.
Many theists would argue that even if some people have done evil things in the name of religion, most
religious people are good, moral people, and that religion on the average provides a positive moral benefit.
It is true that
most religious people are good, moral people, but so are most nontheists. The theists' claim
that religion is morally beneficial on the average is completely without merit.
Not only is there no evidence indicating a positive correlation between religion and morality, there is
evidence of a negative correlation:
"The United States is the most religious of all the industrialized nations. Forty-four percent of Americans attend church once a week, compared with 27 percent in Britain, 21 percent in France, 16 percent in Australia, and 4 percent in Sweden. Yet violent crime is not less common in the United States--it's more common. The murder rate here is six times higher than the rate in Britain, seven times higher than in France, five times higher than in Australia, and five times higher than in Sweden. Japan, where Christianity has almost no adherents, has less violent crime than almost any country....Within the 50 states, there is no evidence that a God-fearing populace equals a law-abiding populace. The Bible Belt has more than its share of both praying and killing. Louisiana has the highest churchgoing rate in the country, but its murder rate is more than twice the national average. The same pattern generally holds in the rest of the South..." -
Steve Chapman in
Praise the Lord, Pass the Ammo.