They borrow their ideals from the history of religion.
You got it backwards. Suggesting that the ideals came from religion without showing anything to support your claim is nothing but a bald assertion. People put morality into religion. It's evident from the different teachings of different religions and their ongoing evolution of the teachings that change with time.
But you're missing the point. Religions are how we humans conceptualized and defined ethical behavior. We wanted to "live right" to please the gods, and thereby gain their favor.
Nope, I do understand point that you're trying to argue for, I just disagree with you because of justifiable evidence showing that you are wrong. And that's not what morality is about. Morality is about right and wrong, religion is about existence. And you just showed us why religion is not required for morality. Pleasing the gods is not the basis for being moral. If committing murder is how you gain the favor of a god, then you are doing an immoral act and the religion sees it as a good thing. But what really showed that you got it backwards is from what you said humans wanting to live right. Our decision of right or wrong comes from morality, so we make moral decisions that comes outside of religion in order to please the god of that religion.
So we held onto behaviors that brought us peace and prosperity, and rejected behaviors that brought us chaos and suffering, because we believed that the former behaviors pleased the gods, while the latter behaviors angered them.
Has nothing to do with being moral.
NOW, in modern times, we can look back and see that we would not have needed to use this superstitious idea of pleasing the gods to determine positive and negative behaviors by their results. But at the time, we clearly did. And even today there are a lot of humans who still apparently need to hold onto these superstitions to help them determine and live by positive ethical imperatives. YOU may not be one of them, but you are not the yardstick by which all humans must think or live.
Again, that had nothing to do with morality. Pleasing a god is morality. I never said anything about me being the standard for all humans, that was all your saying, nor did I argue against the practice of religion. What I did say about religion is that it is not required for morality. And if those people who you spoke of need religion to make decisions for them in regards to doing a moral or immoral act, then they are exactly the same as what you've been complaining about earlier, they are amoral, lacking the moral compass decide whether their actions are moral or immoral. Not doing an immoral act because their religious doctrine forbids it does not mean that they have a moral compass.
The problem happening, today, is that there are a lot of very naive people who think science has 'dispelled religion' entirely simply because, for them, it has dispelled religious superstition (that's all they think religion, is). And as they reject religion in it's entirety, they are rejecting the mechanism that humanity has used since it's inception to determine and maintain ethical and moral imperatives. And science, as you pointed out, has no such mechanism. So the end result is that culturally we are becoming increasingly amoral.
All of this is irrelevant to morality. Religious superstition and science has nothing to do with a person regarding their moral behavior. Those who think that science effects it, is in the same boat as those who thinks religious superstition is morality.
And the evidence is all around us. And then thanks to science, as we become increasingly amoral, we are also becoming more and more effective at manipulating and controlling our environment (and each other). And this is NOT a good path to be on, because it will not end well for us.
Logically, it shows exactly that.
Wrong. It's illogical to conclude that something that is irrelevant to moral standards is the cause for the change in people's moral standards. Instead of making excuses and blaming science, you should actually look at morality and see what is happening. Eventhough today, humanity's moral standards have changed from those of the past, but that doesn't necessarily mean that humanity is becoming more amoral. In fact, there are numerous things that people in the past did not considered as being immoral, but today we can see it and realize that they are immoral; slavery, discrimination against someone's race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, etc, just to name a few.
In regards to your comment about us becoming more manipulating and controlling, there is no way to positively confirm it to being true. Manipulation and control have always been a part of humanity. In the past, it was religion. Now a days, I consider the media as the thing that had replaced religion.
So far you haven't shown any evidence or provide the reasons for religion being required for morality. You've made arguments that it's required, but in those arguments, you've proven that religion is not required. You claim that nonreligious people "borrowed" moral ideals from religion, if that's the case, then religion is not required.
