Does having religious beliefs make a person more moral than someone who is an atheist

[Audie]

I think people who practice a religion tend to contemplate the morality of their and other people's behaviors far more than people who do not practice a religion. However, this does not necessarily make them "more moral". It's just makes them more 'morality minded'.

Everyone is "moral" in that everyone considers to some degree the ethical implications of their and other people's behavior. But some people consider this far more often, and far more intently than other people do. And I think that frequency and intensity is encouraged by most religions.

Noneense. A "theist" just does cut n paste of
absolutes. Great way to avoid having to think.

Ask an athist if he would steal in interests of a greater
good, he'd work it through.

As a theist about "thou shalt not steal" ( medicine you would pay
for the nect day )
And, its is no. Cant do it.
Morality, dont ya know.

 

[exchemist]

That is interesting. Do you have any insights as to why that may be the case?

I also found it interesting that belief in God or a higher power diminishes with age. I would have guessed it would have been the other way around.

Sure. Only a madman would start a nuclear war, since his nation would get fried in return. But, as way to stop a nation entertaining ideas of attacking yours, they are brilliant. N Korea vs. Iran is an instructive comparison, it seems to me.

Oh hang on minute, now it seems I'm replying to the wrong question. Must be going senile. As to why there might be more chemists with religious belief than these others, our resident bacon-fancier has come up with a hypothesis that I am debating with him.

 

[PureX]

Noneense. A "theist" just does cut n paste of
absolutes. Great way to avoid having to think.

They choose what to cut, and they choose what to past, and they choose to adhere to it, then, as best they can. That's a lot more than a lot of other people do.

 

[HonestJoe]

I heard atheists argue atheists are just as moral as theists. But I am not sure this is true in general.

How would whether an individual believes in the existence of some kind of god or gods or not directly impact their morality? Surely there are historical examples of both atheists and theists who were terrible people and both atheists and theists who were wonderful people.

Many scientists work on weapons designed to destroy humanity. Scientists are mostly atheists, and many scientists are engineering weapons of mass death. Then can I conclude there something inherently missing from the way atheists believe?

A tiny proportion of all scientists will be doing any kind of work on "humanity destroying" weapons and plenty of scientists will be actively working on humanity saving work. Even if your "most scientists are atheist" had been accurate, I don't think such generalisation could support your assertions. You've either need to establish a mechanism by which atheism renders a person less moral or more specific statistics demonstrating a difference.

It seems to me someone could use their religious beliefs as a way of seeing working on weapons of mass death as being immoral, and therefore, a person with religious beliefs might not create such evil weapons in the first place because of the potential consequences as held by the religious beliefs.

Not all theists are religious and not all religions are theistic. Also, religious beliefs have also been used to justify and promote highly immorally things so again, you'd need more specific evidence to support your position.

 

[amorphous_constellation]

Many scientists work on weapons designed to destroy humanity. Scientists are mostly atheists, and many scientists are engineering weapons of mass death. Then can I conclude there something inherently missing from the way atheists believe?

Well, the thing is that it is the trend of a lot of contemporary religions to believe that this world ends, and often not in a fun way. I don't really see that there's much that's benign about that, it's pretty destructive in a passive sense. I see that as just about as nihilistic as the atheist who's stuck on the pointlessness of everything. Neither is working toward our betterment here, ultimately. My own view is more like this: I believe in science, but science actually has teleology in it, it actually has goals. And we are the tools to try reach those goals, and those goals involve our survival and greater comfort, if we successfully work toward them. The opposite of those things can happen, which are suffering and elimination, but they don't need to happen like the atheists and eschaton obsessed religions say. Doesn't that at least provide more of a window of positivity?

 

[A Vestigial Mote]

Religions attempt to inform everyone what is moral or immoral. Those of us who aren't religious request justification from everyone to explain and support what they think is moral/immoral and why.

An interesting takeaway from this is that what you classify as immoral activity among non-believers may very well not even fall within the realm of "morality" at all when justification for that classification is missing. For example, being religious, someone might want to say that one night stands are "immoral," but there may not be any rational justification for that view, leaving you to appeal to large-scale, population trends of things like STIs (the ACTUAL immoral act in this instance being exposing someone to infection without warning), unwed mothers (the ACTUAL quasi-immoral act in this instance perhaps being a person running out on their responsibility, or not taking responsibility in the first place), abortion rates (again here, responsibility, whether one feels eliminating an unborn baby is immoral, etc. is separate from the act of copulation) The act of copulating with a person you just met itself may not be deemed immoral by a great many people, and so using YOUR particular views based in religion to point a finger at the rest of the world and say everyone is being immoral may not be a compelling reason to think that such a stark difference as you want to claim actually exists. In the end, you need to justify your stance and back it up with something substantial.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Oh hang on minute, now it seems I'm replying to the wrong question. Must be going senile.

Nope. Completely my fault. I wanted to ask, but put my phone down for a moment to do something else, and when I picked it back up and replied, I saw I had pulled the quote for the wrong post. I edited it, but probably after you initially read it.

 

[exchemist]

Nope. Completely my fault. I wanted to ask, but put my phone down for a moment to do something else, and when I picked it back up and replied, I saw I had pulled the quote for the wrong post. I edited it, but probably after you initially read it.

Phew, that's a relief.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Religions attempt to inform everyone what is moral or immoral. Those of us who aren't religious request justification from everyone to explain and support what they think is moral/immoral and why.

It would be nice to some day see an atheist not pile all religions under the same umbrella.

 

[Revoltingest]

Could be, I suppose. But that would only be threatening to the fairly small subset of believers who are creationists. Though, actually, thinking about it, this survey was done in the USA, where creationism seems to be far more prevalent than elsewhere.

But to be honest I would find it pretty extraordinary for a chemist to manage to keep himself studiously ignorant of cosmogeny and evolution. And of course the study of abiogenesis, potentially the most contentious area of the lot, is 100% chemistry!

Religious (& other deeply held philosophies) beliefs can
cause compartmentalization of application of rational thought.

 

[exchemist]

Religions attempt to inform everyone what is moral or immoral. Those of us who aren't religious request justification from everyone to explain and support what they think is moral/immoral and why.

An interesting takeaway from this is that what you classify as immoral activity among non-believers may very well not even fall within the realm of "morality" at all when justification for that classification is missing. For example, being religious, someone might want to say that one night stands are "immoral," but there may not be any rational justification for that view, leaving you to appeal to large-scale, population trends of things like STIs (the ACTUAL immoral act in this instance being exposing someone to infection without warning), unwed mothers (the ACTUAL quasi-immoral act in this instance perhaps being a person running out on their responsibility, or not taking responsibility in the first place), abortion rates (again here, responsibility, whether one feels eliminating an unborn baby is immoral, etc. is separate from the act of copulation) The act of copulating with a person you just met itself may not be deemed immoral by a great many people, and so using YOUR particular views based in religion to point a finger at the rest of the world and say everyone is being immoral may not be a compelling reason to think that such a stark difference as you want to claim actually exists. In the end, you need to justify your stance and back it up with something substantial.

I think the religious prohibitions concerning sexual activity are interesting and in some ways a special case.

For most of human history, having sex with someone was very likely to result in pregnancy. It was therefore highly irresponsible, outside marriage. The advent of reliable contraception in the 1960s has in effect changed the moral calculus concerning sex quite a bit. And of course the churches have been slow to catch up. Though it remains the case that sex is tremendously powerful psychologically and leads to expectations that, if they are dashed, can lead to misery. So for instance I find myself advising my teenage son to be circumspect, as I don't want him hurt, nor do I want him to hurt someone else, even if semi-inadvertently.

But I certainly would not pretend that religions can claim any sort of exclusivity on morals. It seems to be that religions may have in part arisen in early Man as a way to codify what made sense for a smoothly functioning society.

 

[Vouthon]

I heard atheists argue atheists are just as moral as theists. But I am not sure this is true in general. Many scientists work on weapons designed to destroy humanity. Scientists are mostly atheists, and many scientists are engineering weapons of mass death. Then can I conclude there something inherently missing from the way atheists believe?

It seems to me someone could use their religious beliefs as a way of seeing working on weapons of mass death as being immoral, and therefore, a person with religious beliefs might not create such evil weapons in the first place because of the potential consequences as held by the religious beliefs.

If nothing is sacred then why have any reverence for life?

I see no evidence that religious beliefs, inherently by the mere fact of being religious beliefs, make a person any more likely to be ethical than someone lacking such beliefs.

Human beings are a moral species and most of us have a natural ability to empathise with other people. This intuitive capacity is at the basis of what is typically known as conscience.

Only a small number of people, those in the anti-social personality disorder bracket, are lacking in conscience.

Now, that doesn't mean that intuition - by itself - makes everyone have impeccable values. Different socio-cultural-religious systems encode a consensus on the given values of different societies, and there are some that I'd deem less moral than others.

 

[Mock Turtle]

That's a very biased presumption. People choose to adhere to a religious moral code because they believe it represents their ethical imperatives. The fact that the conceptual mechanics of religions make that decision easier to recognize and to follow in the long term doesn't negate the earnestness or awareness of that decision.

Have you seen any studies or polls to confirm this rather than say the morality being accepted along with the particular religious belief?

 

[Revoltingest]

That's a very biased presumption.

Criticism coming from someone with even greater bias, eh.

People choose to adhere to a religious moral code because they believe it represents their ethical imperatives.

Given that most people keep whatever religion they're
brought up with, "choice" doesn't seem to apply. This
suggests a lack of thought & challenge.

The fact that the conceptual mechanics of religions make that decision easier to recognize and to follow in the long term doesn't negate the earnestness or awareness of that decision.

Looks more like auto-pilot to me.

People who accept moral codes of any kind without deep consideration can exist in or out of religion. But it will be much harder to be so thoughtless when your religion is constantly reminded you of what the moral path looks like.

As I see it, individual variation exceeds the generalities.
Thoughtfulness & its lack can occur in believer & non-believer.
The individual rises above the tribe.

 

[Mock Turtle]

It would be nice to some day see an atheist not pile all religions under the same umbrella.

It would be nice to see some of the religious not assuming what atheists as a whole tend to do or think.

 

[Valjean]

That's a very biased presumption. People choose to adhere to a religious moral code because they believe it represents their ethical imperatives. The fact that the conceptual mechanics of religions make that decision easier to recognize and to follow in the long term doesn't negate the earnestness or awareness of that decision.

I think you've put the cart before the horse here.
Do people choose their religion, or do they absorb it at a pre-critical stage of cognitive development, and adhere to it out of familiarity and conventionalism; because it "fits" their familiar world-view or status community?
The fact that people overwhelmingly end up embracing the religion of their parents is telling.
Despite the fact that Christian theology says your religion is the most important decision you'll ever make in life, people give it very little thought.

People who accept moral codes of any kind without deep consideration can exist in or out of religion. But it will be much harder to be so thoughtless when your religion is constantly reminded you of what the moral path looks like.

"Can exist?" I'd say this is the norm.
Religion is a convenience; a social propriety. Embedded without reason, and subsequently immune to reason.
Religious people can, and historically have, ignored morality when it's inconvenient.

Religious moral codes are external, like crutches. You need not develop strength or balance if you're using crutches.

 

[exchemist]

Religious (& other deeply held philosophies) beliefs can
cause compartmentalization of application of rational thought.

Sure. I suspect all of us practise cognitive dissonance at some level, in order to stay sane. Our models of the world do not dovetail neatly. Quantum gravity, anyone?

In fact, I have often argued that chemists need to flip between different models more than physicists - or possibly biologists. We often have multiple pictures of how things work in chemistry, because it is so complicated that almost no model can cleanly account for everything we observe. So, for instance, we have Valence Bond and Molecular Orbital theories of bonding. Which of these we pull out of the toolkit depends on the case. And of course we sometimes think of electrons as particles and sometimes as waves. QM harmonises both together, but you can't actually do the full QM treatment exactly, for anything more complicated than the hydrogen molecule ion (H₂⁺ ), which is pretty useless for a chemist!

So chemists live in something of a twilight world, in which sometimes we see "through a glass darkly", using models that we know tell us only part of the story. Maybe that leads to a certain lack of dogmatism, and a certain willingness to live with unresolved conflicts.

 

[Revoltingest]

Sure. I suspect all of us practise cognitive dissonance at some level, in order to stay sane. Our models of the world do not dovetail neatly. Quantum gravity, anyone?

In fact, I have often argued that chemists need to flip between different models more than physicists - or possibly biologists. We often have multiple pictures of how things work in chemistry, because it is so complicated that almost no model can cleanly account for everything we observe. So, for instance, we have Valence Bond and Molecular Orbital theories of bonding. Which of these we pull out of the toolkit depends on the case. And of course we sometimes think of electrons as particles and sometimes as waves. QM harmonises both together, but you can't actually do the full QM treatment exactly, for anything more complicated that the hydrogen molecule ion (H₂⁺ ), which is pretty useless for a chemist!

So chemists live in something of a twilight world, in which sometimes we see "through a glass darkly", using models that we know tell us only part of the story. Maybe that leads to a certain lack of dogmatism, and a certain willingness to live with unresolved conflicts.

Chemists are like mechanical engineers...
...we're the least threatening to religious folk.
And we tend to be the most good looking.

 

[PureX]

Have you seen any studies or polls to confirm this rather than say the morality being accepted along with the particular religious belief?

To accept a moral code as presented by a religion is to accept it as aligning with your own. To reject it, or part of it, is to reject it for not aligning with your own. Either way, one has to consider their own ethical imperatives, and those being presented to them by their religion, to make the choice. I would think this is self-evident.

 

[exchemist]

Chemists are like mechanical engineers...
...we're the least threatening to religious folk.
And we tend to be the most good looking.

Well at least you are not an electrical engineer. Most of the relativity cranks I've come across seem to be electrical engineers.