Golmer's Blog

Christians claim that morality is ingrained in every single person, everywhere by God, and that they choose to either follow the moral path (by accepting God and Jesus, yada yada yada). In essence, they claim that morality is defined by the god of Ibrahim - exclusively and in everyone.

Of course logically, this claim falls short, for to make said claim it would have to be argued that every society that ever existed (other than those based on Judeo-Christianity) was incapable of displaying morality AND at the same time it would have to be argued that every society that has ever existed exhibited the selfsame morality because it is ingrained in our very being.

In other words, you can’t argue that every society other than a Judeo-Christian based one is immoral while simultaneously arguing that morality is ingrained - especially when societies (moral ones at that) have existed for millennia prior to the existence of Christianity and the Christian God.

Christianity cannot claim moral supremacy for another reason - if it IS argued that morality is ingrained into people by God from birth, then if that morality is universal it means there is no need for the Ibrahimic religions at all.

As for the bible (or the 10 commandments at the very least) to be considered the standard for morality, they are severely lacking. And, since the 10 commandments and their “moral” precepts have only been in existence for 2k years and society has been in existence for tens if not hundreds of thousands of years prior, it cannot be argued that those are the basis of the engrained morality of which the speak - they are relatively recent. You can’t engrain something in people if it doesn’t exist yet - unless you want to argue that morality itself only came into existence with the death of Jesus and creation of two stone tablets with 10 (or so) “commandments.” And the bible is a compendium of disparate works compiled well after the fact - let alone the books that didn’t make it into the canon.

It is more likely and logical that “Morality” is a function of society in general and has nothing to do with the supernatural. Humans cooperate with each other - that cooperation necessitates a certain set of rules that form naturally or that cooperation falls through. Concepts like proscribing murder, theft, stealing another’s mate, rape, pillaging, enslaving others, etc. are universal - albeit fungible and somewhat fluid in definition - no matter what the society. Christianity and other Ibrahimic religions certainly borrowed parts, but added other components (graven images, primacy of God, nasty thoughts, etc.) in as control mechanisms for their particular religions that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with being “moral.”