Adventures in Hedonism

The Raging Rev has a post a few days ago about morality and God.  Does all morality come from religion?  What kind of morality would society have if religion didn’t exist?  There’s a pretty good debate going on over at his blog and I thought I would throw in my 2 cents.

Not only do I believe that morality exsits outside of religion, I beleive that morality and all humankind would be better off without religion.  Religious extremests certainly cause more problems than they solve.  Does this mean that I’m not against all religion, just those who take it overboard?  No.  It does not.

I don’t believe in childhood indoctrination.  The definition of brainwashing is:

Intensive, forcible indoctrination, usually political or religious, aimed at destroying a person’s basic convictions and attitudes and replacing them with an alternative set of fixed beliefs.

I don’t believe that brainwashing is moral and brainwashing is the basis  of most religions.  Get people to believe in something that defies logic and tell them that their disbelief (that thing that the brain naturally does) is going to send them to eternal damnation.

Scaring a child by way of indoctrination is not moral.  Neither is putting their health in jeopardy because of your religious beliefs (abstinence only education ). For those who believe this is the only way to have moral teens, check your statistics.

You might be surprised.