Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Religion != Moral Values

So I keep hearing this when I get into discussion about religion, that religion teaches good values with the implication that without religion, people would be amoral. This has always been something I disagreed with based on personal experience. I am agnostic but have atheist friends. I would not consider any of them amoral. So where do they learn right vs wrong? I've always maintained it is culture, not religion, that teaches morals.

Anyway, I came across this article about religion and 'goodness'. Within the article it talks about surveys of democracies that have a low rate of religiosity. Guess what? They tend to be lower in violent crimes and abortion/teen pregnancy than us over here.

Funny that.

Of course, correlation doesn't equal causation but it is an interesting twist to consider.

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