Religion may have become a codification of morality, and it may fortify it, but it's not the origin of it.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The true meaning of religion is thus, not simply morality, but morality touched by emotion.
The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be the hijacking of morality by religion.
Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.
Now I think one of the reasons why religion developed in the way that it did over the centuries was precisely to curb this murderous bent that we have as human beings.
I guess it was but I think peoples morality has changed. It's gotten more liberal and more diverse and even in a sense much more fundamental, you take the fundamental religious right in this country, its got to go back about 50 years.
Religion without morality is a superstition and a curse, and morality without religion is impossible.
Although religion might be useful in developing a solid moral framework - and enforcing it - we can quite easily develop moral intuitions without relying on religion.
Thinking that morality is all about commandments is a relatively new way of thinking, since the Reformation.
I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its Churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.
The difference between religion and morality lies simply in the classical division of things into the divine and the human, if one only interprets this correctly.