I just finished reading some interesting words by PZ Myers about the topic of religion and whether it is an adaptation in our human development or a by-product of some¬†other process, and thought I’d share them. I have NOT read the document he is talking about in this article, but I’m hoping to squeeze it in sometime today.

I find the topic of morality particularly intriguing. As an atheist, I do not perceive myself to be any less moral than a religious person. In fact, given that I’m at least a moderately self-actualized person, I would have to assume my morals to be much more strong than those who would argue that the only reason they don’t act immorally is because of fear of divine retribution. However, the notion always seems to be that morality is a function of religion.

This has never sat well with me, even before I lost my faith. I knew many people who were faithful but terrible people, and I knew many people who were good but had no real faith, ranging from the twice-a-year faithful to agnostics and atheists. The way I saw it, if my religion and the strength of that faith were the things that made me a¬†moral person, then it stood to reason that people who didn’t have those things would also not have as strong a morality. But this was clearly not the case.

So at a young age I saw that there was no significant relationship between morals and faith, but to this day I have people proclaiming the opposite. Now we have this research which, if I read PZ’s take on it correctly, takes that idea that religion/morality link to task, implying that morality is much deeper than religiosity. Interesting stuff.

Jim