is it possible to raise good kids with out religious morals? (page 3)

BU2B

Morals are independent of belief in any entity. If YHWH is a guide to morality, we are all doomed.

I am not sure why society equates religion with ethics and morals. Ethics and morality are concepts that are separate from religion and are not tied with religion. Religious people can be moral and ethical, but so can non religious. The reverse applies.

So, I hope that I am teaching a moral and ethical framework for my child. I also hope she understands that you can be moral and ethical without being religioius.

MadGiant

Actually, every one of us were raised without "bible morals". Following "bible morals" in this day and age will send you to jail.

Simon

You just have to teach your kids how to decide to handle situations in the right way, not by tring to give them a definitive list of answers to every situation.

Teaching them empathy and the reasons behind making good decisions is what creates moral people - not belief in any ancient superstition.

Dagney

^^^ What Simon said.

Everytime and in every situation in life, how much better for a human being to learn to act from reason, empathy, love than out of fear of a supernatural being. Every situation.

garyneal

Don't JWs and other Christians ever wonder how the heathen nations worked out that murder, stealing, lying, adultery, assault and envy are wrong, thousands of years before Moses climbed Mt Sinai?

Not my JW wife, she points out the passage in Acts where it says that the people of the nations are a law onto themselves and have the law written in their hearts.

startingover

I didn't read all the posts, but this is my opinion. I think self esteem is all important. If a person has self esteem I think they are less likely to succomb to peer pressure and will recognize bad behaviour which leads to trouble.

LisaRose

This study seems to suggest it doesn't matter. Of course, it's just one study, but the idea that religious belief doesn't make one more moral is interesting.

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2014/09/12/do-religious-people-have-better-morals-than-non-believers-study-says-neither-side-has-the-edge/

Do Religious People Have Better Morals Than Non-Believers? Study Says Neither Side Has the Edge

September 12, 2014 by Terry Firma 174 Comments

Good without God? Join the club. Via Live Science:

Researchers asked 1,252 adults of different religious and political backgrounds in the United States and Canada to record the good and bad deeds they committed, witnessed, learned about or were the target of throughout the day.

The goal of the study was to assess how morality plays out in everyday life for different people, said Dan Wisneski [pictured below], a professor of psychology at Saint Peter’s University in Jersey City, New Jersey, who helped conduct the study during his tenure at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

The study’s findings may come as a shock to those who think religious or political affiliation helps dictate a person’s understanding of right and wrong. Wisneski and his fellow researchers found that religious and nonreligious people commit similar numbers of moral acts. The same was found to be true for people on both ends of the political spectrum.

And regardless of their political or religious leanings, participants were all found to be more likely to report committing, or being the target of, a moral act rather than an immoral act. They were also much more likely to report having heard about immoral acts rather than moral acts.

The self-reporting seems a little problematic, as people have a known tendency to present themselves as more moral than they are – and religiosity may play a factor in how readily they either lie or feel compelled to speak the truth. We’ll have to guess about the study’s other strengths and weaknesses; the full paper, published yesterday in the journal Science, is online, but — drat! — behind a paywall.

If the research withstands scrutiny, it puts the lie to the lazy if widespread assumption that there’s something uniquely moral about believers that is absent in atheists. You really don’t need gods to be an upstanding human being.

is it possible to raise good kids with out religious morals?