DuranOfForcena posted... lmfao @ the posters claiming our "moral compass" would suffer without religion and people would be killing people and just having a free for all without religion. what a fucking stupid claim. religion is not a necessary or required component of morality. the concept of morality existed before organized religion and will still exist if organized religion went away. people in a civilized society understand innately that it is in everyone's best interest if people in the society behave morally.
i'm reminded of the best line from True Detective season 1, when Marty claims, like someone in this topic did, that without religion people would just be murdering each other in the streets with no restraint, Rust says, "If the ONLY thing keeping a person decent is the expectation of divine reward, then brother, that person is a piece of shit."
As someone who is raising a kid in a non-religious household, it *does* need to be said that kids have no frame of reference of what's right or wrong except for what the adults tell them.
Do the kids hurt each other? Do they lie? Do they make more noise than our neighbours should have to tolerate?
The answer to all of those is yes. And if *we* as the adults aren't helping fix those behaviours, then who is? TV? Internet? The same friends who also hit, lie and make noise?
Religion, for all of its faults, *can* be helpful in shaping a child's morality. Unfortunately, religion has lost its way and also teaches intolerance, and fear among other things.
That said, even regular church-goers, for all their moral high-ground will often say - screw it, I'm doing it this way anyways - and ignore anything that would be considered moral.
I forgot the point I was trying to make. I guess it's that some kids don't have the luxury of moral parents to help guide them through to being moral adults.