Do we need religion to be moral?

The word atheist in itself has a distinctly negative connotation.  I have come across people who feel that atheists are immoral, a bad influence on society and as someone who in their words “will take you away from the way of god”.

This always gets me thinking is religion the source of our morality? I definitely do not confer to such a belief; morality is an inherent virtue in humans. So when people do good deeds and shun bad ones they do so on their own. There is no validation required by anyone, there is no god required to decide and tell them what is good or what is bad.

In other words what is good and what is bad is somewhat a common understanding in all humans. It is not something on the whims and fancies of any celestial being. Man took what he thought was right and projected it as the will of god, the Ten Commandments, Manu Smriti or whatever.

So when in a moral dilemma we can decide for ourselves what is morally correct without invoking god. Some might argue why the need for all this blabber if the end result is the same – if we decide for our self or take it as god’s will and follow it.  This distinction is what separates a fundamentalist and liberal. When people start blindly believing that god’s will is right without deciding for their own self,  that is where the truly dark side of religion is exposed.
That is where terrorists get the will to massacre hundreds as was in Mumbai, this is where the rioting mobs in Gujarat got the will to kill, plunder and rape innocent people.

Faith without reason can beget nothing but disaster.

Most people say what the suicide bomber or the mob did were not religious, that what he does is not the religion they so steadfastly believe in and that is not what the religion is.

See what happened here – we have achieved a complete turnaround from our initial argument.

People are not using religion to decide what is moral and what is not, but in fact are using morality to decide what religious is and what is not.

The very idea that we need religion to be moral is an insult to mankind. We do what we do because we believe in it and not because we are required to.
Most religious scriptures are very old, confusing and are open to multiple interpretations. Fact of the matter is no one needs to confer any religious teachings to remind us of what is good or evil.

When the first human ancestors were evolving it was certain that as weaklings their strength lay in numbers. As they started living together in proximity, it was a consensual realization that the greater good was to be kept in mind at all times. We as humans had an unsaid understanding that we would not like to live in a society where it was right to kill, steal or rape.

This is the foundation of morality which was established before any religion or anything was ever conceived. The failure to understand other celestial things is what gave them the idea of a superior being who was later also given the role of a policeman to oversee human morality.

So to sum it up I quote the Nobel prize winning physicist Steven Wienberg

“ Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”