MORALITY IS NECESSARY EVIL AND DECLARING IT HOLY IS GOING TOO FAR WITH IT

Christianity says you know from your relationship with God that it is a real relationship and prayers bring results.  This is an implicit attack on the pagan gods.  But worshippers of such gods would point to things they considered to be divine responses to prayers and sacrifices.  Also, pagans did not always expect the gods to help in the way they asked exactly.  They argued that no deity was supreme and gods disagree so there were more considerations than your prayer.  But they said you could be sure she or he was going to do their best and that is not always that easy to see.  This is exactly the "mysterious purpose" and the "help has been given but you just need to see it" patronising preaching that we are used to in Christianity.  Belief in God is founded on a lie about pagan gods being clearly useless.   If they are then God is as bad.  Do you want to call pagan worshippers liars?  Is that fair and neighbourly?  Belief in God cannot then be a foundation for morality.

Objective morality means that it is a fact, not an opinion or theory, say that feeding the starving is right and letting them starve is wrong. Objective morality, is in other words, saying that right is right no matter what people believe or think. It is not right to slap a baby even if the whole universe has no problem with it or even celebrates it.

So, according to this, it is some kind of fact that it is wrong to do certain things.  Even if it is, it does not follow that moralists are generally good.  I mean they may be just attracted to how their beliefs say that x is wrong no matter who thinks it isn't so that they can weaponise it and feel superior to the critic of their mores.  Good rules can be still be promoted only because their defender wants the sense of power.

Religion and many specific religious ideologies such as Islam give themselves away.  There are clues to their real motivation.  If a fact is a fact what do you need a God to agree with it for?  They put God above all and say morality is not an end in itself but about him.  That is unnecessary and a telltale sign.

Morality is a kind of law. You are told to do good or the best thing or suffer. It is thought that being immoral brings its own punishment and will bring upon you the punishment of disapproval and other horrible things from God or other people.  You will notice that if somebody disagrees with objective morality, they should be forced to believe and conform. Why? Because nobody has the right to attack facts. In fact such force would be a priority.  While you might not force people all the time to be moral, you will force them not to preach against morality and to go along with saying it is true even if they think otherwise.  We fear religion for beneath the smiles we feel it poses a threat.  And when religion gets into a position to control people it takes it.

For some reason the notion of objective morality is comforting and we feel comforted by it. We feel protected by law.  And we want to feel it.

We may say it is evil and immoral if we starve billions.  But we know that if we were forced or brainwashed to do it then it would not be considered immoral then.  It is all really about intention.  What if hypothetically the whole world had to die in agony because I can have a good intention?  The hypothetical is not a brain experiment but shows what we are like and what is in us even if it is untapped.

You think your intention to be good is so important don't you?  That it is cosmic?  Should we feel that all that matters is morality as in our intention to be moral?  In practice that is what everybody is doing.  As long as you feel what you do is right and moral that is all you care about.

Objective morality tells you never to reason, "What is good is what I like. What is bad is what I do not like." That is a repudiation of objective morality for morality is not about what you prefer or otherwise. But it is obvious that most people do reason that way. Facts do not care and should not care what you want to believe.  Objective morality suffers from people pretending to believe in it.

Objective morality takes the wrongness of selfishness as its basic principle.  To help another because you feel there is a moral standard that cannot be changed or which rules you so you have to cooperate with it is selfish.  Paradoxically helping a sick baby because you believe you should is still selfish.  Most would say it is both selfish and unselfish at the one time.  One way it is about you and another way it is not.  It is selfish to help a child if you know you will be condemned and harm yourself somehow if you do not.  And even more so if it is God doing it not just a law.

Religious and philosophical doctrines such as that evil tyrants and killers damage and hurt themselves more than their victims (bunkum taught by Socrates) are not helpful for they are clearly lies and nonsensical. They are based on wishful thinking and how one wants to see the harmer harmed even if it means ignoring or playing down the victim's predicament. The doctrine are fundamental to moral theory which shows that morality is passive-aggressive.  You may argue that it could still be needed and a necessary evil. 

To digress, if the concept that Hitler damaged himself more than the people he had killed is important and essential to morality, then it follows that religions like Christianity that claim that the damage can be magicked away by spells or prayers or sacraments or indulgences from the pope are evil if their methods in fact do not work. Anyway it is obvious that to say that about Hitler is an insult to his victims.

No theory of right and wrong is universally accepted. Some theories say that "Love of God and of neighbour as yourself" is wrong for God cannot be that important and it is unnatural to look after a stranger as you would your own baby. Each religion has its own rules about right and wrong. Islam allows polygamy and Christianity forbids it. For a Muslim, the worst sin is not accepting the holy book the Koran as God's word. Other religions disagree. The differences between moral philosophies could be seen as a necessary evil. A necessary evil is an unavoidable one for the alternative would be worse.  The problem with necessary evil is that it might be just evil that we think is necessary.  So there is a risk involved.  A moral philosophy is a necessary evil for we need it though it might be wrong. The danger is that religion can easily play on this problem to get people to be okay with evil. Catholics are okay with the murders commanded by Jesus in the Old Testament. Muslims see at least some suicide bombers as heroic saints. Whatever they value morally or whatever moral rules they have, they worship them in the form of a God who preaches and represents them.

The evidence does not support religion as a truly moral force.  God belief wrecks the supposed justice and love it promotes and this plays out in real life.  The true harm done in secret by religion will never be known.  The wars and murders done in the open are horrific but they remain the tip of the iceberg.

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