"'Without religion, how would you stop yourself from raping and killing all you want?' I already do all the raping and killing I want. That number is ZERO because I don't want to rape or kill!" - Penn Gillette.

People who are only moral because they fear going to hell scare the piss out of me.

I would argue that morality came before religion or spirituality, and therefore does not require either of them to exist.

Even animals have some kind of morality

Incorrect

I also disagree. All you need is to say "I don't want/like that" and to understand that something could be lost or suffered to yourself or others, given a particular scenario. That can then be used to create a system of morality where the majority are in agreement with each aspect.

Oh and empathy. That's pretty critical!

I'd say that spirituality and religion is then formed off the back of and alongside general or universal moral beliefs and that many aspects cannot exist without morals in the first place.

I'd say morality came first and people invented religion to justify the moral frameworks they already had. Cultures invented gods and ascribed their culture's shared moral views to their gods

Ethical frameworks exist that don't rely on religion or spirituality. Utilitarianism, kantism, etc..

It doesn't serve us well to murder our own communities. It doesn't serve us well to cause conflict and strife among ourselves when external circumstances are tough enough.

Living on the steppe or on the savannah would have been extremely tough, and I believe that pragmatism would have naturally lead to a sort of morality -- don't steal from, harm, kill, antagonise other people in your group or you're putting the entire group at risk.

It doesn't have to be spiritual or religious!

I've heard this bullshit so many times...

What we call "morality" is simply put to words those behaviours that has made us a successful species. We are a communal species, one of our greatest strengths being the delegation and specialisation of tasks; all working together. Everything we've built, everything we've achieved, can be attributed to that feature of our species.

Now, imagine how far we'd get if every individual in our species acted "amorally".

Morality is a product of evolution.

Morality is inherent in mankind, even if many folks have the will to defy it or lack it altogether.

Religion emerged as a product of humanity’s profound drive for survival. The concept of death as a finite existence is inherently unacceptable to the brain’s survival mechanisms. Consequently, we developed religion and spirituality as coping mechanisms to address this existential dilemma.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

Here you go. Or if you prefer more specific:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

Have a pleasant read.

I feel a lot of the people disagreeing here are making assumptions about your beliefs, missing the point, and then simply refuting you to refute you without providing explaination. I think this is a fair and interesting premise. I disagree with it and will ecplain why, though do note I am not invested enough to specifically look anything up so if I say something inaccurate, please evaluate if the logic falls apart or not.

I think the first part of your main justifications has been hard to refute. Most, if not all societies we have known have had religion or spirituality. However, I think your following conclusion, "those societies must have then used morality based on those religions", is where the flaw is. I think most societies had religion as a form of a "God of the gaps" and used it to explain phenomena they couldn't. I would say that is the main reason they did have it. However, that doesn't yet mean they didn't use it for morality. To see that, I'd ask you to look at Greek and Roman mythology, or as known to them, religion. Now I believe, Zeus turning into a swan and doing Zeus things doesn't have a moral (or not a useful one, it's mainly that Zeus is an asshole).. Likewise, Aphrodite turning Arachne into a spider didn't really inform some Greek moral of don't be too pretty, just showed Aphrodite is, for lack of a better word, a fucking jealous bitch. Let's similarly look at Norse mythology. Loki makes Fenrir and tries to kill other gods and generally does shenanigans. There's not really a moral attached to that, he kinda just does shit cus he's a hit of a dick.

My main point here is that while these religions existed, they did so to explain phenomena or were then essentially fanfic extensions of the reasons/personifications of those phenomena, and often were not the basis for morality of a culture (but very well likely were themselves molded by a cultures morality in a reversal of causation). Because Greece, Roman, and Norse cultures were more secular, they could therefore have stories without morals that just had assholery abound. Because the time around the formation of the Christian church was more tyrannical (now I'm guessing), the bible had much more heavy handed morals (ten commandments, 7 deadly sins etc).

I hope that was a better argument for disagreement. And, I don't think your premise was as outlandish as so many others are making it out to be, despite my disagreement.

I get where you're coming from. I used to think the same thing. I don't anymore and I would urge you to look more into subjective vs objective morality. Alex O'Connor has some really good thoughts on the matter.

Either your argument is that morality is somehow "god given" through religion, in which case I have to ask, which god? Which religion? There's a lot of those around or no longer around, with different nuances of morality, contradicting that idea.

Or each civilization developed religion and incorporated their respectove ideas about morality, but then morality necessarily precedes religiosity.

Either way, doesn't make sense.

Besides, the idea that a fear of god is necessary to make people "moral" is ridiculous. If you would commit immoral atrocities if you didn't believe in god, then I'm sorry, that makes you a bad person; but don't project that unto other people.

Empathy is sufficient for morality, while god, arguably, is an amoral monster.

Cheers, a moral atheist