Times: Williams perpetuates the canard of ‘no morality without religion’
I’m starting to suspect that the religious, especially the moderately so, are increasingly having to rely on the ridiculous and offensive notion that there is “no morality without religion”, as they have nothing else to fall back on: no evidence of their gods, no miracles, no Jesus coming back and so forth to justify their existence or power grabs. Their history of blood letting and oppression, and even the present day discrimination of those who just want to get on with life without even encountering the church, is not winning them any popularity contents, except perhaps with those who would like a return to the Dark Ages.
April 24th, 2007 at 3:47 am
Wilberforce and his circle believed that if a sinful system existed and its sinfulness implicated them as well as others, they were under an obligation to end it.
Does Wilberforce’s example demonstrate that we ought to oppose slavery because it is unjust, or because (he thinks) God says so?
May 21st, 2007 at 4:28 pm
Too true, another idea which pops up frequently even among the non-religious, is that our modern society of tolerance is based only on Christian ethos. How come then, that out society was so different throughout the ages, when we were also a Christian nation. I have yet to see a satisfying anwser.
But about morality, that annoying little man Rod Liddle made the same ‘argument’ in his terrible ‘The trouble with atheism’. In a shambolic programme that was possibly the worst bit, aside from the ‘imminent demise of evolution’ part.