Skimmed over some of the interesting deconstructions – I find the biblical scholarship stuff interesting.

Anyway this notion that Religion is required for morality is an argument one runs into often. Usually it is “my religion” that’s required by whoever believes it. Sometimes it is any. But of course we have mountains of evidence that religious people can be immoral as well as moral. And we have evidence that those who aren’t religious can be immoral as well as moral.

Of course religious people don’t operate on an evidence-based epistemology when it comes to anything related to religious beliefs. I was there once. In fact it was an atheist point blank questioning my belief and me giving it serious thought that was one of the steps toward deconversion. How does one reconcile knowing non believers who are decent people and believers who are …not? In my case the best people I knew were non believers and the believers all seemed fake and uncaring (only putting on the show)

You wrestle with the possible explanations, perhaps play a few rounds of No True Scotsman, but eventually you have to either lie to yourself or admit that religion isn’t transformative as far as morals go.

Now, on the other side of of deconversion, it is clear that capacity for empathy is some mix of nature and nurture. Morals are taught and, I think, childhood trauma is really the root of much of bad treatment of others. Extremist versions of Christianity seem to cause their fair share of such trauma.