LordsFire
Internet Wizard
In their founding, sure they had reasons. But their followers in modern times? You would need to be a scholar or do extensive research to know the exact reasoning behind it.
Modern morality is so far divergent from the morality of the big religious groups that it's meaningless. Modern morals have logic and reasoning behind them before, and even completely lacking, faith.
Morality based off faith first, such as Shariah law, is not logical or compatible with modern society.
No, it's not hypocritical. Because I am saying "Religious Morality." Not "Morality" in general.
1. I am a scholar of Christianity. I study Philosophy and Theology in general, and the history of Christianity in particular. Biblically, it is a requirement of Christianity to be a philosopher and theologian. Not everyone follows this, but it is absolutely part of what is supposed to be.
2. On the contrary, most modern morality has little to no logic or reasoning behind them. Back in the late 1800's and early 1900's, secular philosophers were confidently asserting that religion (Christianity in particular) were superfluous to a moral society. Immanuel Kant in particular asserted that he would be able to arrive at morality by pure reason.
He failed.
Nietsche, on the other hand, famously claimed that 'god was dead,' and that as a consequence, the 20th century would become the bloodiest in all of history, and he was absolutely right. He was an atheist himself, but he was honest about what the consequences would be, and in the 20th century, atheistic regimes started wars and slaughtered and starved their own people resulting in more than a hundred million dead.
3. Sharia is absolutely not compatible with modern western society. Modern western legal systems were founded on Christian morality though, and part of why current justice systems are becoming so messy, is they're shifting in post-modernist directions.
4. So, 'anyone who disagrees with my religious beliefs isn't allowed to take part in public discourse on morality.' Pretty standard modern secularist debate tactic, really.
Something you need to understand, is that Atheism and Agnosticism are religious beliefs. Sure, they're beliefs that God either doesn't exist, or you can't tell if God exists, but those are massively significant philosophical and theological assumptions, and have commensurately immense implications for morality.
As evidenced, again, by the massive bloodshed of atheist regimes of the 20th century.
Now to be very clear, I am not trying to claim that all atheists, agnostics, or secularists, are of the sort of character that the communists and fascists were and are. Not at all.
What I am claiming, is that Communist Russia is just as logical a moral outflowing of atheism as is the UN. Atheism imparts no fundamental moral law to the universe, and reduces mankind to nothing more than a particularly sophisticated aggregation of matter functioning as a biochemical computer. In atheism and most forms of agnosticism, morality is nothing more and less than a matter of personal preference.
Funny though, how most atheists in the US simply inherit the most part of their morality from cultural inertia of Christianity, discarding the bits and pieces they (or their parents) didn't like, usually the bits about sexual restraint.
I am not going to try to claim that all Christians (or followers of any other religion that does believe in the divine) all have thought through the moral teachings of their faith logically. With Christianity at least, I can claim that those who haven't, are in fact violating the morality of Christianity not doing so.
I will absolutely claim that the overwhelming majority of atheists and agnostics have given little or no thought whatsoever to a logically coherent morality.
To tie this back around to the original issue of the thread, this is part of why Democrats try so hard to push churches to either submit to their political agenda, or get out of politics completely. Because as long as people have loyalty to something higher than the state and the ruling class, they will resist attempts by their 'betters' to tell them how to live their lives.