Quote:
Originally Posted by tweetiepooh
As a nation or society becomes more secular it loses any logical imperative to behave morally. (This is not to say that secular people aren't moral, or that "religious" people do behave morally).
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As a summary of the way ethical systems are developed and chosen, this is severely lacking (and I say that as a minister and big fan of morality as derived from Christian scripture and tradition). The basis of your argument appears to be that there is a singular morality identified with deity (in your view, I suspect, the God of the Bible) *and* that it is possible for “religious” people (Christians, in this context) to access, understand, and act in accordance with that morality.
In truth it is a heck of a lot more complex than that. Getting at what God considers “moral” is difficult enough. Understanding how to apply that in the world is quite something else. Ethicists and philosophers, even Christian ones, have struggled with, and disagreed over this for centuries.
I agree that any moral system requires an anchor point, or a set of reasons *why* people should act in accordance with it. For most cultures, in most of history, some concept or other of deity usually provides that. In secularised Western Europe, vestigial attachment to those same ideas usually still lies behind it even though secularists prefer to deny this and construct alternative justifications for their moral systems. But it is still incorrect to equate secularism with lack of morality. It is possible to construct a basic, consequentialist ethical system without reference to any deity at all (not that I’d recommend doing so).