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Defining morality

Morality, it is the leash that binds us to our god. For the atheist, morality binds the individual to his own thoughts and perceptions about what right and wrong are, and what they feel they should be. In other words they are their god and they will do what ever they please. For the religious, morality binds the individual to what ever they believe their religion teaches them to be. If their god teaches them that they are moral for killing people who disagree with them, so be it. But, no matter what an individual believes morality is a leash that binds them to their god, like an animal chained to a pole.




Sigmund Freud taught that belief in god was wishful thinking, a crutch for those who could not rely upon themselves. Freud did not need any god telling him what to do, he could live quite the moral life without the help of religion, and probably better than some who went to any religious institution for over a 100 years. Many claim him to be the father of the sexual revolution, but he himself was a man who married and as far as any one knows was continuously faithful to the same woman through out his entire life. Freud would be considered by some today to be a prude, for much of his beliefs in regards to morality. Freud was just as moral as the next man, he just did not believe that god had anything to do with his morality.




I guess Freud was trying to make the point that one did not need religion in order to be moral.
A point that his life arguably made, but his teachings arguably did not make, for Freud had kept the chain of his morality tied to the religious views of his father while trying to tie them to the god known as himself. This god (that is Freud) believed that he could be just as moral as any man of faith without the need for religion or any god and so he set out and succeeded to do just that. He set his standards high, because he wanted to prove that he was a good man- without accrediting any of his goodness to any higher being.




Later those who would follow his ideology and beliefs would agree with him, that they did not need any god to be moral, but they would decide for themselves that certain things were not necessary in order to think one moral. Sex outside of marriage for example, my god (that is myself) says sex outside of marriage is okay. After all I would never buy a car without test driving one first, and since I am here I might as well try all the cars on the lot kind of mentality.





So morality is a leash tied to the god that one serves. If


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