Religions like Christianity and Islam are religions that claim to be revealed to people by God. Other types of religions God was something people seeked and ended up finding. Basically when it comes to Christianity, God came to man and showed himself to them. He told them what way they were supposed to live. He apparently dictated this book to a person who wrote it.

God apparently gave everyone the ten commandments.

• Do not steal
• Do not murder
• Honor your father and mother
• Etc.

The idea was that if morality wasn’t a dictated law from God that society would fall into a horrible immoral place. But did God come up with morality, or did religion come up with it? Could morality be a function of the human mind. Something completely independent of a God? I think so.

If you asked an atheist if they thought stealing was wrong, would we get a wide range of answers? Or would be have a consensus that it is wrong? It is pretty obvious that there would be a consensus because people think it’s wrong. People were born with the power of empathy. This allows people to put themselves in other people’s shoes. We can extrapolate how it would feel. None of us like to have something stolen from us, therefore we know it’s wrong.

You can also take a look at other issues such as premarital sex. People can extrapolate whether they think this is wrong. Outside of religion, most people think it’s fine. Where as in religion it’s a sin. I’m not here to say what is write and wrong, but the fact is that morality is a process of the mind, not something dictated from above.