>>>Well, it's just an opinion, isn't it. And it just so happens to be mine. Do you think morality can be legislated?
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>>Absolutely not. I think behaviour can be legislated, but not morality. Morality is an internal thing. If one behaves toward others in a way that is socially acceptable out of a sense of decency (understanding right from wrong), then that person is probably a moral person. If one behaves that way out of fear of the law (even God's law), and not out of an innate decency, then that is nothing more than a self-preserving sort of pragmatism that has no real basis in morality. Acting out of fear of retribution without any real feeling for right and wrong is not morality. This is probably the main reason why civilized societies need laws. There are many out there who will act properly out of fear of the law who would not be so reticent if there were no such law. Unfortunately, there are still those who have no such innate decency who also care nothing for the law. And if you check, I'm sure you'll find both believers and non-believers amongst that group.
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>I contend that all laws are based on morality. Murder, rape, robbery, burglary, etc. are all prohibited by laws that have a moral underpinning.
>That underpinning comes from religion.

I think we'll probably have to agree to disagree. I think most of the 'morals' that govern behaviour probably come from the need for members of societies to be able to live and thrive together and to depend on each other. I can't know for certain obviously, but I'd bet that cro-magnon man had similar but unwritten rules governing the members of the tribe. A tribe that had no such rules would not have survived. Of course, just as today, most of those rules would have been reserved for the lesser members of the tribe. To be a leader, one member probably had to mug another member and be declared the strongest. But overall, too much fractiousness would have made the tribe unviable, and it would have been destroyed from within.

A couple of thousand years ago, somebody got the idea to take those rules and write them into a document that we call the Bible.