Moral people reject religion's pitfalls

My June 20 letter, in which I criticized religion for claiming a monopoly on morality, drew several responses, one as recently as September.

The ones that disagreed contained more logical fallacies than I could possibly address here.

A couple spoke of Hitler and Stalin and tried to blame their atrocities on secularism, one of religion's most common hate-spreading untruths.

Hitler was a Roman Catholic and proclaimed he was doing God's work. Even if you doubt his sincerity, Hitler's followers were mostly Catholics and Lutherans who had been brainwashed into hating Jews. So the Holocaust had plenty to do with religion and nothing to do with secular morality.

Stalin probably was an atheist, but his brutality was motivated by political ambition, not atheism.

Individual secularists sometimes do bad things, but they do not do bad things systematically in the name of secularism. However, countless horrors such as hatred, oppression, violence, war, terrorism, genocide, the Crusades, the Inquisition, 9/11, human sacrifice, beheadings, burning witches, ethnic cleansing, suicide bombing, honor rape, condoning slavery and genital mutilation of children are all directly and systematically inspired by religion.

Secular people are horrified by these things. Religion has convinced millions of people those things are good.

Religious morality offers nothing good that can't be had through secular morality, without all the sociopathic baggage of religion. Truly moral people reject religion.

Robert Green

Cedar Rapids