"Why Believe in God" ad campaign

[Alex]

If modern morality derives from ancient religion, where did ancient morality come from since societies have been around longer than the religions we're now relying on?

I'd argue that rather than even the godless sneaking peaks at religion for how best to behave, religion instead simply declared themselves the inventors of how people generally behaved anyway.

As evidence of this I'd offer the fact that when societal norms change extensively it is frequently religion scrambling to catch up and then eventually stamping the new norm with the label "proper god-fearing behavior."

[wendybeth]

Any society is going to form rules to survive. I would argue (even though I believe in God) that religion was a useful tool to give the ruling person/group ultimate power to implement those rules. Hammurabi declared his laws as divinely inspired, but it certainly seemed to help keep his people in line and cement his authority. I think that humans are largely social animals, and I tend to follow the idea of social contract as our motivation to stay out of trouble, trouble being whatever is deemed a negative social action by the larger group.