Disassociating religion from morality

The New Humanist has a truly wonderful essay – on its website, naturally – by Jonathan Rée, in which the author attempts to dissect the evolution of atheistic thought. You ought to read the whole thing.

[John Stuart Mill] reserved a special contempt for humanistic secularists who imagined they could extract a kernel of moral truth from the shell of religious superstition – separating the practical teachings of Jesus, for example, from his pretensions to divine authority. “Mankind have, as a race, hitherto grounded their morality mainly on religion,” Mill wrote; “and if their religion is false it would be very extraordinary that their morality should be true.” And Christian morality, in Mill’s view, was most definitely false, because it tried to replace noble ideals of generosity and magnanimity with a system of “self-interested inducement”, an “essentially selfish” incentive scheme promising paybacks in a future life for any losses incurred here on earth. Far from being supported by religion, therefore, morality was liable to be corrupted by it. 

(Image via the BBC)