Tuesday Toon Roundup 1- 4 more years

[Hekate]

34. Yes, it is tiresome

I was actually raised in reaction to that very meme: my mother, the non-church-going ex-Catholic, thought out all the ways she could raise her children to be ethical beings without referencing the religion she had rejected. She also disdained the emotionalism and anti-intellectualism of fundamentalists and "holy rollers." She was not sure God existed, but she was very sure he/she/it had given us brains for a reason. As a consequence, funny as it may sound, I grew up hearing words like "ethics" and "social contract" instead of "morals" and "the Bible says." I was taught that in all religions the core message is the Golden Rule, but that no religion had a lock on the truth.

You are right: religion is not needed to do the right thing. A strong ethical core is what is needed.

But more people than not use religion as the framework for their lives, and as long as they find it comforting without insisting that the rest of us believe as they do, without insisting that we have a government based on their personal interpretation of their personal scriptures, as long as they don't transgress, in other words -- I see no harm in it.