Morality through Evolution, not religion...

Can Evolution Explain Morality?   Read more here...


Richard Dawkins On The Source Of Morality...watch it here...

Moral Minds: The Evolution of Human Morality...  Listen to the discussion here...

The Gospels - Summarised!

Too busy to read all the gospels?  Then prepare for the fires of Hell!   But seriously, here's a link to summaries of each gospel and other bits of the New Testament. 

The Gospels - summarised

Do we need religion for morality? Is religion immoral?

Here are some links to stuff I found this morning, there will be better examples of each topic out there, just use these as initial ideas:

Is morality linked to religion?

Here are some examples of when religions can, due to their beliefs, commit acts that may be seen as immoral by others:

Abortion Clinic Violence

Discrimination againts women in religion:

women and religion

Judaism and Women

Issues around the condom ban relating to HIV etc in Africa:

Condoms

Religion damages the environment?

Religion and Environment

Are Natural Disasters and 9-11 actually God's punishments for our sins?  People like Jerry Falwell think so...

Westboro 911

Falwell 911

Pat Robertson Top 10

Plato's Euthyfro

Fancy reading all of 'Euthyfro'?  Of course you do!  (spoiler alert...at the end, it turns out that Bruce Willis is dead!)

Plato's Euthyfro

Peter Singer & John Hare - Moral Mammals: Why Do We Matter?

Is the existence of a creator God foundational to human morality? Does theism or atheism provide the best foundation for human worth? Can we treat morality as independent of religion?

Peter Singer, controversial atheist philosopher and one of Time Magazine's "100 Most Influential People", discusses the implications of atheism and theism for morality with John Hare, Noah Porter Professor of Philosophical Theology at Yale.

Singer and Hare

Documentaries on Religion, mostly relating to Morality

Link to full list of religion documentaries (some are full versions, others are compiled from segments on youtube, not ideal but they are free so don't moan about it) :

http://topdocumentaryfilms.com/category/religion/

'Virus of Faith'  Richard Dawkins explains how religious faith acts like a virus which is particularly virulent to the young. In challenging interviews with a Hasidic Rabbi and the head of a city academy, which has adopted the American 'Accelerated Christian Education' curriculum, he tackles the rise of faith schools in Britain and argues that religious education saddles our children with evident falsehoods and an inflexible moral outlook.

Virus of Faith

Christopher Hitchens and Tony Blair debate whether religion is a force for good in the world:

Hitchens v Blair

Bill Maher's 'Religulous':

Religulous

Jonathan Miller's interviews with leading Atheists:

The Atheism Tapes

Louis Theroux meets the Westboro Baptist Church:

The Most Hated Family in America

BBC Horizon Documentary on Science and Religion including Scopes Monkey Trial:

End of God?

Documentary on Fundamentalists of all varieties:

The Fundamentalists


If you're really hardcore and want to experience the thrill of lectures on religion and atheism, science and faith, check out some of these videos from the 'Beyond Belief' conferences.

Beyond Belief

Christian Evangelical Scandals

To argue against the idea that religious people are 'more moral' than non-religous people, choose a few examples from this list:

Immoral Christians

The BBC compiled a list of the sex scandals in the Catholic Church:

BBC link

Atheists on Morality and Religion

I'll collect some quotes and put them here...

'Most studies show that conventional religion is not an effective force for moral behaviour or against criminal activity'  Bernard Spilka, Ralph Hood and Richard Gorsuch, authors of 'The Psychology of Religion'


'Every single bit of progress in humane feelings, every improvement in the criminal law, every step towards the diminution of war, every step towards better treatment of the coloured races, or every mitigation of slavery...has been consistently opposed by the organised churches of the world.  I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organised in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world'  --  Bertrand Russell  (1872-1970)

'In every religion it soon comes to be the case that faith, ceremonies, rites and the like, are proclaimed to me more agreeable to the Divine will than moral actions; the former...gradually comes to be looked upon as a substitute for the latter'  --  Arthur Schopenhauer  (1788-1860)

In a study involving hypothetical moral dilemmas:

'There were no statistically significant differences between subjects with or without religious backgrounds...Like other psychological faculties of the mind, including language and mathematics, (it appears that) we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgements of right and wrong...It is our own nature, not God, that is the source of our morality'  --  Peter Singer  (1946-  ) 

'Why does it not say anywhere in the Bible that slavery is wrong?...How is it possible that it is not immoral to own another person?  Why isn't that one of the Ten Commandments?  'Thou shalt not own another person.'  You want to sit here and tell me that fornication is worse than owning someone?'  Mira Sorvino  (1967-  )

Immorality in the Bible

Are you too lazy or too stupid to do a google search of your own?  Then I've done it for you.  Here's the link to the search page for 'why the bible is not a moral (guide)'. It will give you lots of examples of 'immoral' acts and commands from God in the Bible which you can use as examples in essays to argue against the claim that religion/scripture is a good moral guide.  No need to thank me, it's my job.

Immorality in the Bible links

These schools have lots of resources...

Why not borrow them?

School 1:

http://w1.qehs.net/moodle/course/view.php?id=383


School 2:

http://www.mel-thompson.co.uk/Notes.htm


This delightful chap...

http://www.r9paul.org/resources/a-level/


This charming lady has situation ethics and natural law amongst other topics...

http://www.m1cvf.co.uk/ethics_situation.php

http://www.m1cvf.co.uk/ethics_naturallaw.php

Book - Jonathan Berg 'A Companion to Ethics'

Jonathan Berg - A Companion to Ethics

Philosophy and Ethics websites

http://www.philosophyofreligion.info/

Ethical theories covered here:

Ethical Theories


TABLE Strengths and weaknesses of Virtue Ethics here:

Virtue Eth pros and cons

The Philosophers' Magazine Blog

http://blog.talkingphilosophy.com/

Blog post on 'Morality without God'

Morality without God

Religion is ‘the new social evil’?

The Times Article

Dawkins and Harris and Hitchens websites

Sam Harris

Richard Dawkins

Christopher Hitchens

Downloading copyrighted material without authority is illegal, so don't do it. Lots of people do though.  Don't believe me?  Fine, here's the proof, links to downloadable pdf versions of various atheist books written by the authors listed above!

Harris - End of Faith

Dawkins - The God Delusion

Hitchens - God is not Great


Too busy/illiterate to read these books?  I suggest you make an effort but the least you can do is read and make notes on the synopses of these books which you can find here:

Synopsis God Delusion

Synopsis God is not Great

Synopsis End of Faith

Science Religion Morality

Here's Part 1 of Richard Dawkins' 'The Root of All Evil?':

Part 1 Dawkins

And Sam Harris talking about how science can answer moral questions:

Sam Harris

Downloading a free pdf of Harris' book 'The Moral Landscape' is illegal, so don't do it.  I couldn't believe the amount of websites that allow people to steal copyrighted material, this one here, for example:

The Moral Landscape

And there's a review/discussion of the book and science/morality here:

Simon Blackburn in Prospect Magazine

And a discussion video (part 1 of 4) about Science and Morality here:

Science and Morality | Lawrence Krauss, Simon Blackburn, Sam Harris & Steven Pinker 1/4

Atheism website with lots of links/articles on religion/morality:

Atheism.com

Mentioned in Edexcel A2 textbook, here's Jon Nelson 'The Immorality of Religious Morality':

The Immorality...

Atheist Blog post on Morality/Religion

Morality and Religions blog post

Mentioned in the textbook, here's Richard Swinburne 'God and Morality':

God and Morality - Swinburne

Mentioned in textbook, here's Richard Packham on Morality and Religion

Packham

Mentioned in the textbook, A C Grayling 'What is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live', I can't find a free source for this but it's cheap to buy, see what you can find.  He recently wrote a Humanist Bible called 'The Good Book' which seems to be a bigger and better version, here he is talking about it on Youtube:

The Good Book video

Here's a BBC article on it:

Do Atheists need their own bible?

Here's an interview with him in The Guardian:

Interview

And while you're at it, see if you can find anything on 'Godless Morality:  Keeping Religion out of Ethics' by Richard Holloway.


Peter Singer pops up throughout the A-Level course (not literally, don't be alarmed, he's not about to crash through a your living room window like some kind of over-educated SAS philosopher with a grudge) and he's only gone and co-written this short article on 'Morality without religion'!  How useful is that? (answer: quite useful):

Hauser and Singer 'Morality without religion '