Morality does not come from religion

In the words of the writer Sam Harris, like sports, not all religions are created equal. You can have a sport like badminton and a sport like kickboxing. A similar comparison is that you can have a religions like Jainism and Islam. A core belief of Jainism is non-injury to all living things. A Jain extremist does not give us much cause for concern because they would be obsessed with respecting and not hurting all living things. It is apparent that Islam does not hold these same moral values of non-injury in very high regard. The first pillar of Islam is the profession of faith that there is not God but Allah and that Muhammad is the messenger of Allah. This profession of faith seems and is quite harmless on its own, but the penalty for a Muslim who renounces their faith is not. The Quran spells out that the penalty for apostasy is death, plain and simple. This moral teaching that murder is the appropriate way to deal with an apostate, I would imagine and hope simultaneously, is repugnant to most, which is especially apparent among those who choose to leave Islam. What kind of moral teaching is this that, for those who were born into this religion as a function of their culture through no fault of their own and accepted their parents' and teachers' word with the influencing culprit being natural selection and the format of their brain, those who leave the faith by exercising logic and reason should be put to death? What chance does any child born under the unfortunate circumstances of being raised in the Islamic faith have to leave their former-faith behind on peaceful terms? If Allah had His way, it would be none. Furthermore, membership in the suicide bombing club requires religious faith. Who do so many Muslims end their own lives to kill complete strangers? The reason is that Allah commands this and gives graphic instructions on how to go about doing it, such as the instructions in Quran 5:33 and Quran 8:12. Furthermore, the punishment for those who do not fight for Allah is also clearly spelled out in Quran 4:95. The fact that we have Muslims who lead peaceful and productive lives shows that they see the barbarism in their own faith and that they choose not to follow Allah's teachings. The unfortunate thing is that there are those who happily do the work of Allah in spreading the "faith" and using the sword to cut down those who choose not to believe. This is why we regularly hear of Muslims blowing themselves up wearing vests containing ball bearings and nails, both of which serve to maximize the destruction brought about as the result of their cowardly act. Again, the fact that there are Muslims who stand up and pronounce Islam to be a religion of peace only points to the innate elements of an objective moral compass present in these individuals. As I hoped my comparison to sports illustrated, the moral code taught by religions like Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism are on another plane in comparison to Islam and Christianity. I also do not recall stating that atheists and agnostics are on a higher moral level, simply that they exercise logic and reason to judge the morality of a teaching or moral code and take issues like the suffering of other human beings into consideration. I hope that my examples of more moderate and peaceful Muslims not following the letter of Islamic law shows that even the religious utilize logic and reason and have moral principles grounded outside of their faith. When looking objectively at the Christian faith, as I will now do since this faith has been used in my opponents argument and will serve to further support my key points that not all religions are equal and that we do have a sense of morality outside of our holy books and religions. My opponent is correct about the Ten Commandments of the Christian religion being God's guidelines about what is right and what is wrong. However, I will support the claim that even the Ten Commandments are not objectively moral. The first commandment of the Christian faith is that we shall have no other gods before the Lord our God. Do you know what punishment was inflicted on those waiting at the foot of Mount Sinai and who were foolish enough to disobey God's commandment while Moses was up talking with God on top of the mountain? Richard Dawkins' paraphrases the wrath poured out by God beautifully in The God Delusion by noting that Moses reacted by melting down the golden calf (false god) of the people, burning it, turning it into powder, mixing it with water and forcing the people to swallow it. There, the God of Moses wins by making the people drink their own false god. Problem solved right? Wrong. Members of the tribe of Levi were then instructed to take up arms and kill as many people as possible. Then God finished pouring out his wrath by sending a plague among the survivors. To me, the first commandment is evidently less about accepting the God of the Old Testament because He was our creator and wants to have a personal relationship with us, and more about following the first commandment because literal hell-on-Earth will be unleashed if you disobey. The next three commandments also spell out how to not anger the Lord thy God by not having graven images, not taking the Lord's name in vain, and remembering the Sabbath day He created. We (myself included since I at one time accepted this faith and have since rejected it) do not follow God's commandments because they are morally good (granted, the last five are good ideas, but do we really need the Bible and God to instruct us that these teachings are morally good? Are we really just impressionable blank slates at birth that need to be taken by the hand and shown what is moral and what is immoral? ), we follow them to appease God and save our skin (fear the Lord your God). Furthermore, Christians (I'm making an assumption here - about my fellow debater as well) do not execute homosexuals as the Bible instructs (Leviticus 18:22) and we do not stone women who are not virgins on their wedding night, even though the Bible again instructs us to do this (Deuteronomy 22:20-21). The fact that there are Muslims and Christians who lead peaceful lives along Buddhists, Jains, and Hindus shows that we can think for ourselves about what to believe is good and bad and use some innate guides to morality like logic and reason (e. g. , maximizing the suffering of my fellow human beings is clearly wrong), instead of having religion guide us by the hand.