Americans and Religion

[Merlinios]

Religious or not, a person who only "does the right thing" out of fear of punishment is not a morally straight person at all. One needs a stronger philosophy than that to even begin entering the realm of strong character. Even the most slimy, immoral person in the world will obey the law if they feel that the risks of breaking such law is not justified by the rewards they could gain by doing so.

Hrm, I think I want to explore this. Hypothetically, let's say there is one correct set of morals. Bob lives in a country where the law is identical to them. He follows the law to the letter, but only because he's afraid of punishment. Larry lives in a somewhat corrupt society, and must periodically deviate from this one correct morality in order to survive (let's say he....has to steal bread to eat). Or, in a less hypothetical form, is it more ethical to perform nothing but moral actions with "bad" motivation or to have a clean conscience but be forced into immorality?

Along the same lines, there are those who would say that by your reasoning, no one is moral, that all "morality" stems from either expected gratification or fear of retribution. But that may be a semantic issue on some level.

--me