I agree with you that Christians (or members of any other religion) are not morally superior and everyone else is morally decadent as some Christians suggest.
Every culture developed its own religion and many predate Judaism and Christianity. And nearly all religions have similar moral codes that say that murder, theft, adultery, etc. are wrong. I’ve long believed that religion was “invented” over time by man as a way of explaining the unexplainable and enforcing social order.
The capacity for goodness and evilness is inherent in all humans as is the freewill to follow one path or the other. Since the beginning of recorded history there a numerous examples of “religious” people including Christians who have committed evil often under the presumption that there acts were justified and condoned by their god or gods. Look at some of the followers of Islam who use and manipulate their religion to justify murder on a mass scale as being morally right. Then again in the Middle Ages, Christians also used religion as justification for the Crusades and the murder of other Christian and non-Christians. At the same time Christians were persecuting Jews in Europe long before the Nazis and ever since the reformation Christians have persecuted other Christians; Catholics against Protestants, Protestants against Catholics with Northern Ireland being just one example that extended into modern times.
That’s not to say that religion is a bad thing as many good things are done by religious people but the choice to do good is still a personal choice. The Bible is full of moral contradictions and so it is left up to the follower to choose which to act on and what to ignore.
Even as a child, I questioned the moral contradictions of religion and as an adult chose to not be religious, i.e. an Atheist. That doesn’t mean I reject morality and if Christians want to pity me or pray for me that’s their choice too.
Well said.
I too questioned the contradictions of organized religions, and as an adult chose to admit being an agnostic.
That there was a creation event in our universe is irrefutable. Did a God or gods orchestrate this event? No one can prove they know.