The Source of Morality: Religion or Humanity Within Us

Religious people often claim that morality cannot exist without God. They also argue that Western secular societies do not have their own moral foundation. According to them, these societies are only copying the moral values that originally came from religion.

To find out whether these claims are true, we first need to understand what modern science says about morality.

In the first part of this article, we will look at morality through the lens of modern science.

In the second part, we will critically examine the religious theory of morality and point out the problems within it.

Part 1: What Does Modern Science Say About Morality?

According to modern science, human morality does not depend on a divine rulebook. Instead, evolution has given us three basic qualities. The interaction between these three qualities gives rise to morality.

They are:

1. Our instincts and hormones
2. The social influences around us
3. Our human ability to reason

When these three work together, they form the foundation of human morality.

Let us look at each one in detail.

1. Our Human Instincts and Hormones

Human beings are not angels sent down from heaven. We are biological creatures who reached this point after millions of years of evolution. During this long journey, our bodies developed a complex chemical system. This system, made up of hormones, creates different emotional and behavioral responses depending on the situation.

If we look closely, we can see that two opposite tendencies exist inside every human being.

A. Self-interest and Aggression

Religious people often describe this darker side of human nature as the evil self, sin, or temptation. Science describes it differently. It calls it our survival instinct.

According to science, when we face danger, our bodies quickly release hormones such as cortisol and adrenaline. These hormones prepare us to react immediately. They make us ready to fight, defend ourselves, or escape.

In the ancient world, this instinct was essential for survival. Without it, our ancestors would not have lived long enough to pass on their genes.

However, when this instinct becomes too strong or goes out of control, it can lead to cruelty, oppression, and exploitation. A person may begin sacrificing the well-being of others simply to protect or benefit themselves.

B. Compassion and Cooperation

At the same time, human beings also possess another powerful tendency. We naturally feel kindness, love, compassion, and the desire to help one another. This is what many people simply call our sense of humanity.

Because of this inner feeling, people sometimes sacrifice their own interests for the sake of others.

Religious people often say that this compassion comes from spiritual training. Science, however, shows that empathy is already built into our biology, whether a person follows a religion or not.

Humans are social creatures. We cannot survive completely alone. Throughout evolution, cooperation became essential for survival. As a result, evolution favored people who could trust one another and work together.

When we show kindness or help someone, our brains release chemicals such as oxytocin and serotonin. These chemicals strengthen trust, emotional attachment, and compassion. They also help us feel the pain of others and sometimes motivate us to sacrifice our own comfort for someone else's well-being.

Human Nature Contains Both

Human beings are not born completely good, and they are not born completely evil. Both of these opposite tendencies exist within us from the beginning. They are not miracles from a supernatural source. They are part of our evolutionary inheritance.

Religion often teaches that every person is born pure, and later Satan leads them toward evil. Modern science presents a different picture. It tells us that we are born with both of these biological tendencies already present within us. Our lives are shaped by the constant interaction between them.

2. Social Influences

Modern psychological research shows that even very young children, who have never received religious or moral instruction, naturally prefer helpful behavior and dislike harmful behavior. For example, a small child becomes upset after seeing their mother in pain, even though nobody has taught the child this feeling from a book or religious lesson. This is another example of the natural empathy that comes from our evolutionary heritage.

However, as children grow up, the outside world begins to shape their thinking:

• Their family teaches them what is considered right and wrong.
• Society passes on its own traditions, rules, and values.
• Religion also tries to shape them according to its own teachings.

From the perspective of psychology, these outside influences are like a double-edged sword. They can work in two very different ways.

When Social Influence Strengthens Our Natural Compassion

Sometimes, education and social values reinforce the compassion that already exists inside us. Helping poor people, telling the truth, or respecting elderly people are common examples. In these cases, our natural empathy and our social upbringing move in the same direction.

When Social Influence Suppresses Our Natural Compassion

On the other hand, these same outside influences can also silence the compassion that exists naturally within us. A young child naturally loves other people regardless of their race, color, or religion. But imagine that from early childhood the child is repeatedly taught that a certain religious group, ethnic group, or non-believers are enemies, impure, or deserve to be killed. As the child grows up, that natural compassion can gradually be replaced by hatred.

Society and religion often claim to teach morality. In reality, they can also narrow, distort, or even suppress our natural moral instincts by replacing them with ideological beliefs.

3. The Role of Human Reason

The greatest gift that evolution has given human beings is our advanced ability to think and reason. Reason works much like the processor inside a computer:

• It does not create information by itself.
• It receives information from different sources.
• It analyzes that information.
• Then it produces an output, which becomes our final judgment or decision.

Reason mainly receives information from two different sources. Interestingly, these two sources often contradict each other:

• Inner instincts: One inner voice, which comes from our compassion, tells us, "Help other people." Another voice, driven by self-interest, tells us, "Think about yourself first." Reason has to decide which voice it should follow.
• External environment: Our family, society, and religion all give us instructions about how we should think and behave. Sometimes these messages agree with each other. Sometimes they do not. Reason is forced to decide which message it will accept.

Which Voice Does Reason Trust the Most?

Modern psychological research suggests that our minds naturally give greater weight to information that comes from certain sources, such as people close to us, authority figures, or ideas heard repeatedly since childhood. This is an evolutionary tendency; for our ancestors, trusting the tribe was often necessary for survival.

Today, this same tendency can be used for brainwashing. Religious and political leaders shape beliefs by repeating ideas generation after generation. Reason itself is a tool; if it is fed prejudice from childhood, it produces intolerance. If it grows in an environment of freedom, it produces a compassionate individual.

My Own Story

When Inner Compassion and Social Conditioning Collided

I am sharing this story because it is not unique to me; I believe millions of people have gone through a similar journey. I can divide my life into three clear stages.

Stage One: Reason Listened to My Inner Compassion

I was born into a Muslim family. When I first learned that Islam prescribes the death penalty for apostasy, and that it allows sexual relations with female captives, something inside me immediately reacted. My compassion told me, "This is wrong. This is not justice." My reason took those feelings seriously and concluded that these teachings did not meet the standard of justice.

Stage Two: Reason Silenced Compassion Under the Weight of Social Conditioning

Then the voices around me became louder. I was told that God's wisdom is infinite and my intelligence is limited. My intelligence started giving more weight to these new inputs. Now, my intelligence decided that the killing of an apostate or sexual exploitation was correct. It is important to note that this was a decision made with much reasoning, not just emotion. It reflected the information that my mind had learned to trust.

Stage Three: When Reason Broke Free from Fear and Reverence

Later, I began to question the very ideas I had treated as untouchable. This gave my reason a completely different set of inputs. I considered contradictions within Islamic teachings and listened to different worldviews. I concluded that killing an innocent person is wrong and slavery is an insult to human dignity.

Fear, Reverence, and Love: When Reason Stops Working

When a person experiences intense fear, the prefrontal cortex becomes less active, making survival responses more important than careful reasoning. Extreme reverence or blind love can have a similar effect. When we believe an ideology is perfect, the brain stops questioning it. In both scenarios, critical thinking weakens.

Is Reason Always a Prisoner?

Fortunately, no. Through neuroplasticity, people can build new neural pathways and replace old patterns. This is why people can change their minds. A good judge puts aside personal feelings to focus on evidence; we can train our minds to do the same by recognizing our emotional reactions and questioning which ideas are truly our own.

This Is Not Just My Story

This journey through the three stages described—the initial moral reaction, the weight of social conditioning, and the rare breakthrough of critical thought—is a path taken by many who question deep-seated beliefs. Those who reach the final stage often share a deep desire for truth, curiosity, analytical thinking, and a deep love for humanity. Leaving traditional beliefs is not a sin; it is a natural step in the development of human reason.

Morality as a Statistical Reality: Why "100% Perfection" is a Fallacy

Part 2: Fallacies of Religious Morality: Objective vs. Absolute vs. Subjective

Religious circles insist that there is no real existence of morality without God. To prove this, they divide morality into two parts:

1. Objective Morality: Moral principles that are completely free from human personal desires and likes or dislikes, and are based on reality.

2. Subjective Morality: Morality that is based only on a person's individual opinion and preferences.

The website of a famous Islamic preacher, Daniel Haqiqatjou, states the following (link):

Morality does not exist in Atheism: The vast majority of criticism by atheists against Islam and religion in general is based on moral claims. However, for an intelligent person, this has no justification. How can those who have no moral foundation of their own dare to give moral arguments? In short, there is one "Objective Morality" and another "Subjective Morality." You can see that atheists do not have any objective morality at all. Atheism can only produce subjective morality. "Subjective" means personal opinion. While "objective" means "reality." And there is no third option. For example: "Red is the best color" is a subjective opinion, but "2+2=4" is an objective reality. In other words, atheists are criticising Islam based only on their personal and subjective opinions. Therefore, saying "I hate Islam because Muslims like green while my favourite colour is blue" is no different from their current nonsense.

However, this religious claim is based on fallacies. Let us examine these fallacies.

The First Fallacy: Equating Objective and Absolute Morality

The most basic fallacy in arguments for religious morality is treating Objective Morality and Absolute Morality as the same thing, even though these are two completely different concepts.

When a religious preacher says:

"If there is no God, there is no objective morality."

They actually mean: "

If there is no God, there is no absolute morality."

And this is where the whole debate gets tangled.

What is Absolute Morality?

Absolute Morality refers to a moral system that:

• Is the same in every era.

• Is the same in every society.

• Is the same in every situation.

• Has no room for change, reform, or revision.

Religious morality generally claims that because it came from God, it is considered perfect, eternal, and unchangeable.

But here a basic question arises: Does such a moral system really exist in the world?

The answer is no, while:

• The so-called "eternal morals" of different religions contradict each other.
• Even different sects and schools of thought within the same religion disagree on many moral issues.
• Furthermore, history contains many things that were considered religiously permissible and moral for centuries, but today they are considered immoral. For example, the institution of slavery.

Therefore, just because a moral system calls itself "divine" is not proof that it is actually absolute or perfect.

What is Objective Morality?

Objective Morality does not mean that morality was sent from the sky or that it is one hundred percent perfect and beyond reform. It only means that moral principles are above an individual's personal desire, personal interest, or temporary likes and dislikes. For example, if a person wants to exploit weak people just for their own benefit, objective morality has the ability to say that their personal benefit does not make this act right.

The claim of objective morality is not that it cannot be wrong, but that it can test its decisions on the scales of logic, experience, observation, and human welfare, and improve them over time. This is why being objective and being absolute are two different things. It is entirely possible for a moral principle to be objective but not absolute.

The Second Fallacy: Thinking God is Necessary for Objective Morality

Suppose absolute morality does not really exist. Now the question is: Is God necessary for objective morality? Our clear answer is no. The reason is that humans are not just thinking machines, but also biological and social creatures.

Evolution created in humans the ability to feel others' pain, cooperate, and show empathy. Modern psychology and biology tell us that the vast majority of humans have the capacity for empathy, conscience, and reacting to others' suffering. Importantly, this is not just a matter of personal preference. Just as pain is a real human experience, so too is the sense of empathy and humanity a real human truth.

However, this feeling itself does not provide a complete moral code, but it provides raw material. Then, human intelligence plays the role of creating morality from this raw material, which, again due to evolution, has reached this high level only in humans. Intelligence analyzes this human experience, compares different results, and tries to test which actions promote human welfare and which cause unnecessary harm. This is where the sense of humanity and human intelligence come together to form a limited but real Objective Morality.

This morality:

• Is not based on one person's desire and personal interest.

• Can be tested with logic and evidence.

• Can be improved over time.

• But it does not claim to be infallible or perfect.

This is why morality without God does not necessarily become subjective. In fact, a big mistake of religious preachers is that they present only two possibilities:

1. Divine and absolute morality.

2. Only personal likes and dislikes (Subjective).

Even though there is a third option between these two: Objective but Non-Absolute Morality. That is, morality that is above human personal desires, but still open to human intelligence, experience, and constant reform.

A Basic Question for the Religious: Is the Sense of Humanity Subjective or Objective?

Religious apologists reduce secular morality to:

"You dislike slavery just as I dislike spinach. Or "

At this point, we raise a simple but extremely important question: What is the nature of this "sense of humanity" within us, because of which we feel for others' pain, dislike cruelty, and feel compassion and mercy? Is it just a subjective like or dislike, just like someone liking blue and another liking red? Or is it a real and objective human phenomenon?

The importance of this question is that religious preachers claim that without God, all morality becomes just personal opinions, which are no better than "I like this" or "I dislike this." But it is important to understand a very significant point here. When we talk about the "sense of humanity" or empathy, it does not mean just the likes and dislikes of any colour, food, or personal taste.

The nature of empathy is different. When we see an innocent child suffering from hunger, illness, or pain, the feeling created inside us is not the result of a baseless or accidental preference. It is created as a response to a real and existing reality, which is the child's actual pain. Here there is a very deep scientific and biological difference. The chemical changes that occur in the human body when seeing a child suffering from hunger, and the empathy hormones (like oxytocin) that are produced, their system is completely different from the hormones that are triggered when someone likes blue or red.

Modern neuroscience also supports this distinction. Research shows that witnessing another person's suffering activates specialized brain networks involved in empathy, emotional processing, and prosocial behavior. This is a fundamentally different process from simply preferring one color, food, or hobby over another.

This difference is of fundamental importance. The preference for the colour blue relates only to our internal preference, while empathy relates to an external and real event. There is actually a human being there, they are actually in pain, and our mind is perceiving that pain and reacting to it. Therefore, it does not seem correct to term empathy as a subjective opinion like "I like blue." We are not claiming that empathy itself provides a complete moral code, or that every empathetic reaction will necessarily be correct. Our claim is only that empathy is a real human ability that relates to a real thing in the world, which is the pain and suffering of other humans.

So we ask the religious people: Is the empathy created by an innocent child's pain just an accidental personal inclination, just like someone liking blue? Or is it the perception of that child's real pain, in the same sense that our eye perceives light and our ear perceives sound? If it is just a personal like or dislike, then all moral concepts like mercy, cruelty, justice, and empathy become just taste-based preferences. And if it is a real human perception, then it is not possible to call non-religious morality just "personal like or dislike."

The Third Fallacy: Why Should a Human Sacrifice Their Desires Without "Accountability"

A religious argument is that if there is no life after death and no system of reward and punishment, a human has no solid reason to become "good" by sacrificing their desires. If an oppressor lives a life of luxury and dies, and an oppressed person dies suffering, and both turn to dust in the end, morality feels like a "meaningless burden." According to religion, the fear of God for "accountability" is the only power that stops a human from evil even in "solitude."

Morality Is Not a Meaningless Burden

This religious argument overlooks an important aspect of human nature. Showing kindness, helping others, and acting with compassion do not benefit only the people receiving our help. They also benefit us. Modern psychology and neuroscience show that acts of kindness often activate the brain's reward system and are associated with feelings of satisfaction, inner peace, and emotional well-being. In other words, evolution has shaped human beings in such a way that caring for others is often rewarding in itself.

Most importantly, this reward is immediate and real. It is not merely a promise that depends on what may happen after death. A person can experience a sense of peace, fulfillment, and self-respect simply by knowing that they have helped another human being.

The same principle applies in the opposite direction. When a psychologically healthy person knowingly harms an innocent person, even in complete secrecy, there is often an internal cost. No one else may know about the act, but the person still has to live with themselves. Feelings such as guilt, shame, anxiety, or inner conflict can become a burden long before any external punishment takes place.

This is why morality does not depend entirely on external rewards or punishments. Human beings possess internal psychological mechanisms that often encourage compassion and discourage cruelty, even when no one else is watching.

The Fourth Fallacy: Non-Religious morality could never be 100% perfect

It is also important to understand the trap that religious circles impose a 100% perfection condition on our non-religious societies. 

For example, it is a fact that in non-religious societies, there are certainly individuals who feel no prick of conscience for oppressing others or harming them. Therefore, by making a few such people lacking in morality an example, religious people completely deny the existence of morality in the entire non-religious society.

Therefore, it is very important to understand a basic point here that according to our (non-religious viewpoint), there is no 100% perfect God present in the heavens who could have made this world 100% perfect for humans. Therefore, in our view, nothing in this world, no system, and no society can be 100% perfect. Therefore, it is an expected reality that there will be such individuals in non-religious societies who are morally bankrupt.

But the important question is not whether every individual follows high morality or not, but the important question is if the majority of society follows high morality, can such a society survive and progress? And the answer is clearly yes. For the survival of humanity and the progress of society, it is not necessary that every member of the society be completely moral, but if the majority of the society is following high morality, then that society not only survives but also keeps progressing, despite some of its members being morally bankrupt.

Also, the small number of people who are morally bankrupt are stopped by society using its own devised human laws and regulations to prevent them from harming others. Therefore, even if other members of the society cannot be 100% protected from their harm, still in the practical world their harm becomes so low that it does not cause the society to face destruction and ruin, but it survives and progresses.

And here an important and decisive point is that the same principle applies to religious societies. In religious societies, despite the clear belief in the fear of God and reward and punishment, there are abundant individuals who, despite having faith, harm others for their personal gain. Deception, theft, oppression, and exploitation are just as common in religious societies as they are in non-religious societies. If the "fear of God" were really the only or basic guarantee of morality, then moral crimes in religious societies should be significantly lower. But in practice, this is not the case. This shows that the fear of God also, just like empathy and conscience, is not a perfect and infallible guarantee, but it is also just a factor that is effective in some individuals and not in others. Then why give it superiority over non-religious morality?

The Fifth Fallacy: The Problem of "Is" and "Ought"

Another intellectual objection by religious people is based on a philosophical concept by the famous philosopher David Hume, called the Is vs Ought problem. The religious class says:

"Science and evolution can tell us what a human 'is,' but they can never tell us what a human 'ought' to be. Therefore, without divine teaching, a human can never reach 'ought' on their own."

This is a very old and cunning tactic of religious circles, but the reality is much simpler and clearer. Let us understand it at three levels.

First level: The clear answer of science

Science and modern psychology have the full ability to explain how humans reach "Ought" from "Is." This sequence is like this:

• Our evolutionary heritage has given us the ability for empathy and cooperation with others.

• As a result of evolution, we are designed such that when we help others, we also get happiness and contentment as a reward. For example, when we help a suffering human, hormones (like oxytocin and dopamine) are released from our brains that make us feel deep "happiness and contentment." (This is "Is").

• Evolution has not just given us hormones, but also very high-level intelligence. Therefore, when we get happiness as a result of helping others, our human intelligence raises the question: "What should be the best way (Ought) through which the benefit reaching others and this happiness and contentment produced inside us increases and reaches its peak?" Here intelligence started searching for paths towards 'Ought'.

• Then human experience helps us refine it further. After centuries of social experience and reflection, humans discovered such laws, regulations, and moral methods through which we can help others in the best and organised way, and in return get the best level of inner peace ourselves (This is the completion of Ought).

Therefore, this is not a mysterious or incomplete process. But science explains very clearly how a human travels the journey from Is to Ought on their own without any God.

Second level: Constant proof of thousands of years of human history in practical life

More importantly, thousands of years of human history are living witnesses that in practical life, humans have never faced any practical problem in reaching "Ought."

• For thousands of years (and even today), there are such isolated tribes in the world (like in the Amazon jungles or Andaman Islands) that have remained completely disconnected from any God, prophet, or heavenly book. Have they ever faced any problem of 'Ought' (how we should be)? Not at all! Their societies have always had very clear and strict laws: killing is wrong, treason is a crime, and protecting children is mandatory.

• Buddhism challenged the cruel caste system only on the basis of human empathy and intelligence. This act is the position of Ought.

• Confucius presented a complete moral system based not on the commands of any God, but on human relationships and social responsibilities. This system is the position of Ought.

• Today, the honesty and integrity of citizens in Tokyo and other Japanese cities is such that every year, lost money, valuable bags, and personal items worth millions of yen are submitted to the police, and they safely reach their rightful owners, and this is a record in the world (BBC News). Here, the citizens of Tokyo are not acting on just "Is" (what is happening), but are setting the highest practical example of "Ought" (what should be). And this act is not an exception,  but a constant reality for thousands of years.

Third level: It is ONLY a problem of philosophy, not reality

Then where does this "problem" remain in the end? This problem remains only and only in the minds of philosophers. Philosophy (especially the branch of ethics) has not been able to provide any final and satisfying answer to: "Why should a human ultimately prioritise well-being?" This is a valid philosophical question, and the lack of a final answer to it is also a reality.

But remember! The inability of philosophy to reach a final solution to a problem is not proof that the problem is "unsustainable" or "unreal."

Conclusion

1. Science tells "how."
2. History bears witness to "what happened." 
3. Philosophy asks "why."

But the lack of an answer to this "why" of philosophy does not mean that the "how" of science and the "what happened" of human history are wrong. Religious circles are just lurking in a philosophical vacuum, while the real world (science, history, and daily society) is speaking against them. And this is the reality that they never want to admit.

This failure is of philosophy, not non-religious morality

If this gap between "reality" (Is) and "moral duty" (Ought) is not filled on the paper of philosophy, it does not mean at all that morality without God has failed. In fact, this is the weakness of philosophy's own made-up rules that cannot describe life's realities in the light of those rules.

First point: The problem is of philosophy's "rules" A simple rule of philosophy is that: 

You cannot bring any new word or thing into your final answer that you did not ask about in the question.

Now, since science and all the facts of the world tell us only what "is" (Is) in the world, philosophy gets trapped in its own rule and cannot extract the word "ought" (Ought) in the result. This is exactly like someone saying "Measure the weight of love or empathy with a math formula!" Obviously, this is the limit of math, not the failure of love.

These rules and principles of philosophy did not descend from the sky, but were made by philosophers and logicians themselves. The logic or principle we are mentioning here in philosophy is called Formal Logic or Aristotelian Logic.

Let's understand this in very simple language how this game started:

• Almost 2400 years ago, Greece's famous philosopher Aristotle first prepared some fixed rules and outlines for thinking and debating. Its purpose was that when humans debate with each other, it can be known whose words have weight and whose words have defects (Fallacy).

• Philosophers made these principles exactly like the formulas of Mathematics. Just as 1+1=2 is a fixed rule in math, similarly they made a principle in logic: "If any word is not present in your questions or basic things (Premises), then you cannot forcibly bring it into your final answer (Conclusion)."

• Since these rules were made by humans (philosophers) themselves thinking and writing on paper, they had their own limit. These principles are very excellent for solving math questions or winning debates on paper, but they are not enough to measure the dynamic realities of life, human instincts, and evolution.

Understand with a simple example that this is exactly like some people coming together and making the game of Chess and setting its rules that "the Knight will always move two and a half squares and the Bishop will go only diagonally." Now these are the rules of Chess itself. If a person comes out of the Chess board and starts running straight in daily life, the Chess player cannot cry and say "You are doing wrong because according to the rule of Chess you should have moved two and a half squares!" David Hume's 'Is-Ought' objection is also a rule of this game of Chess that philosophers themselves made on paper. Daily life, human biology, and history are the world outside this paper board, which is not bound by these verbal rules made by philosophers.

Second point: The same question also flips on religion If we sit to thread the needle of this philosophy, no religion in the world can be saved from this objection either. If a religious person says "God's command is not to steal" (this is a reality, meaning Is), then philosophy will stand there too and ask: "But why is it necessary for a human to obey God's command?" (meaning Ought). To answer this, they will say "because God created us" or "He will punish." Philosophy will then ask "Why should we avoid punishment?" Thus, this question will never end, and religion will also remain trapped in this cycle.

The summary is that this is not a failure of non-religious morality, but this is just a tangle of words that is limited to the pages of books. Daily life, human evolution, and our history have gone far ahead of this imaginary tangle.

The real trick of religious circles

Religious circles very cleverly use this entire situation:

1. They ignore science which is explaining the entire process of "from Is to Ought."

2. They ignore history which has been giving constant proof for thousands of years that even without God, societies are running complete moral systems.

3. And then they just catch this one question of philosophy and say: "See! You have no final foundation, only we have."

They know very well that under these rigid rules of philosophy, even their own religious morality cannot be proven and they themselves are trapped in the same cycle (Infinite Regress). But they play this gamble because their goal is not to reach any truth, but to create only "confusion" and doubt in the mind of the common human. Through their large propaganda network, they hype this imaginary theoretical debate so much that a common man becomes unable to see the living scientific facts of the practical world. This trick of the religious circles is actually the last intellectual shield of a drowning human. They try to apply such an abstract problem on the ground which is limited only to the pages of philosophy, so that they can deceive the reader that what is happening so beautifully and successfully in the practical world, should not have happened theoretically! This is not a path of intellectual reform, but an organised path of escape from reality.

The dark side of religious morality

The real problem of religious morality is not that it claims to be objective, but that it:

• is based on authority.

• it is declared to be above questioning and criticizing it is considered a sin.

A religious person does not say: "This act is wrong because it causes harm," but says: "This is wrong because God has forbidden it." And this is not morality but obedience. If God were to command tomorrow that lying is permissible, a religious person would accept that too as moral, because the standard of their morality is not human welfare, but divine command. In contrast, in human morality, there is no place for such blind obedience.