Christianity is full of moral shape-shifters, that are able to fit themselves into new and exciting pseudo-principles wherever and whenever they need a new sense of superiority to brag about. Four hundred years ago they could justify burning folks at the stake for whatever reason might justify a hot dog roast. And 150 years ago they could justify slavery, pointing out the various passages in the bible to justify kidnapping and abusing hundreds and thousands of innocent victims (edit: oops, make that millions). These days, in bed with big business, they can justify each and every example of economic and environmental abuse by saying "It can't be wrong. Someone is making a profit!" And then they make a big deal out of anything marginal or too icky to admit involvement in (abortion, gays) just to make themselves known.
The selfishness of their tiny world, where they know all that needs be known and demand to be the only ones who can make demands, undoes most of the good they could actually do as human beings. When people are pious only because they hope god notices, and generous only because they read somewhere Jesus was sometimes too, there is no morality there. There is behavior that is based on self-interest, not human interest.
High divorce rates are only one of the measures of a failed moral standard. Not the divorce itself, but the simultaneous insistence that such things are against gods will. Normally. You know, when others do it. Newt Gingrich, who values marriage so much that he's done it three times, can condemn while he does the same thing without noticing. And Pat Robertson, blaming gays on everything from hurricanes to farts, epitomizes the inability of the righteously religious to set and/or keep any useful standards, of behavior or anything else. Freely pinning every upsetting event on others and condemning "sinners" while surreptitiously involved in exactly the same disssed activity, both are example of religious double standards and religious non-standards. But they are not examples of moral standards.
And then, to pile on the bandwagon and proclaim that we are all bad because of an apple-loving lady 6,000 years ago, then providing a get-out-of-jail free card if you'll just accept JC (start tithing at our church), is an effort to control anything and everything, an attitude which hasn't a single moral component. Instead of paying attention to the real causes of human misbehavior, instead of looking at our own wrongs and trying to change them, the righteous insist that they have all the answers, and then otherwise stay out of any effort aimed at human reform, social reform, moral reform, etc. If it doesn't involve saying you're sorry to god and kissing the kids behind, then it ain't gonna work anyway.
And as for the methodists who don't get divorced as much as other religions. They would get divorced at similar rates, but someone might find out, and their self-image as perfect might be damaged. So even the arbitrary morals standards chosen by the cited article are inaccurate because they are measuring socially stigmatizing activities, something many methodists can't be caught doing, no matter how bad they want to. That isn't morality, it is a fear of being found out.
Morality cannot spring from ignorance. There is nothing there to base it on. And when you toss in the propensity to claim the moral high ground by fiat and damn anything to the contrary, in the end, most religious thought on the subject is so inane as to make mental illness seem benign in comparison.
Damn it Graybeard, you got me started again. Don't do that!
NOTE: This was intended as a response to another thread, but I somehow accidentally changed the subject and it looks like a new one. My bad. I've asked mods to fix it.
Small typo fixed GB
