Ideology, Morality, Culture and Personal Interpretations

[AkuManiMani]

The following is a brief excerpt of an exchange between me and thaiboxerken on the relationship between religions belief and personal views.

A person's capacity for reason and morality are innate and not determined by their religious faith -- or lack thereof.

[...]

By and large, people choose faiths that reflect their own morality.

I don't agree. Systems that teach people to suppress reason has to have an affect on reasoning. This is why the more religious a person is, the more likely they are to do absurdly immoral things.

[...]

People don't choose their faiths, most people are indoctrinated into it and stick with their faith because they are not taught to look at their religions with a critical eye. They are told not to question their faith or their gods or their religious leaders.

If that were true there would be no branching of religious sects, no alternate interpretations, or evolution of religions over time. People don't universally accept everything they're taught wholesale; they accept or reject what personally suits them or interpret doctrines they do accept to fit their own personal views.

I was raised in a family that was very dogmatically religious but I grew up an atheist. The church my family attended was very fundie but I could count literally hundreds of people who, over the years, left whenever there was a point or interpretation of doctrine they disagreed with. Even many who were raised in the church themselves often changed churches or religions to suit their preferences or just abandoned religion altogether.

Religious belief, by and large, is subjective and being subjective a person's religion [or lack thereof] and ideological interpretations are a reflection of their own psychology. The same holds true for any ideology or doctrine. If a person is aggressive they will naturally be attracted to doctrines and religions that are aggressive, If they're liberal minded they will generally gravitate towards similar ideologies, etc.