Does Religion Make People More Moral?

 The philosopher David Hume wrote, "The greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; Hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere."

The question we are left to wonder about, therefore, is whether religion and religious beliefs actually make people more moral human beings, or less. Or do they have no real effect on us at all. 

"Believers,"  naturally assume that their sacred "beliefs" actually make people more moral,  of course, even though non believers argue that such a "belief" is what actually leads such "Believers" to not only be self righteous in their conviction that they are right (about pretty much everything, unfortunately) but to commit some of the most immoral crimes imaginable - and always in the name of their beliefs and their "god."  

But the truth is that there is plenty of evidence that shows religion makes people more immoral, in fact, including studies that show the more religious people tend to be, the more racist they tend to be as well. It has also been found that the biggest consumers of online porn tend to be people who live in America's Bible belt. Add to this the fact that all "believers" defend a moral double standard of violence and evil, one that not only always exempts God from being judged by such a standard but which "believers" use to justify war despite the commandment not to kill.

The point is, that even if religion does make some people better (which is debatable, of course), it clearly also makes some people worse as well (which is indisputable). The question ,then, is whether "believers" chose to simply "believe" that their beliefs make more people better than worse, even as non-believers think it is the other way around. 

This is not surprising, of course, because once we look under the hood of what drives such believers, we see that there is nothing but air. That is to say, that this "belief" that people are potentially more moral if they "believe" in god or a religion, is itself simply another "belief" that "believers" are just willing to accept as true, regardless of whether there is any evidence to support the claim, even if there is a mountain of evidence to the contrary.

And this only supports the idea that once a person is willing to believe in something without proof, they are easily willing to believe in practically anything without proof. They will, no doubt, reject all of this as simply a "belief" as well, which only proves how they pick and chose which baseless beliefs they are willing to believe are "true," and which they chose to believe are false.  And while it tells us nothing about the validity of such "beliefs" one way or the other, it does tell us that our "morality" is as fickle as what we are willing to believe, and why.