A Study of the Relationship between Religion and Morality from Sam Harris's Perspective

A leading figure of "new atheism", Sam Harris, maintains that religion and morality are in conflict. He, despite what religious believers generally think, does not take religion to be a basis for morality, instead, he believes that religion devastates morality and the moral system. In order to substantiate this claim, Harris takes two ways. First, based on some surveys, he argues that religious countries witness a moral decline, while atheist countries are morally in an acceptable situation. Accordingly, he seeks to induce by field studies that atheist countries are in a much better position than the theist countries in the moral indicators such as material well-being, respect for women's rights, human rights, etc.. As a result, it is atheism that has made society more moral. Second, by inspecting some religious doctrines, he decides that they are sources of violence and clashes among human beings and, consequently, lead societies toward moral decline. In this article, we examine Harris' claims concerning the relationship between religion and morality, concluding that they suffer from following flaws: not accurately determining the meaning of theism and atheism, misunderstanding about moarality and values, not paying attention to various indicators in human moral life, taking a weak scientific approach in evaluating the moral indicators of theist and atheist countries, not paying attention to the crimes of atheists throughout history, and having a superficial and false understanding of religious teachings.