God and morality are not the same thing

It is often said that religion is the basis of morality and here in Malaysia we are constantly reminded that faith is what binds our society together. This belief is so prevalent in this country that atheism is not legally recognized here because the Rukun Negara dictates that every Malaysian citizen must believe in a God or Gods. I suppose the assumption here is that the fear of being squashed by a supreme being is good motivation to behave in a civil manner. The fear of pain works very well and is a powerful motivator. So if God says do not kill or you shall be killed in a variety of different ways, resurrected and killed again for the rest of eternity, a lot of people would take notice and murders would rarely happen.

The above 'command' is universal across just about all religions but once different commands emerge, the gods do battle. I've always thought this was the flaw in every religion; the holier than thou attitude. Often its not enough just to believe that everyone else is going to hell, you need to remind them of that too. What’s point of being loved by God, if he loves everyone else as well?

This way of thinking is dangerous. Not only because it promotes discrimination and violence, but because its hard to make believe otherwise through religious reasoning. The sad thing about this world is that some people only resist slaughtering every man they see just because god says so. Its not enough for them to realize that killing harms people, they need to know that god forbids it. So to stop extremists from feeling superior, they need to be convinced that their religion prohibits it. But telling an extremist that being extreme is wrong is like asking Mozart to stop composing music because its making his symphonies worse.