Weighed and found wanting

 It occurred to me today that religion often claims to be the yardstick by which morality can be measured. 

But in reality, morality is the yardstick by which religion can be measured; and it always falls short.

Furthermore, religious people are always acting according to what they know to be right DESPITE their religion. They'll follow the parts that they believe to be right (or at least admit that they OUGHT to follow those parts), but ignore the parts that they know to be wrong. Even the "literal word of God, true and unchanging in every jot and tittle" folks. Because it's obvious, even to religious people, that only a sociopath would ACTUALLY do all the things their religion commands or commends.

How many adulterers have been stoned to death by Christians, Jews, or Muslims in this country? All three of these groups would claim that their book is authoritative, and yet even the most absurdly fundamentalist of us knows that killing people is immoral, even if they DID do something as immoral as cheating on their spouse, so we don't do that. How many follow the guidance regarding how hard they're allowed to beat their slaves? Even the most authoritarian and racist asshole knows that slavery is wrong (even the shittiest and least moral of them, in their apologetics for slavery, try to justify it by saying it didn't REALLY involve raping and beating and killing black people, rather than trying to claim that raping and beating and killing people was just fine as long as they were black). And while the homophobes are absolutely fine with supporting policies that kill LGBTQ people, most stop short of directly, personally, killing LGBTQ people. They know that their book of morals is asking them to do an immoral thing, so they find some context that lets them say that the Bible doesn't actually MEAN what it says in this instance, because they know damn well that no moral book would direct people to do these things and therefore the Bible can't BE a moral book if it's directing people to do these things. If they're Christian, they'll say that stuff was Old Testament (and disregard things like Paul's command to slaves to obey their masters). In other words, when the Bible contradicts actual moral standards, any remotely moral Christians measure it by their own, ACTUAL moral standard and then retrofit the Bible to agree with them. IMMORAL Christians, of course, will go get an AR-15 and try to make up for the lack of stoning, but even members of their own churches will generally say that's going too far.

In other words, the more moral a Christian is, the less likely they are to actually be following the immoral standards that are in their holy book. They will agree with Jesus when he says that we should love even our enemies but ignore Jesus when he says we should hate our families if loving our families would interfere with obeying him. They will agree with Jesus when he says those that live by the sword will die by the sword but ignore Jesus when he says that his followers should sell their clothes to buy a sword. They will agree with their god when he tells Moses "Thou shalt not kill" but ignore their god when he tells Joshua to kill every man, woman, child, and animal in Jericho that is not dedicated to the god of Abraham. They KNOW that following every word of the Bible would make them a monster, and that the moral standards of today are objectively better than the moral standards of a society in which rape was fine as long as the victim's father got paid enough money.

And this is true of EVERY religion. The religion is less moral than its most lukewarm adherents, and exactly as immoral as its most fanatical adherents. 

Religion has been weighed in the balance, and found wanting, even by all but the most insane of its followers.

Why not just admit to yourself that you are more moral than your god, and continue on the path of becoming better than the genocidal racist sexist homophobic bastard that you claim to follow?