When I looked up morality, dictionaries gave differing definitions, but all of them relate morality to social conventions and agreements about what constitutes right and wrong in various situations.

What prompted me to write this piece is that I've been hearing a bit much from various religious factions that Christianity somehow has the morality market cornered - i.e. morality originates from God. I originally thought I could just say something glib about "what makes Christianity the go-to religion" and leave it at that. But, I've actually got some ideas on how this may be addressed. So...

It appears that organized religions are - have been?, always will be? - trying to corner the market on morality; they're saying that morality comes from God (whichever the de jour god or gods are). I - and maybe one or two others - are of the mind that perhaps humans wouldn't be around if that were the case. I have to say though, if you believe the earth was created 4, 6 or 10,000 years ago, you may be right. Me? I'm of the bent that the earth's a bit older than that. What we do appear to agree on is that knowing right from wrong is a human requirement or it's unlikely we'd have survived this long. Also, you don't have to look very far to see that, despite the pretty clear rule set they've set for themselves, Christians appear to falter in their morality as frequently as anyone else - including other religions whose morality varies some - or a lot - from stated Christian standards.

And, while some may say that I don't meet the morality criteria set by some religions, I know that my morality is not significantly different than that of most Christians I know. The advantage I appear to have is that my adherence to it seems to be better - likely as it comes from within me and not from some apparently continually questioned external, ethereal entity. The advantage is that I get to beat myself up when I screw up, and the punishments I dole out tend to be a bit more real, appropriate and effective. I have never allowed myself the "God will forgive me" cop-out; I have to forgive myself.

Origin of morality
I've touched on this above, but thought I'd add a bit more. Let's leave aside the possiblity that the earth was created 6000 years ago (this is believed by a small - and shrinking - percentage of the population anyway). If the earth is, as most appear to agree, around 4.5 billion years old, and humans have been around for about 200,000 years, how did we survive before religions formulated their interpretations of morality? It's pretty clear to me that we must have had some form of knowledge of right and wrong (likely mostly not documented or formalized) earlier than 2, 4, or 10,000 years ago.

Comparative morality
We've defined morality as social agreements on what constitutes right and wrong. Very few religions agree on specifically what those social agreements should be, so which religion has the "correct" morality? (Never mind that religions very seldom agree from where such morality originates.) And, how come the overwhelming majority of non-religious people appear to adhere to very similar moralities? Most of my friends are entirely non-religious, recovering believers, etc., and I know none of them have killed anyone, and have otherwise trespassed on the moral codes most religions set forth no more than the believers of those religions.

The law
How morality and the law relate is a whole other can of worms. Maybe next time.