Creationism is not a moral principle. It is not a virtue. It is not evidence of wisdom, integrity, compassion, or spiritual depth. Believing that the Earth was created in a manner completely contradictory to observable natural laws does not make someone righteous any more than believing the moon is made of porcelain makes someone enlightened. Quoting scripture does not make you a prophet. Sitting in church every Sunday does not make you holy. Public declarations of faith do not automatically transform a person into a decent human being. Far too many people confuse religious performance with moral substance.
At some point, Christianity in America became less about practicing faith and more about signaling tribal allegiance. Entire communities now seem to believe that salvation hinges on affirming a checklist of cultural talking points rather than embodying any meaningful ethical framework. Did God create the Earth in six literal days? Was Eve assembled from Adam’s rib? Did Noah fit every species on a wooden boat? These questions have somehow become litmus tests for spiritual legitimacy, despite having virtually nothing to do with whether someone lives with kindness, mercy, humility, generosity, or justice.
What that reveals is the uncomfortable truth underneath much of modern religious identity: for many people, it was never really about morality. It was about obedience. Obedience to authority. Obedience to tradition. Obedience to ideology. Obedience to the group.
Because if your entire sense of morality collapses the moment other people stop behaving according to your standards, then what you possess is not morality at all. It is social dependency disguised as virtue. If you require an entire society to mirror your values before you yourself can act ethically, then your ethics were never internalized in the first place. Real morality exists independently of surveillance and social conformity.
A genuinely moral person does not need legislation to practice compassion. They do not require public recognition to demonstrate kindness. They do not need the threat of eternal punishment to refrain from cruelty. Their principles exist because they have consciously cultivated them as part of their character. Morals and values are not abstract slogans. They can actually be measured through behavior.
Kindness can be measured. Generosity can be measured. Justice can be measured. Charity can be measured. Mercy can be measured. Benevolence can be measured. These things manifest concretely in how people treat others, particularly those they dislike, disagree with, or have power over. A person’s faith is not revealed through bumper stickers, Bible verses, or social media declarations. It is revealed in how they behave when empathy is inconvenient. Yet many self-proclaimed Christians spend extraordinary amounts of time obsessing over symbolic gestures while neglecting the actual labor of living faith. They will argue endlessly about creationism, biblical literalism, prayer in schools, or whether someone says “Merry Christmas,” while simultaneously displaying staggering cruelty toward immigrants, the poor, addicts, minorities, queer people, or anyone existing outside their ideological tribe. One begins to suspect that belief itself has become a substitute for moral action as though accepting a supernatural claim automatically absolves someone of the responsibility to become a better human being. It is as though God is less concerned with cruelty, greed, arrogance, dishonesty, or indifference than with whether someone intellectually accepts a Bronze Age cosmology. The absurdity becomes impossible to ignore.
If someone genuinely believes they are “saved” because they accept that God created the Earth in six days, got bored, and decided to experiment with gardening, while simultaneously ignoring every practical demand of compassion, humility, charity, and mercy contained within the teachings they claim to follow, then what they possess is not spirituality. IT IS IDEOLOGICAL VANITY.
Perhaps this explains why some of the cruelest people imaginable often consider themselves deeply religious. Their faith functions not as a path toward self-examination, but as a shield protecting them from it. Once convinced they belong to the morally chosen group, introspection becomes unnecessary. They no longer evaluate whether they are kind, fair, honest, or compassionate because they have outsourced morality entirely to identity and doctrine. But morality is not what one professes, it is what one practices.
A hateful Christian is not morally superior to a compassionate atheist simply because one attends church and the other does not. If anything, the compassionate atheist may embody the ethical teachings of Christ more sincerely than the person loudly proclaiming salvation while treating others with contempt. This is the part many people desperately avoid confronting: belief alone is cheap.
Anyone can claim righteousness. Anyone can quote scripture. Anyone can participate in rituals. The difficult part is becoming the kind of person whose actions consistently reflect empathy, integrity, humility, and grace. That requires effort. That requires self-awareness. That requires accountability. Most importantly, it requires recognizing that morality is demonstrated through conduct, not declared through affiliation.
So no, creationism is not a moral value. Blind obedience is not virtue. Public religiosity is not evidence of character. And if your version of faith produces arrogance, cruelty, intolerance, self-righteousness, and hostility toward others, then whatever spirit you are serving, it certainly is not one rooted in love, mercy, or wisdom.
That was my sermon. STOP BEING AN ASSHOLE!