Originally Posted by Ameliorate

as I see it, religion is a very good excuse for moral behavior. How do I come to this conclusion? How do I reduce religion to simply a mechanism for preachers to use to encourage moral behavior? It is shown best with an example.
When a preacher gets up to speak he very often tells the audience what they need to do different, or better. As is human nature, resistance to this idea is the first premise. In order to counter this the preacher then teaches about what will happen if the audience members do not do this. All the glory of heaven and the fire and brimstone of heck. He shows the audience the possible outcomes of their actions and the reality of life. Keep in mind that this audience has no testimony to begin with
The reason the preacher does this is to get people to join his religion, church, whatever it is, for personal reasons, or, rarely, solely because the preacher cares about the spirits of his audience more than his own.