Religion can affect morality in a couple different ways. One way is through general religious beliefs, such as the belief in a life after death of some kind where the outcome is calibrated to conduct in this life (heaven and hell, or reincarnation), the idea that a Being who is interested in whether people act rightly or wrongly is in control of the universe, the idea that God created human being in order for those humans to behave in certain ways, etc.
One way to understand the difference this might make for morality is to consider what it is like to deny all these claims. If you say there is no God, no life after death, and perhaps even no free will, the implication is that what whether a person is a serial killer or a great human benefactor, the final outcome of your life is to go out of existence when you die. Hence serial killers and saints end up in the same condition. In addition, on some atheistic views, we are purely physical beings, and hence our actions are all determined by the laws of physics. Given the prior positions of the physical atoms that make us up and make up the rest of the universe, when we act, we could not have done otherwise from what we did. If that is so, then it seems a little difficult to say that anything that anyone does is really their fault, or is to their credit, since serial killer and public benefactor alike do exactly what nature caused them to do.
This might lead you to think that no nonreligious people have any morals, but the fact is that they are still motivated by two things: 1) natural sympathy for others and 2) the social usefulness of moral behavior.
However, there is another kind of religious moral influence, and that is the specific teachings of particular religious groups which they take to be revealed by God. But they differ on how they interpret these. People often think of strictures against homosexuality when they think of these things. (The Bible also says "Thou shalt not murder," but this isn't, for the most part, an issue between religious and nonreligious people). Some religious groups think that homosexual conduct is wrong AND that homosexual orientation is a disorder that they should do everything the can to fix through, for example conversion therapy. The second view is that homosexual conduct is wrong, but homosexual orientation is a condition that doesn't need to be fixed, it just means that God has called that person to a celibate life. (Hence a gay person can come out as gay without being condemned just for having that orientation, so long as you don't engage in any homosexual acts). The third view is that a properly committed gay relationship, along the lines of the traditional Christian heterosexual marriage can be God's will for some people of homosexual orientation.
12 comments:
My first thought was, doesn't god have better things to do, in all the vastness of this universe, than to be bothered with how somebody does whatever with whomever?
It seems to me to be the height of anthropocentrism to think god would share the human fixation on other people's sexuality.
The absurdities of Christian morality are some of the things that led me to reject Christianity as a child. It just did not make sense to me that god would create Adam and Eve, and put that tree right there in the garden, and then tell them not to eat from it, and punish them for going against his instructions, but he knew all along that was what they were going to do so maybe he could have put the tree someplace else, just didn't seem fair to me, still doesn't.
Besides, what's god got against knowledge anyhow? My teachers and my parents kept making me learn more and more stuff so it seemed like gaining knowledge is a good thing, and that made sense to me, still does, but god being against gaining knowledge seemed pretty dumb to me, still does.
Also, I never did like the way people would do all kinds of really bad things, like invading countries and burning people alive, and then say god said it was good. That always seemed like a really crummy god that would tell people to start wars and burn people alive, I still think that.
And stuff like thou shalt not kill, or thou shalt not steal never impressed me much. Lots of people know that, they didn't need some guy to write it on some tablets, so that didn't seem so special about Christianity to me, still doesn't.
Plus hell seemed like a pretty crummy idea, I mean, I just do a few little things wrong here for a few years and that means I get horribly tortured forever? That seemed really mean and super unfair to me, still does.
So, after a while I came to the conclusion that this god they teach me about is a real jerk, I can figure out how to be better than that all on my own, turns out I was right as a child, and now that I am grown up I realize that the absurdity of Christian morality is so obvious that even a child can recognize it, so now my ongoing mystery is why billions of adults very obviously lack that capacity.
"doesn't [G]od have better things to do, in all the vastness of this universe, than to be bothered with how somebody does whatever with whomever?"
Poor Stardusty. He can't wrap his head around the idea that God can operate at all scales, from the smallest to the largest. God cares deeply about the fate, not only of every human individual, but of every last electron, every quark, every Higgs-Boson particle. And He simultaneously cares about every star, every galaxy, every supercluster. If size were somehow a determinant of value, then an elephant would be more "important" than a baby, or a mountain of greater value than a Picasso, or lifeless Jupiter more significant than the Earth.
Yes, the universe is vast, but so is the Pacific Ocean, and so is the human soul.
It would be a very small god indeed, who could not love both the very small and the very large. I don't believe in that god either.
" God cares deeply about the fate, not only of every human individual, but of every last electron, every quark, every Higgs-Boson particle."
Really? And what evidence do you have for that? A being that cares about, so presumably knows the details of, every subatomic particle in the universe?
Sure, you can speculate anything you want, its not an issue of understanding, you don't understand god, you just have some wild speculation of something you call god.
Anybody can make up outlandish speculations all day long, that doesn't mean you understand anything, it just means you have a wild imagination.
It's not a matter of "evidence" but of reasoning. Given that God purposefully created every last sub-atomic particle in the universe, He surely knows, and has a stake in, what each one is doing at every moment.
Now I have no intention in debating the existence of God with you - at least not here and now. Your initial question (Doesn't God have better things to do, in all the vastness of this universe, than to be bothered with how somebody does whatever with whomever?) assumes His existence. So we can proceed from there to discuss whether or not He would care for the least component of said universe, or only for the really, really large items in it.
And when expressed that way, doesn't your question sound rather silly? Why should the "vastness" of something or other mean that God should care for it more? If that's indeed the case, then I'd better stop trying to shed these excess pounds, lest God care for me less!
"Given that God purposefully created every last sub-atomic particle in the universe, "
Wild speculation.
That isn't "reasoning", that is just you making up wild stories out of nothing. I can make up an unbounded number of counter stories about god or a trillion trillion gods. So what? That has nothing to do with understanding or reasoning, it is just making up wild speculations and fantasy stories.
(Doesn't God have better things to do, in all the vastness of this universe)
I said that was my initial thought, which led me back to similar thoughts I had as a child. If you don't care about my childhood thoughts, fair enough.
"Why should the "vastness" of something or other mean that God should care for it more?"
It is the height of vanity, egoism, and anthropomorphism to look out into the night sky, ponder the vastness of the universe as we know it, and declare "this is all here for me!"
Sure, you can make up whatever grandiose speculations you want about an imagined being with super powers that placed humans on Earth as his chosen beings, and the number of potential such speculations is limited only by the time it takes to think and express such various fantasies.
The simpler explanation is that you prefer the egotistical fantasy stories, as most people have and do.
Victor,
I actually had a bit of trouble figuring out what you are contrasting here:
"Religion can affect morality in a couple different ways"
"One way to understand the difference this might make for morality is to consider what it is like to deny all these claims. If you say there is no God, no life after death, and perhaps even no free will, the implication is that what whether a person is a serial killer or a great human benefactor, the final outcome of your life is to go out of existence when you die."
" However, there is another kind of religious moral influence, and that is the specific teachings of particular religious groups which they take to be revealed by God."
I don't see how you have contrasted 2 modes of religious moral influence.
It seems to me that you have contrasted the atheistic origins of morality with scriptural origins of morality.
Now, you used the word "religion" at the outset, not specifically "Christianity". Obviously, accounting for the origins and moral effects of religion in general as compared to one particular religion is vastly more complicated and bound to lead to a huge number of contradictions and problems, since the religions contradict each other to a great extent, and many religious moral teaching are, by our modern Western standards, grossly immoral.
Beat your wife, kill the jew, enslave those not in your religion, persecute homosexuals, persecute atheists, murder unchaste girls, invade lands to eject or kill the present occupants.
Those are just of the more egregious moral teachings that can be found in major religions today.
Other moral teachings that claim to have a scriptural source clearly are not derived from scripture, rather, the other way around. Scripture is derived from those moral sensibilities already in social existence.
The idea, for example that "don't murder" and "don't steal" originated in the Sinai desert 3400 years ago is preposterous on its face. Clearly, similar codes of conduct have developed across the globe and in places with no contact to those particular scriptures.
Stardusty,
Your question assumes the existence of God as a given. If you cannot accept that, even "for the sake of argument", then you have no business whatsoever opining on what He can or cannot do. Whatever you would say would be, in your own words, "wild speculations and fantasy stories", not worthy of anyone listening to.
I at least have arrived at my conclusions through reasoning. ("If/Then")
If made up fantasy X then made up fantasy Y.
There is your "reasoning".
You are probably an otherwise very rational and educated person of good character. Religion corrupts cognitive capacities.
It would be as though you found out something about Valdemort and from that "reasoned" something else about Valdemort. All you did was read fiction. You did not deduce anything about any real being.
"It would be as though you found out something about Valdemort"
I love it when people attempt to compare the Gospel with this or that work of fiction, or with mythology. I'm with C.S. Lewis on this one, who said (something like) "Anyone who compares the New Testament to mythology hasn't read much mythology."
Well, I have. I've read Homer maybe 4 times through, the Aeneid twice, plus Hesiod, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles... and Edith Hamilton's Mythology maybe 4 times in all. And let me tell you, the similarities between the Gospels and mythology are nonexistent, and their differences are greater than those between Anna Karenina and the Rand McNally Road Atlas of the USA.
In a way though, it's helpful when someone starts off with such ludicrous comparisons, because it alerts me up front that I'm dealing with a person who has nothing of value to say on the subject. Saves time.
" I've read Homer maybe 4 times through, the Aeneid twice, plus Hesiod, Aeschylus, Euripides, Sophocles.."
That's Greek mythology, so of course it is different than Jewish mythology.
There are other mythological stories of people that rise from the dead, were born of a virgin, and on and on.
The Jews wrote mythology with stories such as the garden of Eden, the flood, the Jewish exodus from Egypt. Then they put their spin on other mythology and wrote about a guy who was born of a virgin, worked miracles, and rose from the dead, all common mythological themes.
The Bible is period mythology cover to cover. Yes, there really was a Rome, and a few other facts sprinkled in, but the rest is just fiction.
The morality of the bible ranges from primitive debauchery to ho-hum commonalities of human nature of no special originality at all.
"There are other mythological stories of people that rise from the dead, were born of a virgin, and on and on."
Of course there are! You wouldn't expect an event as stupendous as the Lord God Himself entering into history as a flesh and blood human being to have no effect on people and events everywhere and everywhen, would you? The Incarnation was like a stone thrown into a pool. The ripples of that cosmic event spread out and out until no portion of the pond (the universe) was unaffected. So of course we will find echoes of that event in the mythologies of Egypt, Babylon, Ethiopia, Persia, Greece and Rome, and yes, India, Japan, Polynesia, the American Southwest, and... well, everywhere, both backwards and forwards in time.
St. Paul summed it up magnificently (and definitively), speaking to a crowd in Athens, "Whom ye ignorantly worship, Him I declare!" (Charles Williams translation)
"The Bible is mythology cover to cover."
You have it totally backwards. Mythology is the Bible. The truth behind all mythology can be discovered in the gospels, as literal historical fact.
" The ripples of that cosmic event spread out and out until no portion of the pond (the universe) was unaffected."
Ripples do not go backwards in time.
Ripples do not precede the stone hitting the water.
The mythological themes of the new testament predate the birth of Jesus.
Your mind is stuck in some sort of time warp where you are very apparently unable to differentiate past, preset, and future.
"You have it totally backwards. Mythology is the Bible"
Me:
B = M
You:
Oh no! You have it totally backwards!
M = B
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