Posted on 01/07/2006 8:49:41 PM PST by Alouette
Is religion necessary for morality? Many people consider it outrageous, even blasphemous, to deny the divine origin of morality. Either some Divine Being crafted our moral sense, or we picked it up from the teachings of organized religion. Either way, we need religion to curb nature's vices. Paraphrasing Katherine Hepburn in the movie The African Queen, religion allows us to rise above wicked old Mother Nature, handing us a moral compass.
Yet problems abound for the view that morality comes from God. One problem is that we cannot, without lapsing into tautology, simultaneously say that God is good, and that he gave us our sense of good and bad. For then we are simply saying that God meets God's standards.
A second problem is that there are no moral principles that are shared by all religious people, regardless of their specific beliefs, but by no agnostics and atheists. Indeed, atheists and agnostics do not behave less morally than religious believers, even if their virtuous acts rest on different principles. Non-believers often have as strong and sound a sense of right and wrong as anyone, and have worked to abolish slavery and contributed to other efforts to alleviate human suffering.
The opposite is also true. Religion has led people to commit a long litany of horrendous crimes, from God's command to Moses to slaughter the Midianites - men, women, boys, and non-virginal girls - through the Crusades, the Inquisition, innumerable conflicts between Sunni and Shi'ite Muslims, and suicide bombers convinced that martyrdom will lead them to paradise.
The third difficulty for the view that morality is rooted in religion is that some elements of morality seem to be universal, despite sharp doctrinal differences among the world's major religions. In fact, these elements extend even to cultures like China, where religion is less significant than philosophical outlooks like Confucianism.
Perhaps a Creator handed us these universal elements at the moment of creation. But an alternative explanation, consistent with the facts of biology and geology, is that over millions of years we have evolved a moral faculty that generates intuitions about right and wrong.
FOR THE first time, research in the cognitive sciences, building on theoretical arguments emerging from moral philosophy, has made it possible to resolve the ancient dispute about the origin and nature of morality.
Consider the following three scenarios. For each, fill in the blank space with "obligatory," "permissible," or "forbidden."
1. A runaway boxcar is about to run over five people walking on the tracks. A railroad worker is standing next to a switch that can turn the boxcar onto a side track, killing one person, but allowing the five to survive. Flipping the switch is ________.
2. You pass by a small child drowning in a shallow pond, and you are the only one around. If you pick up the child, she will survive and your pants will be ruined. Picking up the child is _______.
3. Five people have just been rushed into a hospital in critical condition, each requiring an organ to survive. There is not enough time to request organs from outside the hospital, but there is a healthy person in the hospital's waiting room. If the surgeon takes this person's organs, he will die, but the five in critical care will survive. Taking the healthy person's organs is _______.
If you judged case 1 as permissible, case 2 as obligatory, and case 3 as forbidden, then you are like the 1,500 subjects around the world who responded to these dilemmas on our web-based moral sense test (http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/).
If morality is God's word, atheists should judge these cases differently from religious people, and their responses should rely on different justifications.
For example, because atheists supposedly lack a moral compass, they should be guided by pure self-interest and walk by the drowning child. But there were no statistically significant differences between subjects with or without religious backgrounds, with approximately 90% of subjects saying that it is permissible to flip the switch on the boxcar, 97% saying that it is obligatory to rescue the baby, and 97% saying that it is forbidden to remove the healthy man's organs.
When asked to justify why some cases are permissible and others forbidden, subjects are either clueless or offer explanations that cannot account for the relevant differences. Importantly, those with a religious background are as clueless or incoherent as atheists.
These studies provide empirical support for the idea that, like other psychological faculties of the mind, including language and mathematics, we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgments of right and wrong. These intuitions reflect the outcome of millions of years in which our ancestors have lived as social mammals, and are part of our common inheritance. Our evolved intuitions do not necessarily give us the right or consistent answers to moral dilemmas. What was good for our ancestors may not be good today. But insights into the changing moral landscape, in which issues like animal rights, abortion, euthanasia and international aid have come to the fore, have not come from religion, but from careful reflection on humanity and what we consider a life well lived.
In this respect, it is important for us to be aware of the universal set of moral intuitions so that we can reflect on them and, if we choose, act contrary to them. We can do this without blasphemy because it is our own nature, not God, that is the source of our morality.
Hauser is Professor of Psychology and Director of Primate Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Harvard University. Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University. His recent books include Writings on an Ethical Life and One World. www.project-syndicate.org
We can do this without blasphemy because it is our own nature, not God, that is the source of our morality.
And the source of my nature and ability to reason is...???
I'm sure these fellows would tell us the source is a random interaction of the elements of physical reality.
You know what's really scary about these whackos? They may insist on a world that began with absolutely no meaning of any kind, but they seem to believe that the world is actually gaining meaning as it evolves, and they believe that they are the ultimate authorities on the authentic evolving morality. It's almost the old Hegelian position of the world creating G-d (chas vechalilah!) rather than vice versa. They detest and ridicule "intelligent design," yet they use the language of design continually, almost delighting in flaunting it. The more they insist on the meaninglessness of the beginning of the creation process the more they use the teleological language of "progressive" vs. "reactionary" in describing what the meaningless world is becoming. And it seems to be becoming a totalitarian planetary society that will brook no dissent, all the while attacking "religious fundamentalists" for brooking no dissent! Apparently the absence of meaning at the beginning satisfies these people that no totalitarian "omega point" can be unjust or oppressive.
It's this precise issue of "meaninglessness acquiring ultimate meaning" that exposes atheist humanists as bizarre new age mystics parading as scientific materialists.
"I wonder if they've even noticed this about themselves?"
Actually, that's one of the things that woke me up from agnosticism.
I was telling a friend, as an axiom, that a man has an absolute obligation to any woman he impregnates and the resulting offspring, and he asked me, "Why? What's the source of the obligation?"
Made me think.
"and they believe that they are the ultimate authorities on the authentic evolving morality"
Genesis 3
3:1. Now the serpent was more subtle than any of the beasts of the earth which the Lord God had made. And he said to the woman: Why hath God commanded you, that you should not eat of every tree of paradise?
3:2. And the woman answered him, saying: Of the fruit of the trees that are in paradise we do eat:
3:3. But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of paradise, God hath commanded us that we should not eat; and that we should not touch it, lest perhaps we die.
3:4. And the serpent said to the woman: No, you shall not die the death.
3:5. For God doth know that in what day soever you shall eat thereof, your eyes shall be opened: and you shall be as Gods, knowing good and evil.
3:6. And the woman saw that the tree was good to eat, and fair to the eyes, and delightful to behold: and she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat, and gave to her husband, who did eat.
We Catholics call it Original Sin, and it is with us to this day.
What is a post-natal abortion?
It must be these doctors who want to kill the kid if it doesn't die right away during an abortion. That's all I can think of.
Then there is a proper name for it: infanticide. Why confuse people by using exotic vocabulary? But anyway, let those using highfalutin and complex words express themselves with more clarity. Everybody would benefit.
I agree. The word murder would do it for me.
Not true. Religion has helped to shape the world atheists live in, and thereby shape them.
In order to arrive at such conclusions, one would have to study atheists who have grown to maturity in complete isolation from the rest of us and our world. To my knowledge that is an impossibility.
Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillows of human happiness, these finest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation deserts the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge in the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on the minds of particular structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in the exclusion of religious principle.”
George Washington
Farewell Address to the Nation
September 17, 1796
Thanks~
Sometimes, the best speeches/addresses by a president is their farewell address.
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