Posted on 10/22/2006 10:49:51 AM PDT by A. Pole
THE MIDTERM elections are fast approaching, and their outcome could well be determined by the "moral values" of conservative Christians. While this possibility is regularly bemoaned by liberals, the link between religion and morality in our public life is almost never questioned. One of the most common justifications one hears for religious faith, from all points on the political spectrum, is that it provides a necessary framework for moral behavior. Most Americans appear to believe that without faith in God, we would have no durable reasons to treat one another well.
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The problem, however, is that much of what people believe in the name of religion is intrinsically divisive, unreasonable, and incompatible with genuine morality. The truth is that the only rational basis for morality is a concern for the happiness and suffering of other conscious beings. This emphasis on the happiness and suffering of others explains why we don't have moral obligations toward rocks. It also explains why (generally speaking) people deserve greater moral concern than animals, and why certain animals concern us more than others. If we show more sensitivity to the experience of chimpanzees than to the experience of crickets, we do so because there is a relationship between the size and complexity of a creature's brain and its experience of the world.
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Helping people purely out of concern for their happiness and suffering seems rather more noble than helping them because you think the Creator of the universe wants you to do it, will reward you for doing it, or will punish you for not doing it.
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We have to realize that we decide what is good in our religious doctrines. We read the Golden Rule, for instance, and judge it to be a brilliant distillation of many of our ethical impulses.
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(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
And why should we give a hoot about "other conscious beings"?
As an atheist I can tell you from first-hand experience that the liberals I've worked with in homeless shelters and other such places are not helping people purely out of concern for their happiness and suffering. They're doing it for the exact same reason the Christians I worked with did it--because they felt compelled to. But in my first-hand experience, the Christians were happier and more giving in their charitable works; the liberals to a person were angry, spoke harshly of the clients behind their backs, and seemed to be doing the work to fulfill some self-aggrandizing image of themselves as "sacrificing" their lives for others.
When I started in this line of work I braced myself to find the Christians being the wacko-rightwing loons I've been told, and the liberals so compassionate that my conservative political beliefs would come into question. Instead I'm more of a consevative NOW than when I began in this area, and my previous feeling that libs were good people who were just misguided has been replaced with utter contempt for them.
Not saying they're all that way, or that all conservative Christians are saintly. But in my PERSONAL experience, I couldn't find one Christian I've worked with who I felt was selfish or trying to convert me, while the libs to a person were hateful a-holes.
Knowledge is something secular learning can give, wisdom is something that the mere accumulation of knowledge will not deliver.
For Christians it is easier, because they follow Platinum Rule: "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength". The rest is easy as the Golden Rule "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" logically follows from the fact that you and others are made in image of God.
So Christians when they help others they serve God and honor His image and help themselves to gain Salvation. Nothing more natural and healthy.
Insightful post. Not everyone fits the stereotype, of course, but I think you have a real-life view of human nature. My quibble with liberals is their tremendous desire to place themselves in power to take from some to give to others and that it seems to animate much of their "altruism".
Conservatives, whether Christian, another faith or atheist, have a more realistic view of human nature and seek to release the good impulses of mankind while having just enough "government" to help reign in the abusive impulses. Liberals believe that all humans are "godlike" in innocence and motivation (except for those humans they personally know and excluding themselves of course) and that social inequities are the cause of all evil. Government is seen as the vehicle in which to cure social inquities and thus bring to pass the Age of Aquarius. I say they are all wet.
Yes. When someone who calls themselves Christian indulges in bad behavior, one can point to sacred writings and such to point out why they should change. When a secularist indulges in bad behavior, I honestly cannot think of any authoritative reason to give them as to why they ought to behave differently.
Exactly!
Some secularist are honest enough to say what they think:
"Why do we vent such visceral hatred on child murderers, or on thuggish vandals, when we should simply regard them as faulty units that need fixing or replacing? Presumably because mental constructs like blame and responsibility, indeed evil and good, are built into our brains by millennia of Darwinian evolution. Assigning blame and responsibility is an aspect of the useful fiction of intentional agents that we construct in our brains as a means of short-cutting a truer analysis of what is going on in the world in which we have to live.
My dangerous idea is that we shall eventually grow out of all this and even learn to laugh at it, just as we laugh at Basil Fawlty when he beats his car. But I fear it is unlikely that I shall ever reach that level of enlightenment."
(Richard Dawkins Writes About Human Responsibility In Light of Darwinian Evolution)
See my tagline.
I read the author of the articles book The End Of Religion. He is a neuroscientist. He is a good writer and his book was interesting.... But he then looses all control in the end. He gets into meditation as the way to find the true self free from even your conscious brain. He has a religion he just has not named it yet. I also saw him speak on c-span and was appalled not only at him but the audience. He talk was in a Church. There were Methodist Ministers present who laughed and agreed with all he said. They LAUGHED about their really being a God or a Jesus. I almost could not believe what I was seeing. MOCKING of GOD by so called MINISTERS....
What a bigot this guy is. Jainists (and possibly other religions?) do believe they have moral obligations to rocks.
I do not think that is correct. The Jainists have a profound respect for all living things, they would not consider a rock a living thing; it is considered ajiva.
It's really not that difficult to explain why anti-social behaviour is wrong in purely secular terms. Millions of parents do it every day to their children.
It's as simple as turning on the TV and watching news reports from areas of the world where law and order have broken down. How anyone could believe that anarchy (the ultimate result of unconfined bad behaviour) is preferable to the rule of law is beyond me.
Re: #3. This agnostic agrees with you.
If the religion or God is the ultimate source of moral order, then most people live in a theocracy already. Whether they know it or not :)
Unbelievable! I'm not sure where to start.
Excellent point. Could not have said it better than that.
Sammy spends a lot of time castigating Christians for their behavior in Africa. I wonder what Sammy has done for the poor and suffering in Africa? Trashing believers really doesn't put food on their plates or alleviate their suffering.
Thanks for you insight DW.
The writer immediately creates a false argument for morality: that only reason perform acts of charity is to relieve suffering. While Buddhists may well believe this very thing, it is not a Christian concept. There are many other reasons for Christians to perform acts of charity - some corporate and some individual.
His example from the OT is also in error. He is unaware of the New Covenant. Any writer who attempts to critique Christianity in a serious way should at least be acquainted with some of the widely accepted concepts of the faith.
So what? I'd rather live in a Christian theocracy than a secular democracy any day.
It's really not that difficult to explain why anti-social behaviour is wrong in purely secular terms. Millions of parents do it every day to their children.
No. Parents generally take an authoritarian approach that amounts to because they said so and punishments follow when they are ignored; much like the secular State.
How anyone could believe that anarchy (the ultimate result of unconfined bad behaviour) is preferable to the rule of law is beyond me.
Beyond me as well, but there are many elements in our society that promote that very behavior.
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