Wednesday, March 05, 2008

Why Morality??

I am going to try to write this in a way that can be understood, but, so often, I get tied up when I try to put my thoughts out on the table to organize.

But here we go.

This book "The God Delusion" is not bad. At the moment, I am at the point in the book where he argues that morality would still be present in the world if God or religion vanished.

He doesn't seem to attack the morality/religion argument as scathingly as he does in most of the book. Instead, he shows faith in humanity and hope that if there was no "spy camera in the sky" that we'd still be moral people—morality has been programmed into us much like sexual drive or any other evolutionary drive.

He poses that if we are moral simply because we are afraid of being punished by law or some being "in the clouds" then are we really moral? Is it genuine??

I have had this discussion with a few of my Christian friends and quite often the conversation arrives at this point. They will say "I am Christian because I am a terrible person and I need God" (paraphrased, but not much).

Retrospectively, I feel sorry for those people. Either without god or religion they'd be murderers or rapists (and we should steer clear of them), or it's just the common phrase they use to justify the decision they've made. I don't know which, I am not a judge but I can definitely say that during my time as a fundamental Christian, quite often the theme of the day was "you are worthless without religion or god".

Are we worthless? Before I made the decision when I was 15 to follow fundamental Christianity, was I a murderous, immoral person? Because I am no longer a fundamental Christian, am I, once again, a murderous, immoral person?

He cites in the book a thought experiment used to check morality and between cultures and religions, the results were the same. He even cites an experiment in a tribe in South America (with very little exposure to religion or western thought) and the results were the same: most were very moral.

Is morality programmed into us? Dawkins' argument is yes, it is.

He also cites in his book another book where the author researches the morality level between the 2 political parties in the USA. Strangely (or not) 75 percent of the high-crime cities in the US are "red" state cities. 

So, is religion the charging force in front of morality? Are people only moral because they have religion or they are afraid of some eternal punishment?

I really hope not. Like Dawkins, I have a naïve hope that we are moral before religion.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

One brief comment: Assuming that "red" states in the USA provides a valuable definition of what being Christ-like and moral is leaves much to be desired.

I'm sure all the "reds" in the States are great, surely lovely people. But once again, having part of a "proof" regarding religion or God a reference to the political system of the US make me wonder... and in particular it makes me question and doubt other possibly more reasonable parts of the "proof".

In addition I guess it goes without saying that once you've proven the non-existence of God, and still observe morality in the world, then morality must be independent of God or religion. And personally I'm not sure if there are many people who would argue that you cannot be moral while at the same time claim to be an atheist. But I might be wrong.

I had some more profound comments, but I've lost them. It's hard to concentrate while listening to lobby music drinking a cappuccino...

Greetings from Aberdeen,
Jake