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God and the moral muddle
Q: Is there good without God? Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion? From where do you get your sense of good and evil, right and wrong?
The temptation to confuse morality and theology is strong. There's a mysterious quality to moral truths. Moral truths don't describe the way the world is, but rather the way it ought to be. So where did these mysterious, otherworldly truths come from? You can see the temptation to say that they must come from some mysterious otherworldly source, namely God. But, as Plato demonstrated at the very dawn of philosophy, adding the mystery of God just doesn't help at all in solving the mystery of morality. It's a classic case of the Fallacy of Passing the Buck.
The question Plato asked was this: what reason did God have for establishing the moral truths he did? Did he have a good reason for, say, choosing that giving alms to the poor is good, whereas genocide is not? If he did, then his good reason, whatever it is, provides the valid grounding for moral truths, and reference to God is redundant. And if he didn't have a good reason, then his choices are arbitrary--he could just as easily have gone the other way, making charity bad and genocide good--and we would have no reason to take his choices seriously.
But if invoking God doesn't help us out of the muddle, what does? The entire tradition of moral philosophy, reaching from Plato and Aristotle, to Kant, to contemporary philosophers, has done a great deal of the work in explaining how our human existence is grounded in a social context that has moral implications (to make a long complicated story ridiculously short). And these moral philosophers, as much as they might be accused of inhabiting an ivory tower, have had enormous effects. There has been a steady trickle-down effect from that ivory tower that has, slowly and painfully, succeeded in nudging our species towards greater moral refinement. (There have been other significant nudgers, too.)
Which is why when we go back and read the scriptural sources from which many would say all of morality derives, then even true believers have to interpret these sources in light of the greater ethical understanding that we've acquired over the millennia since they were written. After all, these sources present us with a God who actually did command his followers to slay their enemies to the point of genocide. They present us with a God who deemed slavery permissible and blasphemers and homosexuals unworthy of living. Many of the moral sentiments expressed in the Bible strike us, at face value, as primitive and shocking, which is why even true believers can't take them at face value (or at least one hopes they don't) but must resort to interpretation. In reading these sources so that they don't violate our evolved sense of morality, believers themselves demonstrate that this evolved sense has a purely human, not supernatural, basis.
By
Rebecca Goldstein
|
October 27, 2009; 4:48 PM ET
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Posted by: pjs1965 | November 1, 2009 7:32 PM
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Fortunately for the world, science has successfully undermined the simpleminded religions - the Abrahamic cults, mainly Christianity and Islam.
Christianity and Islam have had a good 2000 year run preying on ignorance and the ignorant. This ended for Christianity in Europe with the development of science. It is now looking for the ignorant and uneducated in Africa and South America.
Islam - a strange combination of ignorance and intolerance - has been picking the lowest lying fruit for a 1000 years as apparent in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Now is the time for science, logic, and deeper & truer spirituality - not supremacist, intolerant cults like Christianity and Islam that proselytize and force their views on others. This results in conflict, violence, and suffering.
Now is the time for Vedanta & Hinduism. After 1000 years of anti-Hindu propaganda, many are not prepared to hear the wisdom or absorb the deep & complex monistic philosophy which is consistent with science. Now is a good time to start; at least some will benefit.
A new age of rational spirituality is again arriving, and Hinduism and Vedanta will lead the way again.
Posted by: clearthinking1 | November 1, 2009 11:47 AM
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Hello paarsurrey,
thank you for your post. You tend to be a bit more inclusive and kind in your offerings. I appreciate that.
"But at least we can understand academically that the Revelation had been received from God Allah YHWH."
I do not know how you can make this assertion. I am clear that assumption is part and parcel to the mythology of the Abrahamic traditions, but it is in no way verifiable. It is all a matter of faith, which is to say that it is dogma that one chooses to accept without substantial fact backing it up.
"The lost part of the Bible or its ethical, moral and spiritual teachings can however be recovered/ modified or understood."
Modified is a good word, taken historically. More apt is interpreted. This we all do, to varying degrees.
Posted by: justillthennow | October 29, 2009 1:45 AM
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Hi friends
“The Bible cannot be taken literally”
We know that the Messengers Prophets of the Creator – God Allah YHWH, like Moses, Noah, Abraham and Jesus did receive Word of Revelation from Him. But unfortunately the Original Revelation has not been preserved literally and has been lost in the debris of time. We only get the glimpses of the Creator- God Allah YHWH’s Word. So definitely one does not get the true meaning and hence the true sense of it. I therefore agree that the Bible cannot be taken literally sometimes.
But at least we can understand academically that the Revelation had been received from God Allah YHWH. The lost part of the Bible or its ethical, moral and spiritual teachings can however be recovered/ modified or understood.
I love Jesus and Mary as mentioned in Quran.
Thanks
I am an Ahmadi peaceful Muslim
Posted by: paarsurrey | October 28, 2009 9:29 PM
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Which makes a good case for saying that any written word, or action or deed or judgment, for that matter, that comes into existence at a moment in time, (hey, they all do!), becomes a static thing, conceived of and carried out at one point of sociological, and conscious, evolution of that individual or collective.
This is true, as all organisms evolve. From another point of reference, all things are, at this moment or any given moment, in a state of not-fully-realized evolution. Each is learning and growing, and next week or next year will have a more fully matured perception.
Whether or not the Bible is considered by some as the Word of God may be a bit moot here. It was written by human hand, and so human mind, originating from a point in time and written with that understanding. Humanity has evolved, thankfully, from eras where genocide of the enemy was common practice. Now it is considered a "crime against humanity".
Appropriate.
The Bible cannot be taken literally, by one that has any regard for the fundamental process by which we as humans, and all of 'Creation' for that matter, better ourselves. Evolution. Not just the grand scheme of it's affect on a species, but even the small steps we make in our individual lives, and then the effect of change on society.
The Bible was written for a society whose consciousness and understanding was between 1900 and 3500 years back from this time, evolutionarily speaking.
Posted by: justillthennow | October 28, 2009 2:56 PM
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We can figure out right and wrong for ourselves. We don't need Santa Claus to do it for us.
At most I see God as an occasionally useful abstraction, but only an abstraction. The Bible does contain a few bits of wisdom if one can get through the noise and junk in it. It is no more God's word than any other book. Actually, I find "Meditations" by the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius to be a much more compact and better source of wisdom. Here you will find the emperor of Rome struggling with very human issues as we all do.