DOES RELIGION & BELIEF DEFINE MORALITY? NO.
http://www.mukto-mona.com/Articles/morality_and_belief.htm#aparthib
It is the common claim of religious believers that sense of right and wrong can only come from religion/God/spirituality and that anyone secular is devoid of any moral virtue. So by their criterion it follows that scientists/philosophers who hold secular beliefs or are atheists have no virtue at all and virtues are monopoly of religious believers only. It must be emphasized that Theists declare it as a rule that "Morality cannot be enforced/defined without religion" whereas Humanists/ rationalists never declare it as rule that "morality can ONLY be defined/enforced WITHOUT religion.
They only affirm that morality is POSSIBLE independent of religion, and that immorality is also possible WITH religion. So even if there exists immorality among some atheists or some secular society that does not change the fact that morality in some other non-religious society/individual can also and do exist, and similarly even if there exists morality in some religious society/ individual that does not change the fact that immorality in another religious individual/society can and do exist despite religion. Let me summarize my points as follows:
1. One exception breaks a rule.
2. Theists declare it as a rule that "Morality cannot be enforced/defined
without God of the religion"
3. There are moral societies (e.g societies based on Buddhism) and
individuals not based on God of the religion. Thus rule 2 is broken.
First let me state an incontrovertible fact - that there are theists who commit immoral acts and there are conscientious non theists who behave morally. This fact already shows a basic weakness of the view that religion has monopoly on morality. Theists might say that "if a person was a TRUE follower of religious belief, then he/ she would not have committed any immoral act and the fact that a "theist" committed an immoral act only proves that his/her conviction in religion is not strong or sincere." Whether or not they were true believers in religion the fact still remains that they were not "non-theists". And since there are "non-theists" who also behave morally so the immediate conclusion is that religious belief is not a necessary prerequisite for being moral. There are those who say "Only strict adherence to religious injunctions/scriptures can guarantee a peaceful society, free from crime, oppression, injustice etc. And any violent and extreme acts of radical followers of the religion is discounted by saying that they are not true followers of religion and true followers of religion would never have engaged in such acts.
The flaw in these assertions is that it can be simply argued that strict adherence to the law of the land is adequate to ensure peace. And if everyone followed the rule of law then that would suffice to make a society free from crime and injustice. The fact that a strict theocratic state has less crime is not because people are so conscientious through deep belief in the true spirit of religion that they refrain from wrong doings but because severe punishments by the theocratic state machinery are enforced and serve as powerful deterrents. In other words it is not primarily a fear of God that helps to prevent crime in a theocratic state, but a fear of human. Had there been any slack in the enforcement of law or if left to the people's religious conscience then those societies would be full of crimes and all sorts of immoral acts.
The theocratic system of laws did not succeed in eliminating the evil instincts in the heart of the followers, only succeeded in putting a lid on it with the potential for that lid to rupture any time as is sometimes reported in those societies. On the other hand those secular non- theocratic states who have managed to enforce the civil laws effectively also are free from crimes, example is Singapore, communist China ( Before the openness). In fact it is ironically true that, autocracy in any form helps to enforce law in any society. Since theocracy is a form of autocracy it tends to give one an illusion that it is religion that is ensuring the peace in the society, where in fact it is the draconian enforcement by humans of a (theocratic) authoritarian rule which which is responsible.
If one thinks carefully It will be evident that religious injunctions actually REAFFIRM what humans already intuitively know to be wrong or right through the faculty of conscience. CONSCIENCE is as much a part of inherent human instinct like any other . Like all human instincts it is rooted in the evolutionary biology of human over millions of years. Natural selection (acting on the profound laws of Physics over a long span of time) gives rise to those human instincts that help in its survival and propagation as a species. In more modern biological language, conscience is the inhibiting effect of our cerebral cortex on the primitive impulses coming from our reptilian part of the brain ( limbic system). It has been observed quite extensively by psychologists and neurologists that a serious damage to the cerebral cortex impairs the judgment faculty of humans and a conscientious person can become less conscientious while still functioning normally otherwise.
These primitive instincts are also biologically rooted and are traced to the biological imperatives of aggression, dominance, mating and propagation needed for evolutionary survival. For lower animals only these baser instincts are necessary for their survival and they didn't evolve conscience (no highly developed cerebral cortex). Only humans evolved this faculty as evolution "chose" (randomly of course) humans to the most evolved species. Human species has the highest Encephalization Quotient (E.Q = 7) which is a measure of how large the brain is compared to the size that is required for a basic survivial. Humans are not limited to the basic survivial impulses of lower animals, but have memory, experience and knowledge all aquired through the extra amount of brain (mostly cerebral cortex) that helps him to judge his surroundings and make informed decisions, sometimes in contradiction to the basic urges.
So the assertion that morality is not rooted genetically is also not in accord with the contemporary view of biology. Our instinct of conscience developed long before the the relatively recent arrival (in evolutionary terms) of revealed religions, so stating that conscience (or sense of right and wrong) is a result of God's revelation is an anachronism. The revealed religions of Islam and Christianity came long after the Greeks already were familiar with and discussing the concepts of morality. All aspects of morality that religion preaches had been taught by Confucius, Buddha, and other ancient sages in different civilizations independent of divine preaching of morality. Besides it contradicts simple common sense that if indeed God was the only source of morality then the complexity of human brain and its evolution and its well known role in judgment faculty would be totally redundant and unnecessary. After all God could just instill that faculty without this unnecessary structural complications in our brain which is known to affect our judgement faculty and hence sense of morality.
We can see there is an inherent fallacy in basing right and wrong on a divine entity. For example the usual explanation of religion declaring some action "X" as wrong (X= rape/stealing/murder etc) is that God, as the source of all righteousness cannot allow such an evil act "X" to be committed. Why is "X" evil? Here a satisfactory answer is not possible. Any attempt to explain why "X" is evil will defeat the premise that an evil is what God decrees as evil. So according to the religious believers, ultimately an evil is what God "decides" to be evil (criterion for such decision is supposedly unknown to human). There is no human criterion that can explain why something is evil. In other words to be consistent they have to admit they cannot explain in human terms why rape/murder/theft etc are evil other than saying that it is only evil because it is declared so by God.
By the same token if these acts were allowed and declared moral then to be consistent a blind follower of revelations could not have challenged that and accepted them blindly to be moral as declared by God, he/ she would not need any justification/explanation in human terms as to why these acts are allowed or declared moral. But in reality if an apologist of religion is asked as to why these "evils" are not allowed, invariably the answer will be "God can never allow such acts since they are evil". So unwittingly they engage in circular reasoning and betray their own instinctive human perception of right and wrong in defending why these acts are not allowed by God. if things are neither right nor wrong independently of God's revelations, then God cannot choose one thing over another because it is right.
An apologist might argue, for example, that God would never condone such killing, raping, stealing, and torturing, for God is all good. But if goodness is a defining attribute of God, then God cannot be used to define goodness, for, in that case, the definition would be circular - the concept being defined would be doing the defining - and such a definition would be useless. Hence at the root of all these conceptual contradictions is the deeply rooted human instinctive notion of right and wrong (conscience) independent of God's revelation which a theist invariably appeals to when arguing about morality and its divineness as we saw above. So this instinctive notion of morality must be more fundamental and precede any belief in revelations and thus debunks the claim of theists that concept of morality can only be rooted in religion.
Religion seems to provide a deterrent by the threat of punishment in hell and reward of heaven to naive minds. But the same can be and is achieved in any civilized society by the civil laws. The reason a person with no strong conscience does not commit a rape in public is NOT because it is forbidden in religion BUT because he will be arrested immediately and thrown to jail or sent to death row. In old days, in some societies, laws and penal codes were not established or effectively enforced and integrated as part of Government/State machinery as it is now. So in those societies religious injunctions were the only deterrent against such uninhibited acts of "wrong" .
In societies where there were other human methods of checks and balances this concept of divine arbiter to settle morality was not relevant or necessary. For example a large population of the world are Buddhist society. Buddhism is based on Godless morality. Even before Buddhism the morality of ancient Chinese was based (and to a great extent is still based) on the teachings of Confucius which in turn is based on human values, not divine. Even the ancient Incas and Mayas had evolved a highly organized society without the help of a revealed religion. Good people do good because they want to do good - not because they will personally benefit from it or because someone has forced them to do it. People who do good solely for personal gain or to avoid personal harm are not the ideal good people.
Someone who saves a drowning child, for example, only because he was offered a reward or was physically threatened does not deserve much praise. Thus, if one's only reason for performing good actions is his/her desire to go to heaven or his/her fear of going to hell - if all his/her actions are motivated purely by self interest - then ideally it should not qualify him/her for heaven because he/she acted out of pure self-interest and hence not a good person worth the reward, since heaven is for truly good people, who would be selfless. Thus the the religious concept of heaven/hell and morality leads to a contradiction. Besides, the threat of divine punishment cannot impose a moral obligation, for might does not make right. Threats extort; they do not create a moral duty.
Thus, if our only reason for obeying God is the fear of punishment if we do not, then, from a moral point of view, God has no more claim to our allegiance than Hitler or Stalin. Morality then literally becomes an unquestioning compliance of divine commands.
As mentioned earlier religious believers assert that a secular/Godless person has no sense of virtue or right or wrong. Hence according to their views, followers of philosophies (Buddhism, Confucius, Shamanism, Shintoism, Bahai etc, none of which believes in God or divinity of any kind) do not have or are capable of forming the judgment of right or wrong. But in reality these people do indeed show sense of right and wrong. and are just as capable of private moral behavior as theists. Thus belief in a certain God does not seem to be a prerequisite. It is true that some universal moral standards are required for the proper functioning of society.
But it is incorrect to assume that God/ religion is the ONLY or BEST possible source of such standards. Early and medieval Philosophers such as Plato, Kant, John Stuart Mill, George Edward Moore, and John Rawls did make convincing arguments that it is possible to have a universal morality without God and we see this is true in practice in any societies not based on revealed religions. Morality/virtue etc is an evolving personal and group code of conduct that seem to reflect the most efficient way of maintaining personal and group stability and peace in a community of people with clash of interests and values. It is a product of the natural selection, through trial and error. After all, human species itself is a product of evolution via natural selection, so morality also has to be part of that natural selection. It is part of simply being human, whether or not one believes in a higher personal God of the religion or spirituality.
We should realize that the notion of right and wrong exist because humans are being with needs, and that human beings have proven themselves capable of devising and then abiding by their own rules independent of religious decrees ( As the examples I have cited earlier show), within which an individual or society can pursue their varied interests with differing values yet maintain general peace and stability, then there is no longer any need to posit any perceived higher moral authority. The Universal Declarations of Human Rights is one such example of the reflection of the common shared moral values of humanity.
Only when someone posits a law higher than what is already agreed to by humanity solely on the basis of common sense perception of what is good and effective for humanity, need any questions be raised --for it is only THEN that an explanation or justification of such a moral base is necessary. The burden of proof belongs on the one who steps outside the ordinary and common sense way in which morals are derived, not on the one who continues to keep his or her morals and values in conformity with that democratically established.
"Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."--
by Nobel Laureate physicist Steven Weinberg: |
