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In a manner of speaking, morality proceeds religion, because admiration is intrinsic to human nature, we are "esteeming" creatures, with consequent respect. This goes far beyond mere utility. We invent ceremonies to welcome the new born into our fold, and to honor the dead. We memorialize great deeds and the heroes who perform them in poetry and song, in monuments and the plastic arts. We create rituals for courtship, solemnize unions in matrimony, and turn rutting into romance, not because we abhor sex and its fruits, but because we consider it so important, and therefore to be treated with some delicacy. But we also have a stake in the belief that our esteem reflects the order of the cosmos, that what we deem to be important, including ourselves, is so, and not merely an imputation. Thus, we care if there are gods, and what their nature might be, and whether we have souls, or emerge from mud only to return. It is not that religion is crucial to the existence of morality, but it may be crucial to the sustenance of morale, the simple confidence that we are right to carry on, that we are not suckers........ |
