List Other Pages on Religion and Morals
"Absolute" morals are impossible, as no Human being can think objectively without personal opinion confusing his thinking. Moral people behave well whether or not their underlying beliefs are correct: Only those with dodgy morals require the reward of heaven, and the fear of the punishment of hell, to behave well. Christian morals and dogma have corrupted Western morals and hindered mankind in history. Morals need to be based on the humanistic values of love, compassion and reason, and are safest when they are protected from religious teachings.
Contents:
Subjective Opinions - common sense.
Every person who reads a long text will understand it differently, as each one of us is unique in character and experience of life. A person who reads a holy text will have to judge it, analize it and think through it and in the process every person observes a different set of moral rules.
Where text can appear to very definitely uphold one person's opinions there are others who are sure it does not. Christianity, Islam and other religions with sacred texts proceed to splinter as people interpret the texts in different ways. It is impossible for two people to read anything but the most basic sentence without them forming differing opinions of what the text implies.
Absolute Morals
Allah, Jehovah, God... most monotheistic gods are given "omniscient" status, they are all-knowing. Or at least very clever. As they are also the ones responsible for creating man kind, it is apparent that deities too realize that Human Beings can only interpret life subjectively, and that no text will mean the same thing for any two people.
Therefore any sacred text can only contain "guidelines" or pointers to moral codes of behaviour, and no actual absolutes. To try and write an absolute into a text that can only ever be interpreted subjectively is pointless, especially in theoretical matters such as morality, where scientific investigation is fruitless.
A moral absolute is a statement that is implied to be utterly correct, divine in nature. However, as all people are going to think of that moral in a different way, it is useless even speculating what they might be, and any such attempt to state it would be useless and result in a whole range of opinions - moral absolutes only apply to omniscient beings, for other beings they can only be pointers and recommendations.
Not moral by dogma
Simply obeying rules, tradition and dogmatic answers to moral questions do not make a person moral. Morality requires choices, and the more that a person relies on a "text book of morality" or dogmatic pre-laid rules, the less they are acting as a moral person. Obeying rules because you think you should is not the same as making moral choices, therefore at best such people are morally neutral, amoral.
Einstein.4
Theists have questionable motives
If I am threatened into behaving in a good manner then I am at best amoral, because I am not acting with free will. If you believe that a supreme god is going to punish you or deny you life if you misbehave, it is like being permanently threatened into behaving well. In addition, if you believe there is some great reward for behaving well, then your motives for good behavior are potentially more selfish. An atheist who does not believe in heaven and hell is potentially more moral, for he acts without these added factors. Most atheists who do not believe in divine judgement, and most theists who do, act moral. Some of both groups act consistently immorally. The claim that belief in God is essential or aids moral behavior is wrong, and any amusing theistic claim that they have "better" morals, despite acting under a reward and punishment system, is deeply questionable. Who is more moral? Those who act for the sake of goodness itself, or those who do good acts under the belief that failure to do so results in hell?
“The Christian emphasis on the individual soul has had a profound influence upon the ethics of Christian communities. It is a doctrine fundamentally akin to that of the Stoics, arising as theirs did in communities than could no longer cherish political hopes.
The natural impulse of the vigorous person of decent character is to attempt to do good, but if he is deprived of all political power and of all opportunity to influence events he will be deflected from his natural course and will decide that the important thing is to be good. This is what happened to the early Christians; it led to a conception of personal holiness as something quite independent of beneficent action, since holiness had to be something that could be achieved by people who were impotent in action. Social virtues came therefore to be excluded from Christian ethics. To this day conventional Christians think an adulterer more wicked than a politician who takes bribes, although the latter probably does a thousand times as much harm. The mediaeval conception of virtue, as one sees in their pictures, was of something wishy-washy, feeble, and sentimental. The most virtuous man was the man who retired from the world; the only men of action who were regarded as saints were those who wasted the lives and substance of their subjects in fighting the Turks, like St Louis. The Church would never regard a man as a saint because he reformed the finances or the criminal law, or the judiciary. Such mere contributions to human welfare would be regarded as of no importance. I do not believe there is a single saint in the whole calendar whose saintship is due to work of public utility. With this separation between the social and the moral person there went an increasing separation between soul and body, which has survived in Christian metaphysics and in the systems derived from Descartes.”
"Why I am not a Christian" by Bertrand Russell
Not only has the monotheistic system of ethics come to be based on non-Human and non-societal fantasy, but it is actively anti-Human and anti-societal. Theists believe our actions are sinful due to, in part, our lack of morals. Their morality is both an attempt to reconcile us with God and to improve our behavior.
"It is a self-deception on the part of philosophers and moralists to believe that in waging war on decadence they are already emerging from it. It is beyond their power to emerge from it: whatever they choose as their means, their deliverance, is itself just another expression of decadence -- they alter its expression, but they do not get rid of it. [...] the entire morality of improvement, Christianities' included, was a misunderstanding... The harshest daylight, rationality at all costs, life bright, cold, cautious, conscious, instinct-free, instinct-resistant: this itself was just an illness -- and definitely not a way back to 'virtue', 'health', happiness... To have to fight against the instincts -- this is the formula for decadence: so long as life is ascendant, happiness equals instinct.
Twilight Of The IdolsBy Nietzsche: "Twilight of the Idols", "The problem of socrates" paragraph 11
"To call the taming of an animal its 'improvement' is to our ears almost a joke. Anyone who knows what goes on in menageries will doubt that a beast is 'improved' there. It is weakened, it is made less harmful, it is turned into a diseased beast through the depressive emotion of fear, through pain, through wounding, through hunger. -- It is no different with the tamed human being whom the priest has 'improved'. In the early Middle Ages, when the church was in fact primarily a menagerie, people on all sides hinted down the finest examples of the 'blond beast' -- they 'improved' the noble Teutons, for example. But afterwards, what did such an 'improved' Teuton look like, once he had been tempted into the monastery? Like a caricature of a human being, like an abortion: he had become a 'sinner', he was stuck in a cage, he had been locked in between nothing but dreadful concepts... There he now lay, sick, wretched, malevolent towards himself; filled with hatred of the vital drives, filled with suspicion towards all that was still strong and happy. In short, a 'Christian'. [...] The church understood this: it ruined man, it weakened him -- but it claimed to have 'improved' him..."
[Lists Manu, Plato, Confucius, Jewish and Christian priests and concludes:]
all the means by which humanity was meant to have been made moral so far were fundamentally immoral.
By Nietzsche: "Twilight of the Idols", "The 'improvers' of Humanity" paragraph 2, 5
Viscount Samuel (1870-1963), British statesman and philosopher, high commissioner for Palestine (1920-5) and home secretary (1916, 1931). Wrote "Philosophy and the Ordinary Man" in 1932
Theist morality is given justification on the basis of their beliefs. But reasonable thought, good intentions and good character all produce the same morals, and produce them in a more fluid, sensible way. What we base on myth, religion and stasis becomes stagnant, legalistic and stone: What we base on love and reason is a superior form of morality to what we derive from religion. As Viscount Samuel notes, if we base our morals on religion, sooner of later the foundation will be lost. In addition to that, it is misguided to base morals on religion in order to claim that they are unchanging as religious morality changes over time just as secular morality does, the only difference is that non-religious folk admit the change and short-sighted religious folk don't admit it. Secular morality is more sensible and honest.
History shows us the mistakes and errors, sometimes causing hundreds of years of oppression and torture such as during the dark ages, of allowing religious matters to rule over areas of morality. It should remain a secular area: The theologians should tell us their opinions of what god wants, but never be given power to enforce a theocracy of morals or to coerce others into acting in the way they want. It always leads to primitive savagery when religious morality goes unquestioned. Secular and religious philosophies, when given ultimate strength, as in Communism or Religious Rule, become inherently corrupt and have always led to genocide.
This question was summarized neatly by an emailer;
I noticed some of your arguments against theism and the thought struck me that you seem to use the words, right, wrong, good, evil, etc. a lot. Do you think it is possible to have any reason to use those words, at least with any meaning, if Christianity is not true? I mean, how can there be anything good or evil, if there is no one to define those terms. If there isn't any ultimate authority, why should there be any standards at all?I'm not saying good and bad don't exist, I think they do, but how can they exist in a world where there is no God? Or why would anyone care whether there were or not? If there is no God then what I say is good is good, because I'm the ultimate authority.
The answers are various and simple. The arguments on this page show that God and morality are philosophically different, logically they cannot be inherently tied. But the complexities and formal arguments required to state it properly are beyond most casual enquirers. So, more rhetorical answers are often needed in rhetorical, non-specialist conversations.
Is there right and wrong "if Christianity is not true"
Firstly, most people do not assume that Christianity has to be true in order for morality to be meaningful. Buddhists, Muslims, Pagans, Atheists, etc, all have moral systems based on what they believe to be true. It is only the Christian that thinks that morality requires Christian theology. Secondly, a Muslim could, and very often does, say "If not for the Koran as inspired by Allah, we would have no morals". It's just the same as Christian assumption about morals. All people have various ways of justifying and arriving at their morals. If a Christian is too ignorant to imagine that other people also have morals, then they are lacking compassion, empathy and common-sense.
If there isn't any ultimate authority, why should there be any standards at all?
Well there are lots of standards based on lots of things. Some of them are based on theistic assumptions about an ultimate authority but ultimately authority is not required for moral beliefs. For example, Buddhism is the most moral religion known, in both its careful philosophies on society and its behaviour world-wide, yet in Buddhism morality is not based on any gods, but on a system of cause and affect. Christians base their moral assumptions on the reality they ascribe to their God, Muslims say that their own morals are derived from Allah, God, too. Atheists say their morality is derived from common sense and good nature. All these people have standards and morals based on various things; it is not right to say that if one of these things wasn't true, other people would suddenly lose their morals.
If a person has poor morals:
If a person has good morals:
If a person has dodgy morals:
It is only people with dodgy morals who need their belief system in order to behave well. It is better to teach such people the values of behaving well through instruction, example and society, not through indoctrinal/intellectual persuasion. It is better to teach and act on values and morals that are derived from common sense and humanism, rather than those from volatile religions. To tie morality in with religious beliefs is dangerous; morals are safer and sounder when they are separated from religion.
“If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would 'commit robbery, rape, and murder', you reveal yourself as an immoral person [...]. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good.”
"The God Delusion" by Prof. Richard Dawkins, 227
Everybody defines 'good' and 'evil' according to their own beliefs. People do this whether or not their beliefs are actually correct:
"The God Delusion" by
Prof. Richard Dawkins, p227
In all three cases, people believe that their morals are "better" than non-believers. In two of the above cases, though, the people are not willing to accept compromise, development or guidance. The only ones willing to truly behave in a socially moral way are those who are adaptable, basing their morality on love and reason, such as humanists. Theists who believe that their morals are borne of an "ultimate authority" will pursue their morals viciously and uncompromisingly, but these people still do not know which of their morals are "theirs" and which ones, if any, are gods'. The only difference between the theist and atheist positions therefore is that the atheist is less arrogant, more humble, more compromising and makes less ignorant assumptions about morals, whereas theists are frequently self-serving and deluded.
List all the pages on morals, god and religion
Dawkins, Prof. Richard
"The God Delusion" (2006 hardback). Published by Bantam Press, Transworld Publishers, Uxbridge Road, London, UK.
Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844-1900)
"Twilight of the Idols" (1998). Oxford World Classics translation by Duncan Large 1998. [About Nietzsche].
Russell, Bertrand
"Why I am not a Christian" (1957). Quotes from Fourth Impression of 1967 edition, 1971, Unwin Books.
By Vexen Crabtree 1999 May 05
