High Morals, Low Morals, No Morals?

by AlmostAtheist 17 Replies latest jw friends

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  funkyderek

  A comment by FunkyDerek really hit my like a lightning bolt. He said of a Christian's morals, "your morals are not high. They are among the basest, most nefarious morals I have ever encountered. They are founded, not on any understanding of human nature, or on concern for individuals or society, but on the mythology and law codes of ancient barbarians."

  Dave, I'm glad I could give you a different perspective on things. As this thread seems to have generated some interest, I'd like to expand on my original comments.

  It may seem strange to some that I consider those who unquestioningly follow the Bible to be immoral. After all, they don't steal, they don't murder, they don't lie, they will help those in need, all admirable traits. But stealing isn't wrong because God carved it on a rock three thousand years ago. Stealing is wrong because it means taking something of value that belongs to someone else. It means illegitimately depriving someone of the fruit of their labour. People who don't steal simply because the Bible prohibits it cannot rightly be called moral people. They will certainly have an appearance of morality, and will often behave like a very good approximation of a highly moral person. Isn't that enough, though? If everyone behaved like that, the world would be fine, right?

  The problem comes when the good advice and sensible laws are mixed up with all sorts of useless and dangerous beliefs. Eating pork (but not beef) is an abomination. Menstruating women are unclean, homosexuals should not be tolerated. No work should be done on a Saturday, on penalty of death. Obviously, if the Bible is the source of your morality, you may very well end up following some of its bad advice along with the good. How can you distinguish if you simply accept everything that's written in the Bible?

  The same is true no matter what book you use as a moral guide. With no understanding of what makes an action good or evil, those who blindly follow sacred texts are not equipped to deal with a changing world with conflicting rules or with people who follow a different sacred text - or none at all.

  Morals need to be based on reality - they need to acknowledge human nature and they need to provide principles by which we can make decisions. It's not enough to ask "What would Jesus do?" We need to ask "What should I do?" and we need to have a good way of answering that.
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  ButtLight

  I would have to say that since leaving the borg, my morals have dropped a bit. But as a jw, we had to have high morals, right? Now I just look at it as taking on "worldly morals". And Im liking it!
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  JH

  I'm a good worldy person, and a bad JW moral wise.

  I'm somewhere in the middle, just waiting to be tempted successfully.
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  LittleToe

  And that would be why I think it's totally ironic when people claim to be a Christian based on being "good". They completely miss the point.

  It's like saying to your wife "I love you!", buying her flowers, having passionate sex, all the romantic touches...

  ...but being dead inside.

  I'm sorry, but you can keep that kind of "Christianity". IMHO JWs have exactly that kind of Christianity. All actions (allegedly), all head knowledge (allegedly) but no love of Christ.

  And why do I say that high morals can be found in Christianity? Not because of rules, not because you don't want to do something for fear of "hurting God" (however you're supposed to do that to the big guy, I'm not quite sure), but simply because deep inside yourself you are inately moral, assuming you don't bury it. But I wouldn't claim that to be uniquely Christian...

  Just my 2p rant - night all, I'm going out to watch a movie.
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  greendawn

  I can't see what is wrong with Christian morals they are perfectly good, if only the whole of society would apply them. Up to now no society did fully apply them so we can't really condemn them as being damaging.
  
  What could be better than putting under firm control the base, instinctive part in the nature of man, in the whole of society?
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  AlmostAtheist

  I would have to say that since leaving the borg, my morals have dropped a bit. But as a jw, we had to have high morals, right?

  Well, see, that's what I thought, too. I didn't exactly CARE that they dropped, but I could see that they did.

  As SNG said, though, I became a better person almost the very day that I dropped my belief in God. I cared more, did more, showed more interest in my world and the people in it. I felt like I was a better person, even though my morals "dropped". But they didn't drop, they changed.

  You might not follow the same rules that JW's or other christians do, but does that mean your morals are "lower"?

  The question is, what gives Bible thumpers the right to call their morals "high" and anyone doing something else "low"? Just because fornication is described as a sin in the Bible, does that make obeying that law a "high" moral? Hell no. It's a biblical rule.

  A truly "high" moral is one that elevates a person and those around him, that adds to the collective happiness pool. Not stealing. Not damaging other people or their property. Helping those in need. Those are high morals.

  Not selling beer on Sunday? That's not a moral, that's a rule. And a silly one.

  Dave
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  Narkissos

  That reminded me of a few lines of Nietzsche in The Twilight of Idols (in a passage about G. Eliot, whence the references to the "English"):

  They are rid of the Christian God and now believe all the more firmly that they must cling to Christian morality. That is an English consistency; we do not wish to hold it against little moralistic females à la Eliot. In England one must rehabilitate oneself after every little emancipation from theology by showing in a veritably awe-inspiring manner what a moral fanatic one is. That is the penance they pay there.
  
  We others hold otherwise. When one gives up the Christian faith, one pulls the right to Christian morality out from under one's feet. This morality is by no means self-evident: this point has to be exhibited again and again, despite the English flatheads. Christianity is a system, a whole view of things thought out together. By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains in one's hands. Christianity presupposes that man does not know, cannot know, what is good for him, what evil: he believes in God, who alone knows it. Christian morality is a command; its origin is transcendent; it is beyond all criticism, all right to criticism; it has truth only if God is the truth--it stands and falls with faith in God.When the English actually believe that they know "intuitively" what is good and evil, when they therefore suppose that they no longer require Christianity as the guarantee of morality, we merely witness the effects of the dominion of the Christian value judgment and an expression of the strength and depth of this dominion: such that the origin of English morality has been forgotten, such that the very conditional character of its right to existence is no longer felt. For the English, morality is not yet a problem

  When I first read that, it struck me as very insightful. Quite commonly we hear "I am not a JW / Christian anymore but I am still a good person / I am an even better person now." This sounds like a sort of moral apology for disbelief, paradoxically confirming the religious link between belief and morality, and showing that morality has not be reconsidered as well as belief. Whether we enjoy better the person we become after dropping out of a belief system is one thing, whether we can claim to be better persons by standards suspiciously similar to those of our previous belief system is another.
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  jaffacake

  I think it depends what we mean by morals, I would not wish to see morality reduced to a set of rules.

  'It is for freedom that Christ set us free. Stand firm then, and do not let yourselves be burdened by a yoke of slavery' (Gal 5:1).

  I would especially not be burdened by rules of any religion, Christian or otherwise. The bible authors made rules bases on social convention of their day, but it is easy to test whether these rules conflict with the summing up of all rules 'love of neighbour'

  It seems the real test of 'morals' is to what extent we have build up human relationships of love, loyalty, respect and trust, of our neighbour ie all fellow humans - isn't that the law and the prophets. Such morality may be impossible for humans and never more than an aspiration.

  On the other hand, following rules about no sex outside of marriage, or anti-gay doctrines etc, which are not measured against the actual Christian yardstick are comparitvely easy, and also provide a warm self righteous glow.