Morality Predates Religion

by hamilcarr 21 Replies latest jw friends

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  slimboyfat

  Actually I think there is a useful distinction to be made between morality and ethics. Religion produces a moral code. Behaving ethically on the other hand involves understanding that there is no preordained moral code to which we should rightly adhere, yet nevertheless facing the responsibility of choosing how we will behave toward one another.

  Recently I have enjoyed reading a book by Richard Rorty called Philosophy in the Mirror of Nature and he argues that the pursuit of truth for the past few thousand years has not secured definitive answers, so it is about time we started asking different questions. Instead of asking whether something is true or false, right or wrong, we may pursue the more fruitful question as to whether a viewpoint is useful, what the results of an action are, whether they are desirable.

  So in a sense you could say that there is indeed 'no morality' without religion, but that that may be no bad thing, and that facing the responsibility of choosing for ourselves how we will behave may actually produce better outcomes.
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  cyberjesus

  But isn't morality as we know it based on religion? How about adultery? or marriage? Why in so many cultures polygamy is normal moral behavior? My natural instincts as a man is to see an attractive woman as a possibly sexual partner but I dont have a religious moral system then nothing really prevents me to pursue her (not that i want to :-)

  I think morality IS based on religion but it should be based on human life preservation. But it isnt and as long as religion rules the world it will stay that way.
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  hamilcarr

  So in a sense you could say that there is indeed 'no morality' without religion

  Implicit ethics are still ethical.
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  Deputy Dog

  I'm with burn on this one. The bible teaches "Morality Predates Religion".
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  slimboyfat

  Implicit ethics are still ethical.

  I am saying ethics are morality are usefully distinguished. Ethics is about choosing how we will behave, whereas moral codes involve systems of control by religious or societal structures. If by implicit you mean innate then I don't think any particular code of morality is innate, yet the necessity to find a way in which to behave is obviously faced daily. Those who do not believe in any set moral code nevertheless are forced to make ethical choices. I would say ethics is only implicit or innate in the sense that living necessarily involves making choices about how to behave, which for someone who believes in a moral code is, I suspect, not saying very much.
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  quietlyleaving

  It seems to me that morality can be very intertwined with religion in the sense of passing judgements and condemnations. But then on the other hand there are ethics based religions that seek more to find a way to work in harmony with all life as well as with one's own life than with inducing guilt and violence.

  edit: I don't think morality predates religion
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  VoidEater

  "Morality" can be formulated in the abstract or the pragmatic without reference to the Divine. It's just easier to threaten people with Hell than reason with them.

  Good behavior can be related to herding instincts, which seem to be hardwired into us. If you prefer to think so, say God created that within our heart. Or that it evolved within us.
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  Narkissos

  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.

  Friedrich Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, "Skirmishes of an untimely man," § 5 (about G. Eliot).

  When the Christian crusaders in the Orient came across that unconquered Order of Assassins, that free-spirited order par excellence, whose lowest ranks lived a life of obedience of the sort no order of monks attained, then they received by some means or other a hint about that symbol and motto, which only the highest ranks kept as their secret, "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." . . . Well now, that was spiritual freedom. With that the very belief in truth was cancelled. . . Has a European, a Christian free spirit ever wandered by mistake into this proposition and its labyrinthine consequences? Has he come to know the Minotaur of this cavern from his own experience? . . . I doubt it. More that that: I know differently. Nothing is more immediately foreign to people set on one thing, these so-called "free spirits," than freedom and emancipation in this sense. In these matters they are more firmly bound, because they believe in the truth, as no one else does, firmly and unconditionally.

  Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, III, 24. (about post-Christian "free thought").

  "All things are lawful," but not all things are beneficial. "All things are lawful," but not all things build up. Do not seek your own advantage, but that of the other.

  Paul, 1 Corinthians 10:23f.
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  hamilcarr

  "Nothing is true. Everything is permitted." . . . Well now, that was spiritual freedom. With that the very belief in truth was cancelled. . .

  I see a humanist morality isn't truly free because it roams within the firm limits set by christianity, 'written by God in the logic and function of the universe'. How to find though a balance between a spiritually free society where 'nothing is true, everything is permitted' and a functional society? And, more urgent, how to communicate (using solid proof) that a free society doesn't lead to an immoral society?
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  Narkissos

  hamilcarr,

  Nietzsche of course was not a democrat (the whole context of the GM quotation is about the "free-thinking," liberal, anticlerical movement working toward democratic reforms in late 19th-century Europe). His illustration is that of a hierarchised order -- "nothing is true, everything is permitted" being the truth motto for the "chosen few" -- who, in Nietzschean fashion, would rather be the choosing few, those who dare to create their own values. To him the masses would still need being fed moral "truths" -- that is, lies. Whether the old religious ones or the new secular ones (e.g. "social contract).

  A more democratic approach would probably stress education as the way to grow from received values to creating values.

  But looking back, Paul's approach is very interesting. Only it is religious, although not legalist. It is functional because it is not self-centered; other-centered, if you allow me this oxymoron. From this perspective, the question might not be whether morality will survive religion, but just the opposite: can a religious education to overcoming self-centeredness survive morality as a sum of shoulds and shouldn'ts?