Morality is a sense of what INCREASES THE VALUE OF LIFE by diminishing the harm we may do to ourselves and others.No group or society allows harm to its members anyway, so, group ethics create a strong sense of what is okay and what is not.
Outside of normal and acceptable behavior, religious groups may take a more absolute view of things. Religions such as Jehovah's Witnesses may even resort to drastic absolutes described in terms of MORALITY which pit God's awesome power to punish and destroy against humanity itself.
Instead of concentrating on upbuilding the human social order and improving family well-being and betterment, Jehovah's Witnesses
have warped the very nature and definition of MORALITY into a Cosmic horror story ending in bloodletting and chaos.
This Watchtower morality tale extends into lists of do's and dont's required of every member (or they face dire consequences.)
The Watchtower Society induces "morality" in this manner.
1.Failure to allow your doctor to administer life-sustaining procedures because of a mind-control morality: the opposite of actual morality.
2.Refusing to get a better education for yourself or your children decreases the good of a life well-lived and is the opposite of actual morality.
Any religious rule which induces a family to decrease its quality of life is clearly morally repugnant.
3.Carrying religious propaganda to your neighbors and strangers that contains arbitrary rules of behavior is immoral and unethical.
Why? You bind them to a life of servitude to capricious values that change according to human error. You instill a sense of fear and anxiety about the future which decreases their quality of life. In effect, you poison their sense of a good life well-lived.
Why would a religion like Jehovah's Witnesses go to such lengths to pressure its members to submit to binding rules of religious morality?
There is only one possible answer.
The fastest and most efficient means of controlling others is FEAR. Fear of the Absolute creates Absolute Fear.
How does this work?
When you are dealing with invisible forces of an immeasurable magnitude you cannot actually grasp what you are dealing with.
A tornado or hurricane or typhoon or volcanic eruption is overwhelming and devastating. The destructive path is insuperable.
Similarly, the wrath of an angry Deity is not anything a frightened human can hide from, dissuade by argument or appease by sacrifice or promises.
The Absoluteness of Consequence is a very effective tool of CONTROL! Rational thought is replaced by a binding fear: DO THIS OR DIE!
Primitive societies quickly learned how to control others by fear alone rather than argument, debate, censure or persuasion.
Tribal Authority claimed representatives who spoke for DEITY!
Do THIS or else.
Don't do THAT or else......DEITY SAYS SO!
The more horrifying the promised consequence or punishment the greater the fear engendered.
Just in case there were those who did not endorse belief in invisible Deity or afterlife punishments, the Tribal Authority who spoke for God authorized stinging punishments for the here and now!
Humiliation, ostracism, lashing, fines, slavery, stoning, crucifixion--the list is practically endless.
Among the refined and civilized people of Athens in the the days of Socrates, public trials were held where the accused could answer and explain their actions and receive a sentence according to local law. Socrates himself was sentenced to drink poison for his irreverence and his efforts in misleading the Youth and his impiety.
In Christian history there have been severe crackdowns on free thinking, personal choice and unorthodox belief in the form of Inquisitions and torture, hangings and drownings and excommunications and banishment. All in the strenuous effort to ENFORCE MIND CONTROL.
In modern times, Christianity adopts the Ten Commandments and the preachment of Jesus and admonitions of Paul as its Morality.
At the extreme, women are to be in subjection to men in violation of their personal rights and self-betterment. Children are insulated from ordinary society by homeschooling to enforce peculiar views of "science" and morality which excludes uncomfortable facts.
In the early days of America the Pilgrims might hang a man or woman who failed to attend Sunday services or banish them to the wilderness and certain death.
Binding belief by drastic fear of consequence has been the mainstay of religious indoctrination and authority.
Among Catholic hierarchy and Jehovah's Witness elders morality can be blurred into darkness and chaos.
Cover ups and containment have often put the interests of the Organization above the harm done to the innocent in cases of child molestation.
Kingdom Halls may operate in an insular and arbitrary manner with summary Authoritarian pronouncements of silence or disfellowshipping.
The Question now becomes clear:
Why do we need the rules of a Group Authority to give us our sense of what is MORAL?
The answer is even clearer. We do not.
What is practical and beneficial trumps what is authoritarian or invisibly mandated!
Value in life extends benefits outside of fear and applies here and now for ourselves and our family and society itself. Moral values improve life.
A person who leaves a group such as Jehovah's Witnesses is outside the arbitrary absolutes of self-imposed moral authority.
An EX-JW can relax their sense of doom and retribution at the hands of an Angry and Violent God.
Once outside the Kingdom Hall and away from the gloomy mind-control efforts of the self-authoritarian regime of the Governing Body
a former member can experience complete Freedom from FEAR itself!
Where does an EX-Jehovah's Witness turn for MORALS and ethical instruction?
The answer is simple and devoid of any connections to an absolute or invisible mystical or supernatural source.
RIGHT and WRONG become PRACTICAL once more!
You still can't harm others.
You still won't get away with mistreating your family, friends or other group.
You can't get by with stealing or lying or other such behaviors because no group will tolerate it.
Every day in every dealing with people your rule of life is practical and easily understood: "I won't do what I don't want done".
No Governing Body and no Judicial Committee can give you better or more transcendent morality than that!
We are FREE from the slavery to fear and Divine Consequences. Our choices become practical and from the heart because we CHOOSE THEM; they aren't forced upon us with resentment and doomsday attached.
FREEDOM brings personal choice.
SLAVERY brings enslavement to lists of rules.
The best standard of Morality is a good life well-lived without harm to others.
Any action which violates this harmless self-betterment is immoral and outside the values of life.
The Watchtower religion has an awful lot to answer for. It devalues life and diminishes the quality of society. How?
1. Lowers educational standards
2.No asset building for retirement or health emergencies
3.Does not build an infrastructure of health clinics, hospitals, universities, charities or endowments for children.
4.Creates unnecessary divisions in families, schools and society by demanding its members remove themselves from social
celebrations of bonding such as birthdays, Christmas, holidays, school activities.
5.Forces members into political inactivity at a grass roots level which might improve community standards.
6.Compels ostracism among family members destroying the fabric of society itself.
7.Creates a hermetic and insular fear of outside contact, black and white thinking and unnatural loyalty to a small group of men weilding absolute authority.
If this is MORAL we can live without it!
JEHOVAH'S WITNESS "MORALITY" IS NO MORALITY AT ALL!!
Terry Walstrom