I'll stir the pot a bit.
Where does morality come from? And in this debate I mean morality in its most easily agreed upon sense. Killing people is bad. Lying is bad. Beating children is bad. That sort of stuff. Forget the murky stuff like stem cell research.
And if your answer to that is given as The Ten Commandments (or even God), consider that lots of religious traditions don't include Moses. Lots of people arrived at those same determinations without those stone tablets. And even in that general tradition I think the Code of Hammurabi predates written versions of the Old Testament.
And maybe more interestingly, to me anyway, if your morality does in fact stem from the Old Testament is the reason for morality principally to avoid eternal damnation?
The snarky view wonders what you would do if you were freed from that threat.
Lots of us unbelievers live our lives with as much morality as the average gay, drug-using evangelical pastor. Often much more.
5 comments:
I've heard people claim that without the Bible, we would have never made it out of the Stone Age. Which is kind of a fun argument.
It is definitely does not reflect favorably upon the person who considers the 10 Commanments the only thing standing between their own decent behaviour and wanton, hate-filled acts of chaotic.
I think morality is a human construct; some sort of all general understanding of "the golden rule," to which we all (to varying degrees) aspire and in which we all (to varying degrees) succeed. We all have a general notion of connectedness. "We're all in this together."
The people that most consider only their own needs and the people guilty of the most egregious acts of "immorality" (the sane, secular definition) are almost always the same people
I agree that morality is more of a general agreement that certain things are not helpful to keep society purring along. From morality comes law...etc..etc...
I've had the notion recently that whatever perceived breakdown in our culture is in large part due to our lack of community. You can argue about whether increased sex and violence on TV is a sign of cultural collapse, but the sense that everyone should grab as much as they can for themselves AND live lives removed from the rest of society (siting home watching the tube) is definitely not helping our sense of togetherness.
This may be part of the source of my otherwise economic model of societal ills much documented elsewhere in this blog. A sense that everyone is on their own is part of that problem.
JFK asked us to consider what we could do for our country, rather than what our country could do for us.
Reagan asked if each of us individually was better off than we had been four years earlier.
One is a model of collective striving, the other is the beginning of a long slide to selfishness.
I don't know anything about Steve and where he is with religion, but as the Jesus follower in the group, The Bible is not preventing me from doing evil.
I would have to say that with the Bible out of the mix, I would still strive to be a good and helpful human.
I actually agree with much of what you guys have said about the common thread of goodness and humanity.
Meth, I agree that the lack of community is putting a huge strain on that common thread.
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