“The greatest tragedy in mankind's entire history may be
the hijacking of morality by religion.”
Arthur C Clarke
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Religion and morality go together like boiled beef and carrots. You often find them together but it is perfectly possible to have one without the other.
Many people have swallowed the idea that morality started with religion to such an extent that they cannot separate the two. I myself was under the impression that religion had a significant causative link to morality until quite recently when I came to see the truth.
Man is a primate. All primates have innate morality. A moral sense is vitally important to the efficient running of any society or group. There are no amoral primate groups anywhere. The Mafia have morals, baboons have codes. There are differences between the various groups and their codes of morality but all primate groups have some morals and standards of behaviour. Religion is also very common but it is not universal and it did not cause the codes or the instinct to observe them. These are facts that need to be clearly stated. Morality does not require religion.
In Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union millions of people were brought up during the middle decades of the twentieth century in a state that was thoroughly atheist and many of the households and communities within those states were also atheist. There was no collapse of morality. You were not more likely to be robbed, raped, murdered or cheated in Leningrad than you were in Manchester. Why? Why did people freed from the fear of divine retribution not suddenly start behaving like amoral animals? Because we are animals. We are political animals, animals that need to live within societies and feel respected by them.
Religion is not the bulwark of morality any more than the cockerel crowing if the cause of the dawn or the virgin sacrifices are the cause of the volcano keeping quiet. This trick has been perpetrated on people for centuries and people continue to fall for it. It is very reminiscent of the great Santa Claus conspiracy. The surest way to lose a job on television is to state clearly that there is no such person as Santa Claus. No adult believes in Santa Claus, but most are part of the conspiracy. We mustn't let children know that there is no Santa Claus because ... er, well, because. And we mustn't let the people, especially the poor, know there is no God because, well, because. We wouldn't want to face those consequences would we?
What is there to be afraid of in the truth that God is just as much an imaginary being as the bogeyman, the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy? None whatsoever. Morality in our species does not rest upon fear of God. We act morally because to do so makes us feel good about ourselves and makes us better friends and allies. Being good and moral is the right thing to do for your own selfish self interest. The best thing we can do as a society to make morality more widespread and more potent is to strip away all aspects of religion from it. Being good is the right thing to do because it simply is the right thing. We as a species have an innate sense of morality just as we have an innate ability to learn language. We need it. We are political animals. We have an innate sense of what is or is not fair. We need respect and the esteem of our neighbours, friends and colleagues. This makes us behave morally.
Our morality breaks down with anonymity. It is no surprise that the biggest cities in the world have the most selfish drivers. If you drive in a small town in Kansas you see people being polite and well mannered not because they fear the wrath of God but simply because in small communities people expect to interact again with you at another time. In contrast in New York, Hong Kong or Rome the rule of the road is to curse and never trust the other driver.
The way to keep morality and lose the encumbrances of religion is to promote morality in and of itself. We as a species know what morality is and we recognize moral behaviour when we see it. We are naturally moral because we have developed complex instincts to help us in social situations. These instincts work as long as we allow them instead of burying them in external threats and admonishments. The ten commandments do not help us discover ultimate morality. We all know it when we see it. The way to get people to behave in a moral way is to trust them, to integrate them and to allow them to develop fully as individuals in a caring society. People will only act as amoral criminals if they fall into a criminal subculture, are mentally deficient in morality (rare conditions do exist that cause these problems) or are in a situation in which crime really does pay in a way that can become a life choice.
However you cannot create a moral society with nothing but kindness. We also need something else, something deeply unfashionable but vital to the healthy running of any society: intolerance. We must promote intolerance of criminality and cheating. We as social animals naturally despise the cheat and the thief, but too many liberal bed-wetter types have been telling us that the thief only steals because of what we do to him. This line must be resisted and fought from both ends. We must both minimize the lure of cheating by ensuring that all can live without falling into crime and at the same time promote natural justice in the community. Criminals must be ostracized. But this is not enough. People who use the glamour of crime and immorality vicariously to achieve their legal business ends must also be shunned. Refuse to watch films that glamorize crime and violence. Refuse to buy music produced by violently antisocial people. Walk away from people who talk about such things. If you are introduced to somebody who makes their living from glorifying violence and crime wipe your hand and walk away. They might claim that they are just satisfying a demand, they are right, but we as individuals should see to it that we never add to that demand and do all we can to spurn those that do.
God cannot punish the wrongdoer or the man who sells his products with images of crime and violence but we can. How many crimes have been prevented by the fear of God? Do Christians never commit crime or sin? Do atheists spend all their days stealing from charity collection boxes, murdering strangers and sexually abusing children? There is no link between belief in the supernatural and God and morality. If the only reason a Christian can give for continued belief in his incredible theory is the idea that such a belief is a useful tool to keep the poor from falling into immorality then his religion is morally bankrupt. The only purpose I can see in religion is as a way to catch the attention in order to reinforce the messages of the natural morality that we as a species are already responding to. It cannot be beyond the wit of our species to come up with other ways to spread lessons of morality than this. Surely the poor and the dangerous will be inclined to listen more clearly if we treat them as adults rather than simply threatening them with the bogeyman again?
http://mwillett.org/atheism/relmor.htm
“When I was a kid, I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord, in his wisdom, didn't work that way. So I just stole one and asked him to forgive me.”
Emo Phillips
