“The greatest tragedy in mankind's
entire history may be
the hijacking of morality by religion.”
Arthur C Clarke 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?
“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 Philips |