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THE IMMORALITY OF RELIGIOUS MORALITY
by JON NELSON
Non-believers, by contrast, recognize that morality is based on human needs. Thus, morality benefits humans rather than serves an imaginary god.
Ethics are grounded in our basic needs as humans; there is nothing mysterious or transcendent about them. Indeed, the introduction of mystical elements into any ethical system tends to corrupt the system, since it takes morality away from the human realm, where it is needed, and places it in an imaginary supernatural realm where, one would think, an all-powerful deity would be able to take care of himself and not need our assistance.
The religious approach to ethics has had devastating consequences, for as soon as mysticism mixes with morality, the door is opened for a flood of competing ideologies, none of them based on empirical validation, and all of them warring with one another.
The fundamental focal point in any religious moral code is an indefinable dream world that always reflects the beliefs and superstitions of those who devised the code. Such a system has no basis in observable facts and thus cannot be verified; it must be accepted on faith. Conversely, a true system of morality has a value system based on human needs, meaning on reality and the vicissitudes of life. It is from the fact that we are alive that we derive our fundamental value judgements: whatever promotes and supports life and its enjoyment is good, while anything that threatens it is bad. We do not need a supernatural deity or an ancient holy book to determine this.
Of all the animals on Earth, we humans are the only ones that use reason as our means of survival, and survival depends not only on a wide range of perceptions (characteristic of lower-level animals), but on our ability to conceptualize as well. Humans alone have moved beyond survival by instinct. We simply have no choice but to use our reason if we want to survive. Survival by instinct alone could only come about through a regression in human evolution. It would mean forgoing our intellect and trying to adjust ourselves to the givens of the natural world. Our survival would depend on the whims of nature, and we would soon perish. Such a regression, even if possible, would serve no purpose.
Yet religion offers us little hope for anything but moral retrogression. It advocates a return to the days when mysticism prevailed over logic and morality was defined according to the dictates of whatever cult happened to be the most powerful in any given location. To insist that we return to the moral standards of ancient religion is a call for the return to barbarism. For example, a return to the strict law code of the Old Testament would mean enforcing the death penalty for adulterers, homosexuals, and countless other people.
Every advancement we have made, and every accouterment we now enjoy has come about through the use of our reason. Faith has never moved a mountain, but human brain power and technology can. We advance through a process of intellectual accretion. Reason is, in fact, the faculty that defines us as being human. To insist that reason is limited and that there are other methods (meaning faith) of acquiring knowledge is to reject the efficacy of reason simply because it does not allow us to treat flights of the imagination as tangible realities. The person advancing such a notion is not a person comfortable with reality and seeks an escape from it. In order to escape the sometimes discomforting facts of reality and contemporary living, such people must circumvent reason and introduce a non-life value in its place.
It is not a coincidence that the person of faith arrives at totally different conclusions about the nature of reality than does the person who relies solely on reason. This is because faith is arbitrary and subjective; the believer wants to believe in a deity and interprets everything in light of this desire. There are no objective standards underlying faith; the person of faith relies on desire and intuition rather than empirical validation. Thus faith, when objectively analyzed, amounts to little more than emotionalism. Emotions are the motivational factors behind the thought processes and actions undertaken by the believer; they take their emotions as primary facts, not to be questioned or examined. With no objective standards for defining truth, each believer interprets truth in their own way. Accordingly, each will also interpret morality in their own way.
However, this raises all kinds of problems. If morality
is purely subjective, being definable solely by the prejudices and capriciousness
of each individual (and/or of their church), then by what means are we
able to determine right from wrong? Clearly, without a foundation in observable
facts, morality becomes totally subjective and totally meaningless.
This is particularly ironic given the fact that so
many religious fundamentalists today decry moral relativism and demand
an absolute standard for moral behavior, which, not coincidentally, always
seems to dovetail with their own particular religious views. It is religions
that are based on the purely subjective interpretations of reality. If
societys degeneration is due to moral relativism, then religion is the
cause, not the solution.
Traditional religious philosophy holds that the concepts of good and evil and of all other value judgements are realities (even entities, according to Platonist thought, to which Western religions owe so much) in and of themselves. Good and evil therefore, according to this view, exist independently of human beings. In other words, something may be either good or evil without having to be good or evil for anyone or anything.
The evil of this view should be apparent, since it takes morality out of the human sphere, where it is needed, and places it in an unknown, mysterious other realm. According to this viewpoint, the only way of acquiring knowledge of good and evil is through mystical insight or revelation. Such knowledge, it is maintained, cannot be acquired through reason. Once they have accepted the ideas of good and evil as having origins in a non-human source, they sever their allegiance to any rational conceptualization of values. At the most foundational level (the level at which the worlds various "holy books" were written), morality is divorced from human needs in this life and placed instead in an imaginary next life.
Herein lies the prescription for disaster. Since all religions promote their own value systems, all of them based on subjective moral absolutes, there is no way to resolve the conflicts that inevitably arise between them except by a show of force. It should therefore come as no surprise that the history of religion has largely been a history of war.
In addition, by rejecting reason as the only foundation for morality, fundamentalist religionists also reject any knowledge that contradicts what their emotions tell them. The resulting anti-intellectual attitude is at the heart of every religious system and permeates every "holy" book. The Bibles fable recounting Eves sin of eating of the tree of knowledge is a perfect illustration of religions animosity toward the mind and independent thought.
To reiterate, there is nothing mysterious about morality. We do not need to look to thousand-year-old texts to find out what it means. The person who develops a healthy self-esteem, a passion for learning, and compassion for fellow human beings is well on the way to being a moral person. Contrast this with the Bibles view of humanity as being innately depraved and with the biblical fundamentalists view that only this book, with its primitive system of rewards and punishments, can hold society together. Given this view, religions bloody history becomes understandable, if inexcusable. Much of the decay of modern society also becomes understandable when one recognizes the unquestioning acceptance of religion as the foundation for morality throughout the world.
The moral creeds of religion are demonstrably harmful to human needs. Asceticism benefits no one, least of all the ascetic who must give up all the pleasures of life in the futile pursuit of a higher morality. Literal acceptance of any holy book gives one a false view of reality and damages ones self-esteem. On the societal level, it pits one group of believers against all others, a sure prescription for warfare.
Looking to religion for moral guidance is like looking to a witch doctor to cure an illness. If our species is to survive, we must remove ourselves from the self-induced mental torture chamber that is religion.