From: pavenant@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za (Paul Avenant)
Subject: Religion and morals
Date: Mon, 12 Oct 1992 06:47:59 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Department, University of Pretoria

Received: From DOS-LAN/MAILQUEUE by charon2.up.ac.za
          via Charon 3.4 with IPX id 101.921008100023.352;
          08 Oct 92 10:00:50 +0200
To:           pavenant@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za (Paul Avenant),
              exukjb@exu.ericsson.se,
              wvandenh
From:         "Derrick Kourie"  <DKOURIE@dos-lan.cs.up.ac.za>
Date:         8 Oct 92 10:00:23 WET-2
Subject:      Re: morality and religion
X-mailer:     Pegasus Mail v2.3 (R3).

> --- Forwarded message follows ---
> From: exukjb@exu.ericsson.se (ken bell)
> Subject: morality and religion
> Date: 3 Oct 92 19:21:10 GMT
>


> (A) Moral action requires the incentives and guidances of religion
>     in order to provide the necessary motivation to be moral.
>
> (B) Morality actually depends on God's supreme moral will which is
>     determinitive of both the content and meaning of morality itself.
>
> Analysis:
>
> The existence of ethically responsible and morally sound skeptics and
> atheists straightway refutes (A).

I agree.

> And (B) leads straight to ethical
> absurdities, as many in this group have not tired of pointing out.  On (B),
> if God just willed that I torture innocent babies to death, his merely
> commanding this would make it ipso facto right!

The theist says:
    IF  (God wills X) THEN (X is moral)  ........(A)
The skeptic says:
    Absurd: Suppose X = (Torture innocent babies to death)
The theist says:
    So what! In that case both (God wills X) is false and (X is
    moral) is false.
    (A) becomes (False implies False) which has truth value true.
The skeptic says:
    Yes, but what if it *were* true that (God wills the torture of ..)
The theist says:
    If it were true, then such torture would be moral, but it isn't
    true.

This line of argumentation gets us nowhere.

> But God's or any being's
> merely willing this or that could not possibly make such an act right.

But why not?  That is precisely one of God's attributes.

> No
> doubt God or any morally good being would want others to do the right thing.
> But a persons'*wanting* others to do the right is not what *makes* it
> right,

For persons other than God, you are indeed correct. People can be
sincere (think that what they want/do is right) but immoral. God can
only want what is right. It is outside his(her) nature to want what
is wrong. To say "God wants what is wrong" is like saying "A square
is a circle."

> and the moral rightness of an action is something that the good
> person himself appreciates and is not something determined by his own moral
> will.

If this "proves" anything, it is only that God's goodness and moral
law is to be found in the hearts of all good people (I might even
say ALL people). Because we are created by God, it is not surprising
that we have a spark of the divine in us - an appreciation that
transcends reason of the natural law and of good and bad.

> Thus, in no sense does morality depend on religion.

Here I agree.  Religion is merely Man's frail attempt to come to
grips with "Ultimate Concerns" (I think this was Bultmann's phrase).
Any religion that imagines that it has circumscribed God is false,
but this is not to deny that some religions are closer to the mark
than others.


> If anything,
> religious belief depends on prior independent human standards of value
> and morality, for how are to decide whether a religion is true without
> comparing it with our own moral intuitions?
>

Yes indeed. You have to evaluate a religion in terms of your own
moral intuitions and you are morally bound to reject a religion when
you sincerely find it in conflict with these intuitions. From my
perspective, (from my starting dogma - if you like) your mind and
moral intuitions (conscience) are sparks of the divine and promptings
of the Spirit.  If, in your sincere understanding,  the face of God
that religions present to you is unacceptable, then morality demands
that you reject that God. You might then call yourself an agnostic
and say there may or may not be some kind of God, and I don't know
what he is like. To some extent, all honest people must sometimes be
in this state of mind - even if they give their loyalty to some or
other religion. Alternatively, you may decide to call yourself an
atheist, implying that God cannot possibly exist. To my mind this is
just as bigotted (?) a position as that taken by the know-all
fundamentalists.

But my problem with your position is this: You premise what you say
on "moral intuitions". How do you respond to the charge that these
are merely the vestiges of your Western Judea-Christian heritage. You
take you cue for what is right and wrong from your tradition.
Morality is a matter of sentiment (it feels good / right), rather
than of rationality. If your tradition had been some Central
Bongolian tribe, your moral intuitions might indeed dictate that it
is good to slaughter an innocent child to the deity every morning
before breakfast. You might *feel* this to be good, even if you
rejected the deity.

It still seems to me that if I were to reject God altogether as the
grounding for morality, then the *rational* position is to base
morality only on what is to MY advantage.  There would be no room for
altruism and martyrdom would be stupid rather than heroic.  The only
reason for postponing immediate gratification would be a calculation
that such a delay would improve later gratification.  The well-being
of others would only have relevance in so far as it affected MY well-
being. Honesty would be stupid, although it would be wise to keep up
an appearance of honesty.  The recent bumber sticker that I saw:
"Fuck the poor" would make emminent sense.  So what if my actions
cause others inconvenience or pain - as long as I get more pleasure
from my actions than the irrational discomfort I might feel from the
pain of the others. And ultimately, if I couldn't get enough self-
gratification from my corner of the world if my little pleasures
evoked the sense of Sartrian nausea, then suicide seems to me to be a
rational response.

To some extent, our post-Christian western world is increasingly run
on this rational moralilty. I would see the rise in divorce,
abortion, euthenasia, financial wheeling and dealing, political
opportunism, environmental irresponsibility, indifference to poverty
etc. are all based on this "as long as its OK for me" morality. It
seems to me to be the *logical* consequence of rejecting God as the
basis of morality.




      +---------------------------------------------------------+
      |  Derrick Kourie                  Phone: (012) 420-2504  |
      |  Computer Science                Fax:   (012)  43-6454  |
      |  Pretoria University                                    |
      +---------------------------------------------------------+
Newsgroups: alt.atheism,talk.origins