Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

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Cherryj
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Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Cherryj »

There is nothing remarkable about the wisdom the bible contains even when it does get basic morality right, which isn’t very often: not committing murder, theft, lying, etc. - these are the very low-hanging fruit of basic human kindness. Every ancient code of law, moral fable and myth manages to get this right as well, both in cultures that are older than the Israelites and unconnected to the Israelites. What the bible doesn’t do a good job with is explaining the tough stuff: how should we treat our slaves and should we have them at all? The bible advocates beating one’s slaves, but not enough to actually kill them. How should we treat women – are they our equals, near equals, chattel property or near chattel property? The bible consistently comes down on the “chattel property” side of the spectrum, in contrast to other ancient cultures where the status of women was higher, and in some cases such as ancient Sumeria and Minoan civilization, much higher. How should we treat people who are different from ourselves such as homosexuals? The bible is unequivocally pro-murder where homosexuality is concerned. How should we treat our neighbors? For a culture that supposedly has a direct line to God Almighty, the Israelites have historically done a very poor job of getting along with their neighbors, often killing them according to the Israelites own biblical traditions. If your religion has to have apologists who make excuses for your god ordering the massacre of children, there’s a good chance your religion is a lie, and the bible is full of god killing children or supposedly ordering it done (Numbers 5:11-21, 2 Kings 15:16, 1 Samuel 15:3, Psalms 137:8-9, Exodus 11:5, etc.). If your religion's apologists have to quote other bible verses in order to justify such wicked behavior, chances are they’re rationalizing and not being rational.

The situation doesn’t improve when we get to the new testament; the moral highlight of the new testament, the absolute best it achieves, is the Golden Rule. Yet we do not need god to explain from where the Golden Rule originated. In the ancient Middle East, the Golden Rule dates back to at least 1780 BCE with the principle of Lex talionis found in the Code of Hammurabi and, more empathetically, in the "eye for a fine" compensation principle found in the code of Ur-Nammu, dating to circa 2000 BCE. The Golden Rule is also found in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, India, China, etc. In religious form, the Golden Rule is first found in Buddhism, dating to 563 BCE, and Hinduism, dating to approximately 1000 BCE. Even in Jewish culture, the Golden Rule dates to at least 50 BCE with the teachings of Rabbi Simeon ben Hillel the Elder. Some versions of the Golden Rule are far more eloquent and insightful that that of Jesus: treat others not as you would wish to be treated, but how they would wish to be treated. The deepest, most profound moral teaching that Jesus ever supposedly preached was plagiarised from earlier and better sources.

When one understands that the bible is not the source for human morality, law and ethics, the bible is left with nothing more than an unsupported and extraordinary claim for the redemption of a fall that never occurred. We know that the fall never occurred because there is overwhelming evidence of humanity dating back approximately 200,000 years, having evolved from earlier human ancestors. The bible gets basic facts of science wrong – geology, biology, cosmology – leaving it an unreliable witness to relate a legendary fall that makes no logical sense in the first place, and yet is supposedly the genesis of the most important story ever told. Further the whole story was stolen from the ancient Sumerians with their myth of Dilmun, a story dating back to before 3000 BCE, far older than the Israelites whom date to no later than 1200 BCE. The Sumerians were the original source of the myths of the flood as well, the Epic of Gilgamesh, dating to 1800 BCE, with earlier versions dating to over 2000 BCE. When your religion steals its foundational mythology from earlier cultures, then it isn’t the authentic word of god.

If the bible were the authentic word of god, one would expect its followers to be demonstrably more ethical, moral and law-abiding than unbelievers and followers of other religions. But overwhelming scientific evidence shows that the best predictor of moral behavior isn’t one’s religion, it’s their empathy; sociopaths will behave immorally regardless of their professed beliefs while people with healthy, normal levels of empathy will generally treat one another well, again, regardless of their professed beliefs. Furthermore, sociopaths are as likely to use their religion to justify their bad behavior as they are to be “scared straight” by the threat of divine wrath. An empathetic Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist or Atheist is likely to be moral whereas a sociopathic Muslim, Jew, Christian, Buddhist or Atheist is quite likely to be immoral.

So, if western religion has no legitimate claim to be the source of morality, then what does? Behavioral psychology points us to the answer: even small children understand all too well how they would like to be treated and they quickly learn that when they treat others differently from this, then there are direct consequences, many of them bad. We have evolved to be social creatures; we do more than merely survive, we thrive, precisely because we are generally able to communicate, learn from one another, cooperate, get along, and generally be decent to one another. So: why does immoral, unethical, law breaking behavior persist? For starters, for most of our history we lived in small bands; we frequently had to kill our neighbors in order for our tribe to survive, so where we are empathetic to others, we are more empathetic to the members of our own tribe. Sociopathic and psychopathic behavior persists because being quick and willing to kill can have some evolutionary advantages that parallel the usual heuristic of treating others well. We are all biased towards ourselves and are quick to see superficial differences such as gender, skin color, weight, sexual preferences, culture, language, political views, religious preferences, etc as “other” and therefore not worthy of our empathy. This was an advantage when we lived in small groups, as we did for over 190,000 years; it’s not such an advantage when we live in large societies, as we have for about 10,000 years.

So, where do we go from here? Do we continue to allow our petty squabbles, often motivated by our superficially different races, cultures, languages, values, etc drive us towards extinction? Will we continue to consume our resources in a unsustainable fashion? Will we make the apocalyptic fantasies of our various religions self-fulfilling prophecies as we compete with one another for ever scarcer resources in a world where our tools are ever better, ever more complex and ever more effective in killing people? Or will we evolve?
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Re: Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Dardedar »

That was fantastic Cherry. Well said! Profound points. Would make a great presentation.

One little bit:
The bible advocates beating one’s slaves, but not enough to actually kill them
Actually, at Exodus 21:20, you can legally beat your slave to death ("they are your money"), but they can't die on the spot, they have to take a day or two to die.
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Re: Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Cherryj »

Dardedar wrote:That was fantastic Cherry. Well said! Profound points. Would make a great presentation.

One little bit:
The bible advocates beating one’s slaves, but not enough to actually kill them
Actually, at Exodus 21:20, you can legally beat your slave to death ("they are your money"), but they can't die on the spot, they have to take a day or two to die.
Thanks Darrel - I'd love to put together a presentation for one of the summer or fall FT meetings. I'll touch bases with you soon to figure out a date and format.

If the slave doesn't do us the courtesy of dying right there on the spot, right in sight of god as it were, how would you expect people with a pre-scientific level of medical knowledge to know for sure that the slave died specifically due to the beating? :wink:
Last edited by Cherryj on Mon Jun 10, 2013 7:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Cherryj »

Christians frequently claim to hate the sin but not the sinner. By the very same logic it is also possible to hate the belief and not the believer. Personally, I disagree with the above logic: frequently when Christians claim to hate the sin, they wind up behaving very much as if they hate the alleged sinner as well. As for me, I don’t hate believers or their beliefs: I consider their beliefs primitive, obsolete and irrelevant. That may seem hateful to believers, but that’s far from being the same thing as me hating them for their beliefs. So let us agree to disagree: Christians hate sins but not sinners, and I disrespect beliefs but I don’t hate believers.

The Code of Hammurabi, for instance, praises various gods in glowing terms and claims its edicts are the inspired word of the highest god Marduk and his pantheon of fellow gods - one can read it for his or herself at http://www.sacred-texts.com/ane/ham/ham04.htm But I have good reason to believe these claims are not actually true: it was a decent enough set of laws applicable for the times when it was written circa 2000 BCE, but it is completely irrelevant today. And it never really was the literal, inspired Word of God; it was merely the writings of mortal men who invoked the name of the gods in order to lend credence to what were intended to be good and just laws by which humankind could be governed more effectively. We see evidence for this in that our views on law have since clearly and greatly evolved in the time since the Code of Hammurabi was written; gods do not evolve, nor do their allegedly perfect views ever change.

One would consider a man foolish for trying to claim on the basis of the Code of Hammurabi that the law of the United States of America today should make it legal for a man to sell a member of his household into slavery, even though the Code of Hammurabi says exactly this. However, according to Exodus 21:7, it is perfectly legal for a man to sell his daughter into slavery. But we don’t see Christians trying to enforce this particular biblical law these days. Why? Our moral views have evolved on the subject of slavery; the bible is not the basis of our modern laws regarding slavery. And if it were, fathers could still sell their daughters into slavery. By the same token, why should anyone consider Leviticus 20:13, a law from one of the many different ancient books of religious law that certain individuals assert without evidence to be the word of god even today, to be a reasonable basis for discriminating against people living in the modern USA - a nation that does not and never has used the bible as the foundation for our law?
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Re: Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Savonarola »

Cherryj wrote:Christians hate sins but not sinners, and I disrespect beliefs but I don’t hate believers.
Hmmm....

How about: I directly hate neither the believers nor the beliefs, but I hate the effects and therefore oppose the beliefs that cause them. As the beliefs in and of themselves are inanimate and cannot change on their own, the only avenue of change involves discussing said beliefs with said believers. I can respect believers' right to believe but have no obligation to respect the beliefs; rather, I am compelled to try to change them.

But that's not entirely true. Those detrimental effects that I despise cannot come about without the *actions* taken by the believers, so the believers do indeed bear some responsibility for the atrocities caused by their beliefs. If a person is a serial rapist, I can hate the effect, I can hate the rape, and I can -- and should -- denounce the rapist. Why would it be different when a religious person's actions cause harm?
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Re: Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Indium Flappers »

Cherryj wrote:So, where do we go from here? Do we continue to allow our petty squabbles, often motivated by our superficially different races, cultures, languages, values, etc drive us towards extinction? Will we continue to consume our resources in a unsustainable fashion? Will we make the apocalyptic fantasies of our various religions self-fulfilling prophecies as we compete with one another for ever scarcer resources in a world where our tools are ever better, ever more complex and ever more effective in killing people? Or will we evolve?
Great post, and great points to make. And great questions to ask.

I think part of the problem is that most people "compartmentalize" their thought processes. If people treated moral or political principles with the same clearheadedness that they treated their jobs or their own personal livelihoods, then anyone sane enough to feed themselves would also be sane enough to figure out that a book condoning selling your daughter into slavery isn't worth much as a guide to living your life.

Personally, while I hope things will change for the better in the long run, in the short run I expect them to get much worse first.
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Re: Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Cherryj »

Indium Flappers wrote:
Cherryj wrote:So, where do we go from here? Do we continue to allow our petty squabbles, often motivated by our superficially different races, cultures, languages, values, etc drive us towards extinction? Will we continue to consume our resources in a unsustainable fashion? Will we make the apocalyptic fantasies of our various religions self-fulfilling prophecies as we compete with one another for ever scarcer resources in a world where our tools are ever better, ever more complex and ever more effective in killing people? Or will we evolve?
Great post, and great points to make. And great questions to ask.

I think part of the problem is that most people "compartmentalize" their thought processes. If people treated moral or political principles with the same clearheadedness that they treated their jobs or their own personal livelihoods, then anyone sane enough to feed themselves would also be sane enough to figure out that a book condoning selling your daughter into slavery isn't worth much as a guide to living your life.

Personally, while I hope things will change for the better in the long run, in the short run I expect them to get much worse first.
Thanks Indium - great points. I think a lot of the current problems we see with today's political process stems from the fundagelicals innate understanding that their theology is *not* sustainable in the long run; if the world doesn't end soon, as they so earnestly hope for, they will be irrevocably discredited. The question in my mind is whether or not a more rational brand of Christianity will then come to the forefront; will the dominant trend be for Christianity to become increasingly humanistic and universal, or will society itself become increasingly secular and humanistic (i.e. no longer Christian)? To paraphrase Shelby Spong, most of the noise comes from the shallow end of the pool. However the presumed deep end of Christianity has done a generally poor job of standing up to the objectives of the radical right, their Moral Majority enablers and to the zanier elements of Christian theology (young Earth creationism, for instance), which tends to discredit them.

Their strategy seems to be to use their current political power to create a bubble that they hope will be enough to sustain them through radically changing demographics, increasing public access to information and an increasingly liberal society.

Otherwise rational people can be highly irrational where faith is concerned because they have been conditioned from an early age to presume that the claims of Christianity are true. Churches are far better at shutting down conversations when the really tough questions are asked than they are at answering them; much of what passes for "tough" questions in church are strawmen arguments no real humanist/atheist/agnostic, deist or some other brand of theist would ever use. Many Christians are conditioned to think it's blasphemy merely to not outright accept their dogma without question, and in an increasingly literate society, this doesn't jive well with out we actually live our lives. In the workplace, bad ideas get people fired, causes businesses to go bankrupt, etc. Unsafe practices cause accidents, injuries, cancer; lawsuits. Bad politics either gets parties run out of government, or brings destruction down on society itself. Religion for the most part has been protected from real-world accountability, so when stripped of this arbitrary protection, which is increasingly the norm - religion has proven itself to be a very slow learner.
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Re: Is religion the source of ethics, morality and law?

Post by Cherryj »

Cherryj wrote:
Indium Flappers wrote:
Cherryj wrote:So, where do we go from here? Do we continue to allow our petty squabbles, often motivated by our superficially different races, cultures, languages, values, etc drive us towards extinction? Will we continue to consume our resources in a unsustainable fashion? Will we make the apocalyptic fantasies of our various religions self-fulfilling prophecies as we compete with one another for ever scarcer resources in a world where our tools are ever better, ever more complex and ever more effective in killing people? Or will we evolve?
Great post, and great points to make. And great questions to ask.

I think part of the problem is that most people "compartmentalize" their thought processes. If people treated moral or political principles with the same clearheadedness that they treated their jobs or their own personal livelihoods, then anyone sane enough to feed themselves would also be sane enough to figure out that a book condoning selling your daughter into slavery isn't worth much as a guide to living your life.

Personally, while I hope things will change for the better in the long run, in the short run I expect them to get much worse first.
Thanks Indium - great points. I think a lot of the current problems we see with today's political process stems from the fundagelicals innate understanding that their theology is *not* sustainable in the long run; if the world doesn't end soon, as they so earnestly hope for, they will be irrevocably discredited. The question in my mind is whether or not a more rational brand of Christianity will then come to the forefront; will the dominant trend be for Christianity to become increasingly humanistic and universal, or will society itself become increasingly secular and humanistic (i.e. no longer Christian)? To paraphrase Shelby Spong, most of the noise comes from the shallow end of the pool. However the presumed deep end of Christianity has done a generally poor job of standing up to the objectives of the radical right, their Moral Majority enablers and to the zanier elements of Christian theology (young Earth creationism, for instance), which tends to discredit them.

Their strategy seems to be to use their current political power to create a bubble that they hope will be enough to sustain them through radically changing demographics, increasing public access to information and an increasingly liberal society.

Otherwise rational people can be highly irrational where faith is concerned because they have been conditioned from an early age to presume that the claims of Christianity are true. Churches are far better at shutting down conversations when the really tough questions are asked than they are at actually answering them; much of what passes for "tough" questions in church are strawmen arguments that no real humanist/atheist/agnostic would ever use. As an aside, I've been amazed recently at how often youtube Christian apologetics use music, emotion-rich speech; images of praise and worship - all in an effort to "answer," far too emotionally, a simple rational question or two. Apologists usually dodge the question, or they answer some strawman question vaguely related to what was actually asked of them. Many Christians are conditioned to think it's blasphemy merely to not outright accept their dogma without question, and in an increasingly literate society this mentality doesn't jive well with how we actually live our lives daily. In the workplace, bad ideas get people fired, causes businesses to go bankrupt, etc. Unsafe practices cause accidents, injuries, cancer; lawsuits. Bad politics either gets parties run out of government, or if they linger in power, brings destruction down on society itself. Religion for the most part has been protected from real-world accountability, so when stripped of this arbitrary protection, which is increasingly the norm - religion has proven itself to be a very slow learner.
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