Organized religion is a powerful force in the world. It plays a major role in culture and politics as well as serving as a critical source of comfort and strength for much of humankind. Its rituals, spirit of community and cultural expressions are interwoven tightly into the human experience. Religion and its spiritual associations provide solace in a world that is both mysterious and unsettling.
In this modern age, a growing number of people have become unaffiliated with formal religion. They may retain some of the cultural trappings of the religion of their ancestors, but they no longer subscribe to the doctrine and the exclusive dogma that most religions demand of their congregants. Many describe themselves as agnostics, with a vague and ambiguous sense of the spiritual realm and a reluctance to embrace any rigid theology. A substantial number are outright atheists.
A basic tenet of those who continue
to strictly practice formal religion is that the moral and ethical development
of civilization has been shepherded by religious thought and faith. Consequently, they fear that the slow but
steady secularization of society and an increasingly agnostic or atheistic
population will cause the world to fall into a death spiral of immorality and
corruption.
This view deserves careful
examination, as it is a primary motivation for a significant part of the
culture war that currently divides our society. There are several questions that must be
answered:
- What is the definition of morality?
- Who or what defines morality?
- Is morality an absolute?
- Is religion necessary for moral behavior?
- Are non-religious societies less moral?
My objective in questioning the
role of religion in defining human morality and ethics is not to downplay or
denigrate the importance or value of spirituality in our lives. I believe that many aspects of religion are
very valuable and nurturing for the human condition. However, the exclusive nature of the world’s
religions, their claims to absolute truth and their inability to recognize and
adapt to nuance, ambiguity and change, are the basis of many of the world’s
conflicts.
What is the Definition of Morality? How does it differ from ethics?
One definition is that morality is a code of behavior relating to right and wrong. There is great debate on the difference between morality and ethics. Some maintain that ethics is a set of practical rules that may or may not relate to any absolute morality. But the two are certainly closely related. If one is behaving ethically, then typically one may assume that one is also exhibiting moral behavior.
But the question of what to include under either morality or ethics is not so clear and has evolved over the millennia. If one considers the most common examples of potentially immoral behavior – murder/assault, stealing, lying, sexual improprieties – it is already apparent that defining immoral behavior is no easy task. Is all murder or assault immoral? Is bombing a city in wartime immoral? Is defending oneself in a violent encounter immoral?
And what about lying? Is telling the truth always a moral act? Is a white lie permissible? Stealing is not easy to define either. Is taking advantage of people to get their hard-earned money immoral, or simply unethical? Is stealing land from people who have inhabited it for years immoral, even if it is “legal”? Is stealing to support a starving family immoral?
The morality of sexual behavior is also complicated. Is premarital sex immoral? Is gay sex immoral? How about pornography?
There are many things that were once deemed immoral and even cause for capital punishment in days gone by – blasphemy and apostasy (still considered punishable by death in certain Muslim countries), making oaths, worshiping other Gods or images, insulting one’s parents, violating the sabbath, etc. – that are no longer considered immoral in most of the world. Moreover, some things that are viewed today as highly immoral, such as slavery and the total subjugation of women, were considered perfectly acceptable in the past. This brings us to the big question:
Who or What Defines Morality?
To ancient peoples morality was handed down by a deity – stone tablets, the Torah, the New Testament, the Koran, the Vedas – though in some cases it was more humanistic in its origins – Confucianism and Buddhism are examples. To many religious people, morality is still precisely defined by their religious beliefs and they look to their creeds and sacred texts to find answers to questions of morality.
But to many modern thinkers and an ever-increasing part of the modern world, morality is perceived as a product of human thought and evolution. Morality is seen as a set of principles that enable human beings to create a better society and a more just community, and to minimize the pain and suffering in the world.
No stone tablet ever said that slavery was immoral or evil, yet human consciousness has evolved to condemn it. No ancient creed celebrated the basic equality of all human beings and encouraged equal treatment of men and women, but the world is slowly adapting its moral compass to those principles. The ancient texts celebrated conquest and domination in the name of religious fervor and conversion, but our modern sensibilities are ever more distant from that type of thinking.
Thus, we see that morality is defined and also refined through both religious and humanistic means. The evolution of our moral sensibilities is ongoing and may be motivated by both sources of inspiration, but I would argue that humanism is now the dominant underlying principle.
Is Morality Absolute?
The earlier examples of the murky nature of stealing, killing, lying and other potentially immoral acts are testament to the fact that like many of life’s puzzles, morality is indeed not an absolute. One person’s stealing is another’s good business deal. One person’s murder is another’s patriotic duty. One person’s lie is another’s kind gesture.
A common critique of humanism is that it promotes ‘moral relativism’. There may be some truth to this, in that humanism is reluctant to make absolute declarations about morality. But any rigorous exploration of moral questions will certainly find that there are a lot of gray areas in human behavior, and that for every general category of potentially immoral acts there is a spectrum of choices that must be individually analyzed to determine right or wrong. In my view humanists are not at all hesitant to strongly condemn immoral behavior, rather they are merely unwilling to generalize and over-simplify the task.
Is Religion Necessary for Moral Behavior?
This is an interesting question. Is religion, or at least some sort of spiritual impulse, the basis for our moral development? Did religion create moral thinking, or did humans create religion as a means to apply moral thinking to their world? These questions are impossible to answer definitively.
But I would argue that the last two hundred years have demonstrated a humanistic divergence from ancient religious cultures and have produced a more moral and humane world. Some of these advancements have been led at least in part by religiously-inspired people to be sure – the slavery abolition movement, the social justice movements, the workers’ rights movement, the feminist movement, the gay and LGBTQ movements, the anti-war movements, the anti-torture movements, the anti-colonial movements. But religious people were also prominent in opposing all of these changes in society.
I have argued in the past that there is evidence that some sort of basic spiritual impulse guides our ‘humanistic’ morality. (https://rvgeiger.blogspot.com/2015/04/conscience-morality-and-argument-for.html) But have our ‘religions’, i.e. the institutions, dogmas and doctrines from hundreds or even thousands of years ago, outlived their usefulness in dictating our definitions of morality? If we liberate ourselves from them, do we risk a moral collapse?
Are Non-Religious Societies Less Moral?
How do we inculcate morality in our citizens? Is religious instruction an essential part of that process? Does religious belief and/or attendance play an important role? If we abandon religion as the primary instructive tool, then with what do we replace it?
We have an ongoing experiment in non-religious societies. Western Europe is substantially non-religious, as are significant portions of the USA. People in these areas are not necessarily atheists and may still have a belief in some sort of spirituality or deity, but they are generally not attending church and are definitely not dogmatic in their application of religious laws. However, Europe still provides religious education and moral instruction in schools and many parents continue to have their children achieve basic religious milestones.
These European nations are certainly not experiencing a rapid decay of morality. Murder, violence, corruption, robbery and other acts that one generally considers signs of moral collapse are actually much less of a problem in Europe than here in the United States.
The only danger in a non-religious approach to morality is the same danger that the general recognition of ambiguity and mystery in the world brings: The risk of every person coming up with their own morality, their own worldview, their own set of ethics. Parents and teachers may give children guidelines, but in the end, there are no absolutes.
But outside of sexual morality, was religious morality ever any more capable of clarifying moral choices than what we have in a non-religious setting? What religious text actually explored in detail the questions of right and wrong in business ethics, in warfare, in investments, in ecology, in politics, in government? Haven't people, even very religious people, always found a way to justify their actions?
The goal of imbuing people with a strong moral character is not achieved by a set of rules, whether religious or humanistic. It is accomplished by teaching empathy, humility and a strong sense of justice and fairness. Every human being is faced with the challenge of reconciling their own interests and desires with those of the community. It is in this final frontier of morality that the battle will be fought in the future. It is, in the final analysis, the full development of humanconscience.
If we are facing an onslaught of moral relativism, it is not because we have abandoned our religious dogma, but rather because the human race is finally confronting the complex nature of the human condition and its social, political and economic implications. A tablet of ten commandments is not going to solve that problem. But I believe the spirit of humanity (whether divinely guided or not) will continue to evolve and will help us find our way.
