Underseer
Contributor
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/28/opinion/does-religion-make-people-moral.html
Alright, I'll confess that I have not yet read the whole thing. It is remarkable that this man admits that religion doesn't always make people more moral, but I have to disagree. Religion can't make anyone more moral. Ever. If you know right from wrong, that came from you, not your religion. The man in the pulpit is trying to take credit for what you did yourself.
Euthyphro
The Euthyphro dilemma was proposed thousands of years ago, and was originally about the Greek gods. Modern people adapt this to point out that no god from any religion can make one more moral. I would go one step further and argue that the logic of the Euthyphro dilemma applies to all authority-based moral systems, not just all religions. It doesn't matter if the authority is a real god, an imaginary god, a preacher, the government, a cop, or an ethics professor.
How do we know that the authority is moral? The only way we can do that is to use a definition of morality that is independent of the authority, but the moment we do that, the definition is our source of morality, not the authority. Thus if the authority is claimed to be the source of morality, then morality is completely arbitrary based on the whim of the authority (or in the case of religion, the mortal human(s) claiming to speak for the authority), while the follower has no way of determining if anything they are being told is in fact moral.
Thus, all authority-based moral systems lead to the most extreme form of moral relativism imaginable. Things are not good or bad based on what is done, but based on who does it or who orders it to be done. So if God kills all of the humans in the world except for one family, that is a moral thing to do, but if you do the same thing, it is immoral. If God orders an army to wipe out an entire city, even the babies, then that is a moral thing to do, but if you were to do the same thing, it would be immoral.
Got that? Murdering an entire city[ent]mdash[/ent]even the babies[ent]mdash[/ent]is moral or immoral depending on who orders the deed done. If objective morality were even possible, then doing the above would be incredibly immoral no matter who orders it, but under an authority-based moral system, anything goes, even murdering larger numbers of already-born babies and pregnant women. William Lane Craig famously argued this. William Lane Craig also argues that the existence of objective morality proves the existence of god.
Exodus 21:20-21
According to the above Bible passage, there is a right way and a wrong way to beat your slaves to death. If you beat your slave to death the wrong way, you could face punishment for having done so, but not if you beat your slave to death in the correct way.
Perhaps in the vastness of the human experience, somewhere out there is a Christian who actually follows the above advice, but no Christian I know of nor have heard of in the modern world would cite the above passage to justify beating slaves to death. In fact the majority of Christians would not own slaves in the first place, much less quibble about whether or not it is moral to beat them to death.
Every Christian I know of who has read the above passage immediately seeks excuses to ignore the moral advice of the above passage. Don’t bother telling me the details of the excuses used, those are not relevant to the current discussion. What is relevant to the current discussion is that every (or at least nearly every) Christian immediately seeks an excuse to ignore the passage. As mentioned by Matt Dillahunty, this proves two things:
It is important to note that even Christians who claim to be biblical literalists will do this. Even so-called literalists will seek an excuse to creatively re-interpret the above passage to mean something other than what it quite clearly says.
To the extent that Christians have morals, those morals do not come from the Bible, it comes from themselves. To the extent that Muslims are moral, that morality does not come from their holy book either, but from themselves. In face, I would say the same of any practitioner of any religion. That’s not to say that those holy books don’t influence moral decisions in ways that are both good and bad (e.g. persecuting homosexuals in Christian and Muslim nations), but I think that overall, the extent to which they are good or bad comes from either themselves or from the society in which they operate.
Motive
If religion cannot make anyone more moral, why does every religion claim to offer the thing that no religion can possibly offer? Because it makes followers less likely to question their religious leaders.
If you believe that your religion makes you more moral, you will be afraid of questioning your religion (or the man in the pulpit) for fear that doing so will cause you to become a bad person. You will be more inclined to obey the religious leader and more inclined to encourage other people to obey the religious leaders.
The moral claims of religions amount to nothing more than a cheap marketing tactic. The claims gain truth only through repetition, never through arguments or evidence.
This is something I find reprehensible about religion, but it is what we expect if we assume that organized religion exists as a tool for political control of populations.
Alright, I'll confess that I have not yet read the whole thing. It is remarkable that this man admits that religion doesn't always make people more moral, but I have to disagree. Religion can't make anyone more moral. Ever. If you know right from wrong, that came from you, not your religion. The man in the pulpit is trying to take credit for what you did yourself.
Euthyphro
The Euthyphro dilemma was proposed thousands of years ago, and was originally about the Greek gods. Modern people adapt this to point out that no god from any religion can make one more moral. I would go one step further and argue that the logic of the Euthyphro dilemma applies to all authority-based moral systems, not just all religions. It doesn't matter if the authority is a real god, an imaginary god, a preacher, the government, a cop, or an ethics professor.
How do we know that the authority is moral? The only way we can do that is to use a definition of morality that is independent of the authority, but the moment we do that, the definition is our source of morality, not the authority. Thus if the authority is claimed to be the source of morality, then morality is completely arbitrary based on the whim of the authority (or in the case of religion, the mortal human(s) claiming to speak for the authority), while the follower has no way of determining if anything they are being told is in fact moral.
Thus, all authority-based moral systems lead to the most extreme form of moral relativism imaginable. Things are not good or bad based on what is done, but based on who does it or who orders it to be done. So if God kills all of the humans in the world except for one family, that is a moral thing to do, but if you do the same thing, it is immoral. If God orders an army to wipe out an entire city, even the babies, then that is a moral thing to do, but if you were to do the same thing, it would be immoral.
Got that? Murdering an entire city[ent]mdash[/ent]even the babies[ent]mdash[/ent]is moral or immoral depending on who orders the deed done. If objective morality were even possible, then doing the above would be incredibly immoral no matter who orders it, but under an authority-based moral system, anything goes, even murdering larger numbers of already-born babies and pregnant women. William Lane Craig famously argued this. William Lane Craig also argues that the existence of objective morality proves the existence of god.
Exodus 21:20-21
According to the above Bible passage, there is a right way and a wrong way to beat your slaves to death. If you beat your slave to death the wrong way, you could face punishment for having done so, but not if you beat your slave to death in the correct way.
Perhaps in the vastness of the human experience, somewhere out there is a Christian who actually follows the above advice, but no Christian I know of nor have heard of in the modern world would cite the above passage to justify beating slaves to death. In fact the majority of Christians would not own slaves in the first place, much less quibble about whether or not it is moral to beat them to death.
Every Christian I know of who has read the above passage immediately seeks excuses to ignore the moral advice of the above passage. Don’t bother telling me the details of the excuses used, those are not relevant to the current discussion. What is relevant to the current discussion is that every (or at least nearly every) Christian immediately seeks an excuse to ignore the passage. As mentioned by Matt Dillahunty, this proves two things:
- Christian morals come from Christians rather than the Bible and
- Christians are more moral than the Bible
It is important to note that even Christians who claim to be biblical literalists will do this. Even so-called literalists will seek an excuse to creatively re-interpret the above passage to mean something other than what it quite clearly says.
To the extent that Christians have morals, those morals do not come from the Bible, it comes from themselves. To the extent that Muslims are moral, that morality does not come from their holy book either, but from themselves. In face, I would say the same of any practitioner of any religion. That’s not to say that those holy books don’t influence moral decisions in ways that are both good and bad (e.g. persecuting homosexuals in Christian and Muslim nations), but I think that overall, the extent to which they are good or bad comes from either themselves or from the society in which they operate.
Motive
If religion cannot make anyone more moral, why does every religion claim to offer the thing that no religion can possibly offer? Because it makes followers less likely to question their religious leaders.
If you believe that your religion makes you more moral, you will be afraid of questioning your religion (or the man in the pulpit) for fear that doing so will cause you to become a bad person. You will be more inclined to obey the religious leader and more inclined to encourage other people to obey the religious leaders.
The moral claims of religions amount to nothing more than a cheap marketing tactic. The claims gain truth only through repetition, never through arguments or evidence.
This is something I find reprehensible about religion, but it is what we expect if we assume that organized religion exists as a tool for political control of populations.
