Stephen Black wrote:
> Perhaps a little less religion is what the human race really
> needs if we want to encourage it to continue.
Stephen backed this by reference to some of the barbaric violence committed
in the name of religion. However, there is a much more subtle and
simultaneously deeper reason to suggest that religion may contribute to our
problems. I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days because
of a little story on the front page of my local newspaper (the Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel) on Sunday. The article was about an Islamic school, and
begins
-------------------------
"Ronald Shaheed likes to quote this story told by the prophet Mohammed:
Walking down the road, a man spots a thornbush in the way. He steps around
it. But then, even though no one is watching, he stops, goes back and moves
the bush off the road so it won't prick the next person to come along. [so
far so good... P.C.S.]. 'God saw him', Shaheed tells his students at Clara
Mohammed School, 'appreciated what he did, and forgave him all his sins'".
-------------------------
Much as I like the notion of helping those to come by moving a Bush off of
the path <grin>, I have a gripe about the basic lesson of the story. It
begins by suggesting that we have a basic moral responsibility to others
"even though no one is watching", a strong moral point. But then it
completely trashes that point by suggesting that in fact someone WAS
watching, and furthermore, that there need be some kind of reward as well.
The story comes from Islam, but Christian schools (such as the one that I
attended for nine years) teach the same lesson, with the same moral: do good
even when no person is watching you, because God still sees you, and will
reward or punish you based on your actions in private as well as in public.
The story is clearly aimed at the control of children's behavior, and the
notion of a God's rewards and punishments as reason for behaving in certain
ways is clearly designed as something that children can understand. So far
it all seems very reasonable, if you believe that we should socialize our
children (and I think that we'd better!).
But the notion is apparently too successful. I'd like to believe that as
adults, we can live up to that higher moral standard, expecting people to do
good even when no one is watching. But the "God is watching" notion persists
into adulthood, and in fact never does seem to disappear. One of the most
common fears of religious people about atheism is that without a God, there
is no morality - a fear often explicitly rooted in the notion that morality
need be imposed by authority. But of course that's not true. There is no
reason why there cannot be a morality - an absolute morality, in fact - that
is rooted in something far deeper than the authority of a God. But religions
in general resist, and continue to teach not only that morality IS rooted in
the authority of a God, but that it _must be_.
If that were the case, then one would expect that an individual's private
morality would correlate strongly with that individual's confidence that
there really is a God who is watching. As a nonbeliever, for example, I
would be expected to be completely unconcerned about the morality of my
private behavior. That is very clearly not the case - the morality of the
atheist is clearly at least as strong as that of the believer, and far
stronger than that of the most fundamentalist of believers (a gross
generalization of course, but you see the point, I assume, especially with
respect to private behavior).
On top of that, it seems very likely that the notion of an authority-based
morality is essential to the ways that religions have been used in the past
to inspire, organize, and later excuse the kinds of behaviors that Stephen
mentioned. If "the law" derives from God, then God can require us to do
evil, and apparently many people believe that He does exactly that (of
course, at the same time believing that it is no longer evil if God requires
it). Surely we have a right to expect adults to at least seek a higher
morality than that.
It feels to me as though the debate is at a level beneath where it needs to
be, stuck there because religions have done such a good job of convincing us
that any absolute morality need be rooted in someone's authority and in
ultimate rewards and punishments. I have a very hard time believing that in
at least some cases, it's not deliberate, in particular when I hear the
favorite strawman argument that atheism is incompatible with an absolute
morality.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
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