[Discussion] Religion and Morality

Reporting in, I guess.

We have people who are not religious and yet behave in ethical ways, we have people who are religious and yet behave in unethical waves. Ergo religious belief is neither necessary nor sufficient for ethical behavior.

It goes beyond that. Some people allege that religion causes people to behave in unethical ways. I'm more inclined to believe that religion can be effective in causing people to behave in superficially ethical ways even though they're not.

My point was that it's less likely that religion causes the problem, but simply masks it. I don't know of a critical analysis mental tool that would effectively curb someone's predilection to break laws and murder people.

Back when I used to believe that salvation was only possible through human sacrifice, my understanding was that it wasn't really necessary to even do "good" as long as you believed that said human sacrifice washed away all your sins. Of course once you gave in to possession by the good spirits you would naturally want to do good things. Like tell gays they are going to hell.

And I recognize that not all Christians believe this. Just most of the ones that I know.

We know a lot more about how people make decisions than did the people of the Bible, and even the Calvinists/Wesleyans/etc of respected memory. We know that decisions are often made *before* the person is consciously aware of them, based on behaviors and beliefs we have taken in earlier, especially those presented by peers in childhood (which seem to be more influential than those given by authority figures, interestingly).

At the same time, we have a sort of conscious over-ride for what we believe and how we look at the world. We can change our early training over time, and learn methods of thinking that are more analytical than "common sense" and handed down learned experiences, and those can be used to change some of our behaviors (even though we often have a sense of "fighting ourselves" in doing this).

We also have massively more understanding of how societies work. We know for example that most poverty today is not the result of moral failure or a lack of faith in God. We know that people tend to want to live with those who share their beliefs and life experiences (writ large). And we know that can bias them towards "othering" those who are different.

For me, the Bible is a book that preserves *tribal* beliefs about how people go about reinforcing their (Jewish, later Christian) identities against the other beliefs and peoples in the world. It preserves naive and flat-out false beliefs about the way the physical world operates. It uses rituals and rules and hierarchies of various types to reinforce these understandings. And it is itself both resistant to change in its transmission in its Jewish elements, and yet (in the Christian world) it has been created largely whole-cloth as traditions (dozens at least) arose in the early Church and were winnowed out by about 250AD according to a sophisticated and biased Iron Age understanding of the world. And with all that in mind, it's been codified by one major sect in a strict, hierarchical, slow to change defined set of beliefs, and by tens of thousands of other sects that differ literally in how they interpret large or small sections of the Mediaeval and Roman-era interpretations and selections of the Bronze Age source material.

It's no wonder that people can pull whatever they want out of it. Christianity is a religion of peace, with acceptance of all peoples and beliefs, with Jesus who was a human inspired by the Jewish God leading a cult that sought to unite all peoples in understanding. Christianity is a religion given to the Aryans to raise them above others and steel their souls for the eventual wars that will subjugate or exterminate, as necessary, the Mud People descended from those subjected to the Curse of Ham. Christianity is a religion that outlawed slavery. Christianity is a religion that justified slavery. Christianity is properly understood through the mediation of priests, with a hierarchy that works diligently to create a logical structure of belief topped with the Father of Church, a tradition based on early Church understandings of Jesus' wishes. Christianity is, however, meant to be read and interpreted and understood by *everyone* through a personal relationship with Jesus, through study of the Bible in whatever language is appropriate. Christianity is a religion that all Jews should join, as it represents the completion of Jewish prophecy, and Jews who reject that should lose their place in society, if not their lives, if they resist. Christianity is a religion that should return to its roots in Jewish practices, as Yahweh through Jesus stated directly that he did not come to change the Mosaic Law. Christianity requires that people have their own agency and determine their own fates through their actions and their relationship with God. Christianity necessarily shows us that our lives are fore-ordained, and we can only hope that God has selected us as one of the Elect.

All of those beliefs and many others are held by significant numbers of Christians today. This is prima facie evidence that the use of the Bible to teach people about the world is incredibly unreliable. At the same time, many millions of believers receive comfort from these beliefs. Even the ones who want to attack and oppress others can gain peace of mind from the knowledge that God is on their side... Something is badly wrong here.

Religions can indeed cause people to change their beliefs; the stories of the fervent convert are present in every religion that rewards strength of belief and group behaviors. Violent hysterias have swept all of the Abrahamic religions, Hinduism, Taoism and probably many other religions many, many times through history; this goes well beyond the limited argument that religion probably can't make an honest man into a thief. (Maybe it can't, but it *can* get him to join 50,000 others to invade a country across the world...).

The moral principles and ethical rules of religions show a remarkable convergence on the Golden Rule, with the varying explicit rules falling under that principle or rules designed to mark out followers as such. But, oddly, secular belief systems hold to the Golden Rule as well. And studies show that the vast majority of societies reward *altruism* more than individualism, even though there are always those who behave selfishly even if that causes harm to their community, and even though there have been tens of thousands of different religions all over the world throughout history. There is something going on here that *transcends* religion, and its looking likely that it's related more to cognitive strategies common to small group survival than to overt systems that purport to teach "proper" behaviors and enforce them.

So it's no longer the case that we can claim that people behave morally because they are believers, and immorally because they are not. We can't assert that poverty is the result of divine disfavor or moral failings (on the whole). We can't say that pigs are less healthy to eat than other animals, or that shellfish are dangerous, or that wearing wool and cotton together is a terrible thing. We understand that the heavens are not a crystal dome surrounded by water which, falling through occasional gaps, causes rain. We can't say that people of one color skin are inferior to others. We certainly know that diseases are not caused by demonic influences. We can't say that any particular religion is bent on destroying all others. These beliefs (and many more) would be really dangerous if widely held.

...And yet all of them are present in the documents of the Abrahamic religions as well as others (look at how Hindus have handled governance lately, or the Islamic leadership of places like Turkey or Iran), and most of them are actively believed by people today, not because they are looking for a "cover" for their moral failings, but because they *learned* what people they were around every day believed as they were growing up. And guess what? God, who rules the universe and watches the fall of each sparrow simultaneously, tells them, in Bible, that what they believe is *right* and *just* and they don't have to change just because others don't like it.

That must be comforting.

To me, the role of most religions has been superceded by better understandings of the world, of better understandings of the way the mind works, of better understandings of how societies can care for their members, of better and clearing understandings of how ethics arise similarly in every culture, in spite of their different religions and the different details of their codes. Religions were once the only game in town for preserving tribal unity, for understanding the mysteries of nature, for maintaining histories, for guiding leaders and teach people their places in the world. Now that is no longer true. And to me, the harm that they do, primarily in the insistence of many in reading their sources literally and attempting to turn that into policies of action that guide societies, now outweighs their utility in providing basic ethical guidelines and holding small groups together through shared identities.

The only way we will move forward as a society is to repudiate the outdated rules and ways of thinking about the world ("spare the rod and spoil the child"? Really? No, objectively not true, even the government refuses to use corporal punishment on *dogs* based on actual science; why can't we adopt that as a Christian principle for *children*? Oh, right... The Book) and to accept that the parts that bring peace of mind are what is worth preserving. Jefferson had the right idea. As long as the text-based religions are based on "us vs. them" separations of believers and non-believers, the problems we see today will continue in one form or another. When we decide to cast those elements aside, and Christianity becomes a contemplative faith like Buddhism, welcoming to all, rejecting none, *fearing* and *hating* none, and not even allowing for that in its books, only then will we be able to say that Christianity and similar religions are a net positive in the world. Because without that fundamental change, it and other religions will always retain the mechanisms and potential to sweep entire regions into turmoil for decades.

TLDR - Religions can change people's behaviors, and sometimes their moral natures and ethical behaviors as well. As long as we depend upon Bronze and Iron Age books for wisdom and teaching, we will see Bronze and Iron Age moral and ethical outcomes in societies and nations. Read the histories; that's not the kind of society any of us modern types would enjoy living in. Why are we so fascinated by its rules and "wisdom"? We need to turn Christianity and other religions to spiritual exercises, rather than ways of teaching and learning about the world, because they are preserving ancient practices and thus ancient, painfully awful outcomes, in spite of the occasional bright-shining leaders that arise in the systems. We need to have faith in our *humanity*, rather than in a God figure who is a projection of ourselves as we were thousands of years ago.

While I can't agree that we should put faith in our humanity, humans being greedy and corrupt by nature, I can agree that we certainly don't want to re-create the various social structures that existed in biblical times. Even speaking from a Christian perspective, these ancient social structures were not based on God's original design for how his creations were supposed to live, but were imperfect and constructed by sinful human beings. Just because God *allows* things doesn't mean he also *approves* of them, and I think a number of people who try to create and implement rules based on these social systems are getting "allows" and "approves" mixed up, as well as missing the overall messages of what the writers were actually saying.

For example, when it comes to Paul's request to slaves to submit to their masters in the book of Ephesians, Paul wasn't necessarily *approving* of the social structure that existed in his time that treated slavery as just another function of normal society, but he was recognizing that it was a social structure that existed at the time and was working within it to support his primary goal as a missionary of spreading the gospel.

But many people nowadays who take an extreme literal view, and without considering any cultural context, will interpret Paul as being agreeable to slavery, and since his words were inspired by God, that slavery is perfectly fine and dandy and that it is our God-ordained right to have slaves in our time too.

Or you get those who do recognize that slavery outside of the family structure is wrong, and that Paul wasn't suggesting that slavery was of God, but somehow are reluctant to agree that the slavery and subordination of women (and perhaps children) within our current family structures (which are quite different from the family structure of Greco-Roman times) is also wrong.

So no, we definitely don't want to go back to ancient social structures just because people in biblical times lived in them, and to try to do so misses the whole point of the message of Christ coming to set people FREE that is all throughout the various writings for those who aren't poring through the scriptures looking for all sorts of legalistic rules to use to subordinate and oppress people.

Approval is not the same as allowance.

Nevertheless, your post is a good example of why any religious theocracy would be a terrible thing. Any human-created religious *institution* is very easily corrupted and people in power will use it for political and material gain. It's basic human nature.

Humans are greedy and corrupt by nature. But we are also altruistic and honest by nature.

I think one of the most unfortunate results of the institution of American Evangelical Christianity is that people are encouraged to reject intelligence and reason and take an extreme literal view of biblical scriptures. For example, I got into an argument with someone a while ago about the requirements to be a current-day ordained church elder. His argument was that only married men could be church elders, and that if that same man ever got divorced or lost his wife, he would have to resign from because he no longer had a wife.

There is a verse in the New Testament that Paul wrote that says that a man should only have one wife, and this guy (and a lot of others like him) took it to mean exactly the literal thing that Paul wrote, without any sort of thought as to why Paul wrote it, who it was written to, the events going on in the time Paul wrote it, etc.

Back in Paul's day, there were a lot of issues with men having concubines, prostitutes, young boys on the side for sexual favors, etc., so Paul was was trying to emphasize having a commitment to only one person, and not that women, men with zero wives, etc. couldn't be church elders.

It seems that in the past, people like Martin Luther, John Wesley, Saint Augustine, early church Fathers and Mothers and others did not seem to be required to leave their brains at the door. Not only were they very well versed in the traditions of their own church (Martin Luther was Roman Catholic, Wesley was Anglican, etc.) but they were highly educated in history, philosophy, and other subjects as well, and it gave a great amount of depth to their arguments and thoughts even as they grew in their Christian faith.

Not that it didn't sometimes cause its own problems. For example, Stoic and Aristotelian philosophy could be very misogynistic and influenced many to interpret Paul's letters in a very misogynistic way that still negatively affects us today, but in general, the idea was that thinking wasn't bad (unless of course it interfered with the power or profit of a powerful person or entity.) I'm sure there were quite a lot of anti-intellectuals around in every age, but it seems that the American Evangelical movement today thinks that "reformation" means to go back to keeping people intellectually in the dark rather than freeing people from ignorance. It's important for people to be able to choose freely rather than being forced or tricked or coerced.

Being a none?

Where's an eyebrow raise emoji when you need one?

Officially "nones" are a polling shorthand that refers to people who self-identify as atheists, agnostics, or who say their religion is "nothing in particular." According to Pew Research "nones" have rapidly grown from 16% of adult Americans in 2007 to 23% in 2014.

The blogger's use of "nones" seems to focus more on the atheists and agnostics and it seems he doesn't quite grasp that by encouraging evangelicals to "leave your church or denomination" in search of a less overtly shitty version of Christianity that he's essentially pushing people into the "nothing in particular" sub-category of "nones." Which is totally fine by me because I'd much rather deal with someone who's religious, but not so rigidly dogmatic that they feel compelled to impose their religious worldview on everyone else.

For what it's worth, I think any 2000-page book of narratives written from many different perspectives is going to inherently make it easy for just about any reader to make a case that the book supports their views. There's good reason that western humanities theories twist around and share the same branch on the family tree as Christian and Jewish theologies. Secular and religious hermeneutics still inform each other, and continue to generate new readings of old texts after thousands of years.

For my part, I use my religion (roughly: progressive evangelical) as a scaffold to train myself in feeling, thinking and acting more like I believe I should act. I can and have used other structures and related texts (some other religions, some non-religious) for that in the past.

This refers to a rising number of survey respondents marking themselves as "none" even when "atheist" is an option. Many hot, hot takes are available.

I'd also like to offer in something on this, which I think is parallel but still relevant to this discussion:

"The Evangelical Roots of Our Post-Truth Society"

I guess what I'm winking at is that I believe Christianity has increasingly featured willpower in place of intellect or dialectic when it comes to ethical questions. Maybe they're just running 75-150 years behind academia.

Can you explain more about what you mean by Christianity featuring willpower in place of those other things?

Concerning the view of biblical inerrancy, I remember someone informing me years ago, in order to explain all the fossils and dinosaur bones that scientists have uncovered, and in support of the earth existing only 7000 years and literal six day creation, etc., is that all of the fossils were placed into the earth by the devil before the flood in order to deceive us all so that we would reject God. He just made them look like they were millions of years old.

This sort of ridiculousness actually did a lot to hinder my faith at the time. (Not to mention there is nothing in any biblical scripture I've read that actually states the devil did any such thing.)

Many people have a very hard time with the idea of getting something for free, whether it be God's gift of justifying grace, or that we are made righteous through God's work and not through our own efforts. We are so strongly socialized with the concept of having to earn everything on our own and be independent that we still seem to think in terms of getting rewarded rather than receiving a gift, and we tend to judge others by that same metric. It's very works-based rather than faith-based, and yes, people in earlier time periods also struggled with it.

In fact, the Catholic Church practically made it into a business, with penance and selling indulgences during its most corrupt periods of history, though maybe it was a bit less of trying hard enough not to sin, but instead not spending enough money to be free of sin, or having their sinful relatives freed from purgatory and the like.

I suppose if it were possible, we could put a group of newborn babies, with no genetic issues or disabilities or any sort of anything medical that might prove problematic in the future, into a vault and allow them all to grow up with each other without any other human interference and influence and see what they ultimately do. I strongly suspect though that at some point, one of them who is bigger and stronger is going to get the idea that they can benefit by dominating the smaller and weaker, and perhaps enforces some degree of "tribute", in order to keep the "peace".

Whether one believes the earth has existed for only 5000 years or 5 billion years, humans have been killing, raping, and cheating each other, if not within one's own tribe, certainly between tribes.

I've personally experienced what people tend to do when left in fairly lawless environments, and have read about many others. And while intellectually, some of us may be very aware that the best benefit to one's self is to behave altruistically, many others either aren't on that intellectual level and/or don't have the intellectual capacity to understand it, and so don't have any inclination to behave other than their basic instincts, which very well (and often are) ultimately against their own interests.

My belief that humans are corrupt by nature is not part of an argument in favor of instituting some sort of human-led Christian theocracy, in the U.S. or anywhere else. Christianity as a political *institution* is typically corrupt and has very little, if anything, of Christ in it. I would not want any version of the institution of Christianity (or any other religion, for that matter) to control society as a government entity. Separation of church and state is a necessary thing for very good reason.

I'm in agreement with you about Christianity needing to be focused on improving people's lives. We have a big problem right now with a large number of very loud and influential people very much wanting the all the power of God without possessing the actual character of God, and that's exactly the type of government and social systems they would create if left alone to do it. A theocracy of Christ-less Christianity.

Not that I think it's impossible for people or governments to do good things, whether those be secular or religious. I just believe it's something that doesn't come natural for us and why at least some laws and regulations are necessary for the common good.