Does Religion provide morals
Many people maintain that morals cannot be established by humans but only by God and therefor unbelievers cannot establish Morals. Morals are “concerned with or derived from the code of interpersonal behavior that is considered right or acceptable in a particular society” (Dictionary). Just like “theory” is misinterpreted by some religious movements to mean mere “speculation” rather than a hypothesis based on facts and then refined when more facts become available, the meaning of “morals” rather than the above dictionary definition, has been taken by religious people as a divine command from a deity. Morals “are a code of interpersonal behavior in a particular society”. That means that they are established to make it possible for a group of people to live together in a cooperate manner for that particular group. Morals differ from group to group and therefor we see that morals for one group can differ drastically from another one, proving that morals are not innate nor God inspired since in that case they would be the same for all humanity. Trial and error established these morals.
When humanity lived in tribes in the distance past, before writing was invented, the morals of the group , passed on by storytellers and shamans, would apply only to that group and would adapt itself to new circumstances in the next generation. The event of writing however, created Morals “written in stone” making adaptions much more difficult and we see the result of that in the world today.
The above definition does apply to the rules we make and adapt all the time (laws) to make it possible to live together. To give a trivial example: For all of history it was not immoral (illegal) to travel on the left side of the road, now it is, because of the possibility it will kill innocent people. To make it possible to travel at high speed we had to create “a code of interpersonal behavior that is right in our particular society”. Now lets us look at one of the ten commandments “thou shalt not kill’ very simple and clear isn’t it. This “moral” obviously applied to the tribe only, the bible is full of approved killing as long as it was killing the other tribe, threatening the survival of your own tribe. It is not a moral which was applied to all of humanity, so we have exeptions to the morals touted to be objective and applicable to all circunstances.
Morals are subjective and must change when circumstances change. Massive killings, which we now would classify as crimes are committed by people who believe that they act according to“written in stone” moral codes according to their religion. Catholics fighting Protestants, some Muslim factions fighting against infidels. I am sure that even suicide-bombers believe they are acting morally. We can only hope that every one starts realizing that we have to disregard some of the “written in stone Morals” and that we MUST develop new morals (rules) to be able to live together in a more peaceful, stable and sustainable manner. Afterall we are becoming more and more one single tribe on earth.
When humanity lived in tribes in the distance past, before writing was invented, the morals of the group , passed on by storytellers and shamans, would apply only to that group and would adapt itself to new circumstances in the next generation. The event of writing however, created Morals “written in stone” making adaptions much more difficult and we see the result of that in the world today.
The above definition does apply to the rules we make and adapt all the time (laws) to make it possible to live together. To give a trivial example: For all of history it was not immoral (illegal) to travel on the left side of the road, now it is, because of the possibility it will kill innocent people. To make it possible to travel at high speed we had to create “a code of interpersonal behavior that is right in our particular society”. Now lets us look at one of the ten commandments “thou shalt not kill’ very simple and clear isn’t it. This “moral” obviously applied to the tribe only, the bible is full of approved killing as long as it was killing the other tribe, threatening the survival of your own tribe. It is not a moral which was applied to all of humanity, so we have exeptions to the morals touted to be objective and applicable to all circunstances.
Morals are subjective and must change when circumstances change. Massive killings, which we now would classify as crimes are committed by people who believe that they act according to“written in stone” moral codes according to their religion. Catholics fighting Protestants, some Muslim factions fighting against infidels. I am sure that even suicide-bombers believe they are acting morally. We can only hope that every one starts realizing that we have to disregard some of the “written in stone Morals” and that we MUST develop new morals (rules) to be able to live together in a more peaceful, stable and sustainable manner. Afterall we are becoming more and more one single tribe on earth.