The Price and Rewards of Morality:
I guess it starts with freedom---free will if you prefer. If God 'wills it' then human morality is non existent---whatever we do, or someone else does is scripted by God or the Devil. Some view a person as torn between the Devil and God. Behind any of this are beliefs, not proven facts, so the issues are forever muddled. I suppose the question first has to be answered as to whether we can really know anything that is not first in the senses--- senses which are dependent on the material world. Kant viewed morality as a series of questions: "What can I know?" "What ought I to do" and "What can I hope?"
Reason would appear to dictate that life on our planet is controlled by some sort of 'natural law' embedded in a God created evolutionary process. As time progresses we learn more and more about the particulars of the evolutionary process, especially now that we know so much more about molecular genetics. Thus, what is left is to understand is how human 'free will' fits into the evolutionary process. If humans have 'free will', then this free will affects the evolutionary process. In this respect the human species is the first species able to affect it's future destiny via 'free will'. Other species seem pretty much destined to be entirely controlled by natural law. Of course one could argue that 'free will' is just another aspect of natural law. Perhaps so, but then 'free will' as part of natural law did not exist until more recently in the evolutionary process.
If one believes God created each species, that God is actively involved with the personal lives of each person on the planet, that whatever happens in the world is God's will or that God has designated human emissaries to write written words of gospel to a particular tribe of people---well these are beliefs----and because they are beliefs, cannot be proven or disproved. Humans, by definition I guess, are free to believe anything they want. But beliefs often have consequences. One can 'believe' that smoking does not have future health consequences, but then if that belief is wrong people die a slow painful death desperately trying to get oxygen into their body. Beliefs can matter a lot in the long run.
Given that beliefs often have consequences, it behooves us to have reasonable beliefs based on reasonable thoughts. Mistaken beliefs can yield disastrous results. Somehow, stating that 'my religious beliefs are true because I inherited them' seems almost absurd. Religion, at least in theory, is about living some kind of moral life as a path to an 'after life'. Because of free will, so it is reasoned, some will choose to live moral lives and others will choose not to, and only those who choose to live a moral life get to go to 'heaven'. The question of an afterlife is beyond human reason. This does not make it, a priori, an absurdity. There is so much yet we don't know about earthly life that it seems unreasonable to be upset because we cannot reason out details, or even any existence, of a possible 'afterlife'. Not everything that IS, is subject to current human understanding. With the passage of time, humans have much more understanding about a lot of natural law, and the environment in which we prosper. This is evolutionary progress. Almost by definition, the evolutionary process is the work of God.
Given the goal of religion (an after life) and the role morality plays in all religions, then moral principles are important. For the most part humans don't appear to discover or learn basic moral principles. Rather, humans have the intuitive capacity to understand basic moral principles. In what human society is there debate over whether it is wrong to steal? to have sex with another's spouse? to kill another person? to lie? to cheat? etc. Not all moral principles are equally clear. Nevertheless just about everyone understands moral cliches such as 'fair is fair', 'what goes around comes around', etc. We know. We all know. Everyone knows---here, there, and everywhere. Abstract logical reasoning resides within human nature as a current genetic reality. If everyone except psychopaths understand right and wrong, then the problem is one of doing the right thing. But what then is the right thing? Something which gives us pleasure? something which increases our financial worth? something which gives an advantage to our own family, our own community, our own state, our own country, our own economic bracket, our own ethnic group, our own religious group?, etc.
One problem is that morality excites passion. Passion cannot be trusted to be reasonable or moral. In the presence of passion, reason can be driven by circumstances, not moral principles. Thus there are non moral imperatives--behavior which is driven by circumstance. These are reactions to situations. You may need to get access to food for survival, protect yourselves from those trying to harm you, win a political battle, or romance battle, or save your job, or win a job, etc. Moral behavior which is governed by non moral imperatives is not, in any pure sense, moral behavior.
What then is pure moral behavior? A pure moral principle is an action that is morally necessary in itself, without reference to any purpose. These are the mountains which everyone must climb to gain any real moral status for their life. I suppose this kind of behavior distinguishes the 'saints' from the 'sinners'. Let us take "thou shalt not steal'---a widely accepted moral principle. The principle is simple, the application is not. If someone has no real need to steal, and they don't---for the most part---then the result is meritorious at the lowest level. If someone has a great need to steal to survive, but only steals in the worst of situations, then I guess they may well have achieved a result more meritorious than one who never has any need to steal---and certainly a lot more meritorious than one with a need to steal who does so all the time. The point here is that it is wrong to steal---period---maybe. This being granted, any grading of moral behavior gets quite complicated. Once you add genetic and environmental variations, the interpretive fog here gets extremely dense. Hence the logical moral caution of 'Judge not that ye be not judged'. If morality is an operative state necessary to achieve a goal (some sort of life after death) then it is probably unreasonable to think we will be our own judge and jury on the matter or the one to judge and jury anyone else. Like so much else in life one has to just do the best one can. We know the rules but we don't know how many points we have to get to pass. How could anyone possibly know that? Many cop out with such vaporous absurdities such as "God has saved me---I have sinned but God has saved me" It is like the kid who does bad things but explains to the school principal,"I did a bad thing but my mom loves me and will forgive me and not really hurt me, just slap my hand." The trouble is adults are not kids and no one has the vaguest idea about judgment, the nature of it, or the points needed to pass---except I, whom God really likes, Who guides me daily through the mine fields of life. Yeah, me and Pat Robertson, Jerry Faulwell, Muslim Ayatollahs, Popes, Priests, Ministers, Kings, etc---the chosen ones. In each category listed above history has yielded endless examples of this being not true. There have never been any human designated representatives of God who have stood the test of moral trust. Like the rest of the population it turns out to be a crap shoot. It strains the concept of logic to assert God would attempt to communicate rules and laws and interpretations of law via such a bizarre assortment of religions whose criteria of being correct is essentially via inheritance.
One of the characteristics of a moral principle is universality. Lincoln put it this way: "As I would not want to be a slave I can be no master" While all sorts of defensive beliefs can be generated by those who mistreat others or deny others the same freedom and privileges as themselves, there really is no escape from the grand daddy of morality: 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. This perfect example of moral logic kind of dictates the morality of most situations. While every age has it's 'witches', every age should, from a moral standpoint, have no 'witches'. It was never right to enslave others, to hang certain ethnics, to deny women the vote, to deny equal opportunity for jobs or housing, to deny certain groups admission to good schools, etc. And by the same moral principle it is not right to deny children (or others) the kind of medical care available to some, it is not right to spend less money to educate some children than others, to deny the benefits of marriage to some couples of adult age because of whom they choose as their marriage partner, to use military might to solve global conflict, etc. Yes, this is a modern age but 'witches' still abound in the minds of otherwise good people.
There is no moral logic to 'might makes right'. Those who claim otherwise cannot rest their case on moral logic. Unfortunately, this 'might makes right' about guts any moral principles from the mentality of our own foreign policy for some time now. "You can run but you can't hide" is bully bellowing. "Dead or Alive" is nothing if it is not an ok to take law into your own hands and justify violence as a means of deciding right and wrong. Preemptive military attack means nothing logically if it does not mean that someone has the right to attack anyone who they think might be some kind of threat to their life, their financial status, their religious beliefs, their political beliefs, their own position of power in life, etc. Gangs use this mentality, the mafia, some religious zealots, and currently our own government. And as logic dictates, "what goes around comes around". It certainly is no product of any "do unto others what you would have them do unto you". And because we are now hell bent on using violence to address world conflicts---what goes around comes around, and we get in return terrorism. When violence becomes your operative mode, then whatever you have at hand you use. Is there anything sillier than leaders, who use violence to resolve their own conflicts, rising to some podium and urging others not to use violence to solve their conflicts? It's hard to top that for pure arrogant moral absurdity. If our government can justify dropping 28,000 bombs on Iraq or killing 2 million Vietnamese, then by what moral logic can we criticize the violence of urban gangs? There is so much violence in America because we actually accept violence as a means to end. Our violence is ok, it is the violence of others that is not ok. Yeah, sure.
Let's just take one more example. Almost all religions preach the moral principle that once you have enough to take care of your own basic needs, that left over should be given to those in need. I have never heard anyone argue the opposite. It fits in perfectly with 'do unto others as you would have them do unto you'. Hardly any of us really do follow what we all agree is a universal moral principle. Let us not quibble here as to what constitutes basic needs---clearly most of us are considerably past that. Part of the problem is two-fold. I might put forth this: "I would consider this if others did it, but for me to do it by myself doesn't really accomplish very much". Hard to argue that this has no truth. Or I might say, puffing up into the appropriate posture, "I earned what I have, if someone else wants to have this stuff, let them earn it"----the "I did it the old fashioned way, I earned it" pitch. Sometimes someone comments that I seem to have accumulated more wealth than that of someone who was a teacher all his life. And I of course like to point out that I lived simply most of my life, never had more than just a room to live out of until I was late twenties, never owned a house until I was in my forties, never (except for my first car) bought anything on credit. So there, other fools spent most of their earnings on interest for all the things they bought on credit. Still, the point remains---a pure moral principle is an action that is morally necessary in itself, without reference to any purpose. To live by the moral principle in question it is necessary, because the principle is moral---to give any excess I have past the point of basic needs, to those who have less than the basic needs. But, one might say, "there is no real reason why some of these people cannot earn their own basic needs". This is certainly true too. If I am capable, and willing to work to earn my basic needs, then all those who are capable of earning their basic needs have an obligation to do likewise.
I wonder, given their particular genetics and environmental situation, just how many millions of people across the globe have no chance, for any variety of genetic or environmental circumstances, to earn for themselves their basic needs? If the answer is in the millions, then the number of people who do have the genetics and environmental circumstances to earn past their basic needs must be many fold million more than those who don't. Clearly, if enough people would follow the moral principle in question here, there would be no one left without the basic needs of life except those who have the ability and environmental circumstances to earn their basic needs, but decline to do so. In this respect we are all trapped. We really are. Almost all of us are weasels, of one sort or another. We circle the wagons around our wealth, we spend considerable time plotting how to acquire even more wealth. I mean, if a certain amount of wealth is good, more must be better, and endless more wealth the ultimate orgasm. Morally, enough is as good as a feast.
My own rationalization goes like this: If I gave all my excess wealth right now to those in need there would be less available to those in need over the long run than if I let my wealth continue to grow so that at my death there will be the maximum amount available. Hard to deny this rationale either. To contribute to this maximum amount available I try to live modestly, not getting too wrapped up in some sort of material world or spending excessive amounts of money on extravagant restaurants, trips, hobbies, etc. I suppose, so far so good---BUT, I am single and can do this kind of thing with little emotional conflict. Most people have kids and want to leave most of their accumulated wealth to them. It is hard to envision how this in any way meets the universal moral principle of giving your excess wealth to those unable to meet their basic needs. In fact, inherited wealth simply ensures a greater inequality in the distribution of wealth in every society. Even if all the above is logical, the question remains whether my plan here is more meritorious than those who leave their excess wealth to their kids. After all, if I did have kids would I really still do this? As far as I can figure out, almost all religions place the responsibility of parents to raise and support kids to adulthood. I don't know of any religion in which the religious founder extended that responsibility any further. In general, it has always seemed to me that those kids who make the most of their life, accomplish the most, and have the most contentment in life, are those kids essentially left on their own after like 18 yrs of age. Like any generalization there are sufficient exceptions. My dad made that clear to his kids, and while at the time I thought him cruel and non supportive, with time I think it was the best contribution he could have made to my life. What you do on your own always means the most and is a major foreboding of how far you will go in life---give me a fish and I eat for a day, teach me to fish and I eat for a lifetime.
At any rate, the universal moral principles are not hard to identify--- just hard to follow. These universal moral principles have little to do with any particular religious creed. To the extent any particular religion enables a person to adhere to these universal moral principles, that religion matters to that person. Unfortunately, far more often a person's inherited religion serves as some sort of safe haven for ignoring universal moral principles---when adhering to them is inconvenient or clashes with assorted human selfish motivations. Through your religion, God will forgive. I guess.
To the extent most of the above is true we then live in a world where all except the mentally ill or retarded understand universal moral principles. Individual religions add nothing to these universal moral principles. All the ceremonies, the hymns, the prayers, the glittering cathedrals, the brightly robed highly titled priestly patriarchs, the solemn services, the paper shuffling, religious college degrees, or the sermons have zero impact on these universal moral principles. These principles are not changed by any of the aforementioned. On the other hand, to the extent any of the aforementioned, except the glittering cathedrals, assist a person to adhere to the universal moral principles, then it is all good. But I suppose one could question to what extent, and to what percentage of the members, does organized religion instead provide some sort of shield from having to adhere to these universal moral principles? The unspoken argument for many is, that while they do not always adhere to universal moral principles, they are good and active members of a church. Historically, churches have often supported, or been passively silent, on many of the worst abuses of human rights and moral principles, including burning witches, slavery, etc. I doubt any reasonable person could ever envision Christ or Buddha, etc. ever supporting the invasion of Iraq. Like who could ever read the teachings of Christ and conclude he would handle conflict the George Bush way? Who would ever conclude that Christ would endorse some kids having no health care, spending less money to educate some kids than others etc.? Strangely, and this is a debatable generalization, it just seems the religious right wing factions of our society are the most vocal supporters of military violence to solve conflict, to actively support the accumulation of more and more wealth in the hands of the already wealthy, to oppose any universal plans to equalize health care and education for kids, to oppose vigorous protections of the environment, to spew intolerance to the different, and to share excess wealth with their kids who seldom lack for the basics of life instead of with those deficient with the basic needs of life.
Somehow there is a glaring disconnect between universal moral principles and the actions of religious fundamentalists---just a picture of life's illogical contradictions. What we see is not always what we think we see, but twisted so that we see what we want to see. "I see", said the blind man as he picked up his hammer and saw.
