Churches (not to mention mosques, synagogues, temples and revival tents) are generally quite keen on morality. That's a good thing; everybody should be keen on morality. But the interest in morality displayed by a church is typically quite different from the interest displayed by, say, a hardware store; churches seem to behave as though their interest is proprietary. Why is that? What special qualifications does a minister of God have to hold forth on good and evil, right and wrong? More importantly, why should a minister of God have a greater say than a bus driver in determining what children are taught about good and evil, right and wrong?
About 2,400 years ago, Plato took up this issue in a dialog called The Euthyphro. There, he asked the question -- paraphrased to give it a slightly more modern feel -- "Is something good because God loves it, or does God love it because it's good?" If it's good because God loves it, the implication is that God has no moral opinions whatsoever; we just have to do what he says because that's the way he likes it, and we'll be in big trouble if we don't do what he says; that's a pretty degraded God, and decent people should be ashamed of worshiping Him. On the other hand, if God loves something because it's good, the implication is that its goodness is totally independent on God's attitude towards it; God recognizes it as good for some reason, and He has no privileged access to that reason. We can understand it, too, with no help from the Almighty; His opinion on moral matters is no more decisive than yours or mine (or, to restore a proper balance, Yours or Mine). That's a knockout punch to the whole idea that we need religion to instruct us in moral matters. If you do things just because God tells you to do them, you're just cowering before the snarls of the biggest bully on the block. You'll burn in Hell if you don't truss up your son, cut his throat and set his body on fire? A moral person, unlike the patriarch of three great religions, will choose Hell every time.
Religion has certainly done a great deal of harm since it was invented. Oceans of blood have been spilled, and thanks to the special appeal of fire to western civilization, millions of acres of skin have been burned off living bodies. Nevertheless, there may still be a point in keeping religion around a little longer. It seems to be a source of comfort, meaning and perspective to people who would otherwise be lost in a vast, uncaring and impersonal universe. However, it is about time that we stopped letting religious leaders -- priests, imams, rabbis, yogis, lamas, televangelists and celebrity Scientologists -- tell us what our moral obligations are. Their profession gives them no expertise in these matters, and we owe them no special deference on account of their position -- just the same decent consideration we owe equally to every concerned person.
About 2,400 years ago, Plato took up this issue in a dialog called The Euthyphro. There, he asked the question -- paraphrased to give it a slightly more modern feel -- "Is something good because God loves it, or does God love it because it's good?" If it's good because God loves it, the implication is that God has no moral opinions whatsoever; we just have to do what he says because that's the way he likes it, and we'll be in big trouble if we don't do what he says; that's a pretty degraded God, and decent people should be ashamed of worshiping Him. On the other hand, if God loves something because it's good, the implication is that its goodness is totally independent on God's attitude towards it; God recognizes it as good for some reason, and He has no privileged access to that reason. We can understand it, too, with no help from the Almighty; His opinion on moral matters is no more decisive than yours or mine (or, to restore a proper balance, Yours or Mine). That's a knockout punch to the whole idea that we need religion to instruct us in moral matters. If you do things just because God tells you to do them, you're just cowering before the snarls of the biggest bully on the block. You'll burn in Hell if you don't truss up your son, cut his throat and set his body on fire? A moral person, unlike the patriarch of three great religions, will choose Hell every time.
Religion has certainly done a great deal of harm since it was invented. Oceans of blood have been spilled, and thanks to the special appeal of fire to western civilization, millions of acres of skin have been burned off living bodies. Nevertheless, there may still be a point in keeping religion around a little longer. It seems to be a source of comfort, meaning and perspective to people who would otherwise be lost in a vast, uncaring and impersonal universe. However, it is about time that we stopped letting religious leaders -- priests, imams, rabbis, yogis, lamas, televangelists and celebrity Scientologists -- tell us what our moral obligations are. Their profession gives them no expertise in these matters, and we owe them no special deference on account of their position -- just the same decent consideration we owe equally to every concerned person.
1 comment:
Hello. I read it, even though I didn't like it. :-)
The main problem with this answer is very simple. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity is a "mystery"; that is, something that one can't understand. To invoke something one can't understand as the solution to a logical problem is not terribly useful and will guarantee an F on your logic exam.
Incidentally, I don't mean to suggest that Christianity is wrong, that God doesn't exist, that God isn't good, or even that there isn't an absolute standard of goodness. The only conclusion I draw from the Euthyphro is that human beings must accept their own responsibility in moral matters and must not accept that God's commands are to be obeyed just because they're God's commands.
It's vitally important that nobody -- not even Abraham -- mindlessly obey the orders of the biggest bully on the block. That way lies great evil, as church history has clearly shown.
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