, April 2002
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This page examines the common misconception amongst hard-line Christians that atheism cannot be "truly" or "objectively" moral. It does so by showing how reason has long being recognised as the only proper arbiter of what is moral, and what is not. (It is something of a work in progress - let me know what you think...) The hard-line Christian argument is generally that true morality comjes from "loving God"; and since atheists refuse to acknowledge god; then they have no basis for morality. Oh course, the first point to note is that ideas of "true" or "objective" or even "God given" morality change over time... If they didn't you would expect to see Christians and Jews running around executing children who curse their parents; witches; ox gorers; sabbath breakers; those who give their "seed" to Molech; adulterers; homosexuals; trampy priest's daughters; blasphemers; people who touch or look at uncovered holy things; people who pick up sticks on the sabbath (has that already been covered?); strangers who come in the night; polluters of "holy things"; people who "commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab"; "dreamers of dreams" if they say or dream the wrong things; those who refuse to listen to a priest; those of different religious beliefs; rape victims who don't cry; and those who "pisseth against the wall". They would also be busy sacrificing animals; vexing and smiting Midianites; and buying wives with philistine foreskins. (Not wives with foreskins... You get the idea...) Of course, humans have had more useful concepts of morality than that since long before Christianity. The early apologetic Justin Martyr complained: "although we say things similar to what the Greeks say, we only are hated on account of the name of Christ".To understand this statement, it is worth looking at exactly where Christianity got its ideas of morality from... For although Jesus taught of many wonderful things, a great deal of them were obviously very smilar to the ethics of the ancient, pagan, Greek philosophers. The early Christian apologist and philosopher St Augustine lived from 354-430 CE. He "argued against the skeptics that genuine human knowledge can be established with certainty. His explanation of human nature and agency combined stoic and Christian elements. But it was by reference to the abstract philosophy of Plato that Augustine sought to prove the existence of god." (The Stoic school of philosophy dated from 322 BCE, and had itself grown from the earlier works of Plato.) Quite fabulously, the early Christians not only acknowledged that they'd "borrowed" their ethics from the Greeks - they claimed that the Greeks in turn had received their wisdom from the Old Testament! Justin Martyr wrote in the mid-second century CE: "And that you may learn that it was from our teachers - we mean the account given through the prophets - that Plato borrowed [from]... Moses...".(In Chapter LIV of his First Apology, Justin Martyr goes on to say that pagan mythologies were planted in the past by "devils" to confute Old Testament prophesies!) However, despite the teachings of Christ, no-one could agree exactly what rules of behavior God expected from man - especially since the majority of "Old Testament" laws had been jettisoned by Early Christians, more used to the relative freedom of the Roman world. Problems in agreeing a proper interpretation of "God's will" or the Scriptures (with attendant violence and corruption) got so bad by the thirteenth century, that the Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas (1224-1274). Aquinas undertook a wholesale review of Christian Ethics. He wrote "it is at least possible (and perhaps even desirable) in some circumstances to achieve genuine knowledge of [natural law and the existence of God] by means of the rigorous application of human reason."Recognising that reason was a necessary arbiter, he shifted the basis of "Christian Ethics" from teachings of Plato to those of Aristotle (described wonderfully by Betrand Russell as "Plato with a touch of common sense"). Unfortunately, the use of "reason" was not as rigorous in the Christian world as it might have been... This led in turn to the Reformation of the the sixteenth Century, when protestant groups largely rejected the "Catholic" doctrines of Aquinas: and they haven't been able to agree on very much since - especially amongst themselves ;> "Christian Ethics" can be summarised as follows: there is a divine being who has laid down certain rules for moral behavior; and correct conduct consists of acting in accordance with these rules and incorrect conduct consists of violating them. But, as Aquinas recognised, the only basis for agreeing what the "certain rules" actually are is reason. And if reason can be used to define the rules of behavior, then where is the need for "God" in ethics? There may be a "god"... But as humanity cannot agree (even among religions) what "god" is, the issue is irrelevant.
From an original posted on the GodAndScience Messageboard on 16 April 2002. |
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