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From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.politics,net.religion
Subject: Re: Schools and Churches (really 'support' for areligious moral codes)
Message-ID: <1687@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Sat, 21-Sep-85 12:34:34 EDT
Article-I.D.: dciem.1687
Posted: Sat Sep 21 12:34:34 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 21-Sep-85 14:07:32 EDT
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Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada
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Summary: 


> Paul Dubuc
>I did not suggest that moral codes derive from religions (that may
>be true or false, but it was not my point).  My point is that only
>religiously grounded moral codes can claim any real authority over
>other human beings.  This is a transcendent standard, one that subjects
>that king to the law as well as the peasant.  If the law is not based
>on a transcendent authority, then it is whatever the king (or government
>in today's terms) says it is; those in power define right and wrong.
>
>If moral codes are a product of evolution as you say, then so is my
>ability to reason and question those moral codes.  Should I just obey
>them because they were supposedly right for "primitive humans"?  Do it
>because that's the way it's always been done?  The technology we have may
>help me avoid the consequences they had.  How does this basis for
>morality help answer the question of whether it is right for me to cheat
>on my income tax?

Two points here: Law = Morality, and evolution both develops moral codes
and allows us to question them.

(1) Law = Morality:
      I totally reject any idea that the law should support any religiously
based morality.  It can, however, support moral behaviour whose value has
been shown by long experience (e.g. don't kill, steal, etc.), as well as
behaviour that we reason will be beneficial.  Reliance on religious bases
for morality leads to conflicts between religions as to what is moral and
what is not, except in these core areas that have evolved over periods
longer than humanity has existed.  Much of what Christianity calls "moral"
is aimed at maintaining authority rather than improving life.  One can
argue that the makers of law have a similar self-serving motivation, and
therefore one would expect law to parallel Christian morality, but that
is not a good reason to derive laws from Christian morality.

(2)
>If moral codes are a product of evolution, then so is my ability to reason
>and to question those moral codes.

I totally agree, but I think it contradicts your statements about moral
codes having a religious basis.  I believe it is absolutely necessary that
we try to break out of the straitjacket of moral codes that evolved to
suit small bands of social animals, and develop through reason new codes
that suit our Global Village.  We cannot afford a code that permits people
to mentally deny personhood to those that live in different places or
under different circumstances (e.g. Vietnamese "gooks").  We cannot afford
to allow wars, little or big, against groups whose aspirations conflict
with those of our group.  Morality that allowed, and even approved, such
conflicts, worked when communication and travel was slow, and only small
groups contended.  The elimination of a foreign group was OK (Carthage
must be destroyed -- and it was), because they were not real people
(not Romans).  But now, the elimination of the foreign group might mean
the elimination of us all, and that morality (which was supported by
the Christian Church) won't work any more.

Unfortunately, our deeply evolved morality seems to be gaining the upper
hand.  We see more and more genocidal tendencies, murders of dehumanized
people (Sunni by Shiite, city-dweller by Pol Pot, Jew by Hitler,
victim by mugger, black S. African by police, and so on and so on).
Such acts are not un-human, but inhumane.  They are a consequence
of our morality, which must be re-thought if we are to survive.  And we
can't rely on the morality of an Avenging Lord to guide our rethinking.
Jesus had the right idea in a lot of what he said, but somehow that often
gets transmuted in "Christian" morality.
-- 

Martin Taylor
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