Religion
In reply to the discussion: There aint no god, if there is may she strike this thread DEAD [View all]whatthehey
(3,660 posts)It doesn't matter if we assume the benign version of Christian moral philosophy as you describe it or the far more commonly expressed version of Christian morality that we must obey to avoid eternal hellfire and gain heaven, both rely on measuring up to externally imposed expectations to gain, or respond to, the mercy of an external arbiter. If people do good works in an acknowledged vain attempt to live up to the impossible standards of Christ's morality as an acknowledgement of his grace and mercy already given to them, or if they do good works to avoid his condemnation to the fiery pit, they still do good works because somebody else is setting the expectation.
That is the morality of a dog. Whether a dog fears the rolled up newspaper or simply wants to please a beloved master by not peeing in the house, the dog is still cleaving to the external deontology of the master. He doesn't think that peeing in the house is a negative act in and of itself. He doesn't understand the work to clean the carpet and think "ah that's a harm caused by my action of peeing. I will avoid that harm by peeing outside."
Far superior is the morality of an autonomous ethical agent. I, surely no moral paragon, need neither divine grace nor the fear of divine wrath to see that killing or raping or robbery cause great harm, and therefore to avoid doing so even when it would likely be with impunity. It is a human, societal morality whereby independent agents know that if A does not cheat B and B does not steal from C then C will not kill A. The vast majority of us live like this, religious or not. Rousseau was a bit of a primitivist, but he had that part right. I've asked religious people quite a few times if they think they personally would go Natural Born Killer if they lost their faith. Every one said no. Every one also acknowledged that atheists of their acquaintance also avoided doing so. That's because absent sociopaths, everybody works this way faith or not. Morality is a human construct for group cohesion. We need laws and authorities of some kind because sociopaths exist. We however don't need gods to make those laws, only human moral agency, which is all that we rely on now really.