Why Secular Society Makes Better Moral Decisions Than Organized Religion

[and-justice-for-all]

By TOBY ROGERS (2007, July 22) May 27, 2009.
Print: RFK Action Front

A few weeks ago I was talking with friends, and announced that I wanted to write a book that asks (and answers!) the questions: why is it that secular society seems to find the best answers to big moral and ethical questions so much sooner than the world’s great religions? Why is it that secular society is, more often than not, ahead of religion in figuring out pressing moral issues?

It seems to me that over the last several centuries, secular society, not religion, led the way in toppling monarchies and starting participatory democracies, abolishing slavery, and granting women the right to vote. Today it is once again secular society (and even corporations!), not religion, that is leading the way to granting equal rights to people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.

In each case there were religious supporters of these positions (democracy, abolitionism, universal suffrage). But for the most part, my understanding is that these were secular movements that influenced religion, not the other way around.

The only counterpoint to these examples is the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s where the religious community (as led by Dr. King) was out front on the issue of ending Jim Crow laws and insuring that African Americans had the right to vote and go to school and participate fully in society.

I imagined that it would take years of research to answer these questions satisfactorily. But just this week I picked up The Wisdom of Crowds by New Yorker business columnist James Surowiecki and it is absolutely brilliant.

The thesis of the book, is both stunning and exhilarating:

“If you put together a big enough and diverse enough group of people and ask them to make decisions affecting matters of general interest, that group’s decisions will, over time, be intellectually superior to the isolated individual, no matter how smart or well-informed he is.” (p. 58)

More: http://www.reasonproject.org/newsfeed/item/why_secular_society_makes_better_moral_decisions_than_organized_religion/

[rrneck]

1. So we can

thank Christianity for the invention of viral marketing...