Ethics

[hyphenate]

I've heard the radical right and others saying that your conscience and your morals are deeply tied to your religious values. And this is one element that fundies especially like to point out: that secularism is "godless" and those who are atheists, agnostics, pagans, etc. who do not believe in a "god" (of THEIR definition) are truly amoral, because we don't have any grounding in what is right and what is wrong.

Now, I KNOW this is bullshit--many of these so-called "godless" people are among the most compassionate and sympathetic people in the world, but tell me: do you see or feel any difference in the morals and ethics of those who are not "christian" and those who espouse christian beliefs?

We also all know that many so-called "christians" (those of the radical right variety mostly!) are complete and utter hypocrites, who not only don't live according to true Christian values, but find ways to justify their intolerance, hatred and prejudices against others. Do you find, in your circle of acquaintances, that those who are not religious are often more solidly moral, or does it even make a difference?

Another argument that a lot of the radical religious right use is that those who are secular have strange ideas about what is right and what is wrong. They complain that these "non-Christians" and others bend over backwards in trying to be politically correct, allowing for no punishments, no allowance for correction (especially of children) and no real vision of right and wrong.

For those of you who are and always will be religious, what level of contempt or agreement with these views do you personally find? Do you think that there is some truth to this view?

For those who are not religious, do you feel your morals are any less outstanding than many of these radical rightwingers? Do you feel that it is your environment, your mental perception and something called a conscience which directs you to be moral, and not some obscure and probably hypocritical view that a supernatural force compels you to be a good person?

[kittykatkoffeekup]

1. point of view

Morals are a very loose subject. What one finds moral another may not. Example,(probably bad, but I'm winging it here) are little white lies moral? It really depends on what the situation is, and what you think is moral in the first place. You have asked an impossible question. No matter what your morals are, others will find fault with them, for various reasons, religious or otherwise. :dilemma:

[warrens]

2. One thing's for sure, the far right seems to have a thing for...

Little boys and girls. Must be just another symptom of the sociopathic personalities.

People who truly have morals and values don't blather on about them. You just live them.

[kittykatkoffeekup]

4. you live them

with no apologies. Do what you think moral is and the hell with everybody else.

[bertha katzenengel]

10. "a thing for little boys and girls . . . sociopathic personalities"

Ignoring your sweeping generalization, I must ask this: What do you mean by "the far right seems to have a thing for little boys and girls?" Thanks.

[Heidi]

3. I see a huge difference between ethics and morality, but

my view my be due to the fact that I grew up in a fundamentalist Christian environment. To be ethical is to do the right thing simply because it's the right thing. (I haven't found that ethics have changed much in my lifetime, whereas morals have changed a great deal and vary from religion to religion.) As I experienced morality growing up, to be moral is to adhere to a set of behaviors in exchange for the promise of a reward or fear of retribution or punishment. I prefer to live an ethical life.

[IntravenousDemilo]

8. The difference between morals and ethics

Morals are a stick with which we beat our neighbour, never ourselves. Ethics are the stick with which we beat some good into ourselves for the sake of our neighbour. This I learned from my non-religious parents, who learned it from their non-religious parents.

[Heidi]

14. Very good analogy, IntravenousDemilo!

(And I love your username.) :hi:

[TreasonousBastard]

5. We need ethics courses in the schools...

and mandatory testing before letting people out on the streets.

Religion is neat because it gives the believers a whole set of moral and ethical guidelines to live by. Most religions, even those we love to hate, agree on the basics so societies can usually be comfortable living with them.

Without religious authority, however, nonbelievers have to come to some agreement on just where their ethics come from.

That's not as easy as it sounds.

Try explaining, in purely secular terms, just why stealing, lying, or murder is bad. You may think they are bad, you may KNOW they are bad, but can you explain just why they are bad? "God says they're bad" makes it much easier.

Have even more fun with less dangerous problems. Business dealings, sex...

You have to have some foundation for your values, and if you don't get it from religion, it has to come from somewhere.

Sartre, maybe? Hegel? But, they're not God, and one wonders just what their authority might be.

Frankly, most of us just grew up enmeshed in some sort of ethical mix we really don't fully understand, but it is somehow ingrained in us. It's usually some mix of the religious and secular. Even the nonreligious have been exposed to religious concepts, and some of them have rubbed off.

[kittykatkoffeekup]

7. how will you choose the teachers?

Great post, but you managed to destroy your own subject line. Who will be the teachers and who will write the tests? Who's sets of morals will we teach? Your own post points out that it isn't possible do this. I say again, this is an impossible question to answer. Each individual must live with their own moral code.

[TreasonousBastard]

12. The teachers don't teach ethics, but...

how to derive an ethical system.

A foolish dream, of course, but it goes with the foolish dream that education is not forcing a list of facts down your throat, but expanding your mind to know how to use those facts.

[kittykatkoffeekup]

13. derive from what?

You teach the students to derive their morals from what source? Won't that source have its own moral code that it bases itself on? Morals cannot be taught, they come from within as you live and mature. This is the only part that I find foolish. Facts can be taught, how to use facts can be taught, ethics cannot.

[TreasonousBastard]

19. Every philosphical system has its components...

like epistemology, cosmology, ontology, ethics, etc. Religion is simply philosophy with some unique cosmological assumptions.

We all grew up with some concept of these things, even if we didn't really know what they were.

Anyway, while it's impossible to teach everyone the entire history of Eastern and Western thought on ethics, it is possible to teach the rudiments of how one comes to ethical decisionmaking within the moral framework he or she developed.

Or at least try.

[kittykatkoffeekup]

15. good points

I liked your points, looking forward to a reply, but time for work.
Peace. :hi:

[lpbk2713]

6. If they were to ever be honest with themselves, they would admit

that their real "God" is money and power. Everything else is just means to an end. They will use whatever works to their advantage to get to where they want to end up.

[bertha katzenengel]

9. "do you see or feel any difference in the morals and ethics" -- NO.

When arguing about sexual orientation, I often point out to those who bring up "gay debauchery" that straight people, too, go to sex clubs for anonymous multiple partners, engage in sexual acts including the anus, etc., etc., ad nauseum. IOW not all gay people are sexually gross and not all straight people are sexually gross.*

The same argument holds here! Some atheists are horribly amoral, yes! And so are some people who go to church every Sunday.

The RRR needs to get off its high horse in a lot of ways, but IMO this is the biggest high horse of them all.

And the notion that "liberal Christian" is an oxymoron is one of the most offensive things to come out of this debate. Shortly after Kerry was nominated, our neighbor put a bumper sticker on his truck: You CAN'T be Catholic and pro-abortion." Quite obviously he is wrong, but -- never having discussed it with him -- I would imagine his mind is firmly closed.**

* "gross" as in doing things that many people probably would think were gross.

** These neighbors have adopted three children. They are good people who have put their money where their mouth is. Good people, too, have closed minds on some issues.

[alarimer]

11. You can be moral without being religious

If fact some of the worst crimes ever committed were done in the name of religion. Explain to me how converting native people through fear, intimidation and torture is moral. Explain how the Crusades were moral. None of those things are.

Some of the biggest hypocrites out there claim to be Christian (see Falwell, Graham, Robertson, any televsion evangelist). But they don't really give a damn about the less fortunate, about the poor or the sick or whatever. Tom Delay and Bush are both examples of this hypocrisy. I have no experience with other religions so I won't comment on them except to say that any organisation devised by humans is bound to have the same problems.

[marions ghost]

16. Ethics is not connected to religion in my book....

It seems to me that fundamentalists are vitally worried about what people do in personal relationships, "morally" speaking. But then they seem to have no interest in the lack of ethics in business, politics, and social justice areas. There is a total disconnect there, which no amount of churchgoing seems to cure.

Both Christians and non-Christians don't seem to have much effect on the general ethical decline. Certainly the abuses of the leaders of the Christian Right defy any possible justification...it's easy to see that they are total hypocrites, preying on the fears and weaknesses of their loyal followers. But unorganized non-Christians don't seem able to be a force for a more ethical culture either. (I realize that some progressive groups are trying, but the obstacles are great). Is our country as a whole operating on ethical principles that are above and beyond whatever is defined as "legal" at this point? I'm not at all sure that it is.

Suggest to read "The Cheating Culture--Why more Americans are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead" by David Callahan. Another good one is "The Tao of Enron." If Christian ethics were really operating as a force for good in this country, would fraud and corruption be at crisis levels?

What I learned about right and wrong I did not learn in Sunday School. At a young age I realized that while many Christian principles are positive theoretically, they are not often applied in reality. My Christian relatives committed atrocious abuses of trust. For me it was this disillusionment from an early age that led me to a "reality-based" sort of ethics. Whether someone is a religious person or not -- is totally irrelevant to my opinion of the ethics they live by. I go by my inner barometer in all interactions with people. If they are low on the personal integrity scale, they cease to exist for me. Poof, gone. No attachment.

Whether someone is "religious" also doesn't tell me anything about how "spiritual" they may be. But that's another topic, beyond Ethics...

[hyphenate]

17. The next question then

is what is "bad" and what is "good"? As someone above pointed out, there is often a break in what one finds amoral, and what another finds amoral.

A sweeping generalization (used here only for example purposes) is that liberals hate violence and conservatives hate sex. So what one might find amoral in these two broad areas is basically different, mostly based on what one was brought up to believe.

Nevertheless, while our backgrounds do tend to shape us throughout life, oftentimes there is a drastic difference in the outcome. One woman I knew had four sons and one daughter, and three of her four sons were in prison for bank robberies. While someone could say that perhaps the mother wasn't raising them right, one has to wonder where the line is drawn for what inspires us from our parents and our upbringing, versus what conclusions our own minds draw during those years of the greatest influence.

Whether we choose to follow a constructive path or a destructive one, is often an ethereal element without any connection to our environment, and rests instead in our genes--a compulsion for either good or bad, depending on some intangible factor that we can't really name.

One has to point out that throughout history, the subjects of morals and religious values are often tied inexorably. In today's world, we need to break that connection and somehow show that the two need not be linked in such a way, and that those who are moral are moral, regardless of what their religious viewpoints are.

[marions ghost]

18. so how does one "sell"

the idea that "moral values" are NOT tied to religion? There is a certain defensiveness in this question. Why do we feel defensive about what we know we value? Maybe because it isn't "sold" in a society where everything is packaged and marketed, as well as religion can be sold? Morality is not a name brand thing and shouldn't be, because it is so individual. So is lack of respect for individual values the problem? Or do we need to promote a higher degree of ethical behavior and how is that done? You have raised good questions... I don't have easy answers.

To a large extent I believe that being clearly "bad" or "good" can be as much a habit one falls into, as any other influence. Yes, major choices may present themselves on the bad-good scale from time to time, but I think it's more an attitude about what is the most productive way to live. The problem for most of us are the "grey" areas...since most of us aren't robbing banks. These are where the ethical debates arise.