Thomas J. Webb’s Ecology Blog

With this post, I begin “God & Morality Week” at Thomas J. Webb’s Ecology Blog! From today until next Monday, we will be exploring the nature of morality with respect to the unknowable supernatural. Though the vocabulary I use may lead one to believe I am picking on Christianity, please remember that when I say “God” I simply mean any benevolent, in-power (possibly all-powerful) benevolent force(s), be it monotheistic, polytheistic or animistic that is supposed to be the source of mankind’s, or at least a people’s morality. These series of arguments are not meant to be an attack on any one religion or on religiosity in general, but instead are meant to attack what are some really silly moral positions that astonishingly still haven’t gone extinct, particularly the absurd notion that one cannot have morality without God.

Wait, this is supposed to be an environmentalism blog or something, right? Well, I just have some ideas that have been swimming in my head since starting to read “Political & Theological Treatise” by Spinoza and watching a few biographies on prominent existentialists. Also, I’m building up to something that does deal with ecosophy.

Okay, so now for today’s:

In a debate about morality, one side (side A) may resort to theological justification. The argument goes something like God says it is good, therefore it is good. The implication is that morals come from God, since God lay them out along with physical laws, for humans to obey. If a book is involved, then one possible interpretation of the book is used to justify the moral position. If the opponent (side B) points out that the book in question could be interpreted differently in such a way that an immoral act is not only justified, but mandated, then side A has a shocking rebuttal - “that couldn’t be, because God is good.”

Think about the meaning of this reply for a second. Isn’t good, good simply because God deemed it so? To suggest otherwise is to admit that morality may come from a different place (making morality without God perfectly possible), perhaps from self-evident facts? If one has faith that God is good and yet can determine right from wrong within the non-scriptural frameworks we use, then isn’t the best way to find out what God wants of humanity to continue to seek under that framework? In other words, when these two people are arguing a moral point, isn’t the one who is right automatically the one who is more pious to God, regardless of what any book says? If the scripture mandates the incomprehensible, then sooner deem the scripture wrong (or misunderstood) than God bad, correct?

Looking at this, we are left with two alternatives - either what we think is right in our society is wrong (so, slavery is okay, for example) or that we can determine what is right by reason alone, without involving the even more impossible task (if such exists) of reading God’s mind.

So, in conclusion, you cannot justify a morality on theological grounds UNLESS you are to believe simultaneously that humans do not have the intellectual expertise to discover what is good and evil AND that those same faulty humans are miraculously able to read God’s mind and flawlessly translate and transliterate holy texts when a false prophet and a true prophet are impossible to distinguish (since anyone can do magic tricks).