Morality: Not a purview of religion
Brent Rasmussen rips into a post by a Christian conservative who responds to a comment:
If your god revealed to you in a set of flawless communications you could not dispute that you should kill every child you see under the age of 2, would you?
The comment is of course a thought experiment, and there isn’t really a chance that this guy, “Vox Day,” will actually do anything of this sort; however, his response is a clear illustration that religion and morality are independent. Vox Day says:
The answer is yes, and how would you possibly take issue with that position regardless of whether you believe in my god or don’t believe in any god?
Obviously, this is a hypothetical question. Anyone would seriously question the sanity of a person claiming to have received this revelation from a god. I don’t believe in god, so I have no hesitation in saying that there is no way I would kill every child under the age of two because God asked me to.
But lets assume that in fact there is/are gods and lets assume the revelation to be “flawless,” as the original comment requires. I still will have no qualms in choosing the same option. If I were to believe god, and if I were to believe he is the creator, and that he is all-loving and all-caring super-being, and that refusing to act on this revelation would mean burning in eternal hell, I would still choose to disobey god. I reject any god who remotely asks me to kill a two-year-old.
Why do I choose this option? Well, Brent puts it better than I ever can:
But I’d be satisfied with my choice that I had done the right thing, by my own lights.
“I was just following orders” is not a moral free pass. It doesn’t matter if those orders come from the Commandant at the Concentration Camp, or from a creator-god. As responsible, ostensibly moral adults, we have the obligation to examine those orders and obey them only if they are moral in our own mind as well.
If you think about it, the question is not that hypothetical. The Islamic terrorists do believe that its their moral duty to fight the enemies of Islam; its OK that the suicide bombs kill innocent adults and children. A large number of Americans look at the war on terror as a “crusade.” Events of Godhara and the ensuing riots of 2002 also saw a lot of innocent children raped and killed in religious violence.
As Richard Dawkins puts it, without religion, all these problems will not just disappear, but there will be one less reason for people to behave thoughtlessly and act brutally.
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