Morality and religion (or lack thereof)

I have presented Richard Poll’s original hypothesis in so many discussions/classes over the years. Hello fellow Liahona. Remember one warning though, considering events which life throws at us, we can change our status. Iron Rods can become Liahonas. Liahonas can become Iron Rods (perhaps less frequently). Last evening a couple came to my genealogy class. She identified herself as a member, her husband is not baptized (nor religious). They were a great couple. We spent two hours researching and finding so much data. Half way through the class, my twin brother showed up for research (a faithful Catholic). I introduced him as such and they laughed. We fellowshipped together in a secular way and boundaries disappeared. That is the path I pursue (and I agree with you regarding prop .

My initial thought in response to the question was that there is a point at which loyalty and integrity become incompatible. If you are loyal to a flawed person and allow that loyalty to trump your own judgment in a matter related to integrity, that’s a problem. Given that religions are flawed human organizations, if someone places their trust in the arm of flesh (church is flesh, BTW) rather than in God (or their own integrity), then it could be said that religion leads to immorality. But that’s an oversimplification, IMO. Because why did that happen? If a religion includes many people who are moral as well as people who are immoral, then the cause is at an individual level. It’s that the individual cared more about approval of (certain) people than about doing what’s right. In that sense, you could say that all organizations lead to immorality, but I would say that’s not the root cause – that some people are such strong affiliators or need approval of others and that those are the traits that lead to immorality in an organization.

I think I’m a weird duck on this issue, so I’ll give it a go here.

It seems like you’re properly assessing the incentives with regard to certain beliefs. While these incentives might exist, it’s not clear to me how much they influence morality. Morality seems to be quite a complex issue that isn’t necessarily boiled down to a single personality, or broadened to a group. Seems like it’s a bit of both to me.

It’s that the individual cared more about approval of (certain) people than about doing what’s right. In that sense, you could say that all organizations lead to immorality, but I would say that’s not the root cause – that some people are such strong affiliators or need approval of others and that those are the traits that lead to immorality in an organization.

I think this is an oversimplification. For example: today I wrote a letter to my supervisor indicating that I’m giving my 30 day notice. However, before I sent it to him, I sent it some trusted friends to find out if they “approve.” This isn’t because I seek approval from others, but because I have nothing to compare to. I have never written such a letter.

Likewise, affirmation of a moral principle by a majority of people (or in Mormonism, a leader) may be a search for approval, but it also could be a comparative mechanism. How do I gauge whether or not I am being moral? Assuming that it is all inside me (I feel it is moral or not) seems short sighted to me. The Light of Christ (or evolutionary psychology if you’re areligious) may be alive and well, but maybe I am not as tuned to it as others. This, to me, assumes morality is absolute. But if morality has anything to do with individuals, culture, perception, gov’t, etc. etc. then it seems more subjective to me. If that’s the case then how else can I gauge whether or not I am being moral? A logical response to that seems to be to ask someone, or wait for approval from a leader, or see what everyone else is doing. I see wisdom in this mechanism as long as it does not turn into a “search for approval” as hawk has indicated.

if one is focused on specific rules of shoulds and should nots, I think it blinds some from seeing the bigger, more important picture of universal love and unity.

I agree completely and I think your point is important. I am not an expert on morality, but clearly there are moral atheists, moral muslims, moral Mormons, etc. etc. for just about every group (except the most cult-like). Indeed there is much personal responsibility in the decision of whether or not to be moral, but I am very inclined to take heed of the Milgram experiment. People will do immoral things in the presence of affirmation or command from someone in authority. I think it is an art to appropriately balance personal responsibility and morality with organizational or collective responsibility and morality. It seems to me there is a balance to be had. I would be wise to check my actions against the accepted actions of the group, but also leave a place for my own inclinations of morality.

Perhaps there is a good evolutionary reason for why we are so ready to heed authority even at the expense of morality. Perhaps in some cultures this evolutionary trend is fed too much, and perhaps in others it is not fed enough. I believe we can be moral with and without religion. I think morality is a system with inputs of culture, genes, technology, gov’t, religion, geography, science, brain function, etc. etc.

So, Eu, I think you are getting to the heart of what is morality, which is a valid question. There was a great NYT article on this about a year ago: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html” class=”bbcode_url”>http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html

Personally, I think a lot of what we think is “eternal” morality is really just group-reinforcing behavior (how’s that for unsimplifying my previous oversimplification?). The article (Johnathan Haidt did it first) points to 5 supposed moral instincts. I’ll post more on this later (gotta run son to orthodontist), but this topic, IMO, puts most of what we consider morality into the arena of learned (and therefore not universal) behavior. The categories are universal, but the specifics and thresholds differ greatly. More to come. Stay tuned.

Recent article in the SLC Trib “Rejection of Religion doesnt mean lack of Morals.” http://www.sltrib.com/Opinion/ci_13809294

This thread is great! I love it all!

I see the origin of religion as an easy way to try to “teach” morality to youngsters. Kind of in the vein of those desert west folk tales like chupacabra or skin walkers. Essentially, those are just scary tales that adults use to keep the kids from wandering off at night.

Similarly, kids aren’t afraid of the dark naturally. I think it’s learned. (I could be wrong but that’s been my anecdotal experience) Maybe morality is like the dark, we have to use instinct and learning.

Kids do seem to be a bit amoral, so somewhere along the way, human community began to construct ways to “teach” morality. Some morality seems to be instinctual (don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t hurt others) but there’s way too much gray to leave it to instinct.

I think it’s hard to say which came first, but the need to communalize must have driven the “need” to be approved by the community. And, this need to sacrifice one’s inner-life for the community’s approval of the external life seems to be the linchpin of the cycle.

So, in the communal construct of reciprocal self-interest and fairness, the need to be seen as “fair”, or doing one’s “fair share” for the community is just as important as actually being “fair” and doing one’s “fair share”. Hence, the dilemma of morality.

I guess I see morality as a form of altruism: one knows what’s right by the community and does it regardless of whether it is noticed by anyone or not.

But, of course, humans don’t trust that other humans will act with this same altruism (probably because they’ve betrayed this trust themselves at some point) and, thus, starts the cycle of “looking fair” being more important than actually “being fair”.

So, inasmuch as 😳 religion is a human community, “looking righteous” will always trump actually “being righteous”. Therefore, it’s not so much that religion is the cause of immorality, rather the human need to “appear” “fair”, “good”, “righteous”, etc. will invariably lead one to being vulnerable to immoral action where that immoral action is necessary to maintain the “image” of morality.

I’ll throw my mom under the bus as an example. She is pure at heart, in almost every sense. She would not, however, go to her ward’s sacrament meeting without my dad because, according to her, what would people think. I’m not saying that the act alone was immoral but, even in her paradigm, she was willing to act immorally to protect the image of morality.

Also, she knows and loves the gay brother of her son-in-law. Which makes him the uncle of my mom’s grand-kids. Through personal experiences with him, she is blissfully unaware of the ironic fact that she has no problem with him baby-sitting her grand-kids, yet vehemently opposes allowing homosexuals to be boy scout leaders.

So, maybe, it’s not that religion causes immorality but the organizing (communalizing) of religion that causes immorality. I think this is why Thomas Jefferson once said that eventually all American men would be universal unitarians! 😆

More about morality and what it is. Those who believe there is such a thing (there are notable individuals who don’t believe morality is anything more than a social construct), morality has 3 traits:

– Morality must invoke “universal” rules. Prohibitions of rape and murder, for example, are felt not to be matters of local custom but to be universally and objectively warranted. One can easily say, “I don’t like brussels sprouts, but I don’t care if you eat them,” but no one would say, “I don’t like killing, but I don’t care if you murder someone.”

– Immorality should be “punished.” Not only is it allowable to inflict pain on a person who has broken a moral rule; it is wrong not to, to “let them get away with it.” People are thus untroubled in inviting divine retribution or the power of the state to harm other people they deem immoral.

– Morality differs from other psychological mind-sets. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral (“killing is wrong”), rather than merely disagreeable (“I hate brussels sprouts”), unfashionable (“bell-bottoms are out”) or imprudent (“don’t scratch mosquito bites”). Bear in mind that many of the arguments against something belonging to “morality” re-position that issue into one of these other categories. For example, is it “immoral” for older men to initiate younger men into sexuality (which was a norm in ancient Greece) or is it simply unfashionable (BTW, every feeling revolts at that notion, so I’m not clear where the line is – just posing the question)?

We know from history that some behaviors that were once considered immoral (e.g. divorce) are now considered morally neutral and some behaviors that were considered morally neutral (e.g. smoking) are now considered immoral (due to harm caused to others). Additionally, people have different morality “thresholds” (e.g. the continuum between sport hunters and vegans). In short, some of what passes for morality is preference alignment (meaning people who make the same choices I do are “moral” while those who don’t are “immoral”). We have a gut reaction that something is wrong, but we don’t really know why, so we try to explain or rationalize our response. This would be fine if those gut reactions didn’t differ so much from culture to culture and from era to era, and even from person to person within culture and era.

There are 5 morality “instincts” that are universal (BUT those 5 have different thresholds and specifics for different people, cultures, eras, and organizations):

– Harm. The difference between sticking a pin in your own hand (ouch!) and sticking a pin in the hand of a child (!!). We might wince at the first, but we recoil in horror from the second command.

– Fairness. Accepting something for free that was due to a random error (lucky me) vs. something for free that was stolen from someone else (!!).

– Community. Saying something bad about Mormonism to another active Mormon vs. saying something bad about Mormonism to an evangelical.

– Authority. Slapping a colleague as part of a comedy skit vs. slapping your boss as part of a comedy skit.

– Purity. Actors in a play behaving in a silly manner on stage vs. actors in a play behaving like animals on stage (e.g. crawling around naked and urinating on stage).

So, while these might be the 5 morality “instincts,” they are not TRULY universal because we all have different thresholds for each.

That’s a lot of information, but I wanted to recap the highlights of the article for those who didn’t take time to read it.