Morals Without God? (by Frans de Waal)

[Alex]

Morals Without God?
By FRANS DE WAAL
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/morals-without-god/

...No one doubts the superiority of our intellect, but we have no basic wants or needs that are not also present in our close relatives. I interact on a daily basis with monkeys and apes, which just like us strive for power, enjoy sex, want security and affection, kill over territory, and value trust and cooperation. Yes, we use cell phones and fly airplanes, but our psychological make-up remains that of a social primate. Even the posturing and deal-making among the alpha males in Washington is nothing out of the ordinary. ...

...Maintaining a peaceful society is one of the tendencies underlying human morality that we share with other primates, such as chimpanzees. ...For example, female chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males towards each other to make up after a fight, removing weapons from their hands, and high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern as yet another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we are today. On the other hand, what would happen if we were able to excise religion from society? I doubt that science and the naturalistic worldview could fill the void and become an inspiration for the good. Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.

[Alex]

The way I see it, (practically) all religions currently in vogue have plenty of good moral principles to guide humanity. The problem is, they also have heaps of what to the non-religious may seem to be unwanted and  unwarranted paraphernalia: some of these may be views that add to the poetry of lived religions. What is urgent is not the formation of yet another religion, but the elimination of certain pernicious elements (like kill the Unbeliever) and some intrusive elements like efforts to force others to accept one's own visions of heaven and hell and how to attain one and avoid the other, and the acceptance that some people can be good and decent and moral and happy without subscribing to any of the traditional religions.

In other words, if we only add some additional ethical principles that relate to environmentally responsible behavior and respect for diversity in non-hurtful visions of post-terrestrial existence or their absence, we can accomplish a lot with the available religions of the world, without adding yet another one. The major religions must be renovated, sometimes overhauled, they need not/cannot be eliminated. They still have a good deal of positive potential, along with much that is also negative.

V. V. Raman
October 18, 2020
posted to IRASNET <[e-mail]>