What came first? Morals or religion? [long]

[the_poochies]

As a person of faith (although I'm sure plenty of holy rollers would call me a "Bad Catholic") who occasionally struggles with moral and ethical choices and why I consider those choices good or bad, I've posted here that without my faith that encourages generosity, self-sacrifice, humility and suspicion of physical wealth, I would probably live my life pretty differently. If I believed that I am only a lump of chemical compounds that will exist as me for seventy or eighty-something years, then I would try to make the goal of every day to experience as much pleasure as possible. If death is a finality, if I would be utterly annihilated upon death, would my life be miserable if I wasn't fabulously wealthy and surrounded by nubile young ladies who catered to my every whim?:popcorn: I'd wanna party every day until I died like a rock & roll song.

And for the record, I love science, the Big Bang, evolution, etc. and don't believe in the literal interpretation of scripture like my ignorant Protestant brethren, so don't get me off-track on that stuff.

But back to morality.

Here is a very thought-provoking essay by Frans de Waal that concerns morality and religion. de Waal cites observations of primates that demonstrate traits that we may consider "altruistic" or "selfless" and wonders that if religion arose as a way to "humanize" what has been longstanding primate behavior.

"We started out with moral sentiments and intuitions, which is also where we find the greatest continuity with other primates. Rather than having developed morality from scratch, we received a huge helping hand from our background as social animals. At the same time, however, I am reluctant to call a chimpanzee a “moral being.” This is because sentiments do not suffice.\ We have no evidence that other animals judge the appropriateness of actions that do not affect themselves. The great pioneer of morality research, the Finn Edward Westermarck, explained what makes the moral emotions special: “Moral emotions are disconnected from one’s immediate situation: they deal with good and bad at a more abstract, disinterested level.” This is what sets human morality apart: a move towards universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring and punishment. wrote:

However, de Waal isn't sold on the idea of completely separating science and religion and relying on science to provide us with a moral guideline to live our lives in harmony with other humans.

what alternative does science have to offer? Science is not in the business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us how to live our lives. We, scientists, are good at finding out why things are the way they are, or how things work, and I do believe that biology can help us understand what kind of animals we are and why our morality looks the way it does. But to go from there to offering moral guidance seems a stretch.
...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. wrote:

So what says you? Does acting good help you, the individual, out in the long run? Is the capitalist mantra of "he who dies with the most toys wins" a distinctly human trait? While the author lists a few instances of primates and other animals demonstrating what we may consider altruistic or even moral values, he fails to cite other examples of animals showing 100% selfish behavior...sort of in his mention of Robert Wright's The Moral Animal. I'm sure we can cite the same instances with humans as well.

[swampy]

"...my ignorant Protestant brethren, so don't get me off-track on that stuff."

You just had to throw in the word ignorant, didn't you? I for one am a Protestant and I believe in the big bang theory and so do many others.

[the_poochies]

swampy wrote:
"...my ignorant Protestant brethren, so don't get me off-track on that stuff."

You just had to throw in the word ignorant, didn't you? I for one am a Protestant and I believe in the big bang theory and so do many others.

Okay, okay, mea culpa! I should have said "my ignorant fundamentalist brethren" there. Anyway, I didn't want anyone to paint me or other posters of faith as ignorant morans. Maybe I was being a bit ignorant myself.

[davester]

I'm an atheist and I know many others, and none of us want to shirk moral responsibilities and "party every day until I died like a rock & roll song". That suggestion is absurd in the extreme IMHO. There are also plenty of highly immoral religious folks around who are going for that "dies with the most toys wins" award. I think that in many cases those who don't have canned moral values spoon-fed to them by religious institutions are much more invested in the values that they do end up living by. Religion definitely has no monopoly on morality, and in many cases religious people have a dearth of moral values.

The article you quoted seems very muddled to me, and gets especially muddled when discussing "the athiest's dilemma" where science is considered as an alternative to religion. This is absurd, since science is a method of inquiry, not a philosophy regarding how one should live ones life, something he states but then disregards.

If he said one good thing in that article it would have to be...

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.

[Grace62]

Yes I read that essay last night and found it interesting. Of course you don't need religion to behave in an altruistic or empathetic manner. And anything you know about "God" has been taught to you by other humans, it's not something you just discovered on your own.
But we are self-aware, and therefore aware of death, and we think about it a lot. It's possible that other animals think about it too and we don't understand them well enough to see that. Religion and science answer very different questions and meet different needs, I see no reason to put them in opposition to each other.
By the way, I just spent the weekend with someone who calls himself an "atheist Christian." He doesn't believe there is a higher being, but he likes the Gospel and thinks we could learn a lot about how to be in community together if we paid more attention to that and less to organized religion. I'm inclined to agree.

[the_poochies]

Well said, Grace62. I agree with your quote that "Religion and science answer very different questions and meet different needs, I see no reason to put them in opposition to each other."

While I'm not a big fan of the guy, Benedict XIV spoke about how the 20th century's distrust of religion led to the growth of the two most destructive movements of the century: Nazism and Communism. Both political movements placed their supreme trust in science or sociological ideas, and Nazism was horrifically linked with the scientific love-fest over eugenics that was all of the rage during the first half of the 20th century. IMHO, it seems like science without a moral structure may carry us to a totalitarian state akin to 1984 or Brave New World.

[Grace62]

Unfortunately organized religion itself (Catholics included) played an ugly role itself in that whole Nazi thing. There is no end to how cruel we humans can be, perhaps that is why we'll always need religion.
Distrust of organized religion is here to stay and I'm not sure that's a bad thing...we'll always need to belong somewhere and faith communities still do as good a job as any group at welcoming the stranger. People want to be taken seriously, they want to know how to make the world a better place for all people. Some faith communities are working on that, and those are the ones that will succeed.

[Gutenberg]

For years I have been a pretty regular listener to "Speaking of Faith," a thoughtful, intelligent, respectful discussion of faith, science, ethics, and all sorts of questions relating to them. It is moderated by Krista Tippett, who is wonderfully prepared and an excellent interviewer. Tippett recently renamed the show to "Being."

This week's guest was Richard Mouw, an evangelical Christian, president of Fuller Theological Seminary and author of "Uncommon Decency," who struggles to convince others that civil, respectful discourse is better than shouting and pounding fists on the pulpit. It was a wonderful talk. Mouw believes that gay marriage is wrong, but he wants the subject discussed in a thoughtful, loving manner without pandering to fear, and he asks other Christians how they would have received Tyler Clementi in their church. More here:

http://being.publicradio.org/programs/20...-civility/

Tippett has also compiled a dozen of her very absorbing conversations with scientists of all religions in the book "Einstein's God." I have a copy and read it often. It's really good stuff, and I get something new out of the conversations every time I read them.

"SOF" and "Being" are podcast. You can pick them up at being.publicradio.org.

Edit: dang typo.

[Grace62]

That's interesting Gutenberg. I was just at a conference this weekend with speakers from Fuller (including Sally Morganthaler.) I'm not a socially conservative Christian (and neither are a lot of the teachers and students at Fuller) but I do appreciate the attempt at civility and open-mindedness.
I think there is a fair amount of collective guilt floating around the socially conservative churches these days. I hope they do something constructive with it.

[michaelb]

I am not a biologists or a theologist, and don't have any particular insight here. But I would guess "morality" came first, only because humans are social animals, and evolved from other social animals, and my guess is that "morality" is a social adaption that provided an evoluntionary competitive advantage.

For some reason, I think religion evolved from what could be called death cults. Other animals (elephants, dolphins?) mourn the dead, but as humans gained self awareness, that must have been particularly profound. So religion developed as a culture explanation and process for mourning the dead.