God, torture and morality

I'm a non-believing agnostic. My parents were non-believers (possibly deists) from religious backgrounds. Although I'm unsure of the existence of God, I do strongly believe that if we are to be judged after death, the only reasonable criteria would be based on how we treat other people. While this would separate my beliefs from much of traditional religious dogma (particularly in regards to sexual morality), I think I do have much in common with many believers- I believe torture is wrong, always, and I believe society has a duty to improve the quality of life of its most vulnerable members (for example).

To answer Rod's question (how are we to know what is permitted and what is not)- I think I can use that reasonable criteria I mentioned above... I'm sure it's no coincidence that the Golden Rule (of which my basis is a version of) exists as a major tenet in every major religion.

Some people say "but how do you KNOW that is the right way to behave?"... and the answer is "I don't, not for sure". But it seems like the best way possible for me.

One thing I think many religious people forget or fail to imagine when talking to unbelievers like myself, is that belief is not really a choice (at least not for me). I don't make the CHOICE to be agnostic- I'm genuinely unsure, and open to the possibility I will be swayed one way or the other in the future. If I'm genuinely unsure as to the existence of God, it follows that I would be genuinely unsure as to the validity of the teachings of the Bible, or other texts. So I use the tools I was taught by my parents to live my life. I don't want to make it seem like it was a great challenge for me to come up with my system of morality, because it is rather intuitive for me. I believe honestly that most agnostics and "soft" atheists (those who BELIEVE, but are not CERTAIN, that God doesn't exist) use similar reasoning as I do in their lives. I can't speak to the motivations and morality of "hard" atheists (those who are CERTAIN that God doesn't exist), but the ones I've met are no more moral or immoral than any other group I've known.

How much more authentic and Godly would our Christian witness to this culture be if we spent as much time and effort speaking out against other forms of materialism and hedonism, which are equally as unbiblical!

Indeed. Ever since Augustine and Constantine domesticated the church, Christian morality has primarily been concerned with private morality, drinking, sex, divorce and so on. There has not been much thought given to the morality of what states or businesses do, even though the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament prophets, puts great weight on societal righteousness. Everybody is familiar with this description of the coming age "they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more;", but the next verse continues "but they shall all sit under their own vines and under their own fig trees, and no one shall make them afraid". This paints a very different picture of God's idea of a just economy than what our present system presents. (But we can ignore it, since it describes the next dispensation, right?)

Just an attempt to place this discussion in a wider framework:

It might be helpful to keep in mind the dilemma posed by Plato in the dialogue Euthyphro (and hence called The Euthyphro Dilemma): "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" Applying it to this discussion, the question would be: Is an action morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good? The question is addressed in divine command theories familiar in Medieval Catholicism.
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"Torture is always wrong, you say, to which the interrogator responds, "Says who?"

Tell you what, Mr. Interrogator, just lie down on that board right there and, five minutes from now, let me know what you think.

Uh...Mick...hand me those pliers and that blowtorch...preesh...

Word Quibble:

Speaking of Dostoyevsky, Rod wrote, "If God doesn't exist, then anything is possible." I think you meant to say "If God doesn't exist, then anything is permissible."

The first quote is a bit funny, since there's line in Matthew that directly contradicts Rod. It's where Jesus says, "With God all things are possible."

Gah, the

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

(This software really needs a "preview" function)

I don't think the premise that without God everything is possible holds. There are many examples where societies function without an ultimate authority, yet still act according to established norms of good behavior. In the animal kingdom, for example, social norms work their way out without a god (lions don't eat each other, for instance). The desire to conform to social pressure is, according to much recent scientific research, the single strongest motivator of human behavior (more than "self-interest", even). So, society's accepted norms -- whether those come from an extant God or moral myths or a heroic philosopher-king or just wisdom passed down through the ages -- are what keep people in line.

If God doesn't exist, then anything is possible.

...it's not enough to say, "God forbids this;" those who believe it must also believe that at some point, they will be judged for violating the divine command.

For me, from reading the first, bolded statement numerous times on its own, those two statements together as a single, logical construct defines the most important issue.

People react to the absence of God and stop short. They say "Well, that person is not a believer, so that person cannot be trusted (to be moral or act morally)." The labels fly fast and furious, absorbing the pejorative connotations as if by osmosis: materialist, hedonist, atheist, ideo-this and metaphysio-that.

Rod's point about the set "sexual morality" and the superset "morality" is telling. Torture in the current context is a high-profile and intense example, but it permeates society. Why would a Christian, whole of body and fully abled, park in a handicapped spot? Why would someone think nothing of parking in a traffic lane or fire zone because he'll "only be a few minutes"? Does every Christian everywhere, upon finding an item of value or money, go out of his way to turn it in to some authority that might find the valid owner? Has he never, ever littered?

I hasten to add that, while I qualify some of my statements towards Christians, that is only because they are the vast majority in my society. I absolutely do not let non-Christians off the hook, which I'll explain below.

Taken separately, these are trivia in the grand scheme. I grant that. But when looked at from the standpoint of morality, are they and other behaviors immoral? Do we go silent on discussing them because they are trivial? Why? Why do we not discuss them with the same energy and effort?

My answer, my challenge, is that we must have this discussion under the broad category of civic morality. Like it or not, it being the intention of the founders or not, argue that as you will, we are a pluralistic society. There is exactly one definitional requirement for inclusion, and that's citizenship, and there are no other requirements, not religion, not ethnic heritage, not nation of birth. Citizenship means compliance with the civic morality, concurrently as well as complementarily under two processes: legal/judicial (compliance with or violation of law), and social.

Our predecessors handed us an entrenched set of civic morality governed by law: physical violence, property damage and theft, fraud and libel, perjury and false witness. I submit, however, that every one of those could be handled socially. We simply agree that, due to their natures, that they must remain under the aegis of law.

In the ongoing discussion -- one that, if it did end, would destroy civic morality -- everyone has a responsibility to take part. We must honor contributions regardless of their motivation, whether religious, secular, materialistic, or strictly rational (add to that list as you wish). As for laws: your God prohibits you from committing murder? I don't believe in your God, but that sure works for me; as for social: your God prohibits you from working or doing business on X-day? Well, my God commands me to rest on Y-day, so you do not have the right to pass a law forcing me to not work on X-day or to open my store on Y-day, but no one will force you to patronize my store on X-day.

The major points must be discussed as points. There must be a mutually agreeable line of demarcation between legal and social, and some damn close examination of any item someone wants to move from one to the other.

It has not been, is not and never will be about the binary "anything goes." It has been, is and ever will be about what happens to the doer when he or she violates the list of what doesn't go. I don't care if the source is God, Jesus, Buddha, Confucious, the Horned-God and Moon-Goddess, or some mixture amongst those and more. I care that the civic morality is clearly defined, and we all take and exercise responsibility for it.

AC,

I'm a Christian, but I think the divine command theory is weak. If we had been created by Molech, that would not mean that the commands of Molech suddenly became good. I'm with that commenter who said "Morals simply are". That's all there is to be said. Adding God to the equation doesn't fundamentally change things. We can learn a lot about goodness through listening to what God tells us, and especially through looking at the life of God's incarnate form, Christ. But goodness, itself, cannot be _defined_ in terms of what God wants, because then that makes a tautology of the statement that God is perfectly good.

To know that God exists is separate from choosing whether to follow Him or not. As it's said, "The demons also believe, and tremble." The choice of whether to follow God or deny Him is a moral choice, not an intellectual one, and simply knowing that God exists is not enough to make that choice for us: we must also believe that God is _good_, and that means that goodness can't simply be reduced to "whatever God wills".

I think that philosopher William Lane Craig expresses himself on this point much better than I ever could, so I'll lazily post a link to an article by him.

In conclusion, even though there are many examples of righteous unbelievers, and regrettably countless examples of unrighteous believers, I believe that human nature being what it is, belief in God is, in fact, the sine qua non of a moral compass, at least on a philosophical level. If God does not exist, how are we to know what is permitted and what isn't, and more to the point, what authority can restrain the will to power if not the fear of God?

Is fear of God a virtue, and is acting from fear of God virtuous? Acting in terror a person tends towards instinctive reaction over reasoned response. And let's be perfectly clear, to behold God has an instinctively terrifying quality to the 'self'. Does that make the moral compass a merely reactive mechanism to the most fundamental of terrors, annihilation? If morality is reduced to instinctive response to terror, we have plenty of examples where people have committed horrific atrocities in response to that existential terror.

So no, fear of God is not in itself an adequate moral compass. Fear tempered by reason and a desire to reduce suffering is an excellent base, to which can be added humility. Humility is the wisdom born of awareness of and acceptance of the extreme limits of my own knowledge and power. I cannot know more than the proximate consequences of my actions, but I can know that to act in a moral fashion requires a parsing out of selfishness in making moral choices. It requires setting aside, as best I am able, those motivators which arise out of concerns for 'self'. These can include attachment to beliefs, and especially those beliefs which provide the ego with assurance of an eternal promise of paradise and avoidance of damnation. Why? Because the ego in the desire to obtain one and avoid the other falls back on its survival as the thing of greatest importance. Rather than building humility, this builds a defensive/aggressive set of responses to anything which threatens. It is a form of ultimate selfishness, and that is the antithesis of morality. To be moral is to transcend fear and selfish desire, and thus be able to act selflessly from a state of humility. It is from this state that moral acts proceed.

"True devotion is for itself: not to desire heaven nor to fear hell."
Rabia al-Adawiya

I think TD (and Plato) puts his finger right on the question to be addressed:

Is an action morally good because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally good?

Very many Christians would seem to argue the former point. There are any number of reasons for this. As Rod mentions, having an ultimate, infallible arbiter of justice continuously observing you and hanging over your head is both a powerful inducement to do right as well as a comfort that those who do wrong will eventually receive their comeuppance.

But this seems contradictory in a religiously pluralist society. How do we know what God is commanding? If there is no one obviously true faith, if indeed we may leap from one faith to another, then how are we to know which God will judge us? We find ourselves in the rather strange situation where we can pick our judge, so under those circumstances, who wouldn't go for the one who will judge our own crimes more leniently?

And if He judges my neighbor more stringently, then how much the better is that? I can confidently assert that when it comes to the truly important moral questions (to my mind), I'm meeting my God's high standards while attacking those who don't.

So it would appear that this model of religion (morality originates from God), combined with a religious plural society, inevitably seems to lead to religion that does nothing but validate my prejudices and make me feel good about myself.

Therefore, it would appear that we are forced to answer the morality is something that exists independently of God. God commands us because morality is independently good. And if that is true, then there is a single moral code that applies to all of us, regardless of religion. And it also appears that there may be many ways of discovering and living that code.

But if that is true, then why is God necessary at all? He may be helpful (as Rod pointed out, He helped Rod avoid some bad decisions), but He's not essential. An atheist can discover and live morally just as well (if not as easily) as a devout person.

So now I've painted myself into a corner of either suggesting that a religiously plural society is inherently wrong because it permits "wrong" worship, or admitting that religion is essentially a luxury...something we might adopt for therapeutic or aesthetic reasons, but not a necessity.

In other words, is the First Amendment the real culprit here?

If God doesn't exist, then anything is possible.

And what is impossible if God DOES exist? The torture happened, with many Christians supporting it. If there is no God, do either of those two material facts change?

What we have here is the conservative version of political correctness. It's dangerous to not believe in God, because it might make you a bad person. William F. Buckley Jr. once made just about that precise argument to support teaching creationism in public schools. Truth doesn't matter--what matters is how a statement makes you feel.

"You believe because you think it's good for you, not because of anything inherent in the belief. I think that the orthodox are in the miserable situation of being orthodox for therapeutic reasons."

Seems an observation as old as Jesus.

A person can be religious for personal benefit or because they love God. Most come to faith for the former and develop varying degrees of the latter. We tend to start with "Obey these rules and you'll get into heaven" and develop into "Be Holy as your Father in heaven is Holy." But the goal is the latter, not the former.

Which is why Jesus was steadfast in his criticism of the Scribes and Pharisees. They were very careful to do all the "right" things, say all the "right" prayers, avoid all the "wrong" things and "uncleanliness" because there was something in it for them. They all-too-often missed the overarching part about loving God. Yet they were the epitome of Judaism, the most religious of all.

For a Christian the truth is not found in rules, traditions or "being saved." For a Christian the truth is found in Jesus Christ, born, died, risen. Spending your time worrying about the former rather than loving God above all things and your neighbor as yourself is to have missed the point.

“The question, I believe, is one of logic, and of course I take the side of Rieff pere, and Dostoevsky: If God doesn't exist, then anything is possible.”

Whether God exists or not has no bearing here…only whether an individual human being believes that God exists, right? And an individual’s belief is very likely inherited from one’s family and supporting culture. I think this is obvious.

But if individuals in different cultures learn to believe in different flavors of deity (Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist, etc.) then you’ve really lost any hope of gaining an objective starting point.

It was mentioned that those with belief consist of the virtuous and non-virtuous alike. But asserting or at least hinting that a non-believer has no basis for moral behavior is rather unconvincing, given the cross-cultural experience of humanity. There is a fair amount of cross-cultural agreement on what is virtuous and what is not.

What the shrinking world is leading to is the need to view virtue at a level common to all humanity – not only to a given culture (e.g. the Judeo-Christian west). Rod’s assertion simply leads to a larger problem that cannot be answered by an individual tradition except with an assumption that the entire human race will one day assent to a belief in the same deity with the same set of attributes and teachings. Not very likely and certainly not practical for convincing the not-already-convinced.

Human beings learn virtue by practicing virtuous behavior. And the foundation of virtue is the human ability to empathize – to understand that another’s life is not – at its bedrock – any different from our own. Thus we learn and try to act in a way that gives ourselves pleasure at the cost of another’s pain. Isn’t that a core belief of virtually all traditions: the Golden Rule, whether phrased positively (‘Do unto…’) or negatively (‘Don’t do unto…’). Note that empthy is learned and that those without it are called sociopaths.

That’s why, no matter what the culture, I strongly suspect that the common instruction ‘Be nice!’ is understood in pretty much the same way.

In another post Rod wrote that he has what is akin to complete certainty that his beliefs are true. I think that reflects a determination to view the world only in the terms of one faith tradition, ignoring what is certainly a more diverse human experience. That may be convenient for an individual’s effort to cope with a wider world, but it’s certainly neither a universal nor lasting strategy as different cultures bump against each other.

Compassion – the bedrock of virtue – is the needed common element: as per Augustine’s“Love, and do what you will.”

I've probably mentioned this before, but I once had a pastor who was very good at challenging people's notions that they were "good." He would say things like, "Don't pride yourself on your goodness, because, say, you haven't committed adultery. How is that good? Has anybody ever *asked* you to?" etc.

I loved his homilies, because they would challenge our assumptions about ourselves, that it was possible to be good merely by avoiding evil--and not even all evil, just those "big sins" dealing with the sixth (for Catholics) commandment. Even there, he scolded the congregation one Sunday because so many people had raved to him about what a "good movie" they'd just seen--"Titanic." A good movie, said Father sternly, but nobody admitted that the movie expects you to cheer for violations of the sixth commandment.

Father was youngish, btw--forties, I think.

Knowing this priest was very helpful to me in terms of spiritual development. His underlying point was twofold--first, that goodness didn't include making excuses for those sins you found personally appealing, even if those were laziness or materialism or gluttony (again, he chided his congregation after Thanksgiving because so many people had told him how they'd "stuffed themselves," but almost nobody was mentioning gluttony in the confessional); and two, that goodness involved not only avoiding the evil, but actively seeking the good (lots of reminders about sins of omission, esp. those pious intentions we might have to pray more or donate money or goods or volunteer our time doing charitable work that just somehow never materialized).

For those who do believe that God exists, all of this makes sense because we believe that God is good--that is, He is goodness, and everything that is good takes the goodness of its being from Him. So avoiding evil means avoiding those things with which God has nothing to do, and seeking good ultimately means seeking Him through the practice of virtue, both spiritual and moral.

Just a very minor correction, it is not the Remissions that are the "Thou Shalt Nots" it's the Interdicts.

I find it curious that Rod sees fear of God's wrath as the most essential influencing factor in religiously motivated morality. I would submit that love is much more important. Fear may help us keep minor rules (especially ones which we don't understand as all that important), but love is what makes us go the extra mile, turn the other cheek, and refrain from inflicting horrible pain on our fellow creatures. I don't have time right now to flesh this out, but I am troubled by the idea that fear is the essential motivator. I think acting out of fear of God's wrath rather than love for God's people has been the cause of many of the sins of the religious. (Bin-Ladin and the Inquisition are both good examples of this.)

"Without faith, anything is possible".

The assertion that the presence of a god is desirable does nothing to actually provide evidence that one exists.

The moral implications are bogus as well. The least religious countries in the world have the lowest violent crime rates. No moral atheist (and that's most of us) has any inclination to murder or rape.

However, who knows what you might do if you think that your holy book condones it. A quick flick through the bible finds endorsements for genital mutilation, witch-burning, murder, genocide, bigotry, rape, slavery and pretty much every horror known to man.

In the normal course of events, good people do good things and bad people do bad things. To get good people to do evil things, that takes religion.

There's nothing moral in following the rules for fear of the consequences, which you seem ot be endorsing as the Christian position on morality. Obey this allegedly loving but surprisingly tetchy deity or suffer for all eternity. Actual morality would be doing the right thing because it's the right thing, not for fear of the consequences.

In religious people, morality is best observed when they reject their religion. An evil person might follow all of the rules of his religion for fear of eternal consequences. But an actual moral person will look at biblical passages endorsing evil actions and reject them.

"Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live". Anybody can burn witches, spurred on by the bible. True morality lies in rejecting this evil concept.

When slavery was debated in congress in the 19th century, biblical passages were quoted in defence of slavery.

Passages from the New Testament were used in South Africa to defend apartheid.

An impartial observer could look at most atrocities in the world today and conclude that "The problem's name is God".

Re: Indeed. Ever since Augustine and Constantine domesticated the church, Christian morality has primarily been concerned with private morality, drinking, sex, divorce and so on.

This is not really true, although there's enough truth to it (especially in America today) to make it sound right. But when the Church first became official in the late Roman Empire, it became a vast engine of wealth redistribution, and the preachings of leading churchmen on the need for justice toward the poor would have warmed the cockles of Karl Marx's heart. John Chrysostom was sent into exile because he criticized the Empress and her friends for their extravagance during hard times for ordinary folk. Some centuries later the Photian Schism was provoked when Michael III (AKA "The Drunkard") deposed Patriarch St Ignatius who had denounced him for his increasingly despotic and erratic rule. In the medieval West Henry IV knelt barefoot in the snow to do penance to Gregory the Great, and King John of England had to knuckle under to Pope Innocent, while bankers everywhere were threatened with heresy charges if they charged interest. The Church tried to ban the use of the crossbow, and tried to restrain unchcked warfare with the Truce of God. Justice and humanitarian concerns were not alien to the Church in eras past.

But if individuals in different cultures learn to believe in different flavors of deity (Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Confucianist, etc.) then you’ve really lost any hope of gaining an objective starting point.

Thus the emphasis on controlling the culture. Pluralism creates ambiguity and ambiguity is hard. People like to feel that they KNOW the right answer to all these questions and that their neighbors will back them up on this. By removing any contradictory voices, you effectively create an 'objective' starting point by having that starting point be one that is culturally agreed upon. This is just as relative as any other culture's starting point, but it feels right and solid.

I think, unlike some here, that the alternative is nihilism. I do believe that there is quite a lot of cross cultural agreement about how to define virtue. I think the capacity for empathy is natural and instinctive in humans. All societies have had some concept of justice and virtue. If this wasn't an essential part of our nature, that wouldn't be the case.

Rather God and morality are one and the same.

Not to butt in and with all due respect, I think there's grave error being expressed here. No less grave because it sounds so reasonable.

God is in essence beyond human comprehension. Morality is in essence within human comprehension. If God is morality, and morality is God, then we are either dealing with a morality that is incomprehensible or a God who is entirely containable and comprehensible. One or the other is destroyed in this construct.

Christian revelation is that "God is love" and "God is light." No-where in Judaic or Christian revelation do we find "God and the law are one and the same." That, for both traditions, is blasphemy.

The exchange between Geoff G. and Erin is interesting. I think it shows that there's a real problem when people with different conceptions of God try to talk to each other about the nature of morality. consider though Rod - that perhaps this is not about different conceptions of God - but rather that the way one understands God is not a permanent fixture - but a growing thing - a journey - and Erin and Geoff may simply be on different places in that journey. I think the question to answer is not - can those who have no knowpedge of God be moral? but rather - why are those who claim to have a knowledge of God so immoral?

But i think for many middle of the country, middle of the road, evangelical Christians, saying "ehhh" to a pollster about torture says more about the code that torture has come to represent in the culture -- torture means, to lots of folks in my neck of the woods, that we're aware that people aren't nice everywhere and sometimes force is used.

I'm not trying to muster a systematic defense of lowbrow theology in the hinterlands (my home sweet home), but i do want to defend lots of conservative Christians whom i think have come to accurately intuit that "against torture" is morally equivalent, in general culture and media terms, to "anti war" and even pacifist.

There are LOTS of hinterland folks who have been in the military or have very near and dear ones in or once in the military, and who will ruefully discuss the Christian imperatives towards non-violence with a sympathy towards a faith-based stance against war in general. But situational pacifism smells to them of elite manipulation, and torture is coding as equivalent -- and i don't think they're wrong.

Which is a long way of saying that conservative evangelical Christians who say they're "not bothered by torture" in polling data may not actually be saying they're fine with our government doing whatever it takes to get 'em to talk.

"There is a field out beyond right doing and wrong doing. I'll meet you there" -Rumi

As long as there is a discussion between what is morally right and morally wrong, then we need to ask what are the consequences of doing what is morally right or wrong. Generally, it means that we are judged negatively by God, peers, church, society and deemed worthy of punishment or coercion. Thus, the entire debate over morality is a debate over who is deemed worthy of punishment or coercion.

If a religion, philosophy or -ism heavily emphasizes morality in terms of judgement and punishment, then I think it likely that -ism will tend to promote violence. No big surprise that evangelical protestants who worship a God that will torture them forever if they reject him and who arranged to have his own son tortured to death to give himself permission to forgive some of us are not particularly opposed to torturing those they deem immoral.

Are there any alternatives to looking at the world in terms of moralistic judgements that would not cause an increase in violence or cause society to fall apart? I think so. Check out www.cnvc.org or read some poetry by Hafiz or Rumi. Check out the teachings of the Priestess at the end of Plato's symposium. The most enlightened among us know that the best way to inspire positive behavior is by appealing to our sense of beauty and connection rather than by appealing to our fear of punishment or judgement.

I think that the answer to that is that there is no possible way for anyone to have certain knowledge of God and His wishes. Not to the extent that I would presume to insist that others act on what I think I know.

I would agree with this statement. It's kind of obvious, actually, unless one claims to have an Infallible Church or an Inerrant Book to hand, and in those cases the question merely moves one step back to "How do you know for sure that your [Church] [Book] is absolutely right?"

The answer is, you don't, at least not in any way that you can prove the proposition logically to anyone who doesn't share your conviction. (The wide disagreements among the various groups who all claim to be Absolutely Right underline this difficulty.)

But taking your statement as a given, Geoff, something's still worrying me. If this truism comes to be widely recognized, will morality (and civilized society) simply dissolve into chaos? Does our security depend on a majority of the population buying into certainties which are, in fact, fictional?

Morality is contractual in nature.

"Who can say what is ultimately right, and what is ultimately wrong, without reference to God? ...it's not enough to say, 'God forbids this;' those who believe it must also believe that at some point, they will be judged for violating the divine command. If they don't, then the moral prohibition loses its ability to restrain." (RD)

Loads of problems here. Let's start with the phrase "without reference to God." It is not possible to have "reference to God." The best one can have is reference to some alleged revelation of God -- one's own vision of God, or someone else's, or an ancient book recording the visions of others, or a tradition built around and interpreting those visions and/or that book. But deciding which of these to trust -- in the hope that knowledge of right and wrong will follow -- is just as uncertain, and just as subject to error, as deciding directly what's right and wrong without the intermediation of religion. So having "reference to God" just adds a step without making anything more sure. It's the difference between building on sand, and building on a solid-looking foundation that's been laid into sand. Either way, ultimately, you're on sand.

Likewise for any moral prohibition that has the power to restrain only if "those who believe it ... also believe that at some point, they will be judged." If they believe they'll be judged, it's because they've chosen to accept whatever book or tradition or other authority claims to disclose this. But there is nothing to compel that prior choice, hence nothing to restrain them from rejecting the authority in question (and with it, the belief in judgment). So either way, again, there's really no "restraint," only a choice to go or not go down certain paths.

In effect, there's no such thing as a non-secular, religiously driven morality. The decision to accept the religion in the first place is necessarily a "secular" one because it precedes whatever is then learned from that religion. The moral commands issuing from religion have no special force UNTIL one embraces the religious authority or tradition in question as a source of moral truth. And what leads to that embrace? Culture, psychology, temperament, upbringing, maybe evolutionary biology -- the same worldly considerations that might, more directly, lead an atheist to believe that torture is always wrong.

(I'm aware that the religiously faithful don't think they're "choosing" their religion, they believe they're being called to it and/or having its truth revealed to them by the grace of God. But as 2,000 years of Christian history have made amply clear, there's no sure way of knowing where and how God's will is best found. Christians themselves have never stopped disagreeing on it; there's no way, finally, to prove that Martin Luther King Jr. was a better Christian, a better interpreter of the Bible, or a better judge of God's will than, say, Torquemada, who presumably believed he was doing Christ's work just as firmly as King believed it. We can certainly *believe* that King was closer to the truth than self-professed Christians who have backed torture, slavery, racism, etc., but as the poll results that started this discussion make clear, that's a belief that one chooses, not one that impresses itself on Christians in general as self-evident.)

I'm not sure I understand why abortion is being labeled under "sexual immorality."

The sex is done and done if there's a baby already. Now, it's just a matter of accepting a life or destroying a life?

So that pretty much returns us to the original question: does morality exist independently of God? Or is it God's invention?

Does anything exist independently of God?

The answer to that is why I can easily accept that a human being who does not believe in God can nonetheless have a very highly developed moral code, and that a human being who does believe in God might not. Our belief is irrelevant to how we were created and to the Divine Milieu in which we exist. Belief or unbelief does not alter reality nor does it bestow superiority.

Doctor Science: On the contrary, they are decisive. Given that there are *in fact* virtuous atheists and agnostics, religious belief *must not* be required for virtue. That's what "sine qua non" means. The existence of moral atheists disproves the thesis that religious belief is necessary for a moral compass. Rod has acknowledged the observable *fact* that moral atheists exist -- you cannot go on to argue that belief in God must be necessary for moral behavior. The question is settled.

Not so. I can look around at my family and circle of friends and find no evidence that among them exists a murderer, or to be precise, someone who appears to struggle with the temptation to murder. But it would be illogical to say, "Therefore, the law forbidding murder, and setting down punishment for those who break it -- both are unnecessary to moral behavior regarding murder." Similarly with thievery, or anything else. Obviously the existence of the law, and the (relative) certainty that it will be enforced against lawbreakers, is insufficient to deter everyone from breaking. Still, it seems incorrect to me that to say, "Given the fact that there are people who would not murder, even in the absence of the law and a justice system, the law is unnecessary to a moral compass." Which is analogous to your position on God.

There are a lot of great comments on this thread, and I find now I don't have the time to respond to them all. I would say, though, that it is far better to choose to do good because it is good rather than because one fears punishment. But we humans are imperfect, fallen and often immature. When I was 20 years old, I would have chosen -- and in fact, did choose -- to turn away from certain temptations chiefly out of fear of punishment, either divine or under the criminal law. Now, at 42, I would not do those things, or similar things, because I believe them to be wrong, and I'm mature enough now to desire goodness more than I fear punishment. I look at my children, and I can see that in some cases, it's fear of punishment that keeps them from doing certain things that they'd like to do. At this stage in their moral development, that's normal. So is it with all of us.

A great film to watch on this question is Woody Allen's "Crimes and Misdemeanors." It's a reflection about justice and morality. The comic subplot involves Woody as a frustrated documentary filmmaker struggling to deal with the fact that he has not succeeded in his profession, but his hack filmmaker brother in law (Alan Alda) has prospered immensely. The main plot, though, involves a successful opthalmologist whose entire lifestyle is threatened by his mistress, who threatens to expose him to his wife and to the IRS (he's cheated on his taxes) if he doesn't leave his wife for her. He is tempted to have her killed, thus solving his problem. He has open to him a way of doing this that would almost certainly keep him from being caught. Yet always in the back of his mind is the voice of his father, who was a pious Jew (as he is not), telling him, "Remember, Judah: the eyes of God are watching you." I won't tell you how this dilemma is resolved -- the film is really worth watching -- but it does come down on the Dostoevskian point that if God doesn't exist, then morality amounts to doing whatever you can get away with and whatever your conscience will permit you to do.

I think the patterns we're seeing which distress Rod so much are best explained by Robert Altemeyer's book The Authoritarians. [warning: author is more snide than is IMHO suitable for an academic talking about people's feelings] Briefly, authoritarians are fearful, need black-and-white distinctions, believe that we should should defer to authorities (traditional authorities for right-wing authoritarians, revolutionary authorities for left-wing authoritarians), and believe that morality is grounded in the fear of punishment.

When Rod said:
in a psychological climate of intense fear, it may well be that the only thing that keeps us from doing evil is that we fear the judgment of Almighty God more than anything else. ... how are we to know what is permitted and what isn't, and more to the point, what authority can restrain the will to power if not the fear of God?

it immediately made the "authoritarianism" bells clang in my head. Notice how much of his concern is about fear: the need for fear, but also the problem when fear becomes too much. And how much of his reflexive solution is about authority: if there is no G-d, there *must* be some other authority, or better yet AUTHORITY, to do G-d's fearful duty.

I suspect that what is driving the Pew results is authoritarianism. Altemeyer and other psychologists' work has quite clearly demonstrated that people with strong authoritarian drives are much, much more likely to condone torture than are more easy-going folk (look up "Milgram Experiment" and "Stanford Prison Experiment" for examples). If authoritarians are more religiously observant in general, and attacted to conservative religions in particular, we would expect to see the pattern that indeed shows up here. Basically, authoriarian religion does not keep a person from committing authoritarian evil, and it may even make such evil easier. This is especially the case in a "climate of intense fear", when authoritarian people are likely to be even more afraid than everyone else.

The question, "Is it possible to do good without submitting to an authority that *tells* you to do good?" is not one for philosophy or theology. The answer is clearly "Yes", because Rod has already admitted that such people actually exist. The question has to be one of psychology and experience: not whether it can be done, but *how* it is already done.

IMHO the best direction for Rod (or others in his shoes) to turn is toward biographies, autobiographies, and fiction by non-authoritarian Christians and non-Christians. Thomas Merton is an obvious Christian example; the Dalai Lama and Aung San Suu Kyi are well-known non-Christian examples; Ursula LeGuin and Lois McMaster Bujold are two science fiction writers who have strong moral components that are not based on the fear of punishment.

Part of the Christian message has always been that humans can love God *without* fear, and plenty of Christian men and women over the centuries have proven that it is true. You don't have to wonder whether it can happen, philosophically: the only question is how it can happen for *you*.

I find Dr. Science's commentary entirely compelling, undoubtedly because it's just what I would say. The causality goes pretty much the way he describes. The fault I find in Rod's rebuttal is that I don't regard the fear of punishment as part of the continuum of moral development. Behavior based on a desire to do good does not develop from one based on fear; such a desire replaces motivation stemming from a desire not to be punished.

We regard fear of punishment as "normal" for children or all of us because nearly all culture inculcates such fear; that doesn't make it right. Insofar as behavior identical to that stemming from a desire to do good comes from fear of punishment by God, it cannot be regarded as particularly "moral"--it's just fear and anxiety. And I cannot applaud a system that creates a certain behavior out of fear, even if dressed up as fear of the Lord, just because the behavior corresponds to my idea of right and wrong. We have to get beyond abuse as a way to deal with ourselves and others.

A more interesting question would be how did Rod move from acting out of fear to acting out of a desire to do good. I am myself not certain of what I mean by that, but it's very clear that many people in the world have no fear of eternal punishment and act in what look like very moral ways--their conscience appears to be identical to that of a good Christian. So how's that happening?

Dr. Science is right, what we're dealing with here is authoritarianism. Other useful resources on that question (although I expect that Dreher probably disdains them) are Lawrence Kohlberg's theory of the stages of moral development, and George Lakoff's distinction between those who see God as an "angry father" and those who see God as a "nurturing parent."

What the Pew poll reveals is a contradiction at the heart of Dreher's grand project, i.e. vindicating the "Truth" that he wants us to recognize as standing above human desire and the institutions and values of a culture -- particularly a decadent culture like ours. The problem is this: As I discussed in an earlier reply above, uou have to refer to some authority for an account of that truth. God may or may not speak directly to individuals, but He/She speaks to humankind as a whole only through scriptures, churches, or traditions, and there is no escaping the problem of having to choose which of these to accept as the true custodian of God's commands.

In calling on people to bow to the Truth, then, Dreher is actually calling on them to defer to some authority that claims to be in possession of that Truth (or of some means for reliabily discerning it). Unfortunately, the people most likely to defer to authority are authoritarian people, and -- whether you explain this in Altemeyer's terms, or Kohlberg's, or Lakoff's, or someone else's -- those are also the people most likely to support or tolerate abuses of authority, like government-sponsored torture. (Or church-sponsored, in an earlier era.)

In short, you can't really have the deference to the "Truth" without deference to authority, which you can't have without authoritarianism, which you can't have without people who are OK with a U.S. president running a torture regime. So when Rod Dreher reads the Pew numbers and gets a sinking feeling, he is merely reaping what he is helping to sow.