Question of the Day 2

Question taken from askphilosophers.com (not from today but from Aug 22):

Many people see their religion as a guideline for moral/ethical behavior.  Can we be ethical/moral without religion?  If a person does not see that an ethical life leads to "heaven," what is his/her rationale for goodness?

This is a very deep question, and I could go on and on about this, but I'll try my best to make it simple and short.

That true question is what do we perceive as moral or as ethical?  We know that ethics and morals are different depending on the culture.  If you live in a cannibalistic society, eating people wouldn't be unethical to you because you spent your whole life believing it was perfectly normal to eat other human beings.  In fact, you would perceive the people that refused to eat human as 'weird.'  In fact, if you grew up having a ritual of consuming a person every week, and grew up believing that what you did was for the good of society, then you would in fact label someone who refused to be part of the ritual as immoral.  Many people would refute my claim and say that they would never have gone down that path even if born into that society.  But take your current set of values, and really think about where they come from.  They're there because it was instilled in you by your government, by your peers, and by your parents.  Our morals and ethics come from whatever the ruling power (or what we deem the ruling power to be) tells us our ethics and morals are.

Religion is different in that the morals and ethics do not come directly from the society around us, but that it comes through what we believe to be the highest authority.  Christians use the Bible as a moral guideline because we believe that God uses to Bible to tell us what our morals and ethics should be.  Granted, the morality over the years, even if guided by the same Bible, has shifted over generations because of the taint of the society around us.

A person will follow this set of rules to remain moral and ethical so as to not be outcast from the society he or she lives in.  There was a time where if two people got into an argument, whoever could win a duel would win the argument.  Nowadays we consider that completely outrageous.  But if you refused to cooperate during that period of time, then you would be outcast from society.  You would therefore follow along so you could stay close to your friends and family.  It is exactly the same concept today.  The difference in Christianity is that we don't care to be moral or ethical to remain within a society.  In fact, we don't need to remain completely moral and ethical to get to heaven, because we believe that heaven is not a place you go because you are good, but a place you go because Jesus died for you.  We try to remain moral and ethical as to be pleasing in the eyes of God who is looking down upon us because we love Him.