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The Daily Utah Chronicle

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Should morality be based on God?

By Deen Chatterjee

It is certainly possible for people to believe in God and possess high moral standards. But their being moral is not due to their belief in God, it is independent of it. There are compelling reasons why God should not be considered the basis of morality.

If morality is to be based on God, then all moral beliefs based on any notion of God would be equally valid. Given all the countless notions of God abounding in the world, there would thus be countless incommensurable moral systems, leading to a hopeless moral relativism.

But if we do not like the idea of any and all notions of God having an equally valid claim for the foundation of morality, then the question naturally arises: “Whose God?”

To decide this question in a non-dogmatic and non arbitrary fashion, we have to employ criteria of fairness and good moral judgment, which would prove that morality is independent of God. If, on the other hand, we were to arbitrarily choose any one notion of God over all other competing notions, then that would lead to bigotry, conflict and violence, which would be the end of morality as we know it.

Even within a single sect where people seem to worship the same God, it is never clear how the sect determines exactly what God wants. Religious scriptures allegedly containing God’s words have been written or compiled by fallible human beings, often many years after the words were supposedly revealed to prophets.

Prophets themselves can be wrong in what they say. History is replete with prophets who have said blatantly immoral things or didn’t know what they were talking about.

Some God-believers claim that their prophets are never wrong or that their scriptures are infallible. However, to base morality on such a blind faith is very dogmatic if not dangerous.

Belief in the existence of God is the biggest dogma of all.

There is no rational way to prove that God exists. To believe in God, one has to bypass reason and embrace faith. The same goes for heaven and hell.

This may be OK as a personal choice if it gives one comfort and security, but it is problematic when all this becomes tied to morality. A dogma is a belief that one holds on to regardless of evidence. Something as important and influential as morality should not be based on dogma.

If it cannot be proved rationally that God exists (all arguments to prove God’s existence are faulty and it is easy to show it), then why do people still believe in God? Indoctrination plays more of a role here than rational and clear thinking.

Religious indoctrination caters to our psychological insecurities and needs, not to reason. This is a very effective ploy to make one believe in something, even something as nebulous and supernatural as God, but that does not make the belief true.

We are proud to be cynics, skeptics and individualists when it comes to almost anything but God. We would flatly say that dragons or unicorns do not exist, but when it comes to God, instead of affirming that God doesn’t exist, we ask whether one can disprove God’s existence.

But, by the same token, one can’t disprove (the possibility of) the existence of dragons or unicorns either. So, why not believe in them as well? We are so desperate to believe in God that we don’t apply the same strict test of logic to God as we do to practically all other beliefs.

Religions encourage this uncritical and conformist mind-set by making faith a virtue. The only other area of life where we are such suckers is romantic love.

The fact of the matter is that morality is an autonomous human enterprise that is independent of God. Otherwise, how could so many atheists behave with impeccable moral standards and so many God-believers do not have any morals?

If God is made the basis of morality, then that would require us to do anything, even if it is blatantly immoral, if we believe God sanctifies it. But that would be religious fanaticism and make most God-believers uncomfortable. The reason for this is that God-believers themselves know that morality is not subject to any arbitrary whim, not even God’s.

But to say that God’s whim is not arbitrary but based on moral considerations is to acknowledge the independence of morality from God.

Great moral traditions of the world do not bring God into morality.

Two of the most enduring moral traditions in the East, Confucianism and Theravada Buddhism, do not even believe in God. The roots of morality in the West are in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, especially Plato and Aristotle, who based their morality on reason alone, not on any dogma.

The Enlightenment quest for reason freed morality from the dogma of God prevalent during the Dark Age of the church-dominated medieval Europe.

In the United States, our secular Constitution, inspired by the Enlightenment ideas, has guided us well in the moral matters of the state, despite attempts by religions to subvert it.

It is only in the religions originating in the Middle East that we find a pronounced effort to base morality on God.

Is it any wonder that these same religions are also the most violent ones in history, killing countless millions in the name of God?

The dogma of God can be useful in so many ways.

As mentioned above, some people may find psychological comfort in believing that God is out there. God can also be used as a scare tactic to keep people in check. And God is especially useful for business. The reason why organized religion is such a foolproof business is that, unlike any other commercial enterprise where consumers are entitled to a refund if a product doesn’t live up to its promise, nobody has come back from the dead to claim their tithing back.

But when it comes to morality, it is best to leave God out of it. If we cast aside reason and make God the basis of morality, then we are doing morality a disservice.

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