The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Just consider this question: — Is that which is holy loved by the gods because it is holy, or is it holy because it is loved by the gods?</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If God is not, then all is permitted.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">More than a century ago … [it was argued that] if God doesn’t exist, then everything is permitted … This argument couldn’t have been more wrong: the lesson of today’s terrorism is that if God exists, then everything, including blowing up thousands of innocent bystanders, is permitted — at least to those who claim to act directly on behalf of God, since, clearly, a direct link to God justifies the violation of any merely human constraints and considerations. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">He that will carefully peruse the history of mankind, and look into the several tribes of men, and with indifferency survey their actions, will be able to satisfy himself, that there is scarce that principle of morality to be named, or rule of virtue to be thought on, (those only excepted that are absolutely necessary to hold society together, which commonly too are neglected betwixt distinct societies,) which is not, somewhere or other, slighted and condemned by the general fashion of whole societies of men, governed by practical opinions and rules of living quite opposite to others.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If life ends at the grave [there is no reward in Heaven or punishment in Hell], then it makes no ultimate difference whether you live as Stalin or a Mother Teresa.&nbsp; Since your destiny is ultimately unrelated to your behavior, you may as well live as you please.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Someone who rejects God has repudiated the only reasonable foundation for morality, accountability, true spirituality, and the necessary distinction between good and evil.&nbsp; So the atheist’s private life will inevitably become a living demonstration of the evils of unbelief.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.&nbsp; Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of particular structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">[Natural ethics] is disinterested.&nbsp; It carries the thoughts and feelings out of self, and fixes them on an unselfish object, loved and pursued as an end for its own sake.&nbsp; The religions which deal in promises and threats regarding a future life, do exactly the contrary … they temp him [man] to regard the performance of his duties to others mainly as a means to his own personal salvation; and are one of the most serious obstacles to the great purpose of moral culture, the strengthening of the unselfish and the weakening of the selfish element in our nature …</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Christian morality (so called) has the characters of a reaction … In its horror of sensuality, it made an idol of asceticism, which has been gradually compromised away into one of legality.&nbsp; It holds out the hope of heaven and the threat of hell, as the appointed and appropriate motives of the virtuous life — in this falling far below the best of the ancients, and doing what lies in it to give to human morality an essentially selfish character … It is essentially a doctrine of passive obedience; it inculcates submission to all authorities found established ...</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">When two tribes of primeval man, living in the same country, came into competition, if (other circumstances being equal) the one tribe included a great number of courageous, sympathetic, and faithful members, who were always ready to warn each other of danger, to aid and defend each other, this tribe would succeed better and conquer the other … A rich tribe in the above qualities would spread and be victorious over other tribes: and in the course of time it would, judging from all past history, be in its turn overcome by some other tribe still more highly endowed.&nbsp; Thus the social and moral qualities would tend slowly to advance and be diffused throughout the world.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The following proposition seems to me in a high degree probable — namely, that any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well, or nearly as well developed, as in man.&nbsp; For, firstly, the social instincts lead an animal to take pleasure in the society of its fellows, to feel a certain amount of sympathy with them, and to perform various services for them … Thirdly, after the power of language had been acquired, and the wishes of the community could be expressed, the common opinion how each member ought to act for the public good would naturally become in a paramount degree the guide to action.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">As man is a social animal, it is almost certain that he would inherit a tendency to be faithful to his comrades, and obedient to the leader of his tribe; for these qualities are common to most social animals … He would from an inherited tendency be willing to defend, in concert with others, his fellow-men; and would be ready to aid them in any way which did not too greatly interfere with his own welfare or his own strong desires.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It must not be forgotten that although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet that an increase in the number of well-endowed men and an advancement in the standard morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another.&nbsp; A tribe including many members who, from possessing in a high degree the spirit of patriotism, fidelity, obedience, courage, and sympathy, were always ready to aid one another, and to sacrifice themselves for the common good, would be victorious over most other tribes; and this would be natural selection.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The past, the tradition of the race and of the people, lives on in ideologies of the super-ego, and yields only slowly to the influences of the present and to new changes; and so long as it operates through the super-ego it plays a powerful part in human life, independently of economic conditions. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary.&nbsp; Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If [your inquiry] ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion … One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for intelligent people to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious.&nbsp; We should not retreat from this accomplishment.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Morality must not lower herself.&nbsp; Her own nature must be her recommendation.&nbsp; All else, even divine reward, is as nothing beside her, for only morality makes us worthy of happiness … It [moral goodness] is more potent and appealing in its simple purity than when it is bedecked with allurements, whether of reward or punishment.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Rawls proposes that we deal with these facts [the disparity of innate talents and contingencies of social circumstance] by agreeing “to share one another’s fate,” and “to avail [ourselves] of the accidents of nature and social circumstance only when doing so is for the common benefit.”&nbsp; Whether or not this theory of justice ultimately succeeds, it represents the most compelling case for a more equal society that American political philosophy has yet produced. &nbsp;</em></p>