Sunday, January 3, 2010

On Adultery, Empathy and Ethics

The "Think about it" thread on morality has been running for a while. Now I'm popping in with my two cents.

I've discussed before my own code of ethics: Love is good; hate is bad. Alleviating suffering is good; inflicting it is bad. I came up with these guidelines based on observations of what made me happy and what didn't. This hearkens back to Kriss's comment about the Golden Rule, and while he may have been off on the timeline, the point remains that people knew right from wrong long before religions started cropping up.

I agree with XR4-IT when he said that the concept of being saved by grace alone nulls personal responsibility. No matter how you want to spin it, that is the logical conclusion of the get-out-of-jail-free, believe-accept-saved dogma. Patrik says (and gets Paul to back him up) that Jesus' sacrifice is not a ticket to sin, but why not? Why does a Christian continue to strive to be moral, despite a belief that Jesus will pay the price for his sins anyway? Why do non-Christians strive to be moral, despite not believing in eternal consequences for our wrong actions?

I think Ray hit the nail on the head when he said that empathy is the driving force behind our ethics (and I'm not saying that just because I sleep with him).  moral code is present in all of us whether we're Christian or not, which is why I think Christ and Christianity have nothing to do with it. As I've pointed out, this code varies a great deal depending on our culture and beliefs, and is not measured against any external absolute code. godwillbegod brought up sociopaths and psychopaths. These are people that we recognize as not functioning under the same innate ethical code as the rest of us. What's more likely: that these people are possessed by demons or that something in their genetic code is off?

Now, some thoughts on adultery. I don't think anyone condones it, although I don't think that extra-marital relationships are always wrong, as there are some people who are happy in polyamorous relationships. But in cases where both partners have agreed to monogamy, they should keep that agreement.

I'm fortunate in that I can only imagine the devastation of an unfaithful spouse. Adultery--defined as a polyamorous relationship to which not everyone involved has consented--would fall under the "Inflicting suffering is bad" clause of my personal moral code. But the idea that death was ever a just consequence for it is abhorrent. Patrik says that in a very real way, adultery destroys lives, and I agree. Perhaps you remember, Patrik, at one time I felt that rapists deserved the death penalty, because rape, too, destroys lives. However, that destruction is temporary. Victims of murder do not get any second chances. Death is so final that I have very strong reservations about capital punishment, even for murder.

I'm sure the debate about the origin of our sense of morality will continue for quite some time, in religious and scientific circles alike. However, I think we can safely say that wherever else morality may have come from, it most certainly did not come from the Bible.


Share/Bookmark

If you enjoyed this post, I hope you'll check out my new blog.

2 comments:

  1. Religion has nothing to say about the origins of morality. It's yet another thing religion used to hold to maintain power-- being the one who says what's right and what's wrong is useful if you're in the societies' control business. Then some people began to come up with a better way to figure that out -science- and thus they started to take that power away from religion. Darwin proposed social instincs as a likely path to empathy which would lead to our sense of morality in The Descent of Man. Now, scientists like Frans de Waal are providing strong evidence for empathy among great apes supporting Darwin's idea.

    But even if they were wrong, at least they're actually working on it, being productive. Science do things and those things are useful even if they're wrong. However, saying something like "I prayed and God told me He made morality" is completely useless because the rest of us can't reproduce that personal revelation to check whether it's true or BS.

    We've seen this same pattern already. The Pope apologized about Galileo and said he was right after all. They gave up geocentrism as they gave up burning people: unwillingly. Eventually, as science continues finding things out, they'll give up morality, too.

    Religion as a way of knowing run out of juice ages ago, becoming some incorporeal dragon-in-the-garage smoke cloud. Morality is another gap on which the religious like to sit down, so is love, so are "awe" feelings. Shame that science is so damn good at filling gaps.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Religion has nothing to say about the origins of morality. It's yet another thing religion used to hold to maintain power-- being the one who says what's right and what's wrong is useful if you're in the societies' control business. Then some people began to come up with a better way to figure that out -science- and thus they started to take that power away from religion. Darwin proposed social instincs as a likely path to empathy which would lead to our sense of morality in The Descent of Man. Now, scientists like Frans de Waal are providing strong evidence for empathy among great apes supporting Darwin's idea.

    But even if they were wrong, at least they're actually working on it, being productive. Science do things and those things are useful even if they're wrong. However, saying something like "I prayed and God told me He made morality" is completely useless because the rest of us can't reproduce that personal revelation to check whether it's true or BS.

    We've seen this same pattern already. The Pope apologized about Galileo and said he was right after all. They gave up geocentrism as they gave up burning people: unwillingly. Eventually, as science continues finding things out, they'll give up morality, too.

    Religion as a way of knowing run out of juice ages ago, becoming some incorporeal dragon-in-the-garage smoke cloud. Morality is another gap on which the religious like to sit down, so is love, so are "awe" feelings. Shame that science is so damn good at filling gaps.

    ReplyDelete

Religion, skepticism, and carving out a spiritual life post-Mormonism