Exceptional The inadequacy of theistic morality - Part i: Motivation Why be moral? by CD Richards

Imagine yourself in the following situation. You are walking along a pathway in a park. There is no one else in sight. Laying on the path in front of you, you notice a wallet. You pick it up and, upon examining the contents, find several credit cards and other pieces of plastic, a Driver's Licence and a fat bundle of bank notes, worth some several hundred dollars. At this point there are several things you could do. For simplicity, we'll consider just two. The first is, you could transfer the cash from the wallet to your pocket, travel a few dozen metres further down the path, and dump the wallet into a trash bin. Then you could go to the nearest mall and indulge in a shopping spree. The alternative course of action would be to locate the owner with the aid of the name and address printed on the driver's licence and return their wallet (cash included) to them. Most people would agree, and I'm not going to labour the point by attempting to justify it, that one of these actions is good, right or moral. The other is bad, wrong or immoral. Returning the wallet and cash to its rightful owner is the good and moral thing to do. The question I'm interested in for the purpose of our discussion is this: why should we choose the more moral course of action? Perhaps one answer could be because we are afraid that if we don't, we might be caught. Someone might have seen us, and if they chose to follow us until we began our shopping spree, they might confront us and publicly shame us, or worse, they might report us to the police. We could call this the fear of adverse consequences justification. An alternative motivation might be that we are hopeful if we return the wallet to its owner, they will express their gratitude by giving us a handsome reward -- say fifty dollars, or even a hundred. We could refer to this as the expectation of reward justification. Are either of these adequate or reasonable explanations of why we should do the right thing? What if there were absolutely no chance that anyone saw us pick up the wallet and dump it in the trash, and thus, no chance of being caught? Does that absolve us from the need to do the right thing? Similarly, if we could somehow know for certain that we would receive nothing from the wallet's rightful owner upon its return--not even a thank you--does that mean we should keep the cash? I believe most people would answer no to both of the above. Fear of adverse consequences or expectation of reward, while they might be the reason some people take the right course of action, should not provide our motivation. If they do, and these factors are removed, there is no longer any reason to do the right thing. Yet, these two factors are precisely the motivations constantly presented by theistic religions to get their adherents to choose right over wrong, or good over evil. Followers of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, as well as, I suspect, most other theistic religions are constantly under threat of dire consequences if they fail to do the right thing. If they commit bad, or immoral acts, they will be besieged with misadventure, plagues, death and even eternal suffering. On the other hand, if they do the right thing, they will receive great rewards and abundance, either in this life, the next or both. Even the belief in karma, as held by some Eastern religions, reduces to this. To use the Christian religion as an example (for no reason other than the author is more familiar with it than any other), we can see that the exhortation to do good is constantly accompanied by either the promise of reward or the threat of divine wrath if the correct path is not chosen. There are literally hundreds of such verses in the Old and New Testaments. Most of these examples consider good or moral behaviour not by how we relate to our fellow human beings, but how we relate to God--whether we praise him, do his bidding, pray to him, etc. Unsurprisingly, most non-believers don't see these as particularly outstanding examples of moral behaviour. But there is one example which perhaps allows believers and non-believers to agree on an example of moral behaviour. It is the parable of the sheep and goats, from the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 25: When the Son of man shall come in his glory, and all the holy angels with him, then shall he sit upon the throne of his glory: And before him shall be gathered all nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as a shepherd divideth his sheep from the goats: And he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me. Then shall he say also unto them on the left hand, Depart from me, ye cursed, into everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his angels: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me not in: naked, and ye clothed me not: sick, and in prison, and ye visited me not. Then shall they also answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, or athirst, or a stranger, or naked, or sick, or in prison, and did not minister unto thee? Then shall he answer them, saying, Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these, ye did it not to me. And these shall go away into everlasting punishment: but the righteous into life eternal. The lesson here is quite clear. Being kind to our fellow humans and treating them with compassion is the good and right thing to do. But what is the motivation Jesus provides to his disciples in order to get them to chose the right path? It is both of the incentives described above--the promise of the inheritance of a wonderful kingdom if they make the correct choice, or eternal damnation if they don't. Thus, the impetus to do good comes, ultimately, from self-interest. Secular moral philosophy takes somewhat of a different tack. In the absence of being concerned with eternal or temporal reward or punishment, it says that we should do good because it is the right thing to do, and not for any other reason. To quote Matthew Parris (https://www.spectator.co.uk/2017/05/why-its-obvious-that-morality-precedes-religion/), "Our inbuilt 'secular' morality whispers that kindness to others is good. Good in itself. Good because that's what 'good' means. Not good because (who knows?) God may be doing a bit of plainclothes detective work among us, and dressing up as a beggar, prisoner or invalid. The master's steward ought to look after members of his master's household not because the master may arrive secretly in the night, but because those people matter, and are human beings just like him. Inserting God as a spy cheapens what should be the moral basis of our civility." Parris is echoing the sentiment of a well-known expression for which, in so far as I can tell, the origin is lost: Virtue is its own reward. Ralph Waldo Emerson, in his essay on Heroism (quoted in https://donaldrobertson.name/2016/11/15/virtue-is-its-own-reward/ ), expresses it this way: "The heroic soul does not sell its justice and its nobleness. It does not ask to dine nicely and to sleep warm. The essence of greatness is the perception that virtue is enough." It could be argued that even performing good deeds, or acting morally, for the purpose of experiencing a good feeling, while not as base as making moral decisions on the basis of material rewards, is still not entirely in line with the best approach. We should do right simply because that is what we should do. Before laying this part of the discussion on morality to rest, I would like to make one further point, and it is this: the problem goes further than the inadequacy of the motivation for moral decisions as it is taught in theistic philosophy. It could very well be argued that those following this path are not actually making moral choices at all. I can get my dog to avoid undesirable behaviour, such as chewing on the furniture, if I punish it for doing so. I can get it to perform desirable behaviour, like doing its business outside, rather than on the living room carpet, by the use of rewards. Is my dog exercising moral judgement when it chooses good over bad in response to a reward/punishment system? No more than we humans are making moral decisions when we do the right thing based on the expectation of good or bad consequences. In such cases, we are not demonstrating morality, but obedience. I will let Julia Annas (quoted in Robertson, op. cit.) sum up the views of Zeno, Diogenes, Seneca and their colleagues, who were great proponents of the importance of doing good for its own sake: "If we are tempted to seek virtue because it will make us tranquil and secure, we are missing the point about virtue that is most important [according to the Stoics]; it is virtue itself that matters, not its results." Perhaps the last word should go to John Frederick Coots and Haven Gillespie, authors of the song Santa Claus Is Coming To Town: "So be good... for goodness' sake."   Author Notes One thing non-religious people find perplexing, and it occurs very frequently, is when theists from the major religions such as Christianity, Judaism and Islam suggest that because of their lack of belief in a God, non-believers cannot properly conduct themselves morally, or if it is conceded they can achieve such a feat, then it is argued they have no philosophical basis to do so. To secularists who know anything about human history or have followed the recent history of certain churches, it is somewhat ironic when believers try to claim the moral high ground. I find the subject of morality and good behaviour a fascinating one, and I think consideration of it is a worthwhile activity. I am particularly interested in presenting the topic from a secular perspective, because I think many religious people have never viewed the subject from any viewpoint other than the one they have been told since childhood. The topic itself is huge, and not something that could be addressed in one essay as short as this. If you've managed to read the essay and/or this note and not click away, you've done well. If there's any interest, I might tackle other aspects of the topic in future postings. If not, it will probably die here :) Thanks for making it this far.

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