religion; and not only the Christian religion, but the Protestant religion; and not
only the Protestant religion, but the Church of England." It is utterly inadequate
and more than a bit egocentric.
Other, more serious, attempts have been made to define religion, in
psychology, sociology, anthropology, and biology. Some emphasize individual
experience (especially the "transcendent feeling" or the "oceanic feeling," etc.);
others stress ritual or myth or belief or institutions or, inevitably, morality. In
reality, all of these are aspects of religion, but none of them is the essence or sine
qua non of religion: there are religions without god(s), without (much) ritual,
without (much) myth, without (many) institutions, and-depending on who you
talk to-without morality. Rather, all of these are potential elements or building
blocks of religions, in what many contemporary theorists have suggested as a
"modular" approach to religion. In other words, according to thinkers like Pascal
Boyeru and Scott Atran,2 religion is not a "thing" at all but a composite of basic
elements which, most critically, are not fundamentally "religious" in and of
themselves. That is, there are religious rituals and there are nonreligious rituals;
there are religious stories and there are nonreligious stories; there are religious
institutions and there are nonreligious institutions; and, most importantly for our
present purpose, there are religious moralities and there are nonreligious
moralities. All of these are human phenomena, not specifically or exclusively
religious phenomena.
If there is, nevertheless, one quality that religions seem to share, it is what has
been called "agency." Agency essentially means "intelligence" or "will" or,
perhaps most profoundly, "intention." Agents are the kinds of beings who have
intelligence or will or intention, who are not mere objects of natural forces but
who make some choices on the basis of their own nature and interests. Agents
are, in short, "persons," and human beings are the agents or persons with which
we are most familiar. As Graham Harvey puts it:
Persons are those with whom other persons interact with varying degrees of
reciprocity. Persons may be spoken with. Objects, by contrast, are usually
spoken about. Persons are volitional, relational, cultural and social beings.
They demonstrate intentionality and agency with varying degrees of
autonomy and freedom. That some persons look like objects [or do not have
visible appearance at all] is of little more value to an understanding of
[religion] than the notion that some acts, characteristics, qualia, and so on
may appear human-like to some observers. Neither material form nor
spiritual or mental faculties are definitive.3
What is important is that humans are inveterate agent-detectors, looking for
will or intention or purpose or goal-oriented behavior in each other and in the
world around them. And we tend to find it, whether or not it is there. Thus, the
characteristic feature of religion is the claim that there are nonhuman and
superhuman agents in the world, lacking some of the "qualia" of humans (like
bodies or mortality) but possessing the most important one-mind or personality
or intention. This "religious perspective," if you will, humanizes the world or,
more critically, socializes the world, because these nonhuman religious agents
(like a god) not only can be spoken with but also must be spoken with. They are
understood by members of the religion to be a real and inescapable part of their
social world. This leads us to a definition of religion offered by Robin Horton
almost fifty years ago:
[I] n every situation commonly labeled religious we are dealing with action
directed toward objects which are believed to respond in terms of certain
categories-in our own culture those of purpose, intelligence, and emotion-
which are also the distinctive categories for the description of human
action. The application of these categories leads us to say that such objects
are "personified." The relationship between human beings and religious
objects can be further defined as governed by certain ideas of patterning
and obligation such as characterize relationships among human beings. In
short, religion can be looked upon as an extension of the field of people's
social relationships beyond the confines of purely human society. And for
completeness' sake, we should perhaps add the rider that this extension
must be one in which human beings involved see themselves in a dependent
position vis-a-vis their nonhuman alters 4
If religion is the expansion of society to include nonhuman and superhuman
agents, then what is morality? Much ink has been spilled on this question too,
most of it also biased, egocentric, and inadequate. Let us, as before, start with
what morality is not. First and foremost, morality is not any partic ular rule or
principle or set of rules or principles. That is, morality as such is not chastity or
marital fidelity or honesty or nonkilling; these are all specific (although perhaps
widely held) moral claims or issues but not "morality" in and of itself-any more
than theism is "religion" in and of itself.
Further, and more surprisingly, morality is not essentially about "goodness," if
only because "goodness" is completely relative. In other words, while people of
a certain moral temper might consider prohibiting same-sex marriage to be
"good," no doubt most same-sex couples consider it "not good." Likewise, if
some remote tribe believed it was "good" to sacrifice humans or to throw virgins
in volcanoes to appease the volcano god, this behavior was "not good" for the
victims. "Good" must always and necessarily be "good for someone" or "good
for some purpose." It also goes without saying that morality is not what is
"pleasurable" or "makes you happy," since occasionally the things that might
give you pleasure-like sex or taking someone's property-are not deemed moral.
Finally, and most surprisingly, morality is not essentially about "prosocial"
behavior. This is a common misconception, but of course it depends on one's
particular view of what society ought to be. Morality tends to be equated, first of
all, with only the "positive" or "beneficial" values and behaviors, like altruism or
generosity and love. But indisputably, any morality, including Judeo-Christian
morality, accepts that there is a time to kill and a time to heal, a time to love and
a time to hate, a time for war and a time for peace. When called upon (often by
religion), killing and hating and warring are delightfully moral, even the highest
and noblest thing we can do, a virtual commandment. More, "prosocial" is
another relative term: killing witches may be "good for society" but is not good
for witches, who are part of society. Banning gay marriage or preventing
abortion may be good for one person's notion of society and not good for another
person's. Worse yet, hardly anyone ever acts for the "good of society" but rather
for some more local and personal good: most of us would act more altruistically
toward ou
r family or friends than toward strangers or enemies. We would kill to
defend ourselves and our property, and the law sometimes recognizes this as a
praiseworthy action (note the "make my day" laws that allow killing an intruder
in your home). Finally, many things that preoccupy the Christian moral
sensibility have little or nothing to do with prosociality, like nakedness or
premarital sex; other cultures have adopted the exact opposite stance on these
issues and have been happy and successful. At the same time, other cultures
have their own moral preoccupations, like covering a woman's face and figure in
some Muslim countries, which do not constitute "moral" concerns in Christian
countries in the first place.
If morality is not any of these things fundamentally, then what is it? Michael
Shermer's stab at the question in his The Science of Good and Evil makes a
decent first approximation: morality, he says, refers to "right and wrong thoughts
and behaviors in the context of the rules of a social group."5 What this terse
statement reminds us is that (1) morality always refers back to a set of rules and
(2) each social group may have its own set of such rules. Therefore, as in the
case of religion, we should look for the essence of morality in some larger and
deeper area than the details of any particular moral system.
The answer can be sought in our new understanding of religion. Why are
humans such obsessive agency detectors? Because we, as an inherently social
species, are necessarily interested in the actions and intentions of other members
of our group (which may include, we now realize, nonhuman agents as well).
Therefore, we need to evaluate each other's behavior-to be able to determine the
meaning of that behavior, the intention of that behavior, and the predictability of
that behavior. Indeed, the very existence of society depends on, one might even
say is, a shared set of standards for the interpretation, evaluation, and prediction
of behavior.
In a word, humans-hopelessly social creatures that we are-do and must engage
in the appraisal of each other's actions. Morality is one form of such appraisal.
Morality is a kind of talk about behavior, a discourse or language about which
behaviors we commend and which behaviors we condemn. As Kai Nielsen has
said it better than just about anyone:
Moral language is the language we use in verbalizing a choice or a
decision; it is the language we use in appraising human conduct and in
giving advice about courses of action; and finally, it is the language we use
in committing ourselves to a principle of action. Moral language is a
practical kind of discourse that is concerned to answer the questions: "What
should be done?" or "What attitude should be taken toward what has been
done, is being done, or will be done?"6
In short, as a social process of behavioral appraisal, "morality functions to guide
conduct and alter behavior or attitudes." 7 Of course, it does not do so infallibly
or in isolation.
We say that morality does not guide and alter behavior infallibly because the
existence of moral rules and of other people's moral outrage does not guarantee
consistently and exclusively "good" behavior. Despite the presence of moral
injunctions against killing and stealing, for instance, some folks persist in killing
and stealing. Even worse, despite the fact that morality supposedly serves as a
"conversation stopper," a bedrock basis for behavior and behavioral appraisal,
the presence of moral injunctions has not ended and does not appear about to end
the moral conversation. Instead, humans can and do argue about what the
standards of appraisal are, what they mean, and when and how to apply them.
Does "Thou shalt not kill" mean all killing, or merely "murder" (i.e., illicit
killing)? Does it mean that you should avoid all killing, or only try to minimize
killing (say, in war)? Does it mean killing anything at all, or only killing
humans? (So much for carnivorism-or eating of any kind!)
So humans constantly appraise each other's behavior and intentions (partly to
determine future behavior), and they do so in relation to some group standard of
behavior-some collective sense of what is "approved" or "disapproved" behavior.
These standards unarguably differ across religions and cultures (although some
big items do frequently appear). But morality is ultimately nothing more than a
special case of the more general human predilection to appraise behavior and to
erect systems and standards of appraisal. Even more, morality is not the only
form that such appraisal systems/standards and such appraisal language can take.
"Morality" is one entry in the universe of appraisal-talk, of which there are many
other entries. What I mean is that "moral" and "immoral" are two labels that can
be attached to behaviors depending on their conformity to group standards. But
there are other labels, too, available to members to praise or denounce (and
hopefully affect and control) behavior: legal/illegal, sane/ insane,
mature/immature, normal/abnormal, polite/impolite, ethical/ unethical,
professional/unprofessional, and so on. None of these other pairs of terms quite
overlaps with moral/immoral.
As Nielsen also explains, "Not all practical discourse is moral discourse. Not
all conduct is moral conduct and not all advice or appraisal of conduct is moral
advice or moral appraisal. Nor are all attitudes or dispositions to action moral
attitudes or moral dispositions to action." s That is, not every behavioral issue is
a "moral" issue, and not every standard of behavior is a "moral" standard. As we
mentioned, most Westerners do not regard the display of a woman's face or arms
to be a moral concern at all, and some tribes like the Warlpiri or the Yanomamo
did not regard public nakedness to be a moral concern. The Jams consider eating
vegetables or killing insects to be a moral problem, while the average Westerner
does not. Nietzsche once asserted that there are no moral facts; in truth, there are
no universal moral questions.
Finally, just as religion can and should be decomposed into more fundamental
building blocks that are not "religious" in themselves, morality can and should
be decomposed into more fundamental building blocks that are not "moral" in
themselves. Shermer calls these "premoral sentiments" and includes among
them:
[A]ttachinent and bonding, cooperation and mutual aid, sympathy and
empathy, direct and indirect reciprocity, altruism and reciprocal altruism,
conflict resolution and peacemaking, deception and deception detection,
community concern and caring about what others think about you, and
awareness of and response to the social rules of the group.9
Haidt and Graham condense the rudiments of morality down to five
"psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues
related to harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/ respect, and
purity/sanctity"10 Most of these, it can be noticed, have little to do with religion
and could easily stand without religion.
MORALITY WITHOUT
CHRISTIANITY
So Christianity has its own behavioral interest and its own appraisal language-or
perhaps we should say interests and appraisals, since not all Christians seem to
agree on the details of "Christian morality." It cannot even be claimed that
Christianity is the only basis for a single morality, let alone for all morality. For
example, some Christians think that dancing is bad, while others do not; some
think that coffee or alcohol are bad, while others do not.
Different religions have their particular behavioral rules and appraisal terms.
Judaism was heralded as a religion of justice long before Christianity was
invented; the word "justice" occurs dozens of times in the Torah/Old Testament,
and the book of job is centered on it (see Alan Dershowitz's The Genesis of
.7ustice for a discussion of the evolution of justice in the Torah's first book").
Here, as in many of the cases to follow, "morality" might not quite be the right
word to describe the specific concerns, but the concerns are recognizable as
manifestations of an appraisal discourse. For instance, the Big Ten of moral rules
were written centuries before the Gospels, with their admonitions against killing
and stealing and lying and bearing false witness. But as anyone with minimal
familiarity with the Judeo-Christian scriptures knows, not all of the "ten
commandments" are "moral" in the conventional sense of the term. There is
nothing "moral" (in the sense of "prosocial" or "altruistic") in having no other
gods before some god, or in avoiding graven images ("or any likeness of any
thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the
water under the earth," as Exodus 20:4 orders and which the average Western
Christian utterly ignores), nor in keeping the Sabbath, nor in not coveting your
neighbor's possessions (which is the engine of Western capitalism).
What most Christians seem to conveniently forget is that the socalled "ten
commandments" are neither the only rules nor the main rules in Judaism. Why,
after the first tablets were broken, the Hebrew god gave Moses a new set with
different commandments in Exodus 34, such as to keep the feast of unleavened
bread, to offer the firstborn to their god (presumably by sacrifice, since they are
also instructed not to offer the blood of sacrifice along with leaven), to observe
the feast of weeks, and to assemble the men-children three times a year. Most
modern Christians, if they have even heard of these rules, do not obey them and
do regard them as "moral" worries.
Judaism also has a concern for "sin," but a cursory examination shows that
"sin" is not the same thing as the modern Christian concept of "immorality." Sin
in ancient Judaism was more akin to uncleanness or impurity: the dietary laws
do not say it is "immoral" to eat pork or shellfish but that those substances are an
"abomination," and a woman is unclean after birth, not immoral. And Judaism's
behavioral rules are hardly exhausted with the ten (or twenty) orders but are
famously said to run to 613 ritzvot or commandments. Among these mandates
are that every man should write a copy of the Torah for himself,12 wear the
tefillin or phylactery on the head and arm,13 not reap his entire field,14 and
exempt a bridegroom from public labor or military service for one year;15 that a
widow whose husband had no children should not marry anyone other than her
dead husband's brother;16 that one not kiss or hug or wink at or skip with a
relative lest one commits incest;17 that one not borrow money at interest;18 and
one of my personal favorites, that one release any servant that one "buys" after
six years.19
Islam is another wellknown religion with a clear set of "moral" principles.
Why Faith Fails The Christian Delusion Page 46
