“The belief in a God All Powerful wise & good, is so essential to the moral order of the World & to the happiness of man, that arguments which enforce it cannot be drawn from too many sources...." (James Madison to Frederick Beasley, November 20, 1825)
Does a belief in this kind of a God cause people to be less willing to harm others, as Madison suggests? Does believing that there is no God (as in the case of Stalin and Mao) cause one to be more willing to harm others?
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6 comments:
There are two things that Man fears, the wrath of his God, and the wrath of his fellow man. All actions dictated by fear will be influenced by these two factors.
A man who is a devout believer in God will most certainly fear the wrath of his God if he acts outside the boundaries he believes his God has set. By nature, a god-fearing man will be more afraid of his God than his fellow man, and if he believes he is acting in behalf of his God, the wrath of his fellow man will become much less, if any at all, of a deterrent.
This fear of God will be an influencing factor for the life of that man, as, by nature, God cannot be usurped.
A man who has no belief in God will not have the influencing factor of God's potential wrath, and all his actions will be dictated on only on the wrath of his fellow man, which, by nature, CAN be usurped. This fear will only deter as long as the man feels weaker than others, but once the man gains power and feels stronger than others, he loses this fear as well, meaning that he has neither governing fear to dictate his choices, leaving him (allegedly) without morals.
The argument that fear is a prevailing motivator is a solid one. Ideally, the driving motivating factor behind peoples' decisions would be something else, such as compassion or something, but we don't live in an ideal world.
So then the question to be asked is "which causes more fear, wrath of God or wrath of Man?". This, of course, is going to be different to different people.
Certainly a fear of both is going to cause people to act in the most socially acceptable way, and a fear of neither would be disastrous. I don't think anyone could argue this.
A fear of JUST man would be adequate, but only until man can be usurped.
However a fear of JUST God can be equally dangerous, even though God cannot be usurped. Once a man's belief in his God becomes so strong that he no longer fears his fellow man (religious fanatics), ANYTHING is fair game, it's only a matter of details after that. And what's worse is that the fanatic can then turn other God-fearing men into fanatics as well leading to genocide as easily as the man who fears only other men, but has risen to power. (hence the Crusades)
So then it really isn't a matter of belief in God, it's just a matter of belief. All God's aside, all men aside, it's all about what principles you believe in. People will fight to the death for the things they believe at the core of their being to be right and wrong, whether those beliefs were instilled by Man or God. The godless 'heathen' can be more morally established than the godless 'saint'. It's all a matter of perspective. I'm willing to suggest that all morals are subjective. There's a few core beliefs that I believe to apply across the board, and those are the ones that I will fight for to the death, but my list of core beliefs will probably differ from many others. Though I believe MINE to be true, and ONLY mine, that doesn't mean that (at least on a theoretical level) they are true.
So then you move to the assertion of a majority rule. A majority of people would agree that murder falls under that list of core beliefs,that stealing is on that list of core beliefs. But that doesn't mean it is. UNLESS you are willing to adopt the belief that right and wrong is established by the majority.
In the American society where we are ALL about preventing the majority from violating the rights of the minority, this can be a very difficult concept to swallow. But if you agree with all my logic thus far, the next question is "Where do you draw the line?". How BIG does the majority have to be for a belief to move from 'subjective belief' to 'core belief'?
Does 100% percent of the world (or for this example, the United States) believe murder is wrong? I would seriously doubt it. My guess would be a split of maybe 99.99% to .01%, or possibly a greater split than that. But so then you have to ask yourself, if 20% of the nation's population believed murder to be okay, would that take it off the list of 'core beliefs'? Would the Supreme Court make a ruling declaring it unconstitutional for States to make any law concerning the legality of murder? And would they say that murder lies in the word 'liberty' in the due process clause of the 14th Amendment?
Goodness, I realize this is a very extreme example, but my argument is this: morality, whether its the subjective beliefs or the core beliefs, are established by majority rule, they always have and they always will, it's human nature.
It's not a belief in God that creates good men, it's good men that create good men, and THAT, I believe, answers the blog question adequately.
Just my long-winded, extensive, and probably unnecessary explanation of my opinion.
Mr. Powell
Three thoughts in response to Mr. Powell.
"Morality, whether its the subjective beliefs or the core beliefs, are established by majority rule, they always have and they always will, it's human nature."
The insistence of the Founders that ideas of right and wrong come from God (and that our basic rights from God) is a denial that morality is whatever the majority says it is. Every single Founder, as well as people like Lincoln, insisted on this point.
You can disagree, but it would be good to give some reasons why you disagree.
"A fear of JUST man would be adequate, but only until man can be usurped."
Perhaps the reason why Marxism leads to totalitarian government is because if there is no God to fear, then government must be extremely powerful in order to keep people in check. The Founders would have seen it this way.
"What's worse is that the fanatic can then turn other God-fearing men into fanatics as well leading to genocide as easily as the man who fears only other men, but has risen to power. (hence the Crusades)."
Is it agreed that the Crusades were the work of God-fearing fanatics? What were the Crusades? What was the purpose of the Crusades? Is there only one way to understand them (a negative one) or is the matter more complex than that?
"The insistence of the Founders that ideas of right and wrong come from God (and that our basic rights from God) is a denial that morality is whatever the majority says it is. Every single Founder, as well as people like Lincoln, insisted on this point."
Who said anything about the founding fathers? I don't believe the debate was over what the founding father's believed or didn't believe about God, but what we thought. My previous comment reflects how I feel and, in my opinion, just because the founding fathers, or anyone else, believed in God-given rights doesn't make it true. All of my comments were coming from a very theoretical level, which they have to because if we only talk from perspective set in reality we wouldn't be able to think outside of our social context.
"Perhaps the reason why Marxism leads to totalitarian government is because if there is no God to fear, then government must be extremely powerful in order to keep people in check. The Founders would have seen it this way."
I believe you are agreeing with me here, but I'm not sure. I'm not trying to defend Marxism, and indeed I'll be the first to admit I don't know much about Karl Marx in the first place. But I believe I know what 'idealist' means and I believe Communism to be just that, idealistic. So idealistic that it's impossible to achieve, and efforts to achieve it will most likely result in morally void behavior.
"Is it agreed that the Crusades were the work of God-fearing fanatics? What were the Crusades? What was the purpose of the Crusades? Is there only one way to understand them (a negative one) or is the matter more complex than that?"
The Crusades, in my opinion, were the work of God-fearing fanatics. Not every soldier who fought in the Crusades was a fanatic, but I believe the people who started it, who were backing it, and who fueled it, were. Like I said: fanatics, who in my opinion are also morally instable, can take the belief of others who AREN'T fanatics, and twist it and manipulate it to get other believers to act in their cause. I believe the Crusades was a war fought in a morally instable time period by morally instable people. As to the negative or positive effects of the Crusades, well, I'm no historian so I won't pretend to know much about that.
It definitely is a good idea to think about whether or not there is a God and whether or not our rights actually come from God, independentally of what the Founders thought.
The reason I brought in the Founders is because they understood what the political consequences would be of believing that right and wrong is whatever the majority says. In their opinion, the political consequence would be that there would be no security for rights and so no liberty. They believed that there must be someone independent of mankind who defines right and wrong, or else injustices and even atrocities great and small would regularly take place.
As to the Crusades, I would just say that personally I am going to reserve judgment on the best way to understand them, until I have spent a good deal of time studying the matter. There is, for example, a well-respected three volume history of the Crusades by a historian named Steven Runciman, that would take many hours of work to read through. I think it is important not to be too emphatic about out opinions until we put in the time it takes to understand the matter we are studying--and even when we have put in the time it makes sense to be open to the possibility that we are not done thinking about the matter.
So I am just pleading for open minds and more thinking about this matter.
I agree with you that it's important for every person to come to a verdict of whether God exists or not, I have come to that verdict myself and found that I believe God does exist. I know it may seem like I am atheist in a lot of the things I've said, but I find religion to be a particularly insubstantial area of belief and consequently find myself playing Devil's Advocate any time I can.
Also, I don't doubt at all the the Founders' beliefs in an active God and God-given rights and the passing on of those values to American society has helped create the great American nation we know today, I don't doubt that at all. I strongly believe that the 'core beliefs' the Founders believed in (or as you call the Sacred Triangle of Rights) is an important part to any successful society. I agree with those beliefs, again I just find myself playing Devil's Advocate. I question the beliefs of the Founding Fathers for reasons you yourself argued: just because an authority figure is telling you something doesn't make it true. You've said this about yourself many times.
As for the Crusades, I'm just going to remove myself of them entirely. Like I said I'm no historian and I clearly don't know enough about the topic to use it in reference to any kind of argument I'm making.
I had hoped in no way that in my explanation of my opinions and thoughts that I was done thinking about the matter. I hope and strive to be an open-minded person, that's why I play Devil's Advocate so often, even though a lot of times I agree with the original sentiment.
I guess if I had to make one argument it would be this, and I'll try to put it in a logical structure.
PREMISE: There are hundreds of different religions and hundreds of more ways to look at each one. Each proclaims to be the one and only truth.
INFERENCE: No religion can prove their's is true and the others are false, at least not in a way in which all can accept it (scientifically being an example of a way to prove something). Belief in any particular one requires a 'leap of faith' to varying degrees.
CONCLUSION: Given the diversity of beliefs and opinions among religion and moral beliefs, and the lack of any real proof one over the others, it can be said that predominating beliefs found among a majority of religions can be considered 'God-given'. Or to put it another way, morals are establish via majority rule.
-Mr Powell
I do appreciate the questions that you are raising, Mr. Powell. As you say, raising such questions help people to think more.
The point you make in this comment reminds of something we haven't discussed yet about the idea of God-given rights.
In the Declaration, the Americans say that the fact that all human beings have certain basic rights is a "self-evident" truth--that is, it is a truth that can be agreed to by human reason alone, independently of the revelation of religion.
In Activity 68, Locke (as quoted by Story) says that the right to freedom of worship is something that we know exists not only from revealed religion, but natural religion as well. Natual religion, I assume, means idea about God that we can arrive at by means of reason alone.
So the Founders at least believed that we can arrive at the idea of God-given rights by reason alone. (I'd have to think more about how exactly that is done.)
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