In reading came across this, “we must become conscious of
our desires and articulate them, and prioritize them, and arrange them into hierarchies that make them work with each other, and the desires of other people, and with
the world.” This process organizes said desires into values that become moral,
according to the author.
The philosophical study of morality, right vs wrong is the branch called ethics, but older than this is religion, with a focus on good versus evil. Religion concerns itself with proper behavior, which is rooted in obedience, sometimes blind, with which many may take issue. And, while this may be problematic, it is a start, as humanity must have standards, after all, how do we determine what we aim for? Moreover, to reach any goal requires discipline (author’s writings summarized by me).
He goes on to say, for this reason-religion must have a
dogmatic element, because what good is a value system that does not provide
stable structure and point to a higher order. However, in all of this, there
must be vision beyond discipline and beyond dogma, but every tool, in this case
religion, still needs a purpose.
The author outlines how the Bible, for better or worse, is
the foundational document of Western Civilization (of Western values, morality,
and the Western concept of good vs. evil). And, it is this reason why one
cannot truly be an atheist. “You’re simply not an atheist in your actions, and
it is your actions that most accurately reflect your deepest beliefs-those
implicit, embedded in your being, underneath your conscious apprehensions and
articulable attitudes and surface-level knowledge. You can only find out what
you actually believe (rather than what you think you believe) by watching how
you act.
You simply don’t understand how every neural circuit through
which you peer at the world has been shaped (and painfully) by the ethical aims
of millions of years of human ancestors and all of the life that was lived for
the billions of years before that.” Hence, why you might not understand how
some of your behaviors are rooted in systems of human thought that have existed
for millennia (my words).
It is in first laying this foundation that I ask you to
ponder some things with me. Could it be that many people’s problem with
religion, and mainly in the western world Christianity, has to do with how evil
is ascribed to the person and not necessarily the act? Meaning, that instead of
seeing the person and the behavior or actions that are deemed evil as
juxtaposed and mutable, we instead see them as fixed and unchanging. And, while
a person and his/her actions are interchangeable, can it be that sometimes people
do evil things, but does that necessarily make them evil ( lots of grey here
and I recognize this)
And, what exactly is evil? Many agree that murder is evil,
but even in this, we must consider the context, because killing someone often
happens within the confines of war. While there are many things we may agree on
as evil, can evil be simply this; “any action or behavior that harms another
and those actions that rob the world of the true essence of you, the reason that you
exist, the reason why any of us exist?
And why do we exist? Many have attempted to answer this
question, which I will not do in the context of this post. I write this mainly
out of fascination, abd ask you to consider what you value and why you value
it. Moreover, what you have rejected, or least thought you have rejected it,
and why you have chosen to reject this.
