This comes to us from Richard Johnson:

 

It is now widely accepted in the secular world that morality, the distinction between right and wrong conduct, is largely hard-wired in the brain – behavior that is “learned” through evolution. Thus, how we treat our fellows is antecedent to our survival as a human species. This just makes sense; evolution makes sense.  Obviously murder is contrary to survival. So is incestuous behavior. Over thousands of years, we have figured out how to be culturally fit.

Sin is a contrivance of religion – not all but many – certainly the three Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.  It sets up a separate – sometimes overlapping – but definitely a shadow system of morality. It sets forth rules that promote superstitious purpose. Religion takes advantage of fear and guilt – also human traits that are hard-wired by evolution.

Christianity is particularly severe because it sets up the individual to bear the responsibility of offending God – by the simple event of birth. Christians are told they are born sinners. Like water dripping on a stone, the relentless inculcation of sin-from-birth wears away the will. Many Christians actually believe (no wonder) that unless they submit to the will of supernatural (fictitious) agents, they will burn in hell.

Moral character is the product of years of honing that derives from discussions with parents, teachers, and sadly, clergy. While the bulkheads of who we are at our core, are set in place through our genes, the fine points – how we regard minorities, people of other races, our charity, the rules of our day to day interaction with others – result from deliberations carried out over the course of our lives. Clergy, steeped in doctrine thousands of years old, often deliver damaged goods. What good is scripture for anything but historical reference when it is so anachronistic to modern day situations? Human culture is evolving but weighted down by unyielding tracts held to be sacred.

The greatest impediments to our cultural advancement come from religion. Far right political candidates hawk their bigotry and bias by claiming that same-sex marriage is immoral – their reference: biblical sources. And they claim that abortion is murder – their rationale: God has placed a soul in the fertilized egg. Fiction!

Who talks with their shadow? Shadows at least exist. To allow less than a shadow to determine moral code is to shoot a hole in our struggle for survival. Pascal Boyer, an anthropologist and author of Religion Explained traces our belief in the unseen to those ancient days when our survival literally depended on those noises in the brush being possibly a predator. The “unseen” can still deliver a fatal blow. It’s called faith.

 

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 2nd, 2012 at 6:00 am and is filed under Abortion, Arizona Families, Art & Culture, Biblical Inerrancy, Christian Self-Righteous Arrogance, Christianity, Clarity, Critical Thinking, Education, Ethics, Faith, Fundamentalism, Gay Marriage, God & Bible, Logic, Reason, Religion, Sanity, That's Life!, Willful Ignorance. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.