I really need to be doing things...

[avevale_intelligencer]

...but I can't let this go. Someone (whom I won't name because I don't know if they want their LJ and FB identities linked) just quoted on Facebook:

"Morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told. Religon is doing whatever you are told no matter what is right."

As an example of the statement that sounds good without at any point touching on truth, I don't think that can be bettered, and it shows up how insidiously persuasive a nice jingly Wildean paradox can be--I almost found myself nodding sagely at it for a second. But good grief, morality is *all about* what we're told--morality is tribal. And as for the stupid, facile old canard about religion being mindless obedience, I don't even need to bother refuting that, do I? I'm sure I've done it before, anyway, and I haven't got the spare computer time right now.

So, let's compose some nice jingly Wildean paradoxes.

"Bacon and eggs are tasty without being healthy. Muesli is healthy without being tasty."

See how it works? You have a try. See how convincing you can make any old rubbish just by balancing two phrases one against the other.

I'll check back tonight. I may award points.

Comments

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Oh absolutely people have made a moral case *in favor* of slavery--the very popular one at the time was, in fact, that slavery was the only way to indoctrinate the slaves in the "true religion" (pick flavour of choice) and thus save their souls, and thus slavery was ultimately to the benefit of the slaves.

I don't share this view, of course, and I suspect most people in the modern world don't anymore, but it certainly looked to me as though the people making that argument at the time were sincere.

And people in the modern day sometimes argue, not that slavery is moral now, but that slavery was moral when most people thought it was. Another view I don't share, though it sounds like perhaps you and the_alchemist do, though the point of disagreement sounds to be more over what "morality" means, than over whether slavery was actually, um, "right-as-opposed-to-wrong" Uh, whatever word you use for that.

And sure, if we postulate "morality" means "whatever most people at that time and place think is right" rather than "what really is right" then the contention that "morality is doing what is right no matter what you are told" makes no sense by definition.

Since people don't often say things that they realize make no sense by definition, the possibility arises that the speaker of the original quote meant something other than "whatever most people at that time and place think is right" by "morality."

Whether you call that "right" or "ethics" or "good" or whatever, I don't know. But whichever term you use (if you recognize the concept as valid at all) should probably be substituted for "morality" in the first part of the quote and, (altered to the adjective form) "right" in the second part of the quote. At least, if one wants to get at what the speaker was trying to say.

At that point, one may still disagree with what the speaker was trying to say, but at least one is not battling a phantom meaning.

For myself, I think I don't really fully agree with what the original speaker was trying to say. I would say "Do what is right. Religion may or may not agree; paying it mind costs time and energy. It takes time and energy to do what is right." Then I would write that out in a circle so the end comes right before the beginning.

Specifically, I do not agree with the original speaker of the quote that religion *necessarily* requires doing what you're told even when it's not right. Some liberal religions place the values quite the other way.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

"Do what is right. Religion may or may not agree; paying it mind costs time and energy. It takes time and energy to do what is right." Then I would write that out in a circle so the end comes right before the beginning.

'Religion' isn't a thing or a person you can 'pay mind to'. And no-one is born with a sense of 'what is right', it is something that is built up gradually, influenced by things on this (non-exhaustive) list:

- parents
- friends
- teachers
- the media
- things we have studied, formally or informally
- religious scripture
- our gut instincts
- books we have read
- our own experiences
- the reported experiences of others
- the teachings of religious leaders
- our desires

Pretty much *any* of these, religious or non-religious, can result in a morality that is either good or bad from a Utilitarian perspective (which is the only vaguely objective measure I can think of). And pretty much all of them take time and energy to pay mind to. So there is no reason at all to single out the religious sources of information as being somehow different from the others.

Different people are more influenced by different subsets of them, and that's fine, but - crucially - if [it were the exhaustive version of the list and if] there were a person who didn't pay mind to any of them, that person wouldn't have any 'sense of right' at all.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

If religion is not something you can "pay mind to" then we're good, right? Except you consider everything beyond "do what is right" to be unnecessary because it refers to actions that are not possible?

And "religion can result in a morality that is either ethical or unethical" is pretty much my point. It's not a useful guideline--it's right sometimes and wrong sometimes, and the yardstick you're using to judge whether it's right or wrong is something else anyway, so why not cut out the middleman and go straight to the something else?

And I wasn't recommending ignoring all the other things on the list, so we're good there too.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

If religion is not something you can "pay mind to" then we're good, right?

I'm not sure what you mean. I meant that I dislike it when people write about 'religion' as though it were basically a list of commandments that people can obey or ignore. In fact it's a much more complicated and amorphous set of things including relationships, communities, actions as well as words and beliefs.

You can pay mind to what religious books say, what members of your religious communities say, what a particular inner voice of yours which you have labelled 'God' says, but you can't pay mind to what 'religion' says, or to what 'Christianity' or 'Islam' says.


Except you consider everything beyond "do what is right" to be unnecessary because it refers to actions that are not possible?

I really don't understand what you mean by this. Sorry! Can you rephrase it?


... so why not cut out the middleman and go straight to the something else?

What is the 'something else'? I don't think there's anything which is an adequate yardstick of the type you describe.

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

In fact it's a much more complicated and amorphous set of things including relationships, communities, actions as well as words and beliefs.

Except that relationships and communities don't require religion; they can just as well be built around something else--a common interest or culture, for example. So I don't think of them as "part of religion" but more as entities that accrete around many different things, one of which is sometimes religion. At which point the religion part of religion, for me, is religious words and beliefs--many of which turn out to be commandments of one sort or another.

What is the 'something else'? I don't think there's anything which is an adequate yardstick of the type you describe.

The something else is:

- parents
- friends
- teachers
- the media
- things we have studied, formally or informally
- our gut instincts
- books we have read
- our own experiences
- the reported experiences of others
- our desires

And

-our own good sense about what hurts and doesn't hurt people (and to a lesser extent animals) and what are fair and unfair ways to behave. "Do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is actually not too bad as a rule of thumb.

[the-alchemist.livejournal.com]

Except that relationships and communities don't require religion ...

Of course not, but nor do words or belief. There are religious and non-religious relationships, communities, words and beliefs. It seems really arbitrary to decide that religion = religious words/beliefs but not religious relationships/communities.

Similarly, why do you single religion out as a 'middleman', but not teachers, parents, media, gut instinct etc.? It seems unreasonable to give it a special, lower status.

As for 'our own good sense about what hurts and doesn't hurt people', doesn't that come out of all the intermediary things we've been listing, sometimes including religion?

[catsittingstill.livejournal.com]

Blink.

Maybe I'm not getting this because I've never been a part of a religious community. But isn't the aspect of a religous community that makes it important to its members the fact that it's a community? I mean, you know the people in your church because you happened to all go to the same building once a week for a long time, and hey, great, a bunch of them turned out to be compatible, personality wise, and then you worked on some projects together and now you've known each other for years and would help each other out in a heartbeat, and of course who doesn't value that?

But couldn't you get the same effect if what drew you to the same building and got you working on the same projects so you got the chance to become long term friends, was something that was not religion?

I see religion as a middleman because to me it looks like a middleman. I see all kinds of different indications of that; most often people using it to justify hurting people, and people who avoid doing that by choosing to discard the hurting bits. Some of them go to the effort of finding bits in the religious teachings that can be interpreted as telling them the hurting bits don't count--but what made them know those were hurting bits and look for a way to discard them?

As for 'our own good sense about what hurts and doesn't hurt people', doesn't that come out of all the intermediary things we've been listing, sometimes including religion?

Well, religion has never helped *me* know this. And I feel like I've done a reasonable job so far and I've never felt any lack. And I've never seen anyone else helped by it while I was observing. And I've certainly seen people misled by religion in this department. So that's why I think what I do.

Frankly gut feeling (admittedly probably heavily informed by my parents when I was too young to remember) and my own good sense pretty much do it for me, I think, though the concerns of my community have sometimes drawn my attention to issues I hadn't considered, and people's discussion of issues have sometimes made me look at them a different way.