E.S. Grayling (ACGrayling). Religion is selfish, narrow-minded and immoral

If politicians start turning to priests for advice on moral issues, that means things are bad. Perhaps this is simply evidence of the complete bankruptcy of political thought. Or maybe politicians are trying to put on the mask of a saint to cover up their unseemly deeds. But the worst thing is if the political establishment really takes at face value everything that the clergy tell it.

Recently, both major British politicians have turned to religious leaders for support: Tony Blair to the independent Catholic theologian Hans Küng, and William Hague (leader of the British Conservative Party - I.K.) to one of the loquacious preachers from the American religious organization Religious rights", convinced that funds for social needs should not be allocated from the state budget, but provided by private donors. Haig's goal is clear - he is simply looking for a new form to implement old right-wing ideas. Blair's case is far more troubling. At the Küng conference held this summer in Tübingen, sincere religious feeling forced our prime minister to say literally the following: ” “I am convinced that a society in which religious faith lives, by its very nature, will be able to bring more good to all humanity . Such beliefs are troubling because they are wrong: religion should never be considered a source of moral standards. Moreover, religion, on the contrary, destroys morality.

This happens because religious morality is not oriented towards practical issues of ethical life in modern society. Among the main values ​​of a modern person are personal independence, achieving material well-being, providing for the family, the opportunity to save for a rainy day, and receiving rewards for success. The values ​​preached by Christian morality are directly opposite to those listed above. Christianity teaches a person to become like the lilies, which, as you know, “do not toil, do not spin” and do not think about tomorrow. It teaches that a true believer is obligated to give away his wealth to the poor. It warns that it is not easy for a wealthy person to get into heaven, and preaches humility before the Lord. Obviously, such morality contradicts the fundamental moral norms of modern society.

Religious morality does not fit into modern ideas about sexual relations. Almost all religions allow sex only within marriage, and the most orthodox faiths condemn homosexuality, contraception and abortion. In addition, many religions have extremely reactionary views on the social position that women should occupy, relegating them to the role of housewife. Today, most people simply do not want to notice the striking contradictions between traditional religious morality and the ideas that dominate modern society. As for the churches, they either compromise or allow direct violation of the commandments of their own creed.

However, religious morality does not just look out of place in modern society. It is also anti-moral, because it is often deaf to the main ethical problems of today, including the protection of human rights, war, poverty and inequality between rich and poor. In Third World countries, a child dies every two and a half seconds from hunger or a treatable disease. At the same time, in developed countries, parishioners unanimously blaspheme sex without marriage and passionately discuss whether divorced couples can get married a second time in church. By wasting itself on trifles, the church thereby causes great harm to the cause of creating good on earth.

Moreover, religion is often not only anti-moral, but also immoral. In many countries around the world, religious fanatics and fundamentalists imprison women, mutilate their genitals, amputate their hands, kill, detonate bombs and carry out terror in the name of their faith. It would be a mistake to think that our spineless clerics never behaved in this way - after all, not so long ago (by historical standards) Christian priests burned heretics at the stake or took crusades against them, flogged people, cut off their noses and ears for adultery or preached that masturbation was worse than rape, since the latter could result in pregnancy while the former could not. Even today in some Islamic countries adulterers are stoned. If the church had still retained a dominant position in European states, who can guarantee that the same thing would not have happened in our country to this day? So if anyone thinks of turning to religious history for examples of moral imitation, he will have to turn a blind eye to the huge number of immoral acts committed by representatives of the church.

Reasoning dispassionately, we can admit that almost all religious ethical systems are similar to each other. The moral principles of Christianity also cannot be called innovative. Nietzsche pointed out that the Beatitudes, which state that the humble, the humble and the poor are blessed and will be rewarded after death, reveal signs of a slave psychology. (In saying this, the philosopher was referring to the experience of the Jews in Egypt before Moses.) It may be added that throughout history these commandments served the needs of those who were well-ordered: they helped the rich to humble the poor and prevent them from raising their heads.

The few positive moral guidelines provided by Christian morality are borrowed entirely from Judaism. But still, Judeo-Christian ethics cannot be compared with the richness and breadth of the “pagan” ethics of the ancient Greeks or the modern concept of human rights, which is not only much broader, but also much more subtle than the moral principles prescribed by religion.

Moreover, the concern of modern society with the well-being of its members, the protection of human rights, animals and the environment is dictated primarily by an internal sense of the importance of this issue, and not by the fear of divine punishment or, on the contrary, by the expectation of the condescension of divine grace. It is this feeling that is the only true source of moral convictions.

The last argument is decisive. Religious ethics rests on subsequent reward or punishment. It turns good into a kind of directive from supernatural forces. You do good because your faith dictates it, because you want to achieve eternal bliss. If there really are supernatural forces in the Universe, then it would indeed be quite logical to comply with their demands in order to save one’s own skin. However, such a motivation would still be not moral, but selfish, selfish in nature. Therefore, if I see two people, one of whom does good because he wants to avoid punishment from some higher power, and the other simply because he respects his neighbor, I myself will respect the latter incomparably more.

Independent
Original article
Translation by Ilya Kun