Moral Developement Fail

I didn't really have a post topic in mind today and I didn't just want to post a mustache update for Rick, but luckily I checked out Pharyngula and found this post which shows us, yet again, that religiosity and adherence to the bible have nothing to do with developing ethics and morals.

According to Answers in Genesis, if you know the hiding place of Jews (during the Holocaust) and a Nazi officer asks you their whereabouts you shouldn't lie in order to save the Jews' lives because the bible clearly states that lying is a sin. OK, I know what you're thinking and I'm not just simplifying a complex answer to make AiG/fundies look bad. If you read the entire answer it makes them look even worse because they imply that doing anything to stop the Holocaust in general (or any other horrific event/occurrence) would somehow go against God/Jesus' will and screw up whatever plan he/they had.

I've always had a problem with religion's explanation for why bad things happen. Even as a child I felt like the "God created us with free will so that's why children get raped, genocide is committed, and dogs get run over by cars" answer was a cop-out. It wasn't until I became a parent that I could put my finger on what bothered me about it specifically.

I love my daughter. I want her to learn how to make her own decisions and develop her independence as she grows up. I have no desire to control her life or choose her future for her. However, if I saw her attempting to shoot up or smoke crack or drive drunk, I would do everything in my power to stop her. I would do this because I love her.

As a human being (according to religion/bible) I am imperfect and therefore my love for Charlotte could never be as complete as God/Jesus' love for us. Therefore God/Jesus loves us more than we could ever love someone else. God is also supposedly all powerful, so while I might attempt to stop Charlotte from doing something harmful there's a chance that I will fail, but God being all powerful would be able to stop anyone from doing anything. So if God/Jesus loves us so much why would he allow children to be raped, people to be exterminated by genocide, infants to die in childbirth, etc.? If you say that it's because He gave us free will, I call bullshit on you. If He really loves us so much He wouldn't be able to stand seeing us suffer such horrible things, just as none of us would be able to stand aside and do nothing while our child ran into the street to be run over, or drowned in the kiddie pool. If you say that God/Jesus allows those things to happen because there's some "greater plan", which involves these horrors, and we are incapable of knowing or understanding that plan, then your God/Jesus is unconscionably evil. What would we say of a parent who refuses medical care and allows their child to die of a treatable illness (ex. diabetes) because they believe that God/Jesus has a plan for the child which involved the child's death? What we say to those parents is that they belong in jail.

This AiG response, which in my opinion is just the bible taken to its "logical" conclusion when applied to every day life, is why I get pissed off when people say that you can't be moral without religion, the bible, God, Jesus, etc. It seems more likely that you would have a much harder time being moral if you follow the bible/God/Jesus.

I'm sure that it's easier for me to see morality as separate from religion because I was raised in a fairly secular home and also because I'm Jewish. I'm not saying that Judaism is more moral than other religions (the Old Testament is filled with genocide and other horrors) but it doesn't put a heavy emphasis or any emphasis (for non-Orthodox Jews) on heaven. We, and I'm speaking of nearly every single Jew I know (and I know a lot of Jews), were not taught that we should follow the bible or be ethical in order to get into heaven, we were taught that we should do those things because they are the right things to do. We were also taught that living a moral life is far more important that any belief in God, and in fact that a belief in God but lack of morals is never preferred over having morals but lacking a belief in God.

The way I see it, the heavily religious (in all faiths) are stuck at stage 1 of moral development. This means that when presented with a scenario a la the one that AiG addressed, they would be concerned about what the bible says and of course how their actions would affect their chances of going to heaven. On the other hand, a morally developed person would be concerned with saving innocent lives, and perhaps if that morally developed person happened to believe in God they would probably believe in a God who cared about innocent lives and was not a petty inflexible tyrant incapable of compassion. As a commenter on the Pharyngula post noted,

"It is often asked how did the good Christian folk of Germany let the Holocaust happen. This article from Mr. Hodge is the answer."

Don't forget that Rick is growing a mustache to raise funds for men's health issues. You can donate money in Rick's mustache's name here, and don't forget to enter my beret pattern giveaway.