or
"Morals"
CUUPS chapter, which is what sparked this whole conversation. A friend of mine and I were
chatting at work and I mentioned this engagement to her. Her response was confused, "What
would you speak about at a Unitarian church?" she asked.
After explaining about CUUPS (what little I actually knew) and UU in general (again, to the
extent that I could), she asked me how it was that I came to be Pagan. Briefly I told her that
after a long period of being agnostic I essentially had an "itch" to go searching for something
more definable and more personal than The Great Undefinable Unprovable Probability. She
further asked what an agnostic was, and I told her that in general it meant that you believe
that something is probably out there but you don't know what it is, and believe that it can't be
proven to exist or not to exist. And then she got to the meat of the discussion. "How do you
find a purpose in life if you believe that?"
The question itself confuses me a little. From my viewpoint, I don't see how my religious
beliefs would affect my purpose in life. Answering her question rather felt like trying to
explain the intrinsic value of art to someone who essentially has no use for beauty in his or
her life, or who sees art as a waste of resources. The only answer I could give was that I felt
my purpose was to live a good life, to make a difference for the better in at least one other
person's life along the way, and to leave this place somehow better than I found it. Those
ideals are not necessarily tied to my religion. She responded that she sees her purpose as
tied to her beliefs, which are tied to her morals. A-hA! Morals, eh? I think what she really
wanted to know was how a person with no or anti-religious beliefs could live a moral life, but
she wasn't even sure how to ask, or thought that implying that she thought it was impossible
for me to have morals might be insulting.
First I think I should explain that one need not have a religious upbringing or belief set to live
a moral life. In Webster's Great Big Book of Everything (I am a mom, I can't help it) in the
"moral" entry, there's an awesome explanation. Webster says that "MORALS refers to
generally accepted customs of conduct and right living in a society, and to the individual's
practice in relation to these: the morals of our civilization. ETHICS now implies high
standards of honest and honorable dealing, and of methods used, esp. in the professions or in
business: ethics of the medical profession." Nada about religion specifically. The
predominant religion may affect the generally accepted rules of conduct, but not necessarily
determine them in whole. And morals can change. We no longer think it's moral to own
slaves; or rather it occurred to us that it was immoral to own another human being. Young
women who became pregnant were once largely sent away from home in shame and forced to
give up their children for adoption or forced into marriage. While it's still not widely accepted
for young women to become pregnant outside of marriage, their families tend to treat them
much differently now than 50 years ago.
Customs and conduct of "right living" often parallel religious edicts regarding the same.
Don't kill people for no reason. Don't sleep around and make a bunch of babies you can't
feed. Don't take things that aren't yours. Don't lie. Generally, don't run around causing a
bunch of chaos. Your neighbors won't like it, and someday you might need their help for
something. To say that the Ten Commandments are the basis of our society's morals is
rather a leap, honestly. Surely people don't really believe that the Hebrews were incapable of
any sort of self-control or found it impossible to be nice to those around them before those
commandments were handed down. Any society that's going to exist for any length of time
must have *some* pretty basic rules, understood by all, on how to get along or you don't have
a society. Simply because we have laws that govern decent behavior that include not killing
people and not stealing things doesn't mean that every person who follows those laws must be
a religious person, or that people who don't follow those laws are not religious people.
Anyone who has lived in a home with more that one cat has experienced this first-hand. Two
cats (or more) have rules as to how they behave. Who gets to eat first, who has fresh box
privileges, primary lap privileges, who gets the prime chair in the living room, and many more.
Occasionally somebody who's not head cat decides to challenge this order. That somebody is
usually put right back into place, and peace resumes. This order (or set of unspoken laws)
allows the cats to live in a fairly low-stress society all their own without destroying your house
or killing each other. I challenge anyone to find me a religious cat, unless narcissism can truly
be defined as a religion!
Look at it this way. If somehow someone proved unequivocally that there was no God, gods,
All, etc., no afterlife, no spirit world, no reincarnation, that This was It, how would your daily
life change? Would you suddenly stop acting like a responsible adult? Would you stop being
a good person? What, if anything, would you do differently, and why? If you find that your
behavior would radically change if your religion were suddenly pointless, perhaps it would be
worth examining such a line of thought. Do you only behave from day to day because you are
afraid of eternal punishment? Or do you do it to receive an eternal reward? If you're one of
the many people who really thought about it and decided that your style of daily living really
wouldn't be any different after you got over the philosophical shock, you can see where I'm
coming from.
While you may incorporate some of your religious ideals into your moral code, those things
that you don't also have a good reason for adhering to probably would last long. For instance,
if the only reason you think sex outside of marriage is wrong is because God said No, your
thoughts on that are probably likely to change or at the worst you'll do it anyway and just feel
guilty about it because you haven't truly internalized the idea that sex outside of marriage is
wrong. If you also happen to believe it's wrong because it spreads disease, causes unwanted
pregnancy, and can lead to hurt feelings, you're much more likely to follow through with this
moral belief. Less emotionally charged example: your mother tells you not to touch the
stove. If the only reason you don't touch the stove is because your mother said so, it's pretty
likely that sometime you're going to do it anyway because at some point you're going to
question your mother's authority. If you also happen to believe that the stove is hot, that hot
things can burn you, and that getting burned hurts a lot you probably won't touch the stove.
Essentially, Mom just gave you advice that happens to fit in with what you already believe
about the stove and other things that are or may be hot.
Am I getting through? Am I making sense? Does any of this help explain how a non-religious
(or especially a non-Christian) person can be a moral person? If you have thoughts on this
topic I'd love to hear from you. Post them on the message board or email me. If you email
me be aware that I'll probably add what you have to say here and I will credit your words to
you (for good or ill).
