Atheist Age

Ethics [still] vs Scripture

© Online Opinion;

Far from any religion, and especially Christianity, being essential to the development of a sound ethical sense, it is a destructive hindrance from whose influence all children, but especially those in our public schools, should be protected.

Prominent clerics in New South Wales are claiming that ethics which are not based on Christian teaching are somehow not proper. They are labouring under the delusion that ethics and religious belief are interdependent. In fact, religion is to ethics as pseudoscience is to science. In each case, the proselytisers of the former try to establish a right to make significant statements about the latter by presenting the latter as being somehow owned by the former.

In NSW, the anxious clerics are even going to the extent of insisting that they should have a prominent role in evaluating the ethics courses being tried out in ten schools because, as they falsely argue, ethics is a subset of religion.

In fact, far from the churches being allowed some role to play in the design or evaluation of ethics courses in schools, they should be not allowed within a bull’s roar of them.

Ethical and religious teachings are both concerned with how people should behave in particular situations and to this extent have a seeming similarity, but there are at least three ways in which they are starkly different and largely incompatible.

Objective:

Ethics concerns itself with how people should behave so as to secure the greatest possible well being of all human beings in this life. Religion concerns itself with how people should behave so as to secure the greatest possible well being for themselves in the next life. Ethics is about securing benefits for everyone in the one existence we know we all shall have; religion is about securing benefits for yourself in a future existence that many (maybe most) do not even think will happen.

Methodology:

Ethical conclusions are reached from rational analysis of the effects on everybody concerned of all available ways of behaving. Religious conclusions, certainly Christian ones, are handed out by influential human beings who claim that they know the wishes of a god. In making an ethical judgment, people have to work out the course of action that will minimise the total amount of personal discomfort in the world. In making a religious judgment, people have to work out what to do to avoid hell.

To be ethical, you have to open your mind and engage your brain. To be religious, you have to close your mind and open your ears. The hallmarks of ethical behaviour are intellectual engagement with issues and their consequences. The hallmarks of religious behaviour are unquestioning obedience to received articles of faith and to observance of rituals.

Continued…

-

Tags: Christianity, Education, Ethics