15 July 2014
·
If God exists, is murder immoral?
·
Can those who do not believe in God be highly
moral people?
·
Can people who practice different religions
agree about how to resolve a moral disagreement?
In order to answer these questions, I need to
fully understand each part of the question.
While reading the questions, several other questions come to the front:
1.
Does God exist?
2.
What exactly is murder?
3.
What does Moral mean?
4.
Can morality be based on other criterion than
the belief in God?
5.
On that premise, can persons with differing
religious belief resolve a moral dispute?
The new questions develop a new path of
understanding by first delving into what a moral is. A moral is defined as a societal code of
conduct based on religious, familial, or societal standards applied to
individual behavior, over the course of time (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/). In this definition the existence of God is
not contemplated, nor is it necessary, to answer the question. In our world there are societies of
individuals that have developed vastly different moral standards. In the USA, for example, morality tends to be
based on a religious platform and applied to all persons in the form of
Laws. In the USA it is illegal to
“murder” someone though as yet I have not defined the term, therefore, by
default it is immoral. If one were to
take a more Eastern view, it might be discovered that what we as a society find
objectionable, is perfectly in-line with their culture and customs and
therefore, not immoral. So morality has
no specific meaning other than that it is the cultural norm or custom as applied
to individual behavior over time.
The second phase of the question comes to
whether God exists. This question has plagued scholars for centuries and is not
likely to be resolved any time soon. In
that light, one should look to their own belief structure to decide for
themselves if God exists. For this
essay, I will illustrate both viewpoints.
Utilizing that method of breakdown
and examination, I will determine what a moral is to me and how fluid the
decisions can be based on the context of a given situation.
For the third part of the question, I will
think about what murder is and how the term came to be what we as a people have
come to believe it means. Taking the
life of another is a very big decision and should not be done lightly. There are many conditions where the taking of
a life would be necessary to ensure the safety of my family or myself. Is it morally acceptable? I think it really depends on the
circumstance. Would I lie in wait in a
park for a jogger to kill? Likely, I
would not. Would I kill the person
trying to kill the jogger? Probably so…but
why would the second scenario be okay when the first is not?
We learned earlier that morality is an
artificial construct of societal learning applied to similar situations. Due to
the herd mentality of humanity, I believe that morality can be a useful tool if
exercised in the proper context. In the
above scenario of the jogger in the park, it would be morally wrong to kill the
jogger but not the mugger. In that case,
I have seen that the jogger is in danger, looked to my morals for guidance and
reacted in a way that would be societally acceptable. But is it morally acceptable? In my own mind, I would feel remorse for
killing anyone—deserved or not. I would
not, however, feel the killing as unjust.
My reasons have nothing to do with legality or even a sense of right or
wrong, but rather have a root in my religious viewpoint. I am not a Christian. I do not believe in the God of the
Bible. Do I have a moral code? Yes, I do.
My moral code is based in the natural cycle of life and what it means to
be human. I believe that if all
creatures do no harm to others, except when a reaction is required to counter
the action of another, which would result in harm to my self, or family, then
it is just. My belief is that all things
deserve to live and exist in a natural balance.
To be more precise, good and evil, light and dark, happy and sad all
need to co-exist in balance. I cannot
fault the lion for killing the antelope as it is in his nature to kill the
antelope to feed himself and his pride.
Perspective and reasoning separate humanity
from animals. Perspective is the way a
situation or event is seen, judged and reacted to or not, based on the
experience of the perceiver. Reasoning
is the decision to react or not to a perceived event or situation. If I do this, then that will happen—based on
past experience. With this information,
we then can logically decide if the reaction is warranted by the action.
Assuming that I am Pagan, Buddhist, or any
other non-Christian religion and you are Christian, can we resolve a moral
dilemma? I believe we can. Morality, we said, is a societal structure
based on cultural norms and that morality is independent of the existence of
the belief, or lack thereof, in God.
Leaving religion out of the equation results in utilization of our
perception and reasoning to help us make the moral call. By relying on past experiences, in our
perception, (learned individually and via a group) we can decide if a reaction
to a situation is moral or not. For
example, we are in Mexico where it is customary to pay-off a police officer to
prevent arrest. In the United States it
is not only immoral but also illegal. In
Mexico, bribes are a cultural norm.
Based on the context of the situation, bribery would not be immoral if I
were in Mexico, it would be expected.
The last apple to fall from the tree of
discussion is the one of murder. What is
murder? In Western culture, murder is
perceived as the causing of the death of another either directly or indirectly. In some Eastern cultures, the causing of a
death is not always murder. Recently in
the news, we have heard of women in the Middle East that have been executed for
adopting western views on education, civil rights, ownership, and
adultery. Not only is it not immoral
that they kill their family member, honor demands that they do. Traditionally speaking, murder is not as cut
and dry as it seems. Moral dilemma such
as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide and brain death have all resulted in
moral conflict. Some feel that abortion
is the killing of a human before it is born others feel that the fetus is
nothing more than a parasitic cell structure until it is able to exist outside
the host. Euthanasia in some cultures
(Japan specifically) is considered a way to regain family honor by removing,
honorably, the cause of the dishonor.
Assisted suicide and right to die advocates claim that it is our basic
right to decide whether we live or die and no person or jurisdiction has the
right to dictate otherwise. We all know
of cases where the patient is brain dead but still biologically
functioning. Do we allow them to starve
or do we keep feeding the living corpse forever? What does your moral compass say?
The answer to the original question therefore
becomes convoluted and distorted by reason and intellect. I personally do not believe in God, but I do
have a deity. Do I think murder is
immoral? Not always. There can be a rational reason to commit
murder (in the defined sense) just as there are reasonable arguments for or
against just about anything that is generally considered immoral. The question of whether it is immoral to
murder becomes why did the murder take place?
Was the murdered trying to murder the murderer? Did the killer perceive danger to himself or
his family? Did the killer believe in
God?
The topic of morality is very broad and cannot
possibly be covered conclusively in a short paper essay. However, a general idea can be gleaned from
our past experiences and our group-learned lessons. The question of God will likely never be
answered (unless you believe in life after death, then maybe). The question of murder becomes a question of
context and perception vs. learned behaviors.
The will of the many usually usurp the rights of the few as has been
demonstrated many times in human history—both recent and distant. Sometimes it is the right thing to do,
sometimes not.
