Reading the Culture: Does morality require religion?

Denison

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This question was the topic for a debate in which I participated recently with the Dallas Philosopher’s Forum. I was assigned the affirmative; a philosophy professor at SMU was assigned the negative. In preparation, I came across a fascinating article in The New York Times and thought its insights might interest you.

Peter Railton is the Perrin Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His Times submission looks at the question of morality through Darwinian eyes. As he explains, current evolutionary theory suggests life tends to preserve itself genetically. You and I are a means to the end of our genes’ survival and procreation. As Samuel Butler put it, a hen is only an egg’s way of making another egg.

Jim Denison

Jim Denison

Applied to our question, this approach views moral choices as genetic instruments. We choose to sacrifice for each other so our families can survive and procreate. We value moral traits in others such as altruism, loyalty and generosity because they make them better reproductive partners. These “proximal psychological mechanisms” are not very glamorous, but evolutionary theory sees them as essential to the progress of life.

Here's what interested me: Railton admits this approach cannot explain moral advancement on a societal level. Even if we concede (which I don’t) that moral choices are all about preserving and advancing our individual genetics, how does this view account for what he calls cultural evolution? He applauds the Geneva Convention, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and dramatic advances in civil rights and women's rights. But the evolutionary theory he describes so well cannot explain them.

It is here that Christians have a point to make. Scripture teaches that God is the Cause for which we are the effect. This is true not just physically but also morally. As C.S. Lewis pointed out, our moral tendencies deserve explanation. I can claim that I learned them from my parents, but where did they get theirs? If from my grandparents, where did they get theirs? We step backwards across time and arrive ultimately at a Moral Cause, a God who is “holy, holy, holy.”

This God is the ultimate explanation of the moral impulses that move humanity. He calls us to moral excellence in attitudes (Galatians 5:22-23), thoughts (Philippians 4:8), words (Ephesians 4:29) and actions (Psalm 15:1-2). But we cannot achieve the moral standard he sets for us, so he enables us by the transforming work of his Spirit (Ephesians 5:18) to be molded into the character of Christ (Romans 8:29).

So, does morality require religion? George Washington thought so. In his farewell address (Sept. 19, 1796), our first president told his infant nation: “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. … Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

To amend Butler, morality is God’s way of making us like God.


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Jim Denison is president of the Center for Informed Faith (www.informedfaith.com) and theologian-in-residence with the Baptist General Convention of Texas.

 


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