Morality Without God Rev. Amy Russell Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Glen Allen Sunday, February 7, 2016

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Conrad McDaniel
5 years ago
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1 Two itinerant preachers were riding horseback to get to the next town where they were scheduled to preach on Sunday. They started talking together and it turned out that one of the preachers was a Universalist. After talking a little about this, the other preacher started riding slower and falling behind the Universalist preacher. Finally, the Universalist preacher stopped and waited for the other guy. When he caught up, the Universalist asked why the other preacher was riding so slower. The preacher hesitated and then said, Well, I ve been a little worried about riding with you. The Universalist minister asked why. If I were a Universalist and feared not the fires of hell, I could hit you over the head, steal your horse and saddle and ride away, and I'd still go to heaven!" The Universalist preacher answered, "If you were a Universalist, the idea would never occur to you!" Many of us as Unitarian Universalists have struggled with the idea that if we don t believe in the Bible, we re not moral people. Some have suggested that if you don t have a religious teaching that clearly delineates the right and wrong actions of life, that somehow that makes you immoral. So, let s consider some moral quandaries that come to us in life: Think about the young woman who finds herself pregnant at a young age, not married or intending to marry, and yet, she is pregnant and not intending to be. She has been told by perhaps her church or her parents that aborting a child is murder. And she wonders whether bringing a baby into her life is the right thing to do. She worries that given her age; she would not be a good mother. That she would not have the material assets to be able to support a child, nor the maturity to know how. And yet, she Page 1 of 7

2 has been told all her life that abortion is wrong. How does she make this decision? Where does she turn? Or the young man who is offered a scholarship from a Christian foundation. While his parents consider themselves Christian, he does not consider himself a believer. He, in fact, believes he is an atheist. Does he accept the scholarship and just pretend he s a Christian? Or does he admit to them his lack of belief and give up the scholarship? Who can help him with this decision? What moral teaching helps him grapple with this? Or the rental agent who is showing an apartment to two young men and realize that they are gay. The owner of the apartment has told him that he will not accept gay people as renters. But the rental agent knows that this is blatant discrimination. based on sexual orientation. He thinks it s probably illegal to discriminate But he also knows that he could easily present this couple as unqualified for some other reason. Does he stick up for what he believes? That discrimination is wrong. And lose his client? What moral authority does he rely upon to make this decision? How do you make your moral decisions? Do you consider what you were taught by your parents? What about religious teachings? Do they affect you? There s been much talk lately about the idea that Muslims might be considered as terrorists because there are some teachings within the Quran about infidels and destroying all non-believers. Many Muslims face religious persecution due to these stereotypes. But we all know that there are several texts within the Hebrew Testament that are just as violent describing floods that kill all of humankind, pestilence and plagues that a vengeful God supposedly sends to punish a whole people. Page 2 of 7

3 Richard Dawkins in his book The God Delusion says, The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser, a misogynistic, homophobic racist, infanticidal, genocidal, megalomaniacal, capriciously malevolent bully. Some have said, Morality is a choice, not a church. Now almost all of us as Unitarian Universalists would agree with this. Many of us came into this faith tradition because we believe that our rational minds and our inborn conscience gives us all the tools we need to make moral choices in this increasingly complex world. We understand that these moral choices aren t easy and that there isn t one moral standard to which we can all agree. Many of us consider moral and ethical choices to be different according to the circumstances and the culture in which they are being considered. The situations I described earlier are real life examples about how people in real life circumstances struggle to make difficult moral choices every day. Whatever choice we may make, might not be popular or even acceptable to some of the people we know or even our family members. But these situations also point to how even people who have grown up in religious communities and accepted some of the doctrine they were taught are still left with many questions about the right choices to make in complex situations. But rather than relying on simplistic answers provided by religious doctrine that might give black and white answers, many religious liberals believe that humans have an inherent desire to treat their fellow humans with Page 3 of 7

4 fairness and kindness. Our innate moral sense or our conscience plays a large role in our making these ethical decisions. Dostoevsky s character Ivan Karamazov when faced with a moral dilemma pondered, If God did not exist, everything would be permitted. Richard Dawkins presents a different view. He presents a view that society without religion might be better off. He says, Perhaps naively, I have inclined towards a less cynical view of human nature than Ivan Karamazov. Do we really need policing? Where by God or by each other, in order to stop us from behaving in a selfish and criminal manner? I dearly want to believe that I do not need such surveillance, and nor, dear reader, do you. Our Unitarian Universalist traditions hold such a view of people as being inherently good. Our histories of humanists are people who believe that humans can live an ethical life according to universal values such as: - The golden rule- do unto others as you would have them do unto you - A sense of community where people care for one another- the Beloved Community - And a belief in the inherent worth and dignity of each person Humanism has a long history going back to philosophers such as Spinoza, a 17 th universe. century Dutch Jewish thinker who redefined God as the natural Some have called Spinoza a pantheist or someone who believes that everything in the Universe is God, but that God is not the controller of the universe. During the 1930 s there were a number of influential and respected leaders who became vocal about their acceptance of humanism as a philosophy. One of them John Dewey, who gave us the Dewey decimal system, was a Page 4 of 7

5 respected philosopher. He added his name to the signing of what was called the Humanist Manifesto, a document outlining humanist beliefs written in Dewey introduced an approach to humanism that described God as the positive forces in the universe. He called himself a reconstructionist or someone who reconstructs a definition of God to refer to natural human values not supernatural forces. Humanism was one of the philosophies that declared that humanity could make moral, ethical decisions based on the human conscience, not on a religious authority such as the Bible. Humanism is considered a type of secular ethics. Secular ethics is founded on several principles. Human beings, through their ability to empathize with other human beings, are capable of determining ethical behavior that allows others to be treated in a humane way The well-being of others is central to ethical decision-making Human beings, through logic and reason, can reach ethical decisions considering the well-being of others Human beings have the moral responsibility to ensure that societies and individuals act based on these ethical principles. The Humanists, including many Unitarians, wrote the Humanist Manifesto to describe the secular ethics that humans are capable of determining. In the Humanist Manifesto, they described how humans consider the treatment of each other in a fair society. They committed to treating each person as having inherent worth and dignity, and to making informed choices in a context of freedom consonant with responsibility. Page 5 of 7

6 Sound familiar, huh? Some of these words became a part of our UU first principle, affirming the inherent worth and dignity of each individual. These humanist principles have always been at the core of Unitarian Universalist understanding of moral issues. Personal responsibility seems to be at the core of the secular ethical argument. Using one s own reason and logic, applying one s intuition and empathy about how other s experience life, and taking personal responsibility for how one s actions affect others. All of these are the heart of building a moral core of one s own. Using one s mind to reason out a difficult situation. Using compassion to understand how it affects others. Taking responsibility for the effect of one s actions. These don t sound like very difficult steps for a reasonable, thinking, feeling human being to take. And yet, we continue to struggle with using these steps for moral decisionmaking versus using arbitrary doctrinal assumptions. Today s political issues name some deeply divided positions on moral issues. Abortion, same-sex marriage, gun control, rights of immigrants, and the prison system to name a few. The ethical standards applied to these issues seem to face a divide between those who apply traditional religious doctrines to these issues and those who apply humane, peoplecentered compassion to these issues. As Unitarian Universalists, we consider ourselves religious people in the sense that we believe that we must use our moral, ethical values and our logical reasoning and apply them in today s worlds. We consider ourselves religious in the sense of a group of people who have deep moral grounding and share values. We don t share theological beliefs, but we don t believe Page 6 of 7

7 that it s necessary to share those beliefs to agree on some moral principles that we might even call religious principles. - That every person has worth and value - That every person and group may hold different religious beliefs and practice differently - That our human conscience helps us define what we consider moral and ethical - That democracy and equality describe how we live with one another UU Minister Ken Pfiefer declares that we must act with the power of reason and compassion as people who believe in life. He says: Humanism teaches us that it is immoral to wait for God to act for us. We must act to stop the wars and the crimes and the brutality of this and future ages. We have powers of a remarkable kind. We have a high degree of freedom in choosing what we will do. Humanism tells us that whatever our philosophy of the universe may be, ultimately the responsibility for the kind of world in which we live rests with us. Page 7 of 7

Troubling Images of God In the Old Testament. Troubling Images Part 1

Troubling Images of God In the Old Testament The God I Don t Understand Introduction and Feedback from You The Goofy Laws of the Old Testament and their Application to Christians Today The Crude Laws Jesus