Religion as a Repository of Moral Ideas

There is a potential mistake made by the anti-theist and new atheist communities and by religious persons that morality is created by religion. The new atheist and anti-theist make the following errors:

· The texts are not from a divine source and some follower think are, the anti-theist and new atheist believe since religions are not divine that this error of them be a moral source completely falsifies them and thus nullifies them.

· Since religions are nullified they have no value and never had a value and can safely be can ignored.

· Since religious ideas are nullified they cannot act as transmission mechanism for moral ideas or as a repository for moral ideas.

· That society does not modify or update religion and or religious practices through interpretation.

· Codification of the texts of the canon does not allow for variation or changes to a religion.

· That there is no mechanism through selective interpretations because most people do not take the time to read the text themselves and interpret the text.

· That humans waste their time and derive no selection benefit from religion and that the ideas are rigid and not adaptable.

· The secular legal and moral functions independent of religion and can replace religion.

A religion may codify and store a vast amount of moral ideas. If an idea is good or works for a time it gets incorporated in the religious structure that is present and is stored in the religious structure. As well horrible ideas get incorporated and sometimes, die or go dormant waiting for a terrible rebirth. Inside the religious structure good and bad ideas can be stored sort as a form of storage devise. Laws and mores can be codified around these ideas to bring them into practice.

Religions allow these rules to be practiced and enforced. Enforcement can be through public opinion, priestly class or shamanistic system or integration with secular law. It can be codified in religious text and secular laws that are born out of the religion or as a check to religion.

Religion that survive are adaptive and are selected. The first religions were originally controlled by a small group in society, this continued for eons and still is going on today. Religious community and its leaders make changes to the religions practice (not its sacred texts although there were updated to the canon e.g. old and new testaments.)

The new atheist and anti-theist see religion is concrete and all the textual rules are obeyed but this is not the case, Christians do not stone people, or go with an eye for an eye. Most Jews and Christians do not follow the old testament constraints on diet or clothing. They can have Buddha in their house or won’t smash the Buddha in their friends or neighbors house. There are multiple Catholics that are practicing contraception and Jews who don’t keep kosher or Shabat. The idea that all edicts of any religion are totally practiced is a bit far fetched.

Religion has some things that make it malleable the first religions were verbally transmitted by elders who could change the story at will and abandon and even forget bad ideas as the oral tradition is past down. It is most likely that oral transmission became very selective for what was good for the survival of the tribe or the shaman class that was imbedded in a tribe that survived. They could interject new stories and idea and even gods as time passed. As time passed bad stories or stories weak to the trial of time and events disappeared and were replaced.

The new atheist and anti-theist camp think by codifying ideas in a text such as the bible that this would freeze them and not allow for selection of these ideas. This is true of many true believers also I will use the Christian bible for my examples of how these things change. First when were updated with new books these books showed continued forming of new covenants and breaking of old covenants with God. These covenants change the rules, more rules and new rules and contradictory rules were incorporated into the body of the religion.

The first five books of the Christian bible are also the first five books of Jewish bible the Torah the law. There are legalistic. But you see a progression and an abandonment of things. The covenant with Adam is broken and almost all the human perishes in the flood. Then God make new covenants with Noah, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, and Moses. He starts dictating laws. Or so the story goes. These were books written by men, they may have felt that God was talking in their heads but most likely what they were codifying were religious ideas that worked in the past for their tribe. Stories, rules and mores and a God that helped them move forward at least in their interpretation of their cosmology.

We should get by with one book written by one divinely inspired man if these text were truly divine but as time passed more books often amendments and contradictory to what old covenants and laws move forward. E.g. circumcision replaces human sacrifice. E.g. The first-born can be redeemed with animal sacrifice. God can destroy the world in a flood, he promises not to do it again.

As religions grow and spread, they often developed a priestly literate class, who feed ideas to the illiterate masses. This allowed selection of the codified text to take place, only the priest could read the whole law and the rulers and priesthood controlled the codified law. This allowed local interpretations of texts to compete and be selected based on survival of the religious group. I am not sure that the priests were conscience of the fact that they were being selective, but the text of the Torah is vast let alone the remainder of the Christian and Jewish bibles, one would have to be selective if only to get past the contradictions and bias would select for parts of the text that were most implementable and lead to benefits for those who survived.

At the time of the Torah separating your group by religious law and practice. This may have been a good accidental survival strategy that the Torah complicated legal frame work allowed. It was a simpler world, so these laws were local and for a small group, so if the Priest was not selective errors would be less detrimental or the errors may have had survival benefits if not moral benefits. (Idea is partially at least from Nassim Taleb. )

Time passed more religious texts were generated and then they were frozen into a canon of texts by writing and selections by religious hierarchies. There are new religious text generated every day interpreting the canonical books , so texts are still being written. An example is how many times I have been told to read CS Lewis but not directed to the bible for my own interpretation. A new atheist example of this is endless textbooks on Darwin and a popular book on interpreting the Darwinian canon.

Priest have been the interpreters through the ages first to the illiterate and then through use of religious languages, Greek, Latin, Arabic, Hebrew Yiddish ect. As vernaculars rose text were protected by the having the language of the book in a scholarly and ecclesiastical language. So, what rules and moral ideas that were codified were again controlled by a class of scholars and ecclesiastics, and they tend to pick the ones that lead to either the best moral or survival position.

This control passed to a new mechanism when the vernacular took hold and the text were translated. First most people did not see themselves as legitimate interpreters or if they did the ecclesiastical class would bend or there would be war and schism, these things would test the survivability of the ideas and the interpretation of the ideas, exemplars are Luther, Calvin, Henry VIII and his daughters and generation of holy wars. To say that people did not have and do not change their option on the text or that each person reads the bible and then interprets for themselves is a bit naïve. Inside religions there is division based on schisms and sects so people who call themselves Christian may be Lutheran or Catholic etc., and Orthodox Jews to Jewish Atheist exist. These schisms are more evidence that groups select practices and moral ideas from religion that are far reaching.

Firstly, the texts are vague and rich. I am slowly reading through the bible, and the story of the fall Adam and Eve is about a paragraph or two long. I remember it vastly different story in my mind before my recent rereading of it. I added a vast interpretative frame work of what was not in the text to my understanding. I was thinking of my favorite line from Henry VIII to Twains short story. I could not believe that so much had been seeded by a small nearly prehistoric paragraph or two. The easily allow the mind to add and remember things that are not there. These stories are expanded on and discussed in more detail than one could ever imagine. As time passes we have countless takes on these paragraphs and the ones that fit society best are passed on and we use the text and augment to reinforce our interpretations of these ideas in and outside the text.

I am not saying all interpretations are right or should be practiced. I am not for chattel slavery, I am not for force circumcision, I don’t keep Kosher or Halal. I am saying that these ideas are stored and then picked through, they have a rich history of good and bad. They have the statement about casting the first stone and turning the other cheek to reconcile with an eye for an eye. I am saying that societies use these texts as repositories of ideas and select from them. They are vague and rich so they are malleable to time, technology, shifts in society and moral changes. Nor am I saying all religions are as flexible and adaptable.

Secondly, these texts are heavily interpreted and by an ecclesiastical class that is selective. Gutenberg may have printed in the vernacular but today it is more likely that you will read a book about the bible or about Origin of Species than the books themselves. Most will never get the full text and most will not read enough to see any of the contradictions and changes from the text. Religion rest on interpreters and modelers of behavior. For example, the new testament is rather readable since it has based on a central important figure. It is easy to say more people have read the gospels than the new testament than the bible. We shy away from the hard reads that are full of contradictions. When I studied classics, my professor laughed at me when I was trying to reconcile Greek cosmology because it was unreconcilable.

Most make no attempt to reconcile or read the bible, often the exposure to the bible is in bits when it is quoted or more and more when someone is at a mass. Like Shakespeare we read the parts we like that reinforce our ideas or make us think on things we want to think about. Most of time it is read to us or quoted in print to us. We are on the leash of the churches selection of the text or those who are quoting to us. The catholic church in its mass will never cycle to read the whole bible in a series of masses it cycles through the books it wants to quote and wants own to think about. We are functionally illiterate of our old religious texts. Most don’t read and those who do usually do not study the bible. These books are neglected and looked at with abject naiveté.

If these ideas were not flexible they would break with time and destroy the cultures that generated them in the distance past. This does not make them moral or amoral that makes religions a repository of ideas that have been tested for survival and what men think is moral. They are also a means of passing ideas on and not starting from scratch. We have the illusion that we can start from scratch with innovations in technology but many of these ideas are based on years of science and thought. To start a society and a moral structure from scratch seems rather daunting more likely we will modify the frame work we have.

We must store our idea somewhere. They must be transmitted from generation to generation, religion facilitates this. The new atheist wants to think he imagined every moral problem while he is often using a default. He is not always reasoning, in fact I think reasoning may be a favorite hobby and not even the main profession of the new atheist.

Also the religious canonical texts do not exist in a vacuum where they are never confronted by other text ideas, lectures, denunciations or moral test. The idea that these text act independently and are not affected by everyday problems and challenges is rather silly. Everyday papal edicts are ignored concerning contraception and sexual taboos without people reconciling the text. I know where to get a peperoni pizza in Hiafa, it is sort of secret (except to every person who does not keep Kosher).

Thirdly, these texts are not the source of our religious ideas they are the repository of them. The new atheist claim since there is not a god and god is supposed to be the source of these ideas that the ideas must be false and immoral. Yes some believe the works to be the word from the mouth of god to the pens of men. Some of these ideas are wrong most are not practiced, but society en masse has interpreted them and uses them as a frame work, a starting point and a default. Religion should be viewed by them as a repository and transmission tool. Religion is a manmade to be an examined and not naively tossed away.

The first states grew out of religious laws. The secular is often founded in the religious. Ideas of natural law we the basis of Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. While church and state were separated, we have a strange natural law foundation that we accept on faith. These divinely granted inalienable rights were the foundation for the means of creating secular rights and separation of church and state. This is the grand modification this separation allows religion to be pushed by the secular, by mortal men trying to create and test a frame work that supports religion but does not use it as an arbitrator morality. Secular law begins to supersedes religious law even though it gets many of it starts with parallels to religious laws, e.g. legal frame work around murder and theft. Secular law changes and modified religion. It allows opponents on religious views to have rather peaceful fights, to hate and to go home alive each night. The law shapes religious practices and lead to acceptance of out groups that the religion does not tolerate in the past. When Christ rendered onto Caesar what is Caesars he was giving up quite a lot, whether he knew it or not. It may say something about the value of the state in the everyday commerce of daily life.

Religion does have its pitfalls I am not glossing over the fact that there are a lot of things we ignore in the canonical texts. There is terror, intolerance and hatred in the name of religion. But it is the not so easy to replace frame work we have. The new atheist and anti-theist just expect that they can get rid of religion than they can replace it. But it is everywhere it is impossible to dismantle and is going out live the new atheist and anti-theist. Do I think religion will be stagnate and not change, perhaps be watered down and less a soul guide to moral philosophy, that seems to be the trend, but it if it is going to die it will be the slowest of deaths or maybe it adapts. There is true naiveite in believing that it will be dismantled instantaneously without chaos.

To be clear, I am an atheist. But when I first parted from Christianity, a friend who was a free thinker said pick a default religion, one you are bit familiar with. It will help you in a pinch when you are put on the spot where a religion is required, most religious people have a hard time accepting that you don’t have a religion. I think this advice was given for practical purposes. But in a way, I have never been without a default position, a starting point. I challenge the default religion but I also did not agonize how I was raised or overturn every moral foundation I had and start over from scratch on new problems, nor do the new atheist and anti-theist.