Morality and God

God and MoralityThe question is - Which comes first, Morality or God? To me, it is the former.
The fact that consequences of our acts have far-reaching outcomes. But by the limitation of the human mind we cannot think of all the outcomes, hence to be in the safer side we choose to behave morally (i.e. to abandon calculation) ruling out immediate gains in favor of building trust among each other favoring healthy and efficient functioning of the society which in turn favors better prospects of survival for individual. So we relinquish our (quick) gains due to our faith and not through calculation, there comes a faith-factor as a property of mind. Due to this very faith factor, we tend to interpret the unknown facts of nature in terms of God. Once the notion of all powerful God is created, it becomes easy to correlate schemes of punishment and rewards for individual acts in order to further bolster the ethical standard. The free riders in the society are those who seek quick gains due to their calculative mind. So if such people claim to be religious, it may be just to take advantage, but in reality they are hypocrite. Eventually they are caught because the consequences of their acts are so profound that it is virtually impossible to ponder about every outcome and something unexpected happens. Furthermore, during the course of evolution, we also develop the instinctive ways to judge each other's ethical standard by judging their nature, ideas, and acts in order to know the charlatans in advance to preclude their undesirable acts favoring better survival of the society and hence individuals. On the other hand, people with morality get more support from society and hence chances of their success will be more than that of a even more intelligent but calculating individual. So if a society is surviving independently (and not as a blood-sucking parasite of other society) then moral people are most likely to be found there. And as this is the case with us too, the moral people are found to be in good number, and hence morality can be defined objectively. Faithfulness is an inherent virtue of mind and hence morality, so it should be by the genes. So, the question is - whether we can teach morality?
As far as religion is concerned, it is just a collection arbitrary set of morals, rituals and stories around (the notion of) God created differently by different people at different parts of the world. So religion san rituals, stories and prescribed moral values leaves just the concept of God, which is explained above. So Einstein's quote ("Science without religion...") perhaps looses its significance. But the religion of love, compassion and honesty is the de-facto religion which most of us follow tacitly and that is why the society is still functioning today.
Here is a link of a book review in this subject written by Peter Singer who is a renowned professor of Bio-ethics at Princeton- http://www.amazon.com/...
{Shortened display form or URL, to restore page width to normal - Adminnemooseus}Find more about Peter Singer:

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If there is no doubt, there are no thoughts,
no thoughts, no truth only prejudices,
no truth no light only darkness. - A famous saint< !--UE-->[This message has been edited by Adminnemooseus, 01-22-2004]

crashfrog wrote: Doesn't Peter Singer eat babies or something? from the way Christians talk about him, one gets the impression they think so...
How can you say that Peter Singer is a Christian?__Here are some Einstein's quotes:
"I cannot imagine a God who rewards and punishes the objects of his
creation, whose purposes are modeled after our own -- a God, in short, who
is but a reflection of human frailty. Neither can I believe that the
individual survives the death of his body, although feeble souls harbor such
thoughts through fear or ridiculous egotisms."
" We thus arrive at a conception of the relation of science to religion very different from the usual one. When one views the matter historically, one is inclined to look upon science and religion as irreconcilable antagonists, and for a very obvious reason. The man who is thoroughly convinced of the universal operation of the law of causation cannot for a moment entertain the idea of a being who interferes in the course of events - provided, of course, that he takes the hypothesis of causality really seriously. He has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man's actions are determined by necessity, external and internal, so that in God's eyes he cannot be responsible, any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motions it undergoes. Science has therefore been charged with undermining morality, but the charge is unjust. A man's ethical behavior should be based
effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death."
Source: http://www.geocities.com/HotSprings/6072/1einstein.html[This message has been edited by Will, 01-24-2004]