A view of right and wrong, good and evil, in a universe without gods.
I am away from my blog for a couple of weeks. This is an experiment in posting some conversation topics while I am gone.
The two questions to answer relevant to the statement below is are:
• Is it true?
• Is it important?
(6) The behavior of a lot of religious people suggests that they think that the relationship between morality and religion is, "If a religious person does it, then it is not immoral."
Posted by
Alonzo Fyfe
at
5:00 AM
By request, I have written some of the basic principles of the desire utilitarian moral theory that sits as the foundation for these blog postings into a book called, A Better Place: Selected Essays in Desire Utilitarianism.
In a previous post, I wrote a detailed account of the contents of the book.
3 comments:
I'm not so sure - religious people of all stripes tend to get embarrassed (at the very very least) when I bring up atrocities committed by their co-religionists and are always tellingly eager to defend their belief structures in that 'some might be evil, but aren't all evil...' way.
The fact that religious people behave immorally says more about the failure of religion to keep morality in check and it's success rate as a means of successfully governing the less pleasant 'instincts' and tendencies that some of us share, just as the general track record of human history demonstrates the failure of many a philosophy or code when trying to overcome the worst aspects of our nature.
I would agree if this is applied to Religious Leaders, rather than simply "religious people".
I know of several examples in the Mormon church:
Joseph Smith blatantly lied to entire crowds of people about how many wives he had. He lied about plenty of other things too, but that was the most documented and easiest to prove.
Former Mormon leader, the late Gordon B Hinckley lied in interviews about certain practices and beliefs in the church. He claimed ignorance or pretended he did not believe the church taught that, regarding the doctrine of Men becoming Gods (eternal progression) and other doctrines still taught by the church and believed by the members.
Several of the Mormon church leaders - even prophets - practiced polygamy, even presiding in polygamous weddings for members - long after the church officially "denounced" the practice.
There are SO many cases of lies, manipulation and deceit in Mormon church history. All of which are unethical practices for normal "mortals" but quite ok if done by church leaders to promote the church or move the world towards Zion.
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