Today I received a flier in the post from a mailing list I belong to inviting me to a conversation with an “ethicist”. In the flier there were a number of “tough moral questions” that I suppose she is coning to converse about. In the next few days I would like to consider some of those questions.
I often think about what constitutes morality and I have touched on this subject in this blog before. Anybody who knows me knows that I am a committed Christian. I make no secret of that although I like to think I am civilised about it. There is nothing worse that being trapped in a one sided conversation with someone preaching a moral position, however justified that moral position may be. However, I love a good debate and am eager to discuss these things intelligently with a willing party.
Morality comes from our paradigm – or our foundational philosophy of life or as some people put it, our world view. From this stems our belief system or religion, and from this our morality. It appears to me to be a layered system where at the base is our paradigm, above that our religion, or our belief system – above that our morality – then above that our behaviour. Many people I know claim that they do not have a religion – in face unless we are totally a-moral – and I have not met anyone yet who is – then we all have a religion, but do not label it as such. In fact one thing I find interesting about many people and their morality is that their behaviour often does not correspond with their paradigm. In other words they state a set of beliefs and behave completely contrary to those stated beliefs. This is so of many Christians I have met. They espouse the Christian religion yet behave in a completely different way and see no contradiction here. In fact their behaviour illustrates their true paradigm, not their stated paradigm. In other words they are what they do, not what they say. This is true right across the spectrum of beliefs, in fact many people are really unaware of their true beliefs and completely oblivious of tis apparent contradiction.
A good example of non-religious religion (if you will) is humanism. Top put it very crudely humanists have as their underlying philosophy “do unto others as you would have them do unto you”. (This reminds me of an amusing interview I saw on TV many years ago. The journalist was talking to a union official and was asking the official if the strike action he was supporting was justified in the circumstances. The union official replied that ‘as the good book says “do others before they do you”‘. No ambiguity there.) This is just as much a religious belief as a belief in a divine creator benefactor.
Before I get onto the actual questions I would like to explore the two different types of paradigm, the dependent and independent belief systems. That is for next time.