An Update to My Faith Crisis
I was asked by a friend, “how do we derive morals if we don’t have a God or religion to tell us.”
Here are my thoughts:
If our actions (or inaction) help one another mentally, physically, or emotionally, it’s good. If it harms or hurts someone mentally, physically, or emotionally, it’s bad. Evolutionarily we come from a long lineage of species that benefitted from positive social interaction. And we’re really no different. I believe morality is as simple as that.
It’s true, everyone views things differently. I guess my angle is if morality comes from a “God” (whatever we wanna call it), God is doing a terrible job. You have millions of people ascribed to different faiths. The Islamic faith with their morals, others to the Muslim faith and their morals, Jews, Christians, and then the rest of the world deriving their morals without a monotheistic view (China, India, Japan, etc.). God hasn’t really been clear on His moral position. Just look at all the religions that popped up trying to define it.
The Old Testaments morals are all jacked up. Back in Jesus’ time, the Jews saw it morally correct for women who committed adultery to be stoned to death. If it wasn’t for the polytheistic Romans, many would have.
More recently, early settlers thought witchcraft was real and that it was morally right to burn women to death just on claims against them. 40,000 people condemned to burn to death in the name of God for fear of the devil.
Even the LDS church had strange morals a generation ago. No multiple ear rings, skirts must be below the knee, shoulders must be covered, and definitely no tattoos. But today, those teachings have changed. Even tattoos have been stripped of their taboo status.
Sure, the LDS church claims to be the true church (like every Christian church), but that doesn’t erase the thousands of years of Old Testament accounts of the same God commanding genocide, blood sacrifice, and the killing of countless children deemed “the enemy”. We try to paint God as a kind and loving Heavenly Father today, but it’s the same God. Did Gods morals change? Or did we change God to fit our changing morality? In my honest opinion, it feels like the latter.
So to me, it seems if we’re trying to derive our morality from religion, well… that feels inconsistent to say the least.