Morality

Righty: Everything we need to know about morality is conveniently contained in the Bible. For those of us with short attention spans, God even summarized His moral laws on a couple of stone tablets. We call them the Ten Commandments, and they’re as relevant today as they were back in Moses’ time. Don’t kill. Don’t covet. Don’t commit adultery. Don’t eat uncooked shellfish. And the other seven, too. Of course, our cultivated, upper-middle class "progressives" think they know better than God, and that’s precisely what’s wrong with the world today.

Lefty: Morality is in the eye of the beholder. Some of us (are you listening, Righty?) still believe that it consists of rigid laws supposedly dictated by the bloodthirsty god of an ancient desert tribe. If they still want to believe in their myths three thousand years later, that’s fine. But it’s immoral for them to impose their moral delusions upon the rest of us. For me, true morality means taking collective action to improve life for the oppressed. It means loving our fellow humans regardless of race, creed or sexual orientation. Morality has nothing to do with the bedroom, as long as we’re dealing with consenting adults. If it feels right, chances are it IS right.

The New Moderate:

Once upon a time, our religions supplied us with all the morality we needed. And regardless of whether those morals were divinely inspired, most of their principles are still surprisingly sound. (That goes for the teachings of Confucius, Buddha and Lao-tse, too.) But what happens when ancient religious dictates lose their grip over the educated classes, as we’re witnessing in our time?

Here’s what happens: we see a great, gaping rift between the pious folks who still swear allegiance to the Good Book... and the more self-consciously "enlightened" crowd who essentially create their own morals as they go along. Of course it’s moral to love your fellow humans, but is it OK to make love in a public park? Shouldn’t we insist on moral absolutes that govern our actions? It’s a tricky question.

Most of us can agree that child abuse is morally wrong, for example. But what constitutes child abuse? If your kid sets off a cherry bomb inside the house, is it abusive to administer a few sharp whacks to the posterior? Fifty years ago such punishment would have been considered a character-building experience; today a progressive-minded witness might notify the child welfare authorities. (Naturally, that same progressive witness might also have the poor kid suspended from school for possession of aspirin.) In short, whose values do we honor?

Until the social upheaval of the late 1960s, Western society took its moral guidance from the Bible: no agonizing over values, no shades of gray; everything was laid out for us on the printed page, including the all-important ban on fornication.

Sexual morality is a universe unto itself, of course. The ‘60s liberated millions of libidos in a massive wave of sexual self-indulgence -- much of it healthy, some of it excessive or downright kinky. Suddenly any private act between consenting adults was considered kosher, even if it involved buggy whips and Nazi uniforms.

Are sex fetishists immoral even if they confine their peculiar appetites to the bedroom? We’ve lost the authority to say so in public, though we’re still free to conclude privately that a lust for being handcuffed while wearing a chicken costume says something important about a person’s character.

That right to private judgment might be the key. We can’t legislate morality, but we can internalize it. We can set good examples. (When I asked a wise friend how to raise a decent kid, he told me, "Morals are caught, not taught.") We can reject the cult of "cool" and create a culture that once again encourages honor and kindness and all the other noble virtues.

We might think we live in depraved times, but we still have the ability to recognize when something grates against our moral principles. That instinct is called a moral compass, and it comes in handy when we’re lost in the woods. I was encouraged by the mass revulsion we felt toward the Wall Street honchos who made billions for themselves while they gambled away our life savings. Maybe we’re not so close to perdition after all.

Summary: We can’t force our moral principles on others, but we can lead by setting positive examples in our own conduct.

Evolution

Righty: The theory of evolution (emphasis on theory) is incompatible with the account of creation handed down to us via God’s own Word in the book of Genesis. The Bible clearly states that God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. That hardly leaves time for the vast parade of prehistoric creatures that supposedly romped around the Earth a hundred million years ago, according to the mythology of evolutionists and nonbelievers. Those fossils may have been deposited at the time of the Flood, or they might have been fudged by overambitious paleontologists. (Amazing, the way they can recreate an entire creature from a single neck bone!) We don’t necessarily believe that the Earth is only 6000 years old (the Bible doesn’t provide us with specific dates, after all), and it could be that a "day" at the dawn of time was considerably longer than a day is today. But we do believe in the Bible, and the Bible makes it clear that God created the fishes, the beasts, the "fowls of the air," and "every thing that creepeth upon the earth." Finally, He created man. How could anything so mindbogglingly complex as man -- or even a housefly -- be the result of mere accident? Evolutionists are asking us to take an awful lot on faith.

Lefty: Mythology has no place in science. In fact, it has been the mission of science since its ancient beginnings to lift the veil of the supernatural from the inner workings of life and matter. As hard as this may be for Righty to accept, the Book of Genesis is just one of the many creation myths fabricated by primitive tribes to explain the mysteries of the universe. The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that only the most ignorant Bible thumpers continue to reject it. (Unfortunately, those Bible thumpers continue to hold sway in the vast hinterland between the East and West coasts... Jesusland, as one inspired cartoonist dubbed it.) How can these imbecilic rubes continue to deny what paleontologists have uncovered in layers of rock dating back hundreds of millions of years? How can they fail to notice the striking similarities between man and chimp? Righty and his obstinate brethren are in serious denial. If they still can’t admit that we’re descended from apes, the rest of the world can clearly see that they are -- and that they haven’t evolved very far from their simian origins.

The New Moderate:

Nobody with any sense still believes that the great parade of creation marched from nothingness to Adam and Eve in six days. We can give the Bible some latitude here and there; we can interpret the "days" as epochs that correspond roughly to the geological ages, or we can wonder if the Genesis account of creation was meant to be viewed as a myth all along. But the evidence for evolution is impressive. We can look at a fossilized archaeopteryx and immediately see the missing link between dinosaurs and birds. With a little imagination, we can understand how the modern horse developed from a cat-sized critter known as eohippus.

So how did primitive life diversify into the millions of astonishing forms we see around us today, all without divine assistance? Darwin’s theory of natural selection offers a brilliant (and brilliantly simple) explanation: mutations that popped up in our genes conferred advantages that enabled the lucky mutants to attract desirable mates, prosper in their native habitats, or exploit new niches that no comparable creature had exploited before. A small dinosaur born with membranes that enabled it to glide through the air might be able to evade predators (and find prey) more easily than its earthbound cousins. It would live longer and presumably raise more offspring, several of whom would share its ability to glide. Those gliding offspring would prosper, and so on down the line. Eventually some of them would produce descendants that could flap their wings and stay aloft for hours at a time. That’s progress. That’s evolution.

Natural selection is essentially free-market capitalism as practiced by plants and animals. Individuals, species and businesses that develop useful new widgets will be more likely to perpetuate themselves through time. Those that fail to adapt are destined for the compost heap. Like business, natural selection is totally amoral: it favors the opportunists.

It all makes sense, but I’ve noticed a few loose ends. How do you account for the development of new traits that don’t seem to confer any evolutionary advantages? (Wouldn’t we have survived and reproduced just as readily without eyebrows, for example?) And how do you explain the evolution of something as complex as a circulatory system? A partial circulatory system would be of no use at all; blood vessels have to reach every living cell, or clumps of tissue would start sloughing off in a disgusting and probably fatal manner. How could any creature have developed even a primitive circulatory system as the result of a single mutation? Correct me if I’m wrong, but evolution alone seems powerless to explain it.

I’m not proposing that God or even some nameless Intelligent Designer engineered the first circulatory system, though I refuse to shut the door on those possibilities. It’s just that the visible world doesn’t always fit neatly into prepackaged theories -- even one as beautiful and widely accepted as the theory of evolution. Religious skeptics probably shouldn’t take so much of their science on faith.

Summary: The theory of evolution explains most (but not all) developments in the history of life. We should be willing and able to question science as readily as we question religion.

God

Righty: God is our creator, our shepherd and our only salvation. We are all sinners, and those who reject God are doomed to everlasting punishment. Therefore we must bring all of humanity into His fold. The Holy Scriptures are the literal word of God, and they contain everything we need to know about life and human conduct. Heaven and hell are actual places; God sees all our sins and will damn our wretched souls unless we bend to His will. Yet He is a loving father who answers our prayers and delivers us from evil. We live in wicked times, and we must stand steadfast against the godless commercialism and decadence that have polluted our culture. We must do whatever is necessary to create a government founded on scriptural principles, so that everyone (and that includes you, Lefty) would be compelled to live by God’s law.

Lefty: The pathetic fools who believe their holy scriptures to the letter are not simply ignorant and deluded; they’re belligerent fanatics who would kill us to save our souls. Save us from what? From the eternal torments promised in their scriptures to all unbelievers. If the scriptures are full of human errors and embellishments, as they obviously are, then nothing in them is believable and the entire faith must collapse like a house of cards. If the scriptures are false, then God is a myth. Surely we’ve progressed far enough over the past few thousand years to abandon those patriarchal Middle Eastern faiths that have existed primarily to perpetuate fairy tales, subjugate their believers and keep them in a state of abject guilt simply for being human. Let’s get real: God is a human fabrication and his devout followers (like Righty) are a menace. Belief in God and the supernatural has no place in an enlightened society, and it must be eradicated before it destroys us.

The New Moderate:

Let’s get this much straight: nobody knows the true nature or will of God. All scriptures mix history, myth, tradition, revelation, dogma, wisdom, fantasy and eloquent guesswork to the extent that it becomes impossible to know the truth. Any of us could write a book and claim that it was divinely inspired.

Because we have no proof of God’s existence, we’re left with faith. We can believe the scriptures if we like, or we can choose not to believe them. We can believe in some parts and reject other parts. But keep this in mind: our beliefs have absolutely no bearing on whether God exists, what form he might take, whether he cares about us as individuals -- or whether he is a she. If God exists, he is who he is regardless of what we think he is (or even if we think he isn’t). If God doesn’t exist, no amount of preaching and genuflecting will bring him into being. We humans still believe we have the power to create God in our image or banish him from the universe if he no longer suits our purpose. What colossal arrogance!

Those who live by the literal dictates of holy scripture have equipped themselves with a sturdy moral compass that guides them through the tangled wilderness of earthly existence. Yet they’re also turning their backs on numerous pleasures of this too-transient life, not the least of which is the simple guiltless joy of being human. More seriously, they risk falling into the deadly grip of fanaticism, obsession and even madness. (The New Moderate shudders to think about the number of people who have died in agony at the hands of true believers.) Religious fanatics have done more than anyone else to turn the educated world against religion.

Those who automatically reject God because they reject the scriptures are making a fatal error in logic: they’ve neglected to consider that God might exist independently of the scriptures, in some form unknown to us, the way a novelist is unknown to the characters he has imagined. Forget about the image of God as a bearded Middle Eastern patriarch; he might be an indwelling life force, the source of energy and creativity, the voice of your soul, the inventor of atoms, the invisible moving hand behind the unfolding universe. Or not. But those who succumb to materialism and its enticements are exiling themselves from the infinitely rich life of the spirit. One of the beauties of religion is its aura of unapproachable mystery, the glimmer of light behind a veil of clouds.

If we require a less mysterious God, why not deduce his true nature by observing the universe he created? (I’m surprised that none of the major religions ever considered this approach.) For example, we can see that God must love rats, termites, cockroaches, viruses and people, because he made them so adaptable (and therefore so plentiful). He heaps misery on loners and rewards those who create strong social bonds, so he’s probably something of an extrovert. God has to be fairly enthusiastic about sex, or he wouldn’t have granted it such a prominent place in our life-cycles. He causes the strong to prey on the weak, which would imply that he’s less than kind. But he also makes sure that the weak outbreed their predators, so at least he’s fair and balanced.

All right -- these are just whimsical speculations, but they make more sense than many of the outlandish tales we’ve come to accept as holy writ. Why would anyone go to war over rigidly held interpretations of an unknowable divinity? Our continuing attachment to ancient dogmas seems as mysterious as God himself.

Still, we seem to have been implanted with a hunger for divine assistance. God might not answer our prayers like some celestial Santa Claus, but faith in a higher power -- even without certainty -- can make us feel less alone and miserable during our ride here on Planet Earth. It can boost our immune systems and our longevity, as studies have shown. In the end, how do you lose by giving the supreme deity the benefit of the doubt? Just don’t tell us that he caused your Google stock to triple so you could remodel your kitchen.

Summary: God is who he is (or isn’t) regardless of what we believe about him. All scriptures are factually suspect; we can come to God only by faith.