The Moral Case Against Religious Belief

[Philosophy Now]

Marilyn Kane reviews The Moral Case Against Religious Belief by R.A. Sharpe.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/19/The_Moral_Case_Against_Religious_Belief

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Religious leaders are certainly authorities on religion… it is not so certain that they are authorities on morality.

Sharpe’s primary aim is to draw the distinction between morality and religion, and to show that religious leaders are not the foremost authorities on morality. Sharpe contends that “religious belief does not necessarily make its possessor an authority on moral matters and that spokespeople for religion are often badly wrong about moral questions as a result of their religious commitment.”

Consider the official position of the Catholic Church regarding artificial birth control: the Catholic Church says it is sinful and morally wrong.

Sharpe makes an illustration why relgion does not teach correct morality.

There are several huge problems with this approach.
1. Ultimately, religions do not teach morality. They teach what their respective god expects us to do in certain situations. We are supposed to do those acts NOT because of morals, but because of god's commandment.
2. Therefore if you are religious, you may call this your moral guide, but behaviour code that a religious person may call morality, is not; it is an adherence to commandments by god.
3. If you are not religious, you throw away the entire skid and bambboozle, saying to the heck with what a religion's god wants me to do.

So in effect religious morality does not exist; obeying and disobedience of god's laws exist to a relgious person, and to a non-religious person, nothing in religious mysticism exists.

[Immanuel Can]

1. Ultimately, religions do not teach morality...

In order to make sense of this statement, your readers must understand two distinct entities to which you refer. If they don't, then this claim either refers to nothing, or else refers to the same one thing twice -- simply naming it differently, in each case.

The two distinct entities to which you refer are "the commandments of God" and "morality."

The first of these is a fairly clear concept to understand. Theists say it exists in reality, and Atheists say it does not exist in reality. But the concept is fairly straightforward.

But what is "morality"? Is it a really-existing conception of right and wrong that predates the word "God"? Reading your statement, the thinking Theist is, of course, going to deny that any such conception of right and wrong can predate the Creator. But perhaps you didn't expect them to understand or believe you anyway, so perhaps that's not a worry to you. We can set that aside, therefore.

But what is the Atheist to understand by your word "morality?"

Let us imagine, just for argument's sake, that there were no God. To what, then, would the word "morality" refer? Would it be to some secretly-encoded right and wrong that are somehow just written into the universe? That seems very far fetched for a person to believe if they believe the universe is essentially a product of impersonal forces with no agenda (i.e. no God). And how does it happen that there's some sort of ultimate "right and wrong" written into the makeup of the universe if there was never any Writer to put it there?

Is it maybe not there before humankind, but we imagine there's a "right and wrong," or maybe we impose it socially? But if so, what obligation do any of us have to take that seriously? If I'm writing the rules for morality, then why does anybody else have to play by my rules? If my society's writing them, then why should I have to obey what my society wants me to do; what makes them more important than me...numbers? That seems implausible. And if it suits me to tell my society, on some moral point, to go and take a flying leap, why shouldn't I do that? In fact, a great many people feel just that way -- some end up in jail, some are caught and punished in other ways, but probably a great many succeed in doing that. And why shouldn't they?

I have never seen any account of an Atheist morality that came with a) a defensible account of right and wrong, b) an appeal to non-contingent, non-arbitrary authority, or c) a plausible explanation -- indeed, any explanation at all -- of why any moral duty follows from such a conception. So there is no metric by which an Atheist can measure anything morally by way of comparison, as your opening statement proposes to do.

Given all that, from where do you get this thing you're calling "morality," which you accuse "religion" of "not teaching"? There's no such concept in the Atheist universe. And you can't blame "religion" for "not teaching" a thing which, according to your own worldview, simply does not exist.

If we take the suppositions of Atheism seriously, then you may as well accuse "religions" of "not selling enough unicorns." It would make just a much sense. Both "morality" and "unicorns" are merely mythical entities, according to your worldview. Is that not so?

But perhaps you know that there is a "morality" after all, and it's quite possible for "religions" to fall short of teaching it. If that's how you see it, then please, tell us what this "morality" is.