RELIGION AND MORALITY
_The current religion is indirectly adverse to morals, because it is
adverse to the freedom of the intellect. But it is also directly
adverse to morals by inventing spurious and bastard virtues._
WINWOOD READE, "Martyrdom of Man."
It had been formerly asserted by theologians that our moral laws were
given to man by a supernatural intuitive process. However, Professor E.
A. Westermarck's "Origin and Development of the Moral Ideas," and
similar researches, give a comprehensive survey of the moral ideas and
practices of all the backward fragments of the human race and
conclusively prove the social nature of moral law. The moral laws have
evolved much the same as physical man has evolved. There is no
indication whatsoever that the moral laws came from any revelation since
the sense of moral law was just as strong amongst civilized peoples
beyond the range of Christianity, or before the Christian era. Joseph
McCabe, commenting on Professor Westermarck's work states, "All the fine
theories of the philosophers break down before this vast collection of
facts. There is no intuition whatever of an august and eternal law, and
the less God is brought into connection with these pitiful blunders and
often monstrous perversions of the moral sense, the better. What we see
is just man's mind in possession of the idea that his conduct must be
regulated by law, and clumsily working out the correct application of
that idea as his intelligence grows and his social life becomes more
complex. It is not a question of the mind of the savage imperfectly
seeing the law. It is a plain case of the ideas of the savage reflecting
and changing with his environment and the interest of his priests."
Justice is a fundamental and essential moral law because it is a vital
regulation of social life and murder is the greatest crime because it is
the greatest social delinquency; and these are inherent in the social
nature of moral law. "Moral law slowly dawns in the mind of the human
race as a regulation of a man's relation with his fellows in the
interest of social life. It is quite independent of religion, since it
has entirely different roots in human psychology." (_Joseph McCabe:
"Human Origin of Morals."_)
In the mind of primitive man there is no connection between morality and
the belief in a God. "Society is the school in which men learn to
distinguish between right and wrong. The headmaster is custom and the
lessons are the same for all. The first moral judgments were pronounced
by public opinion; public indignation and public approval are the
prototypes of the moral emotions." (_Edward Westermarck: "Origin and
Development of the Moral Ideas."_)
Moral ideas and moral energy have their source in social life. It is
only in a more advanced society that moral qualities are assumed for the
gods. And indeed, it is known that in some primitive tribes, the gods
are not necessarily conceived as good, they may have evil qualities
also. "If they are, to his mind, good, that is so much the better. But
whether they are good or bad they have to be faced as facts. The Gods,
in short belong to the region of belief, while morality belongs to that
of practice. It is in the nature of morality that it should be implicit
in practice long before it is explicit in theory. Morality belongs to
the group and is rooted in certain impulses that are a product of the
essential conditions of group life. It is as reflection awakens that men
are led to speculate upon the nature and origin of the moral feelings.
Morality, whether in practice or theory, is thus based upon what is. On
the other hand, religion, whether it be true or false, is in the nature
of a discovery--one cannot conceive man actually ascribing ethical
qualities to his Gods before he becomes sufficiently developed to
formulate moral rules for his own guidance, and to create moral laws for
his fellowmen. The moralization of the Gods will follow as a matter of
course. Man really modifies his Gods in terms of the ideal human being.
It is not the Gods who moralize man, it is man who moralizes the Gods."
(_Chapman Cohen: "Theism or Atheism."_)
In the formation of the Old Testament, the moralization of Yahveh led to
the creation of a god who coincided more with the morality of the later
writers, the God Elohim.
"Rather must we say that morality begins in human social relations and
passes from them to the relations maintained with the other life and
with the Gods. Or, if one prefers to consider ghosts and gods as
inseparable elements of the primary organism, then we should say that
morality is born in that all-embracing psychical atmosphere. But it does
not follow from that fact that the rise and development of morality are
conditioned by belief in Gods and in immortality. Merely human relations
are sufficient to the production of ethical appreciations. The invisible
ghosts and Gods would never have been thought interested in the morality
of the tribe, had not the leaders realized the importance of courage, of
loyalty, of respect for neighbors' possessions, and the other elementary
virtues. It is when the disastrous consequences of their absence became
evident that the Gods were made to sanction these virtues. God or no
God, immortality or no immortality, the essential morality of man would
have been what it is." (_J. H. Leuba: "Belief in God and Immortality."_)
The best that is in man is generated in the experiences of his daily
life. The attributing of moral qualities to the gods was a much later
development in the evolution of the moral ideas. At this stage of our
development man is fortified by a sense of human fellowship, and in
practice, as well as in theory, has long since given up the assumption
that he needed superhuman beliefs. He has fully recognized the
independence of morality from superhuman beliefs.
James Mill and J. S. Mill taught the greatest happiness of the greatest
number as the supreme object of action and the basis of morality. And it
was this conception that introduced the new ethical principles of duty
to posterity. This conception is a much nobler one than the religious
interpretation of morality to consist in mainly defining what man's duty
to God is; a morality whose chief selfish inspiration is not the helping
of one's fellowmen but the saving of one's own soul. A secular morality
teaches that what man thinks, says, and does lives after him and
influences for good or ill future generations. This is a higher, nobler,
and greater incentive to righteousness than any life of personal reward
or fear of punishment in a future life. There are today a rapidly
growing number of eminent moral teachers who condemn the clinging to the
belief of personal existence after death as a hindrance to the best life
on earth. Professor J. H. Leuba, in his work, "The Belief in God and
Immortality," concludes that, "These facts and considerations indicate
that the reality of the belief in immortality to civilized nations is
much more limited than is commonly supposed; and that, if we bring into
calculation all the consequences of the belief, and not merely its
gratifying effects, we may even be brought to conclude that its
disappearance from among the most civilized nations would be, on the
whole, a gain."
There are few educated men nowadays who would claim that morality cannot
exist apart from religion. Theists are desperately attempting to
harmonize a primitive theory of things, with a larger knowledge and a
more developed moral sense. Morality is fundamentally the expression of
those conditions under which associated life is found possible and
profitable, and that so far as any quality is declared to be moral its
justification and meaning must be found in that direction. "Our alleged
essential dependence upon transcendental beliefs is belied by the most
common experiences of daily life. Who does not feel the absurdity of the
opinion that the lavish care for a sick child by a mother is given
because of a belief in God and immortality? Are love of father and
mother on the part of children, affection and serviceableness between
brothers and sisters, straight-forwardness and truthfulness between
business men, essentially dependent upon these beliefs? What sort of
person would be the father who would announce divine punishment or
reward in order to obtain the love and respect of his children? And if
there are business men preserved from unrighteousness by the fear of
future punishment, they are far more numerous who are deterred by the
threat of human law. Most of them would take their chances with heaven a
hundred times before they would once with society, or perchance with the
imperative voice of humanity heard in the conscience." (_Leuba._)
The primary motive of moral standards and practices is man's desire to
seek happiness and avoid pain. And so it is not strange that morality
has become stronger as the power of religion has weakened. "Right
through history it has been the social instincts that have acted as a
corrective to religious extravagances. And it is worth noting that with
the exception of a little gain from the practice of casuistry, religions
have contributed nothing towards the building up of a science of ethics.
On the contrary, it has been a very potent cause of confusion and
obstruction. Fictitious vices and virtues have been created and the real
moral problems lost sight of. It gave the world the morality of the
prison cell, instead of the tonic of the rational life. And it was
indeed fortunate for the race that conduct was not ultimately dependent
upon a mass of teachings that had their origin in the brains of savages,
and were brought to maturity during the darkest period of European
civilization.... And we know that the period during which the influence
of Christian theism was strongest, was the period when the intellectual
life of civilized man was at its lowest, morality at its weakest, and
the general outlook hopeless. Religious control gave us heresy hunts,
Jew hunts, burning for witchcraft, and magic in place of medicine. It
gave us the Inquisition and the _auto da fe_, the fires of Smithfield,
and the night of St. Bartholomew. It gave us the war of sects, and it
helped powerfully to establish the sect of war. It gave us life without
happiness, and death cloaked with terror. The Christian record is before
us, and it is such that every Church blames the others for its
existence. Quite as certainly we cannot point to a society that has been
dominated by Freethinking ideals, but we can point to their existence in
all ages, and can show that all progress is due to their presence. We
can show that progressive ideals have originated with the least, and
have been opposed by the most religious sections of society."
(_Cohen._)
The puerile conception of heaven and the savage conception of hell are
still, in modified form, deemed necessary for a religious morality. Why
it should be necessary for a supreme intelligence to make all things
straight in another world, that he could more convincingly rectify in
this one, is a conception which has escaped the reason of a freethinker,
but has been very profitable to those on earth that lead their adherents
to believe that they hold the keys to our future abodes. Winwood Reade
in his "Martyrdom of Man," discussing the moral value of the fears of
hell-fire, states, "a metaphysical theory cannot restrain the fury of
the passions; as well attempt to bind a lion with a cobweb. Prevention
of crime, it is well known, depends not on the severity, but on the
certainty of retribution. The supposition that the terrors of hell-fire
are essential or even conducive to good morals is contradicted by the
facts of history. In the Dark Ages there was not a man or woman from
Scotland to Naples, who doubted that sinners were sent to hell. The
religion which they had was the same as ours, with this exception, that
everyone believed in it. The state of Europe in that pious epoch need
not be described. Society is not maintained by the conjectures of
theology, but by those moral sentiments, those gregarious virtues which
elevated men above the animals, which are now instinctive in our natures
and to which intellectual culture is propitious. For, as we become more
and more clearly enlightened, we perceive more and more clearly that it
was with the whole human population as it was with the primeval clan;
the welfare of every individual is dependent on the welfare of the
community, and the welfare of the community depends on the welfare of
every individual."
The teachings of Christianity towards marriage furnishes a well known
example of a reactionary philosophy of morals. The views of St. Paul on
marriage are set forth in I Corinthians VII 1-9:
1. Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a
man not to touch a woman.
2. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife,
and let every woman have her own husband.
3. Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence; and likewise
also the wife unto the husband.
4. The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband; and
likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.
5. Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time,
that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together
again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.
6. But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment.
7. For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man has his
proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.
8. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, it is good for them to
abide even as I.
9. But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry
than to burn.
These precepts furnish an example of the harm that can be done when man
follows the absurd and unsocial decrees of an ascetic individual written
in a barbaric age and maintained as law in a more advanced period. The
enlightened physician holds that it is not good for a man not to touch a
woman; and one wonders what would have become of our race if all women
had carried St. Paul's teaching, "It is good for them if they abide even
as I," into practice. Bertrand Russell, in his "Marriage and Morals,"
has gone to the root of the matter when he states, "He does not suggest
for a moment that there may be any positive good in marriage, or that
affection between husband and wife may be a beautiful and desirable
thing, nor does he take the slightest interest in the family;
fornication holds the center of the stage in his thoughts, and the whole
of his sexual ethics is arranged with reference to it. It is just as if
one were to maintain that the sole reason for baking bread is to prevent
people from stealing cake." But then it is too much to expect of a man
living nearly two thousand years ago to have known the psychology of the
emotions, but we do know the great harm that his ascetic principles have
done. St. Paul took the standpoint that sexual intercourse, even in
marriage, is regrettable. This view is utterly contrary to biological
facts, and has caused in its adherents a great deal of mental disorder.
St. Paul's views were emphasized and exaggerated by the early Church and
celibacy was considered holy. Men retired into the desert to wrestle
with Satan, and when their abnormal manner of living fired their
imagination with erotic visions, mutilated their bodies to cleanse their
souls. "There is no place in the moral history of mankind of a deeper or
more painful interest than this ascetic epidemic. A hideous, sordid, and
emaciated maniac, without knowledge, without patriotism, without natural
affections, passing his life in a long routine of useless and atrocious
self-torture, and quailing before the ghastly phantoms of his delirious
brain, had become the ideal of the nations which had known the writings
of Plato and Cicero, and the lives of Socrates and Cato." (_Lecky:
"History of European Morals."_)
This concept that the closest of association between man and wife is an
obnoxious deed, has strewn its evil influence down through the ages to
the present day. The stealth and obscurity placed upon sexual matters
has had its roots so firmly fixed in our manner of dealing with this
purely normal function, that at this late date medical science is just
beginning to eradicate the evils. It is now well recognized by educators
and physicians and all clear-thinking individuals that it is extremely
harmful for men, women, and children to be kept in artificial ignorance
of the facts relating to sexual affairs. The obscurantism placed upon
sexual matters has caused more physical and mental distress than most of
our organic diseases. The physician is constantly correcting the
abnormal conceptions that exist. The sex act had become something in the
nature of a crime which could not be avoided, instead of assuming the
manifestation of the consummation of the greatest love and tenderness
that can exist between two individuals keenly attuned to the natural
desires of a natural act. "The love of man and woman at its best is free
and fearless, compounded of body and mind in equal proportions, not
dreading to idealize because there is a physical basis, not dreading the
physical basis lest it should interfere with the idealization. To fear
love is to fear life and those who fear life are already three parts
dead." (_Bertrand Russell: "Marriage and Morals."_)
Religion has brutalized the marital relations, and Lecky, dealing with
this subject, states, "The tender love which it elicits, the holy and
beautiful domestic qualities that follow in its train, were almost
absolutely omitted from consideration. The object of the ascetic was to
attract men to a life of virginity, and as a necessary consequence
marriage was treated as an inferior state. It was regarded as being
necessary, indeed, and therefore justifiable, for the propagation of the
species, and to free men from great evils; but still as a condition of
degradation from which all who aspired to real sanctity could fly. To
'cut down by the axe of Virginity the wood of Marriage' was, in the
energetic language of St. Jerome, the end of the saint; and if he
consented to praise marriage it was merely because it produced virgins."
Indeed, the entire ascetic attitude was well summed up by St. Jerome
when exhorting Heliodorus to desert his family and become a hermit; he
expatiated with foul minuteness on every form of natural affection he
desired him to violate: "Though your little nephew twine his arms around
your neck, though your mother, with dishevelled hair and tearing her
robe asunder, point to the breast with which she suckled you, though
your father fall down on the threshold before you, pass over your
father's body ... You say that Scripture orders you to obey parents, but
he who loves them more than Christ loses his soul."
It has only been with the advance of secular literature that the
degrading assumption of St. Paul that marriage is to be regarded solely
as a more or less legitimate outlet for lust has been discarded, and the
act of love as applied to marriage has come to have any meaning. And in
this modern day the conception of the relationship of the sex act to
marriage is far from being on the high plane where it rightly belongs.
Bertrand Russell comments, "Marriage in the orthodox Christian doctrine
has two purposes: one, that recognized by St. Paul, the other, the
procreation of children. The consequence has been to make sexual
morality even more difficult than it was made by St. Paul. Not only is
sexual intercourse only legitimate within marriage, but even between
husband and wife it becomes a sin unless it is hoped that it will lead
to pregnancy. The desire for legitimate offspring is, in fact, according
to the Catholic Church, the only motive which can justify sexual
intercourse. But this motive always justifies it, no matter what
cruelty may accompany it. If the wife hates sexual intercourse, if she
is likely to die of another pregnancy, if the child is likely to be
diseased or insane, if there is not enough money to prevent the utmost
extreme of misery, that does not prevent the man from being justified in
insisting on his conjugal rights, provided only that he hopes to beget a
child."
What effect has Christianity had upon our moral life, upon crime,
drug-addiction, sexual immorality, prostitution, and perversion? These
blights upon our moral character existed long before Christianity, and
after Christianity. But what effectual check has Christianity
contributed?
The agitation concerning increased crime after the recent world conflict
has brought this subject to the fore, and aroused a great deal of
discussion and consideration of this problem. In its relation to
religion, we have but one undeniable fact to bring before the thinking
public. An examination of the statistics of penal institutions reveals
that practically all criminals are religious. _Absolutely and
proportionately smaller numbers of criminals are freethinkers._ Although
church members nowhere constitute even half the population outside the
prisons, they constitute from eighty to ninety-five per cent of the
population inside the prison. This can be verified by reference to any
census of any penal institution. As strangely as this may strike a great
many readers, just so strange did it appear at one time to the multitude
that the earth was round. (It is 500 years since the earth was proven to
be round, yet there is a large colony of Christians near Chicago
officially maintaining that the earth is as flat and four-cornered as
the Bible states.) Neither Christianity nor any religious creed has
proved an effectual check on civil crime.
The prostitute has been hounded and abused by ecclesiastics since
Biblical times, yet, it is only true to say that the religionist is not
vitally interested in prostitution. Outwardly, he may pour forth a
verbal barrage of condemnation, but if he believes he can save her
immortal soul, ahunting he goes. He does not attempt to ameliorate the
social welfare of this poor, degraded individual, as he thinks; her
pitiful condition in the "everlasting present" on this earth interests
him not at all, although it is this existence about which he raves, his
only interest is in redeeming her soul not her body. If when the
religionist tells the prostitute that only those who believe in Christ
as God, in His Virgin Birth, and in His Resurrection in the Body, will
go to heaven, and she agrees and repents--all is well; the religionist
has saved a soul, and the prostitute goes about her business of
spreading hideous venereal disease to others whose souls are saved by
believing in Christ as a God. Her soul is saved and safe, but the
scholar, the poet, the scientist, the benefactor to mankind, all those
who make this life bearable and livable, their souls must roast in hell
forever if they do not believe in the creed. Divine Justice?
The greatest number of prostitutes are religious, yet prostitution
continues to flourish. The ecclesiastic condemns the prostitute as the
cause, never stopping to think that the cause must have an effect, and
that prostitution is but the effect. The cause is our economic
conditions. Prostitution is purely a medico-social problem, and the more
the ecclesiastic keeps his hands off the problem the sooner will the
condition be remedied to its best. Attempts to repress prostitution
without changing the economic organization will always result in
failure. Prostitution has always existed and will continue to exist
until our economic system has undergone a radical change. So long as
girls have to fight with starvation or with beggarly wages, so long as
men are deterred from early marriage by inability to support a family,
and so long as many married men remain polygamous in their tastes, just
so long will prostitution exist. But we have seen that the clergy is
never anxious to interfere with the "rights of the few to tyrannize the
many," and since prostitution is an economic problem, religion never
has, and never will be, of any help in this case. (Aside from the fact
that there are many instances of a few centuries ago where the Church in
a period of temporary financial distress has owned well paying
brothels.)
When we think of morality we are apt to concentrate more on sexual
morality than on the more obtuse moral duties. Religion has from time
immemorial been held up to our minds as a great force in the production
of this morality. That is another myth. In our own country it is a trite
phrase that a man has a "Puritan code of ethics," or as "straight laced
as a Puritan."
When the Puritan Fathers landed in this country, they began an existence
that has revealed to the world for all time the value of a "burning
religious zeal." In a sense they showed this zeal in regard to the
Witchcraft Delusion.
Coming as they did, to avoid religious persecution in their own native
country, they should have established a colony which for meekness and
beneficence would have shown the value of a true religious fervor.
Instead, the persecuted immediately became the persecutors--again
proving the worth of a mind that is imbued with a dominating religious
zeal.
Secondly, the principal vocation and recreation of these Fathers was
their religion. It is only reasonable to suppose that in such a truly
religious atmosphere morality should have reached its zenith of
perfection. What actually happened is well illustrated in a very
informative and case reporting work by Rupert Hughes, the novelist,
"Facts About Puritan Morals":
"Everybody seems to take it for granted that the behavior of the early
settlers of New England was far above normal. Nobody seems to take the
trouble to verify this assumption. The facts are amazingly opposite. The
Puritans admitted incessantly that they were exceedingly bad. The
records sustain them.... The Puritans wallowed in every known form of
wickedness to a disgusting degree. Considering the extremely meagre
population of the early colonies, they were appallingly busy in evil. I
do not refer to the doctrinal crimes that they artificially construed
and dreaded and persecuted with such severity that England had to
intervene: the crimes of being a Quaker, a Presbyterian, which they
punished with lash, with the gallows, and with exile. I do not refer to
their inclusion of lawyers among keepers of disorderly houses, and
people of ill-fame. I refer to what every people, savage or civilized,
has forbidden by law: murder, arson, adultery, infanticide, drunkenness,
theft, rape, sodomy, and bestiality. The standard of sexual morality
among the unmarried youth was lower in Puritan England than it is today
for both sexes.
"It is important that the truth be known. Is religion, is church
membership, a help to virtue? The careless will answer without
hesitation, Yes! of course. The statistics, when they are not smothered,
cry No!
"If church-going keeps down sin, then the Puritans should have been
sinless because they compelled everybody to go to church. They actually
regarded absence from church as worse than adultery or theft. They
dragged prisoners from jail under guard to church. They whipped old men
and women bloodily for staying away. They fined the stay-at-homes and
confiscated their goods and their cattle to bankruptcy. When all else
failed they used exile. Disobedience of parents was voted a capital
offense and so was Sabbath-breaking even to the extent of picking up
sticks.
"Yet, as a result of all this religion, the sex life of the Puritan was
abnormal.... Their sex sins were enormous. Their form of spooning was
'bundling,' an astonishing custom that permitted lovers to lie down in
bed together in the dark, under covers. They were supposed to keep all
their clothes on, but there must have been some mistake somewhere for
the number of illegitimate children and premature children was
stupefying. Dunton tells us that there hardly passed a court day in
Massachusetts without some convictions for fornication, and although the
penalty was fine and whipping, the crime was very frequent.
"Nothing, I repeat, would have surprised the Puritans more than to learn
that their descendants accepted them as saints. They wept, wailed, and
refused to be comforted. They were terrified and horrified by their own
wickedness. The harsh, granite Puritan of our sermons, on statues and
frescoes, was unknown in real life. The real Puritan Zealot spent an
incredible amount of his time in weeping like a silly old woman. Famous
Puritan preachers boast of lying on a floor all night and drenching the
carpet with their tears. Their church services according to their own
accounts, must have been cyclones of hysteria, with the preacher sobbing
and streaming, and the congregation in a state of ululant frenzy, with
men and women fainting on all sides.
"The authorities are the best possible, not the reports of travelers or
the satires of enemies, but the statements of the Puritans themselves,
governors, eminent clergymen, and the official records of the colonies.
Hereafter, anybody who refers to the Puritans as people of exemplary
life, or morality above the ordinary, is either ignorant or a liar. In
our own day, there is an enormous amount of crime and vice among the
clergy. Most horrible murders abound, by ministers, of ministers, and
for ministers. Published and unpublished adulteries, seductions, rapes,
elopements, embezzlements, homosexual entanglements, bigamies, financial
turpitudes, are far more numerous than they should be in proportion to
the clerical population.
"Governor Bradford breaks out in his heart-broken bewilderment and
unwittingly condemns the whole spirit and pretense of Puritanism. The
Puritans fled from the wicked old world for purity's sake, they were
relentless in prayer, they were absolutely under the control of the
church and clergy, and yet, their Governor says that sin flourished more
in Plymouth Colony than in vile London!
"If our people are wicked nowadays because they lack religion, what
shall be said of the Puritans who were far more wicked, though they
lived, moved, and had their being in an atmosphere so surcharged with
religion that children and grown persons lay awake all night, sobbing
and rolling on the floor in search of secret sins that they could not
remember well enough to repent? It is well to remember that there has
perhaps never been in history a community in which Christianity had so
perfect a laboratory in which to experiment.
"The very purpose of the Colony was announced as the propagation of the
Gospel. The Bible was the law book. The Colony lacked all the things on
which preachers lay the blame for ungodliness; yet, every infamy known
to history, from fiendish torture to luxurious degeneracy flourished
amazingly. This ancient and impregnable fact has been ignored. The
records have been studiously veiled in a cloud of misty reverence, and
concealed under every form of rhetoric known to apologists."
We can only conclude that religion does not seem to act as an effectual
check against sexual immorality. Furthermore, high moral principles can
be inculcated without any religious background, and have been in spite
of religion. A man who is moral because of his reason and his
sensibilities, and his comprehension of the necessary social structure
of the world is a far better citizen than the man who feebly attempts a
moral life because he expects a mythical existence in a delusional
heaven or wishes to avoid hell-fire. A secular code of morals based upon
the best experiences of communal and national life would place its
highest obligation not to a deity but to the welfare of all fellowmen.