imagination, and that can happen even within very materialistic or acquisitive or appearance-valuing cultures, even in the twenty-first century. It creates obvious cognitive dissonance, but it can exist. In fact, it does exist.
The narrowed use of the idea of “belief” or “faith” by the religious, pointing usually to a very temporally spatially bound conflated historical/mythical person, event, or power, occasionally elicits a comment from very conservative religious leaders who insist that without a belief in God such as they have, there would be no motivation to live morally. Thankfully, that is not true. One of the inexplicable wonders of the universe, as Kant said, is the “moral law within”—as much a wonder, as he put it, as the “starry universe above.” But it requires reason to operate. Rousseau long ago showed that even if people profess to live by “revelation,” that still requires a considerable use of human reason, even if not acknowledged or recognized, before one can even define what one means by “revelation” or “faith,” and long before one can decide that a certain morality passed down through a certain religious institution and embedded within a particular sacred scripture is really divine revelation and to be followed. Kant was quite satisfied that practical reason itself could arrive at the “categorical imperative” as a universal impetus to ethical behavior, and simply showed how that same moral sense could be found within Christianity if one were willing to neither take the scriptures literally nor Jesus as an actual embodiment of the moral ideal.
The appeal to a particular faith vis-à-vis reason is all the more vulnerable when one finally realizes that there are many different religions, most or all of which claim to have the only and Absolute answer to life’s greatest problems which includes ethics.20 We no longer live in the seventeenth century, so even John Locke’s obliviousness to non-Christian religions is no longer acceptable when he declared Christianity’s superiority to other religions because he was incorrectly convinced that Christianity alone had a supreme ethic and believed in an afterlife in which people would be rewarded or punished depending upon the degree of their following Jesus’ ethic. Even if one could finally decide “which religion” was correct, one would still have to exercise considerable reason to try to figure out which, if any, of the moral rules or laws actually require adherence by any “believer” or even nonreligious person today, and precisely how that would be known within our recent discoveries of the relativity of everything in the cosmos as well as the exponentially expanding universe in which we live?
Seeing a divine imprint or eternal truth or value on some religion’s sacred scriptures has no reasonable standard or method or even definition. It is simply an authoritarian position or cultural symbol, a tradition and canon whose content is less important than the adherents’ belief in its sheer authority. The proof of the authority is always a “discovery” in retrospect, long after the alleged event. Any ethic from ancient times therefore carries with it many ancient ideas totally abhorrent to modern morals, especially to a sense of equality and nonviolence. Some sacred scriptures still have alleged divine instruction for the “believers” to put to death their enemies as well as people even within their own group that commit adultery or violate certain “bans” that govern the group such as coveting one’s neighbor’s wife, or engaging in “blasphemy” by asking the wrong questions about the religion, drinking alcoholic beverages, or drawing a picture or other representation of the religion’s founder or God.
In truth, of course, alleged revelation never has any effect or ethical guidance without human reason, since it is human reason that decides to accept something as “revelation” or even as relevant, even if it is done by a group rather than individual. Moreover, human reason within any particular given culture may be very selective about which ethical guidelines within even its “sacred” scripture or tradition are to be followed (or at least believed) and which can be ignored.
John Bennett, in his book on morality, in discussing the responses to Nixon and the Watergate, pointed out that many Christian evangelicals were more upset to find out from the tapes that Nixon used unacceptable language than they were about the overall illegality of the Watergate break-in and the obstruction of justice that followed.21 That same response has recently occurred when it was reported that conservative Christian leaders were upset about the present President’s vulgar language. That was more offensive to them than the inhumane immigration policies and continuous lying and other alleged abuses of power.
Once upon a time in Christian history, “usury” was thought to be a terrible sin, especially if as high as 6 percent interest. But modern banks and lenders today charge as much as the “market will bear” on credit card debt, which can be well above 20 percent if the client gets even slightly behind in payments. The banks can make crippling charges, apparently with a totally clear moral consciousness. So does reason qualify the “revelation,” or culture dictate how seriously or casually one takes the heteronomous idea of the religious Absolute?
One could probably get a pretty good idea of the way culture and religion interact if one were able to measure two different groups: (1) the churches that are sometimes called “megachurches,” which are growing or number in the thousands and are often built around a single leader or at least have no national organization, but consist of a fairly homogeneous group of people; and (2) the churches, many of which because of their national scope incorporate a greater diversity of people, and consequently seem to have had troubles or even split over ethical issues. If the vital sense of unity is a homogeneity on a particular issue, the group may avoid discussing other issues that are sensed as being divisive. The important or even Absolute stance on an issue in one church may be the exact opposite in another, and it appears this is especially true on issues that pertain to sexuality more than any other cultural issue. If either group sees a position in its tradition or Bible as Absolute, it may avoid raising any possibility of opposing interpretations or enabling parishioners of becoming aware that the Bible itself as well as the history of the Christian church is not really that fixed or consistent. Even the question of seeing the teachings of Paul and of Jesus as corresponding on ethical issues is plagued with difficulties, especially since the teachings of Jesus are simply reports of specific occasions that evoked some statements of his, whereas Paul took time in constructing letters by a scribe, which were not simply “live” as we would call it today. Whether either one thought he was being comprehensive in giving ethical guidance, or that his instructions should be normative for all ages to come is a real question that has to be asked.22 So even diligent adherents who insist on a complete and literal following of the scriptures still are very selective in what parts of the Bible they follow. Similar selectivity of scriptures occurs in most religions.
Another example of perceiving how much one’s particular cultural position dictates ethics is to observe that prior to the U.S. Civil War, Christianity was alleged (by different Christian religious “authorities”) to support both sides, both for and against human slavery! Could any religious ethic actually be credible if it were so ambiguous or opaque or so easy to twist into its opposite? Obviously, the primary factor behind the two positions was created more by the precise cultural position, the geopolitical and economic grounding of the specific citizens, the state and its relation to the slave trade, and other factors than by any Absolute ethical principle derived from the Christian religion.
Inasmuch as the ethics of an institutionalized religion are contingent, defined by an ancient mentality, and continually passed on, whether adapted to new cultures or not, we need to take a step back into our present and examine actual life in front of us, comparing, if possible, our presuppositions with those held by the authors behind the “sacred” traditions and their entire histories of interpretation. Certainly the absolutized metaphysics still seem to control, as old as they are. For example, many Christian theologians and scholars have understood the insufficiency of using anthropomorphic language to describe one’s Absolute, “ultimate concern,” or object of worship, just as influential Buddhist scholar, Masao Abe, has kindly objected even to Christianity’s persistent “reification” and “substantialization” in its notion of God.23 Unfortunately, however, that point has been largely
