If you consider yourself religious, this article is not for you.
If you consider yourself spiritual, this article is not for you.
If you are less intelligent than the average dairy cow, this article is not for you.
I say this because while writing this article, I am going to be operating under the assumption that you believe/understand the scientific view of the world to some degree. By ‘scientific view’ I mean the acceptance of evolution, and a lack of belief in anything spiritual. No talking snakes, no souls, and no afterlife.
If you fit the criteria that I established then congratulations, you might find this article mildly interesting.
If you do not fit the criteria that I established, you will probably find this article infuriating.
Either way, keep reading and decide for yourself.
If you fall withing the criteria I set out you should not believe that morality exists, but for those of you who do, allow me to show you why you’re contradicting yourself. The thing is, the term ‘morality’ as it is commonly understood is inherently spiritual. It’s spiritual because people believe certain actions are more moral than others without any concrete reasons. Think about it for a second, why is one action more moral than another? Furthermore, what does it even mean for an action to be more moral than another?
Now I’m sure the more argumentative among you are coming up with what you consider a good answer to my question, so let me respond to what I’m guessing your response is.
You’re probably going to want to tell me that an action is immoral because it hurts a human being, or because it causes pain, or because it goes against ones conscience. But if you think one level deeper, you’ll see why these answers are flawed. Why is it bad to hurt another human? Why is it bad to cause pain? Why is it bad to go against your conscience? You’ve probably got responses to these questions too, but just keep asking yourself why. Eventually you’re not going to have an answer. At that point, the entire logical flow unravels and the initial question is still left unanswered.
You may think it’s a bit of a cop out to keep asking why like that, but in actuality it’s an acceptable method in this scenario to deal with morality. The nature of the argument makes it so that continuously asking why destroys it. It’s for that reason why it’s flawed.
The main issue with the common interpretation of the term ‘morality’ is that it’s generally considered to be some sort of supernatural/spiritual guiding principle. Now if you fit the criteria I outlined, you shouldn’t believe in the spiritual. So if there is no spiritual backbone to the guiding principle, whats left? Just an empty shell. There’s no reason for anyone to abide by any moral law. There is no consequence. It stops being a guiding principle. Just as an interesting side note, this exact same logic can be applied to the concept of a natural right.
So if morality doesn’t exist then why am I not outside robbing houses for a living, instead of trying to scrape a living writing articles. Well, for three reasons:
First: Because it’s risky. If I get caught, the consequences would be massive.
Second: I would feel bad if I did. The reason why I would feel bad isn’t because I believe it is morally wrong to steal, but instead because I was raised to believe that it is morally wrong to steal. After years of social conditioning, the realization that morality doesn’t exist isn’t going to shake off the feeling that it does.
Third: Because evolution gave me what we refer to as a ‘conscience’. We are social creatures because we developed a conscience. We feel bad if we kill each other, steal from each other, or hurt each other. This bad feeling is what allows us to function as a society. The same phenomena can be found with wolves and other pack animals.
To summarize, if you are not spiritual, you cannot believe in the common interpretation of the term ‘morality’ because the word is inherently spiritual. Instead, you can believe that we act the way we do and we feel the way we do because of evolution, and because it is in our own self interest.