Your moral compass

So why is it so difficult to find political leaders or corporate bosses who have ethics? Why does the word ‘ethics’ not even appear in the vocabulary of these people? And why can’t we make 28 million Malaysians, or at least the 16 million Malaysians of voting age, understand what their Godly duties are? If God has programmed them to know right from wrong, if they all believe in God and follow one religion or another, why can’t we make them do the right thing?

NO HOLDS BARRED

Raja Petra Kamarudin

Technology without God is dangerous: Pope

Pope Benedict says man was too often in awe of technology instead of being in awe of God.

VATICAN CITY: Pope Benedict, leading the world’s Catholics into Easter, said on Saturday technological progress, in the absence of awareness of God and moral values, posed a threat to the world.

Benedict presided at a solemn Easter vigil Mass in St Peter’s Basilica to usher the 1.2 billion-member Church into the most important day of its liturgical calendar.

The basilica, the largest church in Christendom, was in the dark for the start of the service to signify the darkness in Jesus’ tomb before what Christians believe was his resurrection from the dead three days after his crucifixion.

The some 10,000 faithful in the basilica lit candles as the pope moved up the central aisle on a wheeled platform he uses to conserve his strength and then the basilica’s lights were turned on when he reached the main altar.

Wearing gold and white vestments at the Mass, his last Holy Week service before Easter Sunday, Benedict wove his sermon around the theme of darkness and light.

“The darkness that poses a real threat to mankind, after all, is the fact that he can see and investigate tangible material things, but cannot see where the world is going or whence it comes, where our own life is going, what is good and what is evil,” he said.

“The darkness enshrouding God and obscuring values is the real threat to our existence and to the world in general,” he said.

Benedict, repeating one of the central themes of his pontificate, said man was too often in awe of technology instead of being in awe of God.

“If God and moral values, the difference between good and evil, remain in darkness, then all other ‘lights’, that put such incredible technical feats within our reach, are not only progress but also dangers that put us and the world at risk,” he said.

“With regard to material things, our knowledge and our technical accomplishments are legion, but what reaches beyond, the things of God and the question of good, we can no longer identify,” he said.

The Pope, who returned from a gruelling trip to Mexico and Cuba last week, looked fatigued at the long service, during which be baptised eight adults from Italy, the United States, Slovakia, Turkmenistan, Albania, Germany and Cameroon. He turns 85 on April 16.

On Sunday the Pope will preside at an Easter day Mass and then deliver his twice-yearly “Urbi et Orbi” (to the city and the world) blessing and message from the central balcony of St Peter’s Basilica. – REUTERS

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After reading the above, you may now want to go to the Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy and read Moral Arguments for the Existence of God here (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-arguments-god/).

Students of theology or philosophy would understand the subject of the various arguments to support the belief in the existence of God. I shall not bore you with the entire spectrum of arguments or else my article will need to run into at least 20 or 30 pages. And even that can be considered brief because books on this subject run into 300 pages or so. Being Easter and all that, and in response to what the Pope said in the Reuters report above, I would therefore like to talk about only one of the arguments: the moral arguments for the existence of God.

To simplify the entire argument for the benefit of the average Malaysia Today reader: since humankind knows the difference between right and wrong, then this proves that God exists. If God did not exist then we would not know right from wrong. In other words, humankind has been programmed to distinguish between right and wrong -- hence, since we have been programmed, then something must have programmed us, and that ‘something’ would have to be God. Thus this proves that there is a God.

As I said, this is one of various arguments that are used to defend the belief in the existence of God. In answer to that question in the Philosophy of Religion course that I took last year -- as to whether I agreed or disagreed with that argument -- I replied that I did not agree.

My reason for disagreeing is that your moral compass cannot be guided by religion, and hence it cannot be God that programmed you to know right from wrong. The definition of right and wrong is subjective and changes depending on time and place. What is right could be wrong, and vice verse, depending on when and where you happened to have been born.

For example, it was right to bash the heads of pagan babies after you baptise them during the time of the Spanish Inquisition in Latin America 500 years ago. Even the Pope endorsed this as a way to save the souls of these babies and send them straight to heaven. So you save the souls of the pagan babies by baptising them and bashing their heads against a rock.

"How blessed will be the one who seizes and dashes your little ones against the rock." (Psalms 137:9)

Now, God ‘said’ this was right, according to the Vatican and Psalms 137:9. Common sense, however, tells us that it is wrong. However, religion wins over common sense. But that was 500 years ago in Latin America, a different time and place. Today, say in Malaysia, we would certainly say it is wrong. Hence time and place have a bearing on what is right and what is wrong. Whether you take what the Holy Books say literally or allegorically also has a bearing.

Say you do this today -- you bash the heads of non-Christian babies to kill them and send them straight to heaven -- what do you think will happen to you? The answer is obvious -- you will get arrested for murder and in some countries you would be sentenced to death.

But how can it be murder when 500 years ago it was the right thing to do? Have they rewritten the Bible since then? No, the Bible is still the same, as is the Quran and all the other Holy Books. Nothing has changed. What has changed is the way we now interpret the teachings of religion plus our tolerance level and value system have changed compared to, say, 500 years ago.

The question we now need to ask is: what is our moral compass? Do we need God or religion to guide us as to what is right and what is wrong or can common sense be that guide? For those who can think, common sense is sufficient. For those who cannot think, they need religion to guide them. Without the help of religion they are incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.

Hence, the bottom line would be, humankind is bad by nature. Thus they need religion so that bad people can become good. Without religion, bad people will be naturally bad.

I can buy that argument. But what if people are good by nature and they are good not because they have a religion or because they believe in God but because they use common sense as their guide? They just know the difference between good and bad without the benefit of religion.

Would this not be what good Atheists are: good not because they believe in God but good because their common sense tells them what is right and what is wrong? I would imagine your answer would be that although they do not believe in God, God has programmed them to know right from wrong. Hence they are good although they do not believe in God.

Very complicating, is it not?

Actually, it is not really as complicating as you may think. Using ‘do unto others as you would others do unto you’ would be a good enough guide although that quote is from religion. If you hate pain then do not subject others to pain. If you hate being robbed then do not rob others. If you don’t like your mother, wife or daughter being raped then do not rape other women/girls. And so on.

Do you need religion to make you understand that?

What perplexes me is the fact that the more religious a person is the more evil he or she becomes. So how can God have anything to do with this? If they have been programmed to know right from wrong and if they have additional help to guide them -- meaning a religion -- then certainly these people would live the life of a saint. But that does not happen.

Take some of our very religious politicians, businessmen, etc., as an example. They are orthodox Muslims, devout Hindus, Born Again Christians, staunch Buddhists, or whatever. Yet they are most evil and untrustworthy. So what has gone wrong here? Why are they not able to be good people?

I cringe when a Malay politician stands up on a stage and proclaims: I am a Muslim, Islam is my religion, etc. What do these people mean by this? Of course we know you are a Muslim. We know that your religion is Islam. Why do you need to state that fact? Did you think we did not know this?

If your name is Abdullah Bin Muhammad then for sure you are a Muslim and Islam is your religion. Why the need to stand up on a stage, and in front of thousands of people, tell us that? Why must you state the obvious? Did you think we were confused as to what religion you profess?

No, they know that we know what religion they practice. They are not shouting on stage because they thought we did not know that. Shouting, “I am a Muslim and Islam is my religion”, means, “I am a good and trustworthy person because Islam is the true religion and Muslims are good people”. That is what they are trying to say.

It is a proclamation they are making about how good they are. Once they say, “I am a Muslim”, or “Islam is my religion”, this means their character is beyond question. They are good people by virtue of the religion they believe in. Their credentials are their religion. You cannot but be a good person if you are a Muslim. Hence they openly declare their religion to ‘prove’ that they are good people.

But do not all our Malaysian politicians, businessmen, etc., have a religion? Does Malaysia have any political leaders and/or corporate bosses who are Atheists? Has anyone thus far openly declared, “I am an Atheist and I do not believe in God”? None that I can remember!

Yes, in short, what is the moral compass of these 16 million Malaysians of voting age? And this includes you as well, the more than half a million Malaysia Today readers. Do you even have a moral compass? Do you understand the difference between right and wrong? And if you do, why do you then not do the right thing?

And what is the right thing to do?

If I need to teach you that then God probably forgot to program you before He ‘blew’ your soul into your mother’s womb.