Religion in discussion of "morality"

Hello to whatever brave and intrepid souls are still reading this! Forgive my long silence...anywho, since I haven't had the inspiration to write anything new, I thought that I'd post a long-winded post that I wrote previously for my Psych class. All of the students were presented with a moral dilemma and had to decide what the most appropriate course of action would be. Tempers soon began rising, and people started debating whether or not other people should drag their "privately-held beliefs"--ie, religion--into a "public question of morality". I mean, seriously, what do the two have in common? =) So below are my thoughts on the question. Comment if you want with your own thoughts on this area. The rest of the text was lifted verbatim.

I noticed that we've started discussing this fascinating area within the larger argument on our tough MORAL DILEMMA. How about we post thoughts up here to keep the board a bit more organized and argument-specific?

Alright, now for my thoughts on this area. As humans we all have some conception of right and wrong (however, the specific WHERE and HOW differs considerably depending on your worldview--regardless, that concept is there). And further, as human beings constantly interacting with each other and with ideas (we don't, after all, exist in a vacuum) we all get this concept of acceptable versus unacceptable behaviors from SOMEPLACE. Christians and people from other religious backgrounds receive their code of conduct from their God and religious writings and traditions. Atheist/agnostic/not-so-very-religiously-affiliated-people (what's the correct vocab, anyone?) from a more loosely-defined conglomeration of what "feels right to me" (note: these are not stylized quotation marks for the sake of quotation marks--though they are a hard-working and often under-appreciated bit of grammar--but an actual quote) or to the more philosophically-minded, whatever causes the most good to the greatest amount of people without harming anyone. (that last clause is terrifically important--otherwise you'd have non-suspecting hospital visitors being attacked all over the place and getting their organs donated to five or six needy people who would "benefit" much more from the organs than the single hospital visitor--pst, not to knock organ donation. It's a truly wonderful thing and I think we should all do it, again, just for the sake of examples.) And we are all innately impacted by our upbringing--either by accepting and assimilating it, or consciously rejecting it.

That said, we all argue from our worldviews and collection of beliefs. For Christians (and other religiously affiliated people, etc.) this just happens to be on the basis of their religious beliefs. This is really quite logical--if your religious beliefs are what you GET your moral beliefs FROM, it only makes sense that THAT is one of the main measurements in determining the morality or immorality of a certain course of action. Therefore, it is equally logical that in debates religiously-based reasoning will form a significant argument either in favor of or against a certain idea.

Now of course it must be noted that arguments based COMPLETELY in a particular belief system, whatever that may be: Christian, Buddhist, Jainist, raging atheist, etc., will not be terribly convincing to any outsiders. The logic of such an argument won't be particularly convincing to someone who doesn't ascribe to the same beliefs as the one presenting the argument. If you're trying to convince your Hindu neighbor that he should be more considerate of other people's sleep and not blare Bach's 19th symphony at 3 in the morning, all of the Torah in the world won't change his mind. So make sure to have audience-specific arguments.

Recently Americans have come up with this terrific idea called "tolerance". Perhaps originally intended to mean, "let's all respect each other as people, even if we disagree personally on certain issues", it has now come to mean "you have to unflinchingly accept my ideas or else you're biased against my race/gender/ethnicity/age/income bracket/religious affiliation/variety of preferred dog breed/favorite band, etc."--your fertile imaginations can fill in the blank. So, the playing field is sort of interesting for Christians who are on the one hand encouraged to share their beliefs, but at the same time, forbidden from sharing the specific motivation for WHY they hold such and such a belief at the risk of being labeled intolerant. Oh the irony. (irony alert: the next few sentences are rabid with it =) Why does no one harp on secular humanists for subjecting us all to their agonizingly biased belief system? Or those annoying existentialists--why does their hot air constantly infiltrate our media interviews and how can we stop them? So today's society expects us to be perfectly "tolerant" of all ideas save Christianity. Nice. Maybe we should move the definition of tolerance back towards its original definition?

Feel free to comment with your own perspectives on this issue (but please, no one use the tired old "separation of church and state"!). And let's be cordial to each other--just because you differ with someone belief-wise, that's really no reason to tear into their person. Like Ghandi said once (paraphrased--I can't remember the exact quote), if you criticize someone else's beliefs, then it sure doesn't make them look any better...but then again, it doesn't make your own beliefs look particularly appealing either.