It just is.
Gravity is why I don't jump off a 5-story building onto a sidewalk. There would be baleful consequences to such an action.
Because I will break bones in the fall, I can observe the effects of gravity and know that it exists.
As far as I can tell, God just is. Christ is the Son of God. They said some stuff and that's been codified into Catholicism. That's one of many competing hypotheses about the nature of the world, but after quite a bit of study and thought, it's the one that I feel is most likely to be true. If it is true, then it is a fact on the order of the existence of gravity.
The Word of God both defines sin and its consequences. It is why I don't engage in any more sin than I can manage to resist. Spiritually, bad things will happen to me if I do. My observations about the temporal effects of sin in myself and others increase my confidence that my Catholic faith is true. It's not cause or effect, it's both.
Do Morals Change?
Currently, Europe is majority European. Being gay is acceptable. If current demographic trends continue, some parts of Europe will soon be majority Muslim. Some cities already are. There, being gay is not acceptable.
Aubervilliers, a suburb of Paris is about 44% Muslim right now. When Aubervilliers turns from being 51-49 secular French to 51-49 Muslim, will being gay turn from good to bad at that moment? If you say no, then that means there is a moral order above Man. Who is the author of that moral order? What is its source?
To use an example where the turnover has recently happened, prior to the Chinese crackdowns in Hong Kong, it was OK to voice anti-CCCP opinions. It is no longer allowed. Did such opinions switch from good to bad? If not, why not? What is the source of your judgment?
Focusing On Results
I think we get hung up on the consequences of religion, perhaps because we don't like them. What guy wants to hear that fornication is a sin? Our lizard brain is screaming at us to mate as often as possible so our genetic code propagates through time. This hangup about moral restrictions changes the way we see religion from a hypothesis about the world as it is to some kind of stultifying human invention.
If Catholicism is true, then it and its consequences were always true and Mankind simply discovered them.
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| Gravity didn't spring into existence when Newton got brained by the apple. It was there before the planets formed. |
2 comments:
The thing is, I agree with most of what you say here. Moral/ethical behavior is almost always beneficial to the individual, improves quality of life, and makes civilization possible. And it is possible to distinguish moral from immoral largely on that basis. I have said as much on several occasions before. Which is why, even though I am not a Catholic any more, the morals and ethics that I follow are largely indistinguishable from my behavior back when I was still in the church.
But, KT, every time I have said something along these lines in the past you have immediately snapped back that this wasn't the point at all. That without a belief in God, I "couldn't possibly" arrive at anything like this moral code. That I had to believe in God to be moral. And then proceeded to lecture me that if I didn't believe in God, that I had to become a hedonistic nihilist, and ultimately commit suicide due to a lack of meaning in my life.
But now, you are saying that morality is in fact discoverable by observing consequences. So which is it? Are things moral because God decided they would be, and therefore it is essential that God tell us this, because if God had decided otherwise, the morality would change? Or is God simply informing us of what behaviors are inherently best for us, and these behaviors would be good for us whether he had told us about them or not?
I very much doubt these accusations.
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