The morals of society, although now typically self-serving and nihilistic, have varied throughout the ages. Whether they have changed for the good or the bad depends on where you look and what you choose to use as your examples. There are two sides to the coin, and many centuries to compare to. Religious morality and a ‘connection with god’ has flourished and evolved in many beliefs for over five thousand years. Morality has continued to evolve as well, but convincing someone that there is a connection between morality and God is misdirecting.
“The absolute moralities that a religious person might profess would include stoning people for adultery, death for apostasy, and punishment for breaking the Sabbath. All of these are religiously based ‘absolute moralities’, and I do not think I want an absolute morality like that. I want a morality that is thought out, reasoned, argued, discussed and based upon an 'intelligent design'. Do we not design our society in which we want to live? If we look at the moralities that are accepted by modern people in the 21st century, we do not believe in slavery anymore. We believe in the equality of women, being gentle to one another, kind to animals; all of these things are very recent and have no basis in Koranic or Biblical scripture. This is modern 21st century design developed over historical time through consensus of reasoning and legal theory, political and moral philosophy. These values do not come from religion. Theists cherry pick verses out of scriptures to find occasional examples of acceptable morality while leaving out all of the horrible parts, and call it their religion. They claim that they don’t believe the horrible parts anymore because we have all grown out of it. Of course we have, we have grown out of it because of secular moral philosophy and rational discussion.” (Dawkins, 2010)
We have come a long way from earlier, less developed civilizations. One can go into great lengths describing the history of death and destruction that was evident in the making of each and every empire that exists today or has risen, ruled and fallen to another nation. The transfer of power has been battled over since the beginning of mankind, usually in the name of religion. The actions of society today cannot compare to history, but does give confirmation that we have lost respect for ‘everything’. If we look at profit over protection of the environment or deadly wars that are driven by false motives, or corruption leading to world famine, one can see the pattern. It hits closer to home when one mentions the starvation of our own nation’s people while others live ‘high on the hog’, or rising statistics on rape, murder, and crime. You cannot get through a day without seeing evidence of the lack of respect shown toward women, children, elders, minorities and any other stereotype that is different than the ‘majority’. We have proven that our young species still has a lot learn. In the past, all of the above mentioned atrocities were common place and more or less accepted by their current ethical views. Today, the actions of human society are more based on ignorance and a bombardment of mindless information and misguided direction from the media and world elite.
Without going into politics, government corprotocracy is just another example of self-serving interests and a hoodwinking of the people to thwart interference of their own corporate agendas. Today, our decisions and objectives are based on profit. Scarcity is forced upon society to create the false idea of value. We have taken away the true meaning of ‘value’ that had been apparent to the human race throughout the progression of our species. A respect for the land, water, plants and animals were of utmost importance to us and top priority was placed on the perpetuation of life. It has not been the deterioration of human’s belief in a ‘god’ that has weakened our morality, yet it is our social evolution; the corruption of wealth and the drive to make more money that has guided us in the wrong direction and distorted our moral fiber. The lack of fundamental education and the rejection of modern scientific discovery is another root of our downward spiral and demise. Our government controls public education, television, and the media, because the ruling elite tells you only what they want you to know. They do not want a society of thinkers who they cannot blindfold with their corrupted program. We are misled to follow a path that will serve the needs of the ‘bigger picture’ that has been formed by the leaders of this world. We have been bamboozled; led astray from knowing and accepting the true facts of nature and starving our society of relevant information and knowledge that empowers the human race to help preserve our life.
Strength and power lie not with our connection of a ‘god’ but with our connection with each other, nature and our preservation of our planet to sustain a livable environment. Neither a god nor money will support the longevity of this planet. One who believes in ‘God’, or ‘Allah’, also believes that their time on this planet will come to an end and continue ‘living’ somewhere else. (i.e. eternal life) Having such a belief drains one’s motivation to improve life on this planet while we are here. Monetary gain and power outweigh concerns like oil spills, global warming, societal degradation and depletion of our natural resources. If we all knew that this was our only chance, our only time to protect what we have and make it last, we would show more concern for what we are doing to this planet and to each other. We as humans are here to stay, but we won’t be here to stay much longer if we don’t come together towards a more common ground, Earth.
