Can Religious Morality Be Coherent Without Belief?

Charles Murray of "The Bell Curve and "Losing Ground" fame, has written a book called Taking Religion Seriously.

That, in and of itself is a good thing, as the examples of the failures of societies that move away from religion are piling up. You know...the West! But his take seems to suggest an intellectual approach to religion, rather than the more common belief-based one. And that is immensely appealing to me, because regardless of the significant scholarship of Judaism, the intellectual analysis of Christianity is many times larger and more comprehensive.

Taking Religion Seriously is Murray's autobiographical account of the decades-long evolution in his stance toward the idea of God in general and Christianity in particular. He argues that religion is something that can be approached as an intellectual exercise. His account moves from the improbable physics of the Big Bang to recent discoveries about the nature of consciousness, from evolutionary psychology to hypotheses about a universal Moral Law. His exploration of Christianity delves into the authorship of the Gospels, the reliability of biblical texts, and the scholarship surrounding the resurrection story.

And that is separate from the also vitally important belief in God, and his influence on us. What makes Murray's take so important is that in our current post-religious world, it is possible to construct a coherent moral framework from the teachings of Christianity. Is it ideal? No...absolutely not. Eventually it will fail in the absence of God, but perhaps as a bridge to a world in which there is a renewed sense of faith and religiosity (and there are signs that it is coming) it is a worthwhile endeavor.

posted by CBD at 12:00 PM

| Access Comments