The world today is much different than the one that existed when I was young. The changes in culture and morality continue at an ever-increasing rate.
Morality is defined as:
- conformity to the rules of right conduct; moral or virtuous conduct.
- moral quality or character.
- a doctrine or system of morals.
Synonyms for morality include:
| decency | godliness | rightness |
| integrity | goodness | standards |
| justice | honor | uprightness |
| principle | ideals | ethicalness |
| virtue | incorruptibility |
Reason is defined as
- the mental powers concerned with forming conclusions, judgments, or inferences: Effective leadership requires a person of reason.
- sound judgment; good sense.
- normal or sound powers of mind; sanity.
Synonyms for reason include:
| logic | wisdom | sense |
| reasoning | intellect | soundness |
| brains | judgment | sanity |
| comprehension | mentality | understanding |
| discernment | rationality |
One would think the two would have more in common, but they do not. Morality is concerned with goodness and an established code. Reason is focused on the ability of the person and the person’s capacity to improve (or not) using logic.
For thousands of years, life changed very little for the vast majority of people. They worked, paid taxes, raised families, went to church, and seldom interacted with anyone outside their community. They may have lived under a king or other such autocrat, but most lived under the radar of the rulers because of the limitations of their ability to control everything within the kingdom.
The invention of the printing press gave greater opportunity for people to share ideas over larger areas and assisted in bringing groups together to discuss “new” and important ideas. The Church had sought to limit education and the expression of ideas to maintain their power.
Intellectuals began to rebel against the abuses, the immorality, and the control of monocratic rule and it subsidiary, the Catholic Church. The “Age of Enlightenment” of the 18th century was characterized by a shift away from traditional religious forms of authority and a move towards science and rational thought.
The first complete break with the underlying authority of the church came with the French Revolution (1792-1799). Reason replaced tradition. Where the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution have a very clear foundation in the Word of God, The French and their “Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen” is based on their interpretation of how reasonable men should live.
The problem with the French Declaration was that it attempted to establish broad rights, but it hedged on those ‘bedrock’ rights with loopholes like “general will” (which can change at any time); “public order” (e.g., opinions are protected, unless they trouble the public opinion); and “public necessity”.
The morality of the Ten Commandments and the Torah were replaced by the beliefs of ‘reasonable people’ that changed when newer, reasonable-er people replaced the previous reasonable people.
People of faith (especially priests and nuns) were forced to renounce their belief of a righteous God or they were tortured and murdered; The State created an idol that they called the “goddess of reason”; even the cathedral of Notre Dame was stripped of all vestiges of Christ and renamed the “Temple of Reason”.
Moral people are generally thought to be “good” people (not necessarily better people), because they believe in a code that is bigger than themselves, but who decides which code to use?
Most people will agree that society is better when we don’t murder each other (though some may differ in their opinion), steal from each other (though this is easily rationalized), lie to each other (imagine a world without the news media and politicians), or lie with each others’ spouses. Where can we find such a code, especially since man minus a code is especially depraved.
Man never becomes much better when he writes his own code.
In the 1800s, the theory of Evolution was embraced by the intellectual class because it offered them freedom from the ‘restrictive’ Commandments that required them to confess that there is one who is above and greater than themselves. The Commandments dealing with human interaction were okay, but, like Costco, you cannot separate a jumbo pack – if the package has ten items, you buy all ten or none.
Nature became morality – nature cannot be moral but it is abundantly honest. “Survival of the fittest” became the new code based on Darwin’s analogy to the selective breeding of livestock and pigeons. The idea of breeding the farmer’s best animals with equally good stock (and not with unhealthy animals) was not a new idea in the area of agriculture, but the intellectuals now sought to improve man by selective breeding, giving birth to the Eugenics movement. It was the reasonable solution to the limitations of nature.
Royalty had always selectively bred with other royalty, but now the idea was to eliminate inferior classes of people through sterilization and propagate an ever evolving, ever improving race of people.
In America, “Orientals, Jews and Colored People” were referred to as “weeds” by Margaret Sanger and the Eugenics movement. They sought to eliminate the scourge through a program entitled, “Planned Parenthood”. Even today, three-quarters of their abortion clinics are adjacent to minority neighborhoods.
Hitler and the Nazis admired the work of the eugenicists and used science and technology to aid in the rapid elimination of non-Aryans. The Nuremberg Codes eventually led to the slaughter of millions of undesirables because advancing the Aryan race became moral, based on the reasoned, proclamations of the German intellectual class (at least the ones that were not driven into exile or silenced by fear of the ‘consensus’).
The weak had to be obliterated to prevent them from corrupting the fittest.
Evolution did not cause Nazism, but Nazism could not have existed without it.
The Soviet Union (Russia) was also making great strides at eliminating its undesirables. Communism had ushered in an intellectual ruling class that eliminated religion and its moral codes. Survival of the fittest became an all-consuming government program, because the new leaders did not only seek to eliminate peasant threats to their power, but also threats from ambition (real and perceived) within their own ranks.
If one survived within this system, the one was, by definition, fit – until someone was able to eliminate you to achieve your level of power or to protect themselves from your level of perceived ambition. Intellectuals, the ones who made this system possible, are not generally known to be particularly blood-thirsty, so they were among the first victims.
Stalin made himself perfectly suited to rise to the top of this slaughterhouse and he nightly signed off on huge lists of people to be imprisoned and/or killed. The fact that they could not stop him meant that they were not the fittest and therefore needed to be eliminated.
The communist slogan of “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need”, became the rallying cry for every revolution that sought to impose their reasoned ideology. Pol Pot in Cambodia, Fidel Castro in Cuba, Hugo Chavez in Venezula, Kim Il-sung in North Korea, Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua, and the big Kahuna, Mao in China, instituted murderous regimes that took from those with ability because of the governments’ great need.
In the 20th Century, over 100 million were put to death by bullet or starvation by the fittest within their own societies.
Evolution did not cause Communism, but Communism could not have existed without it.
The Bible and its moral code had to be eradicated. Not just because of the rampant murder that results for implementing a Socialist or Communist regime, but also because of that pesky tenth Commandment.
Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.
Exodus 20:17
The following is reprinted from my book, GRAFTED: Embracing Torah concerning the tenth Commandment:
Socialism is the ideology of envy. “Don’t think it’s fair that others have more than you?” Your leaders will take what the rich have (this class of people will eventually include the not-so-rich, the “doing okay,” and finally the “barely scraping by” as the leaders drain more and more wealth from its citizens) and give it to others (the “poor”).
Socialism breaks down the entrepreneurial spirit because no one will want to work harder for more because it will be taken away. In the end, people stop working because they know that someone else’s labor will provide for them. At this point, people must be forced to work, and those who cannot produce must be eradicated because they are a drain on society (the Nazis referred to them as “useless eaters”).
This is why socialism always fails, and the results are devastatingly deadly. Everyone becomes equally miserable, except for the leaders who impose socialism but exempt themselves from its deprivations. The only way to maintain the system is through force and murder.
Dennis Prager writes:
Because the Ten Commandments are given by God, they are absolute [moral]. People can and should argue about how to apply any of these commandments in any given situation [reason] – such as what constitutes . . . disrespect for a parent, or when taking a human life is to be defined as murder. But because they are decrees from God, only those types of debates make sense, not debates about whether they are binding.
The Ten Commandments therefore stand in direct opposition to all relativistic approaches to morality—the notion that each individual or society determines what is right or wrong. The Ten Commandments are not relative.
Objective Morality without reason is oppressive, especially self-oppressive.
Reason without morality is no standard at all. It is based on the whims of the reasoning person in charge.
Both are necessary for a functioning society. Morally, murder is wrong, but what constitutes murder? A rational, reasoning society needs to define homicide, suicide, manslaughter, etc, but first, the moral code would need to establish that murder was wrong.
Belief in God is not a requirement to be a moral (good) person – many atheists are moral. Belief in God is no guarantee that a person is moral – many believers are not. Good people cannot make a good society without the moral code of a good and moral God.
It comes down to faith in a moral and good God. The founding fathers of America had faith in a good and moral God and it is reflected in their correspondences and in our founding documents.
The French revolutionists did not share this faith and it was reflected in massive, state-sanctioned, shedding of blood (they referred to one stage of the revolution as the “Reign of Terror”).
Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim, Castro and EVERY socialist dictator denied the existence of God and His moral precepts. Every one of their ‘socialist paradises’ has degenerated into enslaved societies where poverty and murder are the rule . . . every one.
Faith is not hard. You believe that God created the world (and therefore has the authority to make rules for the life He created) or you believe that everything in the universe created itself and whatever is expedient for you is the law because you only live a short time and then you are gone.
When you look at the design of life, DNA, and the laws of science, it appears easier to believe (have faith in) that there is a Designer rather a random, unguided creation.
To continue in atheism, I would need to believe that nothing produces everything, non-life produces life, randomness produces fine-tuning, chaos produces information, unconsciousness produces consciousness, and non-reason produces reason. I simply didn’t have that much faith.
Lee Strobel
Would it not be strange if a universe without purpose accidentally created humans who are so obsessed with purpose?
Sir John Templeton
Believe in God, or don’t (I prefer you did as it has ever-lasting consequences), but if you want to live in a rational, prosperous, and good society, adopt the moral code of the God of the Bible and rationally apply it in all things.
Much more on the moral code of the Father of creation can be found in my book, GRAFTED: Embracing Torah.
