Godless Morality
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Godless Morality Is religion necessary for morality? From a report on the Moral Sense Test from a Harvard University study
Some say that either a divine being crafted our moral sense, or that we picked it up from the teachings of our religion. Yet non-believers often have as strong a sense of right and wrong as anyone.
Some elements of morality seem to be universal, despite sharp doctrinal differences among the world’s major religions. Perhaps over time we have evolved a moral faculty that generates intuitions about right and wrong.
Moral Sense Test Consider each of the following scenarios. For each, fill in the blank space with
Obligatory Permissible or Forbidden
Scenario 1
A runaway train car is about to run over five people walking on the tracks. A railroad worker is standing next to a switch that can turn the train car onto a side track. The railway employee near that side track would be killed, but the other five people would be saved.
Flipping the switch is ___________.
Scenario 2 You pass a small child drowning in a shallow pond, and you are the only one around. If you go into the water to grab the child, she will be saved but your expensive designer shoes and new pants will be ruined.
Rescuing the child is ___________.
Scenario 3 Five people have just been rushed to the hospital in critical condition, each requiring an organ to survive. There is not enough time to request organs from outside the hospital, but there is a healthy person in the hospital waiting room. If the doctor takes this person’s organs, he will die, but the other 5 will live.
Taking the healthy person’s organs is ____.
What did you decide? If you judged case 1 as permissible, case 2 as obligatory, and case 3 as forbidden, you are like the 1,500 people from around the world who participated in the Harvard University Moral Sense test.
Were Emerson, Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists right? The Harvard studies provided support for the idea that we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgments of right and wrong. Our sense of morality seems to be a part of our nature, whether we choose to listen to it or not.
Some say that either a divine being crafted our moral sense, or that we picked it up from the teachings of our religion. Yet non-believers often have as strong a sense of right and wrong as anyone.
Some elements of morality seem to be universal, despite sharp doctrinal differences among the world’s major religions. Perhaps over time we have evolved a moral faculty that generates intuitions about right and wrong.
Moral Sense Test Consider each of the following scenarios. For each, fill in the blank space with
Obligatory Permissible or Forbidden
Scenario 1
A runaway train car is about to run over five people walking on the tracks. A railroad worker is standing next to a switch that can turn the train car onto a side track. The railway employee near that side track would be killed, but the other five people would be saved.
Flipping the switch is ___________.
Scenario 2 You pass a small child drowning in a shallow pond, and you are the only one around. If you go into the water to grab the child, she will be saved but your expensive designer shoes and new pants will be ruined.
Rescuing the child is ___________.
Scenario 3 Five people have just been rushed to the hospital in critical condition, each requiring an organ to survive. There is not enough time to request organs from outside the hospital, but there is a healthy person in the hospital waiting room. If the doctor takes this person’s organs, he will die, but the other 5 will live.
Taking the healthy person’s organs is ____.
What did you decide? If you judged case 1 as permissible, case 2 as obligatory, and case 3 as forbidden, you are like the 1,500 people from around the world who participated in the Harvard University Moral Sense test.
Were Emerson, Thoreau and the other Transcendentalists right? The Harvard studies provided support for the idea that we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgments of right and wrong. Our sense of morality seems to be a part of our nature, whether we choose to listen to it or not.
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