Erin Byers Philosophy 110 October 20, 2002 Rules Without God While a lot of philosophy deals with questions on the way things are, these kinds of questions seem to prompt another side of philosophy: ethics. Once it is determined how the world works, we must, as rational beings, determine what to do with ourselves in it. When dealing with the question of what actions are right and wrong, religion naturally surfaces as a set of rules. However, even without a set of rules as strict and emotionally influential as religion, people tend to work out ways of governing themselves, and teaching their children similar behavior. Even if God does not exist, morality is possible. Plato and Socrates, who lay foundations for Western thought, did not incorporate God into their morals significantly. Socrates was a religious man to a point, but emphasized thinking and seeking Truth as man's goal in life. By freeing oneself from material illusions, he thought, a person could attain union with the world of Being at death, and never be born again. The Platonic metaphysics were separate from God, because they outlined how the world itself was laid out. It was because of the nature of the dual-world existence that their morality of intellect was formed; not because of any religious ethics. Since the world of Being was described as invisible, timeless, true, and holding all true forms of matter in the world of Becoming, only the most perfect things went there. Additionally, because the world of Being, if in a physical location, would be beyond the ether in the concentric realms of existence, the Gods would actually not dwell there. They were thought to dwell on Mount Olympus, which was in the realm of Fire. Though esteemed, they were not as pure as the Truth itself, and therefore I tend to think the Truth could easily exist without them. Socrates does mention the Gods, however, in his account of the afterlife. While this may seem contrary to Platonic metaphysics, Socrates does believe the soul goes many places before reaching its final destination after death. The Gods could still logically be a part of the afterlife though they were not the purest forms of existence, and at any rate, there is no real mention of their being integral to Truth. The Greek Gods really aren't even said to know or reveal any Truth; Socrates seeks truth with his own intellectual powers. Immanuel Kant lived after Christianity had taken hold; a power that deeply imbued religion into the moral system of its time. Still, thought Kant was a religious man, he took a pragmatic approach to morality. Because not all cultures shared the same God, as was becoming apparent as different nations began to come in contact with each other, there should be a moral system that could apply to any of them. He sought this ultimate morality, this categorical imperative, with pure logic. He thought that no one could understand morals just from being told about them; they must use their intellect to understand morality for themselves. This would imply that one could not seek morality from a church official, because he should find out for himself. Thus, it seems that religion is more a way to suggest behavior to people than a means to Truth. John Stuart Mill, though very different in his thinking from Kant, also leaves the existence of God optional to morality. He advocates human happiness-a shocking proposition at first glance to those who believe in serving God. He reasons, however, that if God did exist and was all-good, he would rather his creatures be happy than subservient and miserable. But, regardless of whether God existed, man was capable of improving the human condition simply by trying to keep himself and everyone immediately around him happy. Surely, if Mill allowed for God's will in his philosophy, but still did not make it integral, he could defend his ideas without God's existing. In practice, people certainly do not require a God to please themselves-the very reason Mill's ideas were avoided by the religious. Still, the power of religion to influence people's behavior cannot be denied. Religious people are driven to do the most compassionate and the most hateful things in glorification of God; but does that passion stem from God himself, or just people's minds? Augustine, one of the most important and strict Christian authors, based the morality he finally found on a constant meditation on God. This gave him divine knowledge, or at least hope of it, and strength to abstain from immoral acts. Any time his consciousness slipped away from God, he regarded his actions as sin. This raises the question: without God, then, how would Augustine's morality have any meaning? Augustine was, it seems, a broken man by the time he arrived at the Monastery. He lived a life of sin and misery, always searching for a way to believe in God and falling short with every ideology he followed. Only after being prepared by forming small pieces of his Truth from experiences with Manichaeism and Neo-Platonism could he accept the Christian faith when he came to it in his 30's. Only then could he achieve celibacy and a sense of goodness. Though Augustine held a deep passion for God and devoted his life to understanding God's nature, his abnormally strict morality may have been the means he needed to turn his life around when nothing else would. Even today, chaplains try to persuade criminals to come to Jesus in hopes that they will change their morality. Though there is no way to know for sure, it is possible that Augustine drove himself into a passion about sin that he believed to be divine, though it was really all in his mind. If God did not exist, merely believing in Him is valid, if only because it makes life more worthwhile, and the believer more compassionate. That person could have important morals based on an imaginary being, and a religious passion that stemmed merely from his strong will, so long as it helped him feel and act righteous. Even the less extreme version of Western Christian morality today, which does not require a constant focus upon God, does use morality as incentive to get to heaven. This tenet is founded on divine laws, set by God, that one must follow to achieve salvation. If God was one day found not to exist, would our culture dissent, and stop lending eggs to neighbors, stopping at red lights and telling the truth? There are so many other philosophies and ways of thought, that most likely, the common morality would be replaced by something more secular. Moral anarchy could not last long; it is people's nature to make rules for themselves. The realization that acting in a "right" way improves the human condition lends itself to forming a morality outside of absolute decree from God. Though many important and noble philosophies have been both secular and based on God's will, I believe humans invent their own morality, in whatever form in comes. Since there is no physical voice of God telling us what to do, whatever laws we follow are laws we have imagined ourselves. Whether or not our actions in this life determine whether our soul go to Heaven or not after death is irrelevant to day-to-day life. Morality guides us in our day-to-day activities, and shapes the experiences we seek. The human mind leads itself where it wants to go-a practice intrinsic to rational beings. .