Is Religion an Essential Scaffolding for Morality?

 

Is Religion an Essential Scaffolding for Morality?

 If morality is assigned to the whole of humanity, the subject matter would be so vast that this pea-sized brain cannot handle it. But, if morality is to be taken for adherents of one religion after another, I do not feel so diffident. So, it will be that, in this post.

The religions that I am aware of have many versions–for some of them running into thousands–and even lay people of one version of a particular religion would be in the dark about the other versions.  Therefore, I would confine myself to only a general or overall analysis, and discuss how religion guides morality, if it really does.

My first stop is, Scientism. I believe in science but I do not go too far (not an objective assessment) in my belief. But the religion of Scientism goes all the way on the slippery slope without exit ramps. I would explain.

I am convinced that science is always a half-way house. Always. It is like Zeno’s Paradox. I believe that Scientism’s claim that reality can be assessed only through the methods of science is less than partly true. Every time, for example, a major thesis is “proved”–like the existence of the God Particle, the Higgs Boson–more of the gaps in fundamental reality, or what physicists think they are, are revealed.

No, my position is precisely skewed to the theists’ argument from “God of the gaps,” which stops further probing of reality. Science promotes such investigations, but differs from Scientism; science is confident that it can never get a solid grasp of reality, should such a thing existed.

One might say that my position is close enough to be tagged the Advaita Philosophy (non-dualism) that posits with certainty Maya, the illusion. I beg to differ, by the conditional phrase that ends the previous paragraph, to repeat: “...should such a thing existed.” Is multi-verse reality? It is not that we do not know, but we cannot know.

Scientism believes (this belief) belies the fundamental aspect of science. Hence, it is not science, but is religion. It promotes its own paths to morality, but has no purchase on the idea that it underpins morality.

The next religion I wish to analyse is Scientology. This is not a straw-man I am setting up to topple easily.

The picture below of a building associated with Scientology sports a Cross at the top. Then, it is religion!

My cousin, an IIT product (he set the goal for me), got his MS from Penn State University in Mechanical Engineering (his All India JEE rank was 32, and mine was 1493), and fell headlong into the abyss of Scientology. He tried to get me to follow his path and I successfully desisted (so, I am intelligent, after all, though my All India JEE rank resembled the ends of the bridal train that sweeps the church floor!). The above picture is the “corporate” HQ of Scientology, I believe. Its motto is a string of mumbo jumbo words–Dianetics, Engrams, Thetans– and nothing more than words that are pronounceable! Tom Cruise is a member. That could tell you about that institution–has talent and know how to make money!

For every Scientology, there are perhaps dozens of religious orders–scams (?)–in India. I am going to skip them.

Then, I come to Jewish religion, which with a long coastline (Trump is eyeing this as sites for his bound-to-fail casinos) is much in the news currently, all because its adherents are claiming that certain real estate, indeed almost the entire Levant, has been given permanently by a land deed to them by their God. I do not blame the Jews.

Indians of the past three decades or so do exactly what Israelites are doing, except that the former cannot claim any God-given authority. They make money abroad (the US, the UK, the Nordic countries, oil-rich Middle East) and buy land (plots mainly and build ostentatious, glass fronted (?) houses, not to live in them, but wait for land value to shoot up–mere speculative bubble building). No wonder, if you conducted a survey you would find the state of Israel finds favour among them, and also among those like me who missed the bus, but wistfully.

Basically, Jewish religion now seems to take pleasure in agreeing with what Shakespeare, an antisemite he must have been, wrote in Merchant of Venice!

Christianity. A perfect example of myths creating havoc. The schisms in Christianity is self-inflicted. Calvin and Martin Luther were Christians, but the movements they created divided the religion permanently. Then, within the Levant we have Syrian Maronites, and you travel eastward from Christianity’s birthplace, the Levant, and you come across, Greek Orthodox, then Russian Orthodox.  Anglicans (The Archbishop of Canterbury), and in the US, so many, Methodists, Baptists, Southern Baptists, Episcopalians, Presbyterians and on and on. Every one of these divisions must have been created by one myth trying to transplant another and in the process mutating.

I know not much about Islam except that there are at least two steams, Sunni and Shia, within it. Are they divided by doctrinal issues or by other power seeking strategies/tactics? Yet, look at them through the lens of Iran-Iraq war of the late 1980s, or the Iraq “invasion” of Kuwait straddling the ‘80s and the ‘90s. Those wars were definitely not theological disputes going out of control, but down to capturing resources (read oil) and getting access to the high seas.

To be fair, one may wish to acknowledge that the UK did play mischief by creating Kuwait merely to deny Iraq a port on the waters of the Persian Gulf, as one reading of history points out. Even if Islam started out as an effort to endow the population with morality, it failed to do so in the far past (near to its beginning) and also in the near past (a little more than three decades ago).

Hinduism is almost beyond the pale in this discussion, yet I will try my hand at it. The religion is not a religion, its adherents say, but merely a way of life. This alternative definition is merely obfuscation, and not a good one at that. If it indeed is a way of life approved by it, then the way of life endorses caste with all its injustices. Its misogyny is no less positively endorsed. Its bias against the lower castes in terms of training and learning are stories/episodes in its epic, the Mahabharat–the story of Ekalavya, and also the curse visited upon Karna by Parasuram for not being a Brahmin. Some morality.

I can write much more but I would not know when or how to end. Hence, I end it here abruptly, merely pointing out that morality seems to play no part in Hinduisms scripture, its philosophy, its recitations (Mantras). Such instances can also be easily found in the other anchor, Ramayana. Hindus live multiple lives, and they have to, jumping from one branch to another.

Oh, that brings me to another episode, an epilogue: How Rama killed Vaali, the monkey king, from behind a tree.    Rama applies human morality (of those times perhaps, but definitely not enlightened and current) to monkeys; morality attributed falsely, inappropriately, shall we say? Indra, one of the supreme strong men in Rg Veda gets sequentially reduced in the following scriptures and ends up begging to be saved from his (not His, as must have been in the Rg Veda) whenever under threat. Is there a moral in it? I am playing hide-and-seek!

Jainism seems to me to be neither here nor there. I have visited Jain Temples (they are galore near Kanchipuram where I did my schooling) and it is confusion, with idols of Hindu Gods, prominently the Goddess Sarawathi. This is good, prominence to education, a good piece of morality!

But, I have taken a shine to Buddhism, not as it is being practised (so corrupted) but as taught by the Buddha (Siddhartha Gowthama), more appropriately as understood by me. The Buddha was not interested in metaphysics; merely wanted to reduce the suffering people felt as they went about their life. Is there any moral in it? I do not know. Can it be classified as a religion? I do not know.

Let that be.

Raghuram Ekambaram

P. S. You may choose to believe that I got all the above about the various religions, including Christianity, Jewish religion, and Islam, from the Net, but that would be false. Christianity and to somewhat lesser extent other religions, merely by their plurality, has fascinated me for over forty years. Much of what I have written is from my memory, and while I am reasonably confident that my memory has not failed me in the main, I do not vouch for what I have written here.