Are there connections between religion and ethics? Can ethics be non-religious?

Like many of you, I was pleased by Vice-Presidential candidate Joseph Lieberman's exuberant invocations of  God and faith during his early public appearances. His faith makes Lieberman Lieberman. It helps us understand why he does politics the way he does.  After about two weeks, however, the Senator slammed on the brakes.

Throttler-in-chief Al Gore had been at work. Choking merrily away as well had been Abe Foxman, President of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). Foxman and ADL wrote Lieberman to cool it. For the Senator's frequent references to religion while campaigning 

"risks alienating the American people.... None of our citizens, including atheistic Americans, should be made to feel outside of the electoral or political process," 

The argument  was also made that some Americans do not derive their morals or ethics from religion. That's news?

Of course ethics does not have to be derived from religion. Whether you think of religion as "ultimate concern" or "practices designed to relate man to God" or something similar, a non-religious ethics can be worked out and is practiced.

Reason and experience have created non-revealed, respectable (as well as lazy or perverse) philosophies of what makes human  behavior good or evil. Aristotle, for one, developed a theory with heavy emphasis that what is good  tends towards a mean between two extremes. Stoic philosophers, like Nero's teacher Seneca, developed general moral principles which early Christian writers found highly congenial.

But many heathen practices were vigorously  rejected by religious leaders: for example, dressing immodestly  and appearing nude in athletic performances. Church fathers were particularly harsh about the self-absorbed, "pleasure is first" ethics of Epicurus.

There exists no one self-evident ethics "out there." There are many
systems. And some are at war with others. It is self-deception when the State of North Carolina hands out  texts of non-religious "universally accepted ethics" to volunteers  who teach morality to prisoners.  What system do they teach? Utilitarianism? Situational Ethics? Pragmatism? Natural Law? The theses of Schopenhauer? Nietzsche? Plato? John Stuart Mill?  One prison teacher admitted, "we teach the Ten Commandments, thinly disguised."

Let's concede something humbling. To create from nothing our own personal ethical system is beyond the intellectual prowess of almost all of us. Even if we succeed, how many will we persuade to embrace Killoughism or Fishburneism or Ramseyism? Is our mental construct likely to blow away all competitors? I think not.

Enter God and His helpful, loving  commands.  Most people begin learning right from wrong, along with how to pray, from their mother.  And she learned much of it in church or synagogue. Mama may not mind if  her daughters grow up to be Aristotelians or Pragmatists. But, like Joseph Lieberman, mother mainly trusts her God to rule out a lot of tempting systems leading either nowhere or to the pit. We can trust rules coming from God, Ten Commandments and Beatitudes. They lay the basis for balance, sanity, courtesy, holiness and peace on earth. Lord God, we thank You very much!

-OOO-

 for INDEPENDENT TORCH