Morality and Religious Thought

A thought that I desire to further pursue is the impetus that many religious theories present in order to promote moral behavior. Its a trend that I noticed a long time ago and was a part of my criticism of Christianity. The idea that I had a problem with is the idea of having to morally behave because of another reason other than just to act morally. I know Immanuel Kant explores this idea through his categorical imperative, but I will look at that another day. Right now, I just want to continue to explore basic religious reasons to act morally.

To begin, I'm going to examine an ideology that I am most familiar with, Christianity. Christianity poses that the reason we need to behave morally is because it is a commandment of God and is required to be a good servant of him. This continues with the story of Jesus being as a divine savior teaching people that the way to get into heaven is through kindness and other moral behavior. Thus, moral behavior is an imperative for a Christian because of the implications your actions have on your success in the afterlife. If you do not act in the kind loving way that Jesus acts in your earthly life, you will be denied access into the divine eternal life promised to you by God for your good deeds. Moral behavior exists because God says that we must act in this way to get to heaven.

The problem that I have with this explanation is that is presents moral behavior as something innately God-like. To act with kindness and compassion are all things that are what God wants us to do, and because it is humanity's lot to please God in order to achieve eternal salvation, we must follow suite. The reason that we act morally is because God told us to. The problem I have with this is that it puts the only motivation for acting morally in the hands of an external God's command.

Setting aside the Christian tradition to look at Eastern religious thought, a similar, but distinct, theory also emerges. I would like to know more about the Confucian and Hindi traditions, and I am not going to pretend to be an expert, but for the sake of this argument I have extracted the following impetus for moral behavior. Because of our inherent egoism and perception of an individual existence, we have come into an identity crisis with ourselves. They propose that human in suffering from an existential crisis of sorts and that the way to alleviate this suffering is to understand our intertwined reality. For Confucianism I understand this to be the understanding of the distinction between Destiny and the Decree of Heaven. For Confucianists, material wealth, political status, and personal longevity are all things that are determined by Destiny. This makes striving for them in our lives a waste of time and a cause for other vices such as greed, stealing, and gluttony. Because these things are out of our control, we should aim to commit ourselves to instead becoming aligned with the Decree of Heaven, an understanding that the only thing that we can control is ability to be morally disciplined and live in "the Way of the Sages". So, the reason to behave morally is to alleviate our suffering due to the misconceptions we have about Destiny and instead look to achieving oneness with the Decree of Heaven. Hinduism has a similar explanation. It poses that the differences we perceive in the world are illusions and that everything is interconnected with the Brahman and the Atman. Everything is Brahman and nothing is Brahman. In this way, the illusion that we are disconnected to others around leading to our immoral behavior is fundamentally flawed because there are no separations. Because of this, to alleviate the human ignorance of universal connectivity by understanding the Brahman and Atman is what ultimately causes us to behave morally.

Both of these theories propose that, similar to the Christian faith, it follows from our effort to alleviate our suffering caused by a misunderstanding of the world to behave in a moral way. In these two religions it is just painted in a must different fashion.

So, are these other religions acting morally because it is the correct thing to do, or are they acting morally for the same seemingly selfish reasons that Christianity has urged its followed with. Is there a difference between understanding that the only thing worth pursuing in life is correct moral behavior, therefore pushing one to behave in this way, and the idea that to have an eternal afterlife I must behave morally. Are one of these more or less selfish than the other? Are either selfish? What does it mean to be selfish, if indeed you do understand that the only thing worth living for is pursuit of this moral behavior, wouldn't it then simply be logical to pursue it?

These questions will require further thought into what it means to be selfish and if this is dependent upon our theory of existence. Also, a refined theory of morality will also be required in the interpretation of what sorts of behaviors are being recommended in these religions.