Tuesday, October 6, 2009
Natural Law and Religion
Natural law theorists need to ground their views about the moral content of law in theological accounts of the universe, because much of this moral content can be traced back to a specific religious tradition, or if not then simply to a belief in a higher power or karma. This strategy provides backing by important texts such as the bible, and writings by other religious scholars and philosophers such as St. Thomas Aquinas. In his scriptural commentary entitled Summa contra Gentiles, Aquinas states that humans rely primarily on the senses for natural knowledge and this is exemplified by the gentiles’ knowledge of God, which he claims can be known by natural reason. This phenomenon is also brought to light in the New Testament in the passage Romans 2:14: “For when Gentiles who do not have the Law do instinctively the things of the Law, these, not having the Law, are a law to themselves.” [New American Standard Bible (©1995)] One particular danger to this approach is that someone who is an atheist can claim that since they do not believe in religion and a higher power, they are not obliged to adhere to the natural law. The attempt to hold the law to a universal and unchanging set of moral standards does not necessarily imply a fundamentally “religious” attitude. Someone who does not believe in religion would still most likely adhere to the aforementioned natural law since much of what it dictates comes naturally through human nature in itself and does not necessarily need to be taught.
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So, an atheist or someone who did not accept the Bible as the word of God, e.g. a Muslim, would not need to take a theologically based version of natural law seriously because s/he would have a different set of theologically based moral obligations, right? At the same time, such individuals would have a reason to accept Aquinas's account of natural law, not because it states a theological truth, but because it states an empirical truth that anyone can observe regardless of their religious or cultural background.
ReplyDeleteIf that is true, how do we explain the variety of moral and ethical systems we observe in different cultures occupying different geographical regions? Aquinas's response is that empirical observation is insufficient to explain all of our moral, and consequently many of our legal, obligations.
For example, assistance to the poor might seem optional on an individual level because it's unclear how this would serve our individual interest, much less everyone's interest, i.e. the common good. To some extent, Aquinas might argue that this virtue has to be accepted as a matter of "faith" (not religious faith, but faith in the unobserved) rather than in terms of observable, measurable, empirical value because there is no universally shared agreement on the value of this activity, much less its practice. Since, many moral values necessary for the common good do not have widespread acceptance, which would constitute empirical value, their justification is primarily non-empirical, faith-based or "religious" in a broad sense.
I like your point about how even though a person is not religious per say, they still adhere to rules and laws that were created morally for the good of the whole. I feel that people take religion too harshly. They solely think of God and Heaven and angels. But religious morality has given us many rules and laws that we still use today and that make our society work as well as it does.
ReplyDeleteIt could be said that several personal morals that are actually shared by most are not religiously based. For example, "Good Samaritan" Laws, which admittedly appear in fewer and fewer states, require onlookers and bystanders, witnessing a crime that won't mortally put them in danger by interfering, to do something to help. These laws started as most realistically because of an overall mutual human feeling that people should not have to be subjective to danger or crime if there is a third party who is capable of preventing that situation. This seems to be more of a humanistic nurturing type of moral than a so called "heaven sent" moral.
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