Q&A: Faith and Morality
Faith and Morality
Question
Hello,
Attached is an article from Drops of Sanity.
Eve of the Sabbath, Parashat Shoftim, 5777
Answer
R. D., do you really think Nazism was the result of a lack of faith? Some of them were believing Christians. Was ISIS also the result of a lack of faith? And what about our own “zealots”? Is that too the result of a lack of faith?
If you’ll allow me one more bit of heresy, in my humble opinion nowadays faith does nothing in the realm of morality. There are good people and bad people everywhere, and it is character and morality that determine things, not faith. Faith is a second story, and it has no connection to morality.
I recall that Dawkins once wrote that in every society there are good people who do good deeds and bad people who do bad deeds, but only in religious society are there good people who do bad deeds. Notice that you wrote something similar, only the reverse. I disagree with both of you.
By the way, this may perhaps be a success of the Torah and faith, which in the past managed to instill moral values in the entire world, and therefore today this is seen as self-evident and binding on every enlightened person. But bottom line, today there is no significant difference in my opinion between believers and non-believers. This is another slogan that in my opinion ought to be gotten rid of, and this also emerges from what you yourself wrote here (and in earlier issues as well).
Discussion on Answer
I too, humble as I am, have written at great length in many places that there is no way to ground morality without faith. But that is a theoretical claim. In practice I do not think secular people are less moral. Their behavior is moral, but it is not consistent (because they have no valid reason for it).
I think the test of experience proves otherwise than what you say regarding “small thefts.”
True, no secular person would mug an old woman as she takes out her National Insurance money at the ATM.
But dozens of secular soldiers in my company ate grapes to their heart’s content, and even put some into their packs, when the patrol passed through a vineyard.
No religious soldier in the company touched them.
All the secular guys were astonished when they heard that we don’t burn discs or download albums from the internet because it’s theft. (And this is pure morality, not Jewish law, because in Jewish law, as is known, some permit it under the principle of “like something swept away by the sea,” and I can’t go into it here at length.)
Many secular soldiers would “complete their gear.” Of course, not from their own clique, not from the veterans, but from the “gaping youngsters” who had just arrived in the company. Quite a lot of religious soldiers were punished severely, but they did not “complete their gear,” even though they had the opportunity.
And in civilian life: I haven’t done research, but my impression is that more believing people would refrain from taking pickles at the supermarket without paying.
True, a secular person would return change that he got by mistake to the neighborhood grocer,
but many more believing people would call Cellcom to report a mistake in their favor.
In my opinion, the reason for the difference is that Torah and religion instill in consciousness the *absoluteness* of the moral command (like the absoluteness of the halakhic command), even in cases that are harder to deal with and where the temptation is greater.
There is indeed something to those examples (although I also don’t entirely agree with some of them), and still we are talking about the margins. These are small acts, and precisely because of that there is a difference between religious and secular people. The former see this as a formal prohibition, while the latter see it as a prohibition against harming another person, and here there is no significant harm. By the way, “but into your vessel you shall not put any” also permits, even according to Jewish law, eating in your fellow’s vineyard.
It is true that for someone who does not accept the first, basic moral level as the standard for interpreting faith, faith will not help him; on the contrary, in the name of religion he will indeed carry out every crime in the world with holy fervor. And about this I have indeed written several times already. And indeed, the Lithuanian yeshiva message [the one I know; I don’t know what happens among others] that says basic morality is just a nuisance and should not be relied upon is terrible and horrifying.
But it seems to me that someone who accepts unconditionally that natural morality is foundational in everything having to do with a person’s service of God and morality—faith: (a) obligates him also toward Heaven, and this is a firmer commitment to these values, so that even when his inclination tempts him to violate those values he will refrain more than a person who is not also committed to the Holy One, blessed be He. (b) The commandments and prohibitions refine him and turn him into a person with a more spiritual personality.
And in general, it seems to me that religion is what gives a person the power to feel that he lives for someone else, unlike the heretical person, who in the end lives for himself, and the values he believes in are there so that the society in which he lives will be more comfortable for him.
I once heard from the philosophy professor who was the brother of Rabbi Eliyahu ben Shlomo of blessed memory: a Nobel Prize in philosophy should go to whoever proves that there is a reason to be a person of values even without commitment to God.
The Nazis denied the very basis of initial moral commitment, and therefore even for a Nazi Christian, religion was not supposed to stop him. And likewise here.