A popular statement touring the social networks states, “You don’t need religion to have morals. If you cannot determine right from wrong, you lack empathy, not religion.” Kane Bailey makes a claim to having coined this. To analyze such a statement one would need to understand the definition of the terms. First, what is meant by morals, second, what was meant by empathy, and finally, what was meant by religion. However, the statement fails in its construction so no need to define the terms.
My first observation is that it appears someone wants to do away with the need for religion, and the statement seems to be biased in that direction. Indeed, in my research I discovered that it is the statement of an agnostic.
The presupposition of this proclamation is that all morals can be defined or determined through empathy. Right and wrong are somehow miraculously discerned through one’s deeds of empathy. To see the faulty logic in this we only need to ask, “Why?” You see, that shows you that you are at a dead end. The statement is circular reasoning. It assumes the statement. The other problem with this statement is that it commits an equivocation fallacy. If you look carefully the first statement speaks of “having morals” while the second statement speaks of “determining morals.” These are two completely separate issues. The first statement can be true, while the second statement seeks to ride the coattails of the first, but when analyzed properly, is actually found to be false.
Even the Bible states that, “For the whole Law is fulfilled in one word, in the statement, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR AS YOURSELF.’” (Galatians 5:14) One does not “need” religion to do this. However, if one wants to know what morality is, what is right or what is wrong, one cannot discover it by merely having empathy. For instance, what if I have empathy for the “wrong” thing? How would I know it was wrong? What if I had empathy for a murderer? We have a number of cases where we have witnessed a member of a jury taking the side of the murderer. If empathy were the determining factor of discerning right from wrong then we could never question one’s empathy, could we?
Morality is actually something that transcends human behavior, feeling, or thought and has an absolute quality where it cannot change. This is why we humans know intrinsically that certain things are wrong. They have always been wrong, because they existed before humanity itself. That standard is indeed learned through a particular religion….Judeo Christianity. Without a written transcendent standard of morality, morals would be defined by the individual, which would result in a plethora of moral claims with nothing more than the authority of the individual to substantiate it. Morality can only be defined by the Creator, else it carries no real definition.
Don’t shoot the messenger!
