XPost: soc.culture.german, soc.culture.greek, soc.culture.turkish   
   XPost: soc.culture.usa   
   From: mr.alistair.sim@gmail.com   
      
   Moral Values Without Religion   
   Tuesday, May 24, 2005   
   By: Peter Schwartz   
      
   The alternative to the dogmatism of the religious right and the   
   emotionalism of the egalitarian left is a code of moral absolutes   
   based on reason and individualism.   
      
   Does morality depend upon religion? Most people believe it does, which   
   is a major reason behind the appeal of the religious right. People   
   believe that without faith in a supernatural authority, we can have no   
   moral values--no moral absolutes, no black-and-white distinctions, no   
   firm demarcation between good and evil--in life or in politics. This   
   is the assumption underlying Justice Antonin Scalia's recent assertion   
   that "government derives its authority from God," since only religious   
   faith can supposedly provide moral constraints on human action.   
      
   And what draws people to this bizarre premise--the premise that there   
   is no rational basis for refraining from murder, rape or anarchism?   
   The left's persistent assault on moral values.   
      
   That is, liberals characteristically renounce moral absolutes in favor   
   of moral grayness. They insist, for example, that criminals should not   
   be reviled, but should be seen as tragic products of their "social   
   environment"--that teenage mothers are just as entitled to welfare   
   checks as wage-earners are to their paychecks, and that to deny   
   welfare benefits for a child born into a family already receiving   
   welfare is, as the ACLU declares, to "unconstitutionally coerce   
   women's reproductive decisions"--that America is morally equivalent to   
   its enemies, with our own policies having provoked the Sept. 11   
   attacks and our "unilateralist" actions in Iraq being no different   
   from any forcible occupation of one nation by another.   
      
   Repulsed by such egalitarian, anti-"judgmental" absurdities, many   
   people disavow what they regard as leftism's essence: secularism, and   
   turn to religion for their values.   
      
   But this is a false alternative. Secularism is simply a viewpoint that   
   disclaims religion; what it embraces, though, may be rational or not.   
   And the absurdities of the left stem precisely from its   
   irrationality--its pervasive emotionalism, its insistence on doing   
   whatever "feels right," its contention that there are no fixed truths,   
   its credo that morality is anything one wishes it to be. The left   
   maintains that no objective principles exist to validate moral   
   judgments. From its multicultural equalization of all   
   societies--savage or civilized--to its belief in an indefinable,   
   "evolving" Constitution, the left rejects the logic of objective   
   standards and enshrines the arbitrariness of subjectivism. Thus, what   
   the left's opponents should disavow is not secularism per se, but   
   rather the replacement of a religious variant of unreason--blind   
   faith--with a secular variant: blind feelings.   
      
   The real alternative to the leftist claptrap is a morality of reason.   
   Such a morality begins with the individual's life as the primary value   
   and identifies the further values that are demonstrably required to   
   sustain that life. It observes that man's nature demands that we live   
   not by random urges or by animal instincts, but by the faculty that   
   distinguishes us from animals and on which our existence fundamentally   
   depends: rationality.   
      
   With reason as its cardinal value, this code of individualism espouses   
   fixed principles and categorical moral judgments. It demands, for   
   instance, that the initiation of force--the antithesis of reason--be   
   denounced and that an unbridgeable moral chasm be recognized between   
   the criminal and the non-criminal.   
      
   Since life requires man to produce what he needs, productiveness is a   
   moral value--thereby making moral opposites out of the industrious   
   worker and the parasitic welfare recipient. Since life requires man to   
   use his own judgment rather than submissively accept the assertions of   
   others, independence is a moral value--making moral opposites out of   
   the person (or nation) acting on his own rational convictions and the   
   one deferring to the consensus of his neighbors (or the U.N.). Since   
   life requires the mind, man's political system must allow him to use   
   it, i.e., freedom is a moral value--making moral opposites out of   
   America, the defender of liberty, and America's enemies, who seek   
   liberty's destruction.   
      
   A morality of reason counters the relativism and the undiscriminating   
   "tolerance" of the left.   
      
   It also counters a morality of faith, and establishes a genuine   
   "culture of life." Individualism upholds your sovereignty over your   
   life--and refuses to subordinate the preservation of that life to,   
   say, the preservation of embryonic stem cells in some petri dish.   
   Individualism defends your inalienable right to your life, including   
   your right to end it--and evaluates, say, opposition to   
   assisted-suicide as a desecration of human life, since forcing someone   
   to live who wishes to die is no less evil than forcing someone to die   
   who wishes to live.   
      
   There is indeed morality without religion--a morality, not of dogmatic   
   commands, but of rational values and of unbreached respect for the   
   life of the individual.   
      
   Peter Schwartz is chairman of the board of directors of the Ayn Rand   
   Institute in Irvine, California. The Institute promotes the ideas of   
   Ayn Rand--best-selling author of Atlas Shrugged and The Fountainhead   
   and originator of the philosophy of Objectivism.   
      
   This Op-Ed was published in the Post-Tribune, IN (June 2, 2005)   
      
      
   --   
   Alistair Sim   
      
      
      
      
   "I am the Whistler, and I know many things, for I walk by night. I   
   know many strange tales, many secrets hidden in the hearts of men and   
   women who have stepped into the shadows. Yes, I know the nameless   
   terrors of which they dare not speak."   
      
      
      
      
   They seek him here   
   They seek him there.   
   Those Frenchies seek him everywhere.   
   Is he in heaven?   
   Or is he in hell? That damned elusive Pimpernel!   
      
      
   "How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the   
   impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?"   
      
      
      
      
   The little things are infinitely more important."   
      
      
      
      
      
   "I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for   
   trifles."   
      
      
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