Creating space in our lives for compassion, for awe and beauty, for discipline and self-sacrifice – these are time-tested pathways to a deeper and more effective life. Better in what sense? More effective in what way? A simple answer? Living in such a way as to maximize the happiness of all – giving everyone the opportunity for a successful and meaningful life.

We’ve embraced a natural model for how things work based on scientific principles, yet we build our spiritual life on outmoded speculation and assumptions about the world that we know to be false. Instead, let’s take what we are learning about the foundations of ethics, of community, of morality – and use this growing understanding to make a new map of human spirituality.

Just like ancient maps were often very wrong – and yet did identify historical towns and landmarks with some accuracy, these new maps will continue to identify touchstones like compassion, meditation, self-discipline (to name a few), but these can now be placed in the context of the natural world and our modern discoveries about the nature of our brain, our communities, and the vast universe we inhabit.

The result is a life that honors virtue, discipline and sacrifice – but in the service of a more just and compassionate life for ourselves, our family, our neighbors, the people of the world and the earth itself.

As a result of our experiences and perceptions, we have the ability to modify those inherited values – though perhaps not as much as we’d like to think. Many studies have shown that our background and education are far more predictive of our opinions than any other factor. We rationalize our values as if they are based on facts, when in reality we are reflecting the values gained from our community and life experience.

One reason to value intact families and healthy communities (in which the regard for the rights of minorities and the weak is valued), is avoid the alternative – increasing violence and selfishness in communities where the weak are exploited, and minority voices are silenced. We chose values that give us the kind of community we wish to live in, and attempt to restrain those who would build a community that is destructive to our values. Simple, right? So the values we cherish and pass on are pretty important. And like all of life, it is the values we live out that make a lasting impression. Does our community embrace freedom? Reward merit? Embrace diversity? Celebrate charity? Protect the weak? Think about the consequences of its actions? Then these values are what will be passed on. Whatever we say we base our morality on, it will look like the values we actually live out.

From this perspective, absolute right and wrong does not come into it – because absolutes justify our community practice. Like Samuel Clement’s War Prayer illustrates, we invoke absolutes to endorse our actions far more often than to challenge them. Studies show that we even we tend to think of ourselves as more ethical that do those around us (we can’t all be above average, can we?). What is more, the same ethical sources (religion, philosophy, tradition, etc.) in practice embrace a wide range of behavior, with no way to successfully arbitrate who has it right and who has it wrong. So even if we could agree on an absolute standard of morality (which we can’t), and a consistent way to interpret that standard (which we don’t), we’d still view ourselves as meeting that standard more often that we actually do.

So would a dictatorial, slave-owning, misogynistic community, lacking substantial civil liberties or social safety net be wrong? Interestingly, these are descriptions of many fundamentalist religious communities – and since they are endorsed by God, how can effective theistic arguments be put forward to reject them? Yes, this community model is rejected (at least in parts) by many religious proponents, but what these religious defenders of liberal democracy actually do is to clothe enlightenment arguments (modern community values) in religious language – re-imagining faith for modern sensibilities.

In other words, values are based on a community consensus. This is why it is so important that liberal democratic values be articulated and defended. What is at stake is the very definition of good and evil, right and wrong. No source – religion, philosophy, science or culture, can provide an absolute standard of morality. Such a standard has never existed, and can never exist (if you doubt this, just survey the various understandings of right and wrong practiced by various religions over time and from place-to place. Even though segments within this diverse group base their competing claims on the same revelations and sacred traditions, very different ideas of morality, community, fairness and justice emerge).

What can and does exist is a series of overlapping cultural practices – our values – that are then justified by appeal to tradition, or reason or faith. Humans consciously engineer their sense of morality; we cannot afford to let that engineering run on autopilot, or worse, be hijacked for economic, political or religious opportunism.

For example, the ongoing consumerisation of culture is a conscious effort to change our community values. Not because anyone thinks that there is any moral or ethical value in consuming more and more, or in investing one’s sense of self in the things we own or consume, but because it serves the economic interests of corporations. This change has come about, not because of a religious revelation or because a group of philosophers or elders or community leaders urged this path on us – it has come about because people with money have undertaken an orchestrated campaign to change our behavior (though only to make more money). This change has fundamentally shifted the values of most everybody it has reached. When religious movements reject the “westernization” of their culture, they are not primarily talking about the sex and violence and personal freedoms of the West (though these may be some of the most tangible exports). They are talking about the switch in self-identity from one who primarily defines themselves in relationship to god, to an identity defined by what they consume. Though this is a classic conflict, the global consumer culture is exerting pressure in ways never before possible – resulting in unprecedented secularization, even within religious communities.

We have been experimenting with an economic theory that holds above all that markets are rational, and that they work like an invisible hand to provide the best possible economic system for the largest group of people. Perhaps what we have neglected to notice is that community is the source of our values, and when you change the community, you change the values.

One of the trends fueling the resurgence of conservative religion is the desire to find models for community – and values – that work. What remains to be seen is if we can rediscover positive community values without reverting to the often irrational, authoritarian models rooted in theocracies.

Because super-naturalism is an attempt to explain the world without the tools of science and rational thinking. I do not mean that no one in the ancient world thought rationally or even scientifically – I mean that the world was largely hidden to us. We used intuition and story to make sense of the world. It turns out that this can take us so far in an accurate direction before we are swamped by unfounded assumptions and lose our way among inaccurate suppositions. Unable to make sense of the world we observed, we assumed that there was another world – populated by gods and monsters who were the ones responsible for the mystery and chaos around us.

We cultivated these creatures as a way of learning about ourselves, our world and our place in it. We formed religions and ways of life based on the certainty that we now knew important truths about the world, about ourselves, and about the purpose of life. And yet, the gods and spirit beings as described in traditions and ancient texts are obviously myths, and the quality of the facts and values they communicated turn out to range from inconsistent to simply wrong. Yes, there is some deep truth and enduring wisdom in among the myth and history. But it is mixed in with lots that is not helpful, much that is hurtful, and lots that we eagerly reject.

All the same, sometimes these religions seem to work. And by work, I mean that there is embedded in these belief systems observations about how humans can be made to behave, how we can structure our internal life and our interactions with our larger community that people find useful or acceptable, sometimes even noble or uplifting. This is in stark contrast to mere facts. The fact of evolution, the facts of chemistry, astronomy, geology. Not only do we have lots to learn, but much of what we have discovered is still new, still tentative, still incomplete. If naturalism is a new religion, the texts are not yet complete, and some have not even been started yet.

Naturalism – and I don’t mean the worship of nature, or our natures, or even any kind of worship at all. What I mean is that the best way to learn about the world, learn about ourselves, is to study it. Religions’s claims need to be tested. Newton gave us the laws of motion, but he also believed that equatorial gold had special alchemical properties. The laws of motion have proved invaluable, alchemy not so much. Both came from genius, but only one has stood the test of scientific scrutiny.

This scrutiny, this ability to question – free from the charges of impiety and blasphemy – what is really new and powerful in what is practiced as the scientific method. This is what is threatened by the demands of various faiths that their “revelations” be accorded priority, or at least equal weight, when seeking to understand the world (which includes us). Science advances when smart people question assumptions, each other, experimental results. We learn about the world when we are willing to see what is there, without ruling out certain possibilities before the fact, or rejecting certain conclusions no-matter the facts. Because we are not very good at this as individuals (or even as cultures), the community of skeptical voices should be wide and deep.

Where super-naturalism falls down is an unwillingness to change bedrock assumptions. When a creationist says that they cannot abandon the idea that everything came from nothing some 6,000 years ago, they are simply defining the real incompatibility between super-naturalism and science – an inability to follow the evidence. When a more liberal apologist claims that religion is a different way of knowing, just as valid as science, they purposely confuse what it means to know.

While it may be true that, through trial and error, humans have affirmed that this or that religious principle bears good fruit, this does not validate religious thought as a way of knowing about things in the real world. As a way of knowing, religion has a pretty poor track record. To just consider the Christian religion, it is wrong about the age, shape and movement of the earth (6,000 years old, flat and at the center of the universe). If you do not believe those things and consider yourself Christian, it simply means that you have edited out teachings you can’t believe in (like slavery, the subjugation of women and capital punishment for things like disobedience). It turns out that what the religion “teaches” (what it knows) changes somewhat from culture to culture and age to age. Seen from this perspective, perhaps religion is more like a mirror than a window – but a mirror with a memory, so that what religion teaches lags somewhat behind what we know.

There is another sense of the word knowing, however, where religion does excel. Religion comes with a story and a narrative. What is more, religion is prescriptive and self-referential in a way that science tends not to be. Religion confidently demands that we change our mind and alter our behavior to conform to the will of the gods. Fellow believers can be assumed to share a similar perspective and ethic. This shared belief system provides the foundation for community, common action and cultural values.

Naturalism has none of this. Of course, religion knows no will of the gods ether – it simply has a claim that it cannot back up. At most, it has a history, a tradition of belief and behavior that has been in some sense successful. Naturalism is perceived as a threat because it strips away the pretense of divine authority for religious claims without providing much in the way of alternative narrative, values and sense of place. I suspect that if naturalism is to take the place of religion, people are going to have to embrace naturalism, and then tease out the implications in a kind of natural philosophy that covers much the same ground as religion, without the supernatural elements and claims to absolute truth.

Of course, if religion is simply another artifact of human culture, then what he has really done is simply pointed us to the fact that behind our secular discourse is a worldview – a way of justifing how we and those around us should live.  Absent a divine fiat, people will disagree (sometimes violently) about the whats and whys.  Unfortunately for Smith’s argument, even with religion, the situation is just that – thousands of different views of the what and hows of public life, with no way to objectively determine what is the best (or even better) way.

Religion does not help us here, except to the degree that we recognize a sort of historical record of what humans have valued in various times and cultures.  It may be true that when we talk about what constitutes a family, or abortion rights, or euthanasia that secular reasoning cannot provide a final answer – but neither can religion.  This is, I suspect, because there is no final answer, just contingent answers that will change over time and place.

This makes the values of liberal democracy all the more important – tolerance, individual freedoms, minority rights, and educated citizenry, and a secular democracy, free from the artificial restrictions of a particular religion.

This is a pretty important idea as we wrestle with the idea of things like what kind of country we want to live in, and how we can build a just, livable and sustainable community.

Often, religious people argue that there is no foundation for morality without some external authority.  That is, ethics exist by fiat – they are whatever god says they are.

This viewpoint is saved from seeming merely arbitrary (whatever god says is good is good), by further positing that because god is good, god’s rules are necessarily good.  Of course, this leads to the question “Would these rules then be binding even if god did not command them?”  Answer yes, and you have rules that do not need a god to validate them.  Answer no, and you have arbitrary rules that we may reasonably chose not to follow – for ethical reasons.  AC Graying, writing about a recent court case in England where a Muslim was given a suspended sentence after breaking someone’s jaw because “he was a religious man” observes:

In the Times a young philosophy graduate turned journalist, Mr Hugo Rifkind, although claiming to sympathise with the National Secular Society’s complaint against Mrs. Blair, further claims that his ‘philosophy degree’ tells him that Mrs. Blair and her Roman Catholic church are the ones who are right in claiming that religious belief ‘gives you a sort of super, better morality, which outweighs everything else’. His reason for saying this is, as he puts it, that ‘There’s no such thing as abstract morality. It doesn’t even make any sense. If God isn’t the ultimate answer, what is?”

This is an awful advertisement for wherever Mr Rifkind studied philosophy. Either that or he was not paying attention in ‘week one’ when it appears (from what he says) his ethics course took place. And he certainly seems to have stopped thinking since then. Let me direct his attention to Socrates, Aristotle, the Stoics, Hume, Kant, and a few dozen others among the thinkers he ought to have come across in his studies, whose ethics are not premised on divine command or the existence of supernatural agencies, but proceed from consideration of what human beings, in this life in this world, owe each other in the way of respect, concern, trust, fairness and honesty. The rich deep tradition of humanistic ethics stemming from classical antiquity has a tendency to make much of what passes for morality in religion (‘give away all your possessions’, ‘take no thought for the morrow’, ‘women must cover their heads in church’) look merely silly or trivial – at least in regard to what is distinctive to the religion, and not part of wider ethics whether religious or non-religious. Indeed Mr Rifkind is somewhat overexposed in philosophical ignorance here, for he ought to know that what is of practical value in Christian ethics is an import from the late Hellenic and Roman schools, mainly Stoicism, in the fourth century CE and later, to supply the want of a livable ethics in a religion that, to begin with, imminently expected the end of the world and had no use for money, marriage, and other aspects of ordinary life. So as the centuries passed it had to look about for something more sensible, and of course found it in the classical pre-Christian tradition. And to put matters in summary terms: the Roman Stoic conception of good character knocks Mrs. Blair’s (and Mr Rifkind’s) into a cocked hat, where they belong.

A more reasonable approach is to recognize that we all have an ethical inheritance that evolved along with our growing success at living in community.  That we exhibit a range of ethical standards makes sense – some approaches to ethics works better than others, depending on where we find ourself.  Further, just like humans display a range of personalities and abilities, so it is with our sense of ethics.  They are highly impacted by our predispositions, our culture and our surrounding environment.  A recent paper titled
The origins of religion : evolved adaptation or by-product? makes the point like this:

Considerable debate has surrounded the question of the origins and evolution of religion. One proposal views religion as an adaptation for cooperation, whereas an alternative proposal views religion as a by-product of evolved, non-religious, cognitive functions. We critically evaluate each approach, explore the link between religion and morality in particular, and argue that recent empirical work in moral psychology provides stronger support for the by-product approach. Specifically, despite differences in religious background, individuals show no difference in the pattern of their moral judgments for unfamiliar moral scenarios. These findings suggest that religion evolved from pre-existing cognitive functions, but that it may then have been subject to selection, creating an adaptively designed system for solving the problem of cooperation.

Why does this matter? Because this is a way forward on two fronts. First, it provides a reasonable rejoinder to the notion that ethics belongs in the realm of religion. Ethical systems are a human invention. This claim will have no more success with fundamentalists than evolution, but it does not preclude the choice of faith – just the insistence that a particular understanding of faith trump science, reason and other faiths. Second, it allows us to create a public debate on issues of morality and ethics without this becoming a clash of religions. Public and private virtue, a citizen’s rights and responsibilities, our obligations to minorities, to the environment, to the future can be discussed and decided, not based on which ancient creed you ascribe to, or which interpretation of the teachings of what religious leader you follow, but based on an educated and informed understanding of what it means to live in the world with other human beings.

So rather than a God who exists, we have, literally, billions of ideas about what you and I think god or gods are like.  Sure, our concepts can be grouped into major categories – one or many, stern or generous, trustworthy or trickster, personal or not, knowable or not. But mostly, we become comfortable with our own ideas of God, and we mostly live with the consequences.

Maybe this does not matter, maybe this helps us more than it hurts us. But I do have doubts – when, for example, we reject gender equality based on our beliefs about God, or reject information about our origins, or the age of the cosmos, or reach conclusions about the intentions of entire cultures or races – because of our religious preconceptions.

If we start off with false assumptions -about who we are, where we come from, who we owe our allegiance to, about what makes an act moral or just – then it is just that much harder to reach the right conclusion. Sure, these faulty assumptions can be addressed – but only when we agree to reinterpret our religious notions – never easy, and never completely successful.

The consequences are pretty obvious – when we are forced to understand the world through a distorted grid, our conclusions are distorted. We have some pretty daunting challenges in front of us. Could it be that our religious preconceptions are keeping us from seeing the problems as they exist, and considering all the possible solutions? Is it possible that our preconceptions keep us optimistic enough to keep trying? Do we have to chose belief in a fable over despair, or is there a way to hold on to both hope and an evidence-based life?

In the Swat Valley, villagers have taken up arms against religious thugs who think that throwing acid in the faces of school children, and stoning girls for unspecified offences is the way to honor god.  We’ve got to find a way between these two extremes.

We’ve got to find a way to have discussions about deep-seated differences without resorting to violence.  Can you be vocal about a pro-abortion stance without risking murder?  Can you be gay without risking being mugged?  If our history has shown us anything, it is that we cannot know the truth (though thinking we know is something else again).  Given that, we need to admit a certain amount of tolerance, a certain amount of latitude – until we can no longer put up with it.  Then we need a set of laws to sanction the behaviour, and if required, to protect us from evil.

Open the gate too wide, and we are awash in aberrant behaviours that are not good for civil society.  Too narrow, and we demonize anyone who thinks or acts differently than we do.  And in any event, laws enforce norms – what we need is to adopt and promulgate a series of norms that strike the right balance.  To do this, we need a comprehensive education aimed at more than getting a job, a democracy encompassing engaged, informed citizens, sensible curbs on the power of money to buy votes and a functioning balance of power.

We need a nation of people convinced of the necessity of civil liberties, of economic justice, of common courtesy and respect.  We need to throw off the attempts of corporations to drive the culture into shallow consumerism and voyeurism – we need an American dream, a global dream that is attainable, affordable, sustainable and ultimately satisfying.  We do that by seeking, and finding, this for ourselves and our community – and then from that base, reaching out to the world around us, and working to provide that same opportunity for everyone – even people who have a different dream in mind.  Not any dream – there are limits, as we are learning as we watch the men of South Africa or the Taliban of Swat valley pursue theirs.  Not any dream, as we watch corporations horde more and more of the world’s wealth, and squander more and more of our dwindling resources.  Not any dream, as we watch our culture descend into narcissism and opportunistic materialism, valuing neither themselves nor the people around them.

The answer cannot be to descend into religous fundamentalism – exchanging chaotic horror for relgiously-sanctioned horror.  We’ve got to open our eyes to the fact that only as each one of us behaves less selfishly, as each of us promotes peace, and practices tolerance and mercy can we build a better society.  We can begin to change the game by ourselves playing  by different rules, and by working to ensure that the rules apply to everyone.  The alternative is chaos.

Please be clear – there is no controversy, no doubt at all that the facts support evolution.  What there is is a religious objection to evolution – because it contradicts some folks’ reading of the book of Genesis.  Dr. Tood Woods, a creationist and a scientist qualified to understand the evidence for evolution writes:

I have hope because I’m a sinner saved by grace. That’s my whole reason. It’s not because I can refute evolution (I can’t) or because I can prove the Flood (I can’t) or because I can make evolutionists look silly (I don’t).

So while the usefulness, relevance and certainty of evolution continues to grow, the demands of certain religious conservatives are also growing – demanding that what they could not get in the university, in the science lab or in the courts (the right to teach religion in science class), they are now demanding by threats and intimidations.  This is only a problem if we give in.

So what?  Why not let them have their “teach the controversy?”  A few things are happening – first, many people, raised in a conservative Christian faith, are distancing themselves from science becuase they are being taught that sceintists are the enemies of faith, and that evolution is an atheist conspiracy.

This antagonistic view of science is damaging.  Though it is not doubt true that science can be bought, the antidote in cases like the dangers of smoking was better evidence and fewer cover ups.  Creationism is just the opposite – and insistence that we bury the evidence and cover up the fact that there is no scientific controversy.

Mind you, there is a controversy – but this over how to read the bible.  Is it a magical book, right in everything written between its covers, or is it an artifact of human culture, reflecting the peoples, civilizations and worldviews of its various authors?  This controversy should not be worked out in science education and litmus tests for political candidates . The religious controversy, not the proxy war over creationism – is the struggle that Christians should be facing up to.

We need to find ways of embracing evidence-based living – looking around us to see what actually works and what doesn’t, not battling over things that have already been established – like evolution and the age of the universe.  If we don’t, we will find ourselves talking across a vast gulf – with mutually exclusive ways of understanding the world, and very different approaches to addressing the problems we face.

The correct response to these dynamic, decentralized, emergent problems is to create dynamic, decentralized, emergent authorities: chains of local officials, state agencies, national governments and international bodies that are as flexible as the problem itself.

Local ownership and community responsibility is not only a great way to reintroduce responsible capitalism into the culture – it is also good national security and threat response.  Without turning inward, we need to find ways of engaging citizens at the local level – as a way of unleashing creative, locally-relevant solutions.