Wendell Lewis (Globe, Jan. 4) took me to task for my assertion that non-religious people can and do have high moral and ethical standards. He believes that any system of morals must come from an absolute divine authority because man is just too wishy-washy.
I assume he is referring to the Christian God and believes man would lose his moral compass without the Bible as a guide. Of course this presumes the Bible to be unchanging, to be the divinely inspired word of God, and to contain only morally righteous prescriptions for man (all of which are subject to debate). I believe that man is inherently good and does not need the threat of eternal damnation or other supernatural revelation to live a virtuous life. It does not require religion to believe in the morality underlying the last seven commandments or to perpetuate that morality.
And please allow me to thrash the straw man that Mr. Lewis provided. He seemed to assert that our founding fathers based our Constitution on the absolute divine authority of the Christian God. There is very little evidence for this and much to the contrary. This country was not founded on Christian morality and God was deliberately omitted from the Constitution. Most of the founding fathers were deists, not Christians. They believed in a God, but not the Christian God. To learn more, see “The Christian Nation Myth” (www.infidels.org/library/modern/farrell_till/myth.html) from which I quote: “The supreme God of the deists removed himself entirely from the universe after creating it. They believed that he assumed no control over it, exerted no influence on natural phenomena, and gave no supernatural revelation to man.” Thus the founding fathers established the moral basis for this nation without the help of supernatural wisdom. They were pretty smart guys.
Scott Cragin
Webb City
Opinion
Voices: Morals and religion
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