Christianity, the origin of Morality?

I was recently told by a friend that he had only become honest and moral because he had discovered Jesus. We had something of a discussion about this subject, so I felt it would make an interesting blog post.

If you wish to explore pre Christian teachers of morals, you can do little better than read Pythagoras a non-religious philosopher mystic who was deeply influenced by the teachings of Buddha. Following Pythagoras came Socrates who taught the meaning of what is just, and insisted that moral sentiment depended on knowledge, not any form of theology. One of his famous teachings: "We ought not to retaliate, or render evil for evil to anyone," is perhaps uncomfortably close to words said to have originated with Jesus, but they come from three hundred years earlier.

Plato was the forst sociologist and taught that moral law is utilitarian, logical law for the good of society. Aristotle, after Plato wrote the first treatise on Ethics. He too had no theocratic hangups.

By the 3rd century BC, the Stoics, taught natural ethics and self control as a basis for life. Their movement continued until just after 500 AD when Emperor Justinian closed their schools because their teachings of logical morality owed nothing to his Christian faith.

Leucippus and his student Democritus were the first European philosophers / scientists / evolutionists in about 400BC who taught that the object and origin of moral law was simply the concern for human welfare.

Epicurus, the last of the great Greek philosophers, again taught that moral acts were those which promoted a passionless tranquillity of life. They had nothing to do with religion.

Now have a look at Christian teachings. The oft quoted "Golden Rule of life", the "Royal Law" the most famous of Christ's teachings, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself" is a quotation from the Old Testament; Leviticus 19:18: "Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself: I am the LORD." This is 500 years older than Christianity and some 100 plus years after the Lord Buddha was teaching about universal love, where he stated that every man "should love his fellows as a mother loves her children," and "hatred ceases by love: this is an old rule." A bit different from the Jewish position, where his neighbour was only regarded as being a fellow Jew. The Jews excluded other races from the necessity to be loved, much as many Christians do today.

If we stay at the time of the Buddha, about two hundred years before the Old Testament was written and have a look a bit further East at the teachings of Confucius "Recompense injury with kindness" and "What you do not like when done to yourself, do not do to others." Confucius's student Menicus went on to teach, "A benevolent man does not lay up anger' nor cherish resentment against his brother, but only regards him with affection and love." About the same time Lao-Tse was teaching, "Recompense injury with kindness." All these great moralists were living in the heart of Agnostic China, where religion did not have any import.

Christianity, did it introduce humanity to morality? I am afraid not.

Perhaps in time we can build an enlightened society where frankness, courage, honorableness, and consideration for others and a social or utilitarian theory of morals rules our lives without hangups from misplaced teachers, clergy, mullahs and busybodies behind net curtains. We need to love our fellow beings and allow acts and thoughts that injure no one in any way. These must be regarded as a man's or woman's own business, not meat for the narrow minded or bigoted bible thumping pulpit screamer.

From Prometheus Unbound:

None wrought his lips in truth-entangling lines
Which smiled the lie his tongue disdained to speak;
None, with firm sneer, trod out in his heart
The sparks of love and hope till there remained
Those bitter ashes, a soul self-consumed.

None talked that common, false, cold, hollow talk
Which makes the heart deny the yes it breathes,
Yet question that unmeant hypocrisy
With such a self-mistrust as has no name.
And women, too, frank, beautiful, and kind
As the free heaven which rains fresh light and dew
On the wide earth, past; gentle, radiant forms,
From custom's evil taint exempt and pure,
Speaking the wisdom once they could not think,
Looking emotions once they feared to feel,
And, changed to all which once they dared not be,
Yet, being now, made earth like heaven; nor pride
Nor jealousy, nor envy, nor ill shame,
The bitterest of those drops of treasured gall,
Spoiled the sweet taste of the nepenthe, love.

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822)