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Why Be Moral?

Why Be Moral?

The title question "Why be moral?" has been around a long time. Let us first inquire: what does it mean to be moral? There are several definitions that might be considered. For this paper I will use the definition that to be moral is to follow God’s moral rules. This is the one favored by many members of the religious right in our country. One such answer would be to say that people should follow God's moral rules because to do so would increase their likelihood of obtaining salvation in the afterlife (i.e., getting into heaven and avoid going to hell).
Before considering this proposed answer, let us look at our definition itself. There are many problems with it. First of all, what is God and what reason is there to believe that God exists? This is an enormous problem that confronts this definition. In my opinion, it is not a problem that can be overcome, but for the sake of argument, let us assume that there is some intelligible definition of "God" and some acceptable reason to believe that God exists.
Another problem with our definition has to do with locating some source for the expression "God's moral rules." Why believe that that expression has any source at all? I am not aware of any worthwhile argument to the effect that if God exists then he must have moral rules which it is possible for humans to find out about. But even if we assume that God has such rules, there remains the problem of figuring out what they might possibly be.
The usual approach is to maintain that the Bible is "God's Word" and that the moral rules contained therein are God's moral rules. But this will not do, for several reasons. First, the Bible contains so many contradictions and factual errors that it seems unlikely, if not impossible, that it is the word of an all-powerful sovereign deity.
Second, even the ethical principles contained within the Bible are inconsistent. For example, there are two quite different sets of rules, at Exodus 20 and at Exodus 34, both referred to as "The Ten Commandments." Consider also that God is supposed to have said "Thou shalt not kill" but then to have ordered the Israelites to go out and kill all the people in neighboring tribes who had a different religion from theirs. And there are conflicts between Old Testament morality and Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Another inconsistency has to do with whether or not the OT rules have been superseded. And there are other inconsistencies as well, wh

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