I was recently informed that my moral standards have “lowered” since walking away from my faith. It’s true that some things that I once considered sins are no longer on my Thou Shalt Not list. Homosexual relationships would be in that category. Touching on what is apparently the most important moral issue in the evangelical church, I no longer equate early-stage abortions with murder. And of course, I score a big fat zero on the Greatest Commandment.
I granted my conversation partner’s premise and we moved on from there.
As Blackadder said to Prince George, “It is so often the way, sir: too late one thinks of what one should have said. Sir Thomas More, for instance, burned alive for refusing to recant his Catholicism, must have been kicking himself, as the flames licked higher, that it never occurred to him to say, ‘I recant my Catholicism.'”
What I should have said was, “My moral standards have not lowered. They have sharpened.
“The Bible was the lens through which I used to see the moral world. It gave excellent vision of the basic moral truths: tell the truth, don’t steal, and so on. However, there were some dirty spots on that lens. Looking for truths about slavery, genocide, the treatment of women, humane slaughter of animals, or even discrimination against the handicapped, one learns that the lens is not as clean as one would wish.
“Most people already have great moral vision for the basics, with or without the Bible. Our problem is that we suffer from various astygmatisms of prejudice. We don’t trust people who are not in our tribe — our race, our religion, our political party, our culture. We tend to over-trust people who are like us. We also over-trust ourselves: our cognitive biases systematically prevent us from seeing the truth.
“The most pernicious is confirmation bias, and faith-based morality sinks an arrow deep in that Achilles’ heel.
“I’ve traded the biblical lens for one that sees morality in terms of the well-being of sentient creatures. Although it may be harder to learn to use that lens than to read a book, it is cleaner than the book I had been using.
“I realize that my biases are hard to correct. That’s why I study them and blog about what I learn and learn and learn.
“My new lens is not perfect, but I think I see sharper now than I used to, and I hope my vision will continue to improve.”
That’s what I should have said. Now I’ve said it.
Path of the Beagle 