Morality and God

The ongoing Gaza episode is not a case on the sidelines of human activity, rather it needs to be identified as a pivotal issue that perhaps defines politics, history, religion and human society in many ways.

Unbound by time, it feels like a tumour, the malignancy of which keeps hitting the wider human conscience and keeps subsiding into collective apathy all the time. Historically it is connected to the antiquity where Noah and Abraham are placed, and with Israel's growing imperial lust, it seems to be a case that will persist to the end of times.

The case hammers on the idea that 'morality' is not just a person-to-person societal matter, rather it is also a communal matter that judges the collective behaviours of human societies. And it gives a clarity to the argument of morality having a secular nature verses morality being grounded in religion and divinity.

The secular argument – that morality can be grounded in reason, common sense empathy and scientific understanding and that the more we get learned and civilised and the more we understand consequentialism and utilitarianism, we will inevitably become more understanding towards each other, more responsible, more civic – has utterly failed in human societies and is completely laid bare in the case of Palestine and Gaza.

Rather, humanity as a whole has shown that accumulation of knowledge and sciences and the enhancement of wealths, freedoms, technologies and cultures, has practically proven to be inversely proportional to human welfare, global justice or decrease in poverty and disease.

For instance, in the case of global wealth distribution, 55% of humanity lives in the lower income and extreme poverty bracket, while the 1.1% richest class owns around 50% of total global wealth. The Global Burden of Disease 2023 Study has shown that though overall life expectancy has increased, death rates in youth and young adult are on the rise and are linked to suicide, drug and alcohol use. The biggest increase in disease burden included anxiety disorders, depressive disorders and diabetes. And as of global peace, there are 65 active state-based armed conflicts worldwide, including 13 major wars; topped by 57 intrastate state conflicts, including domestic insurgencies and internationalised civil conflicts, as well as dozens of proxy wars. Global debt, public plus private, has mounted to $350 trillion, which is about three times the size of the world economy. All this shows that material and knowledgeability advancements have not increased morality in humanity rather it has snatched it away from it.

It seems like even if everybody gets to know everything that can be known, they will only be more vicious, more violent, more stealing, more killing. Because it is the most improvised, most knowledgeable and the most cultured ones who are waging most of the wars; who defend genocides; who make bio-labs to work on gain-of-function to make superbugs that could potentially cause global pandemics; and who set unjust global financial systems that help syphon all wealth and goodness to the 1.1% global elite class.

Western societies that are modeled for high civility, law-abidance and knowledgeability are currently rife with indecency, abuse and violence. British governmental stats reveal that sexual abuse, harassment and peer-on-peer harmful sexual behaviour are highly prevalent in British educational institutions, even in schools, where they are often described as "commonplace". All the liberalism and feminism in Europe and America has succeeded only in having porn, prostitution, drugs and LGBT legalised throughout the West. Pornography has become a flourishing industry, so lucrative that it has been generating the likes of $97 billion annually. And as for the feminist run for equality, about 90% of porn content is rife with physical violence and aggression against women. Porn is normalising rape and sexual abuse of women in the West.

So, where does all this begin? You start with the idea that religion is a source of evil! Then you conclude that every person is 'good' and every person can identify 'goodness' because it gives him/her 'happiness'! Down the decades and centuries, you find out that most of the things that are making you 'happy' are indecent, obscene and based on selfish greed! All these things cause 'insensitivity' and 'indifference' among individuals, they break the 'family', they dissolve national unity – and the 'self' becomes the centre, and the larger humanity is given away to the natural cycles of survival and circumstances. Thus, Gaza becomes the lowest level of the vicious food-chain, wherein the highest 1.1% are expected to devour the lowest 55% for their fulfilment.

This is the truth about the world we have made for ourselves – a world without God, a humanity disconnected with its Creator, a morality that can change relative to every person. A jungle of 8.2 billion people, 8.2 billion morality compasses, who are, as a whole, utterly indecisive and utterly impotent!

All this completely changes with One God – Who is scientifically, technologically, sociably and spiritually the most potent; Who can, and has, created the most sophisticated human machine, that can see, think and feel; Who has put the moral compass in each human that tilts towards the Divine magnet of 'goodness'. The goodness is defined by His messengers through simple definitions, like believe in One God; don't lie, don't steal, don't kill without being killed, stay away from indecency and keep the family sacred. Only the single belies in One God stiches mankind into a unity, an accountability and a true responsibility to protect.

So, there is a simple answer to Plato's Euthyphro Dilemma that asks: Are actions moral because God commands them? Or does God command them because they are inherently moral? And the answer is that God created humans, and embedded the moral compass inside them. If that compass is tilted towards God, it aligns with the best nature of all things, it unites with the greater design of all things, and finds strength in the strength of God. But if it tilts towards the other side, it is corrupted, detached and weakened. So, actions are moral because God commands them, because He created morality and He knows better than we do. This is the golden balance that can ensure our 'good' and 'happiness'.

We do know and recognise our 'good' and 'happiness' too, but by defying the Source and Sustainer of all 'good' and 'happiness', we cut ourselves from the spiritual unity upon which the fabric of the universe has been woven. And once we abandon the deep code of the universe, we are left by it astray.

"Lo! As for those who believe not in the Hereafter, We have made their works fair-seeming unto them so that they are astray." (Al Naml 27-4)