"We have no government armed with
power capable of contending with human
passions unbridled by morality and religion."
—John Adams
Ethics is the science of morals. Morals inform manners and manners make up the character of a man. If ethics is the powerful foundation of the character of man, would it not be wise to inquire what it is that informs ethics? What is the role of science, art and religion in the ethics of society? Religion claims to form the lifeblood of societal ethos, demonstrating a strong correlation between societal virtue and religious observance. On the other hand, science undertakes the search for truth without mysticism. Finally, art is the cultural expression of truth. All three seem to fight each other in a battle of truth and justice.
The role of science in ethics is to reduce ethics to a science for
business and corporations. The secular
world is created in order to divide the divine from the human with certain
rules of conduct written and enforced. Science is the facts proven true.
“Science and technology conferred a new value upon fact and created a new
cultural type—the fact-gatherer, the fact-treasurer” which became the new
popular character in society.[1] For Sir Francis Bacon,
science was a study divorced from art and morals. He condemned the conception
of “contemplating the truth” as a study of knowledge. This ushered in the
modern era that everything, including human nature, is based on scientific
experimentation.[2] Furthermore, Einstein’s
theory of relativity had great influence upon not only the scientific world,
but on morals and religion. The idea that all things could mean something
different for each individual was the new morality. Who needed the old prophets
and the old systems? The new morality meant that ethics could be re-written
according to each man. This proposed a great moral dilemma: with God out of
sight and out of mind, who would be God? The nature of man is always changing
from ordered to disordered, however, the nature of God invites man to change
from disordered to ordered. Without God, man would spiral downward into a
disordered wasteland, but a wasteland with only relics of human ethics.
The role of art is to enhance life, says Nietzsche. Art is used as a
tool of inspiration to help its beholder remember something higher and more
noble. Collectively, art is a reflection on the culture of society and as
modern man has been gradually doing away with God, so has art been gradually
doing away with the ideal, the good, the true and the beautiful. Only an
unemotional skeleton of societal duties is all that is left of ethics when the
good, the true and the beautiful are lacking. Art affects people and people
affect art. Art reflects societal customs as Henry James has said, “art is our
flounderings shown” and yet it still has the power to change our customs, for
good or evil. “Great art has the power
of transfiguring the aspect of the world,”[3]says
Jacques Barzun. It, then, could be said that art has the power to impart the
good in ethics. As long as there remains a moral people who demand moral art,
art will transcend the world to inspire us to contemplate the sublime.
The role of religion is to inform individuals and groups of what is
right and correct according to a divine set of laws. As religion teaches the
observance of the good and the true, it then expects its people to be agents of
choice and to be susceptible to the consequences of those choices. Religion
sets the moral basis for making moral choices. History is embellished with the
stories of moral choice and action encouraged because of religious observance.
Religious communities have demonstrated heroic acts of disaster-clean-up; have
set the standard on moral issues from abortion to defining marriage; have
formed associations to help lift third world countries and have inspired
parents to raise their children with good moral character.
It is important to note the special characteristic of religion, that
there must be and will always be a higher standard set by God that transcends
all human law. If this were not so, then any man could set his own “divine” law
and live accordingly at the expense of his neighbor. The law of relativity must be absent in
religion. James Russell Lowell artfully wrote, “Truth forever on the scaffold,
Wrong forever on the throne,— Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind
the dim unknown, Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his own.”
It is religion that ultimately teaches truth. Humans are continually
constructed, mended and reconstructed through the scaffolding of Truth, if they
will assume it to be so, afterall, they have a choice.
Science is a means of discovering and demonstrating the material
truth, art is a means of sensorial communication of truth, and religion is a
means of delivering godly remembrance of truth and redemption from the false.
Ethics are influenced by all three vying for the divine position. However,
rarely is religion the strongest force of the three. “Art and science...become
dogmatizing rivals about who owns the truth--a rivalry that does not keep out
envy, trespass, compromise, and confusion.”[4]
In contrast, religion, in the truest sense, inspires mankind to love, serve and
lift one another, which ultimately has the supreme influence on ethics.
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