The Cut-Flower Thesis: Does Morality Need Religion?
Believing generally that morality is based on the Supernatural, religious ethicists maintain that religion is necessary for the continued survival of morality as an integral part of human life. Glenn C. Graber calls this apologetic claim the “cut-flowers thesis” (1972, pp. 1-5) which consists of a hypothetical judgment that, “Morality cannot survive, in the long run, if its ties to religion are cut.” This proposition is a prediction of what would happen to morality if it were severed from religion.
Leo Tolstoy in 1894 made the following early statement of this thesis:
“The attempts to found a morality apart from religion are like the attempts of children who, wishing to transplant a flower that pleases them, pluck it from the roots that seem to them unpleasing and superfluous, and stick it rootless into the ground. Without religion there can be no real, sincere morality, just as without roots there can be no real flower” (1964, pp. 31-32).
The cut-flower thesis thus implies that those who believe that morality is a valuable human institution, and those who wish to avoid moral disaster, should therefore make every effort to preserve its connection with religion and the religious belief that forms its roots. As morality is currently in a withering stage, its decline can be identified with the exorbitant secularization of many things. Support for this claim can be found both among those sympathetic to religion and surprisingly enough, among those with little or no sympathy for religion.
Basil Willey, a religionist, calls for urgent action to re-unite religion and ethics. He holds that there has been a progressive de-Christianization during the last three or four centuries, the outcome of which “is what we see around us in the world today—the moral and spiritual nihilism of the modern world, particularly of the totalitarian creeds” (1964, p. 118).
W.T. Stace, a secularist, surprisingly supports the cut-flower thesis when he said:
“… the chaotic and bewildered state of the modern world is due to man’s loss of faith, his abandonment of God and religion. I agree with this statement…. Along with the ruin of the religious vision there went the ruin of moral principles and indeed all values”. (1967, pp. 3,9, emp. added)
And for those who doubt that religion ever promoted morality in history (since immorality has flourished even in ages of religious domination), not less than the well-known (agnostic) historians Will and Ariel Durant answer, thus:
“Certainly sensuality, drunkenness, coarseness, greed, dishonesty, robbery and violence existed in the Middle Ages; but probably the moral disorder born of half a millennium of barbarian invasion, war, economic devastation, and political disorganization would have been much worse without the moderating effect of the Christian ethic, priestly exhortations, saintly exemplars, and a calming, unifying ritual. … [The] Church labored to reduce slavery, family feuds, and national strife, to extend the intervals of truce and peace, and to replace trial by combat or ordeal with the judgments of established courts. It softened the penalties exacted by Roman or barbarian law, and vastly expanded the scope and organization of charity.” (The Lessons of History, Simon & Schuster, New York, New York, 1968, p. 44)
All these statements call attention to the prediction of the cut-flowers thesis which, by way of summary, suggests that morality cannot survive without religion.
Some words of caution are needed here though. The cut-flowers thesis does not say that a consequence of abandoning religion leads immediately to murder, rape, robbery, drunkenness, sexual promiscuity, and the like. Nor does it say that the institution of morality cannot survive in the long run if its ties to religion are cut. It just demonstrates that for there to be any real ground or reason for moral action, one must admit a religious heritage–specifically that of the true religion. (© by Jensen DG. Mañebog/ MyInfoBasket.com)
Also Check Out: From Socrates to Mill: An Analysis of Prominent Ethical Theories, also by author Jensen DG. Mañebog
Also Check Out: The Worldview of Atheism by Jensen DG. Mañebog