如果没有上帝,我们为何行善？.doc

IF THERE IS NO GOD, WHY BE GOOD? 如果没有上帝，我们为何行善？ ? Posed like that, the question sounds positively ignoble. When a religious person puts it to me in this way (and many of them do), my immediate temptation is to issue the following challenge: Do you really mean to tell me the only reason you try to be good is to gain Gods approval and reward, or to avoid his disapproval and punishment? Thats not morality, thats just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought. As Einstein said, If people are good only because they fear punishment, and hope for reward, then we are a sorry lot indeed. Michael Shermer, in The Science of Good and Evil, calls it a debate stopper. If you agree that, in the absence of God, you would commit robbery, rape, and murder, you reveal yourself as an immoral person, and we would be well advised to steer a wide course around you. If, on the other hand, you admit that you would continue to be a good person even when not under divine surveillance, you have fatally undermined your claim that God is necessary for us to be good. I suspect that quite a lot of religious people do think religion is what motivates them to be good, especially if they belong to one of those faiths that systematically exploits personal guilt. ? 这样提出后，这个问题显然相当不光彩。当一个信仰宗教者用这种方式追问我时（他们中很多人是这样做的），我立刻想以如下挑战进行辩护：‘你真的是想告诉我，你行善的唯一原因是想得到上帝的承认和奖赏，或者逃避他的谴责和惩罚？这不是道德，而只是巴结，奉迎拍马，小心翼翼地警惕着天上的监视摄像机或者你脑袋中的一个小小窃听器，在监视着你一举一动甚至你的每个内心思想。’如同爱因斯坦所说，‘如果人们仅仅因为惧怕惩罚或者期望奖励而行善，那么我们真是可怜虫。’Michael Shermer，在《善恶的科学》中，将此称为辩论制止者。如果你同意的话，如果没有上帝，你就会‘犯抢劫，强奸以及谋杀’，你显然是一个不道德的人，‘而我们经过周密考虑，最好离你远点’。另一方面，如果你承认你即使不在神力监督之下也将会继续做一个好人，那么你就致命地破坏了你的上帝是行善所必需的主张。我怀疑很多的信仰宗教的人士真的认为宗教驱使他们做好人，特别是当他们属于一个系统地利用个人的内疚感的信仰。 ? It seems to me to require quite a low self-regard to think that, should belief in God suddenly vanish from the world, we would all become callous and selfis