I met a man, Carlos, from World Relief. He is a pastor at a local church, and though he spoke to me about empowering children, he also spoke to me about teaching morality. Very bluntly, he said there must be moral education.
I said that how education tends to happen here is that the teacher will simply give a fact and the students are expected to accept this fact. And they do. But I said that I don't agree with this system because the only way you learn is if you are given a choice to accept information as right or wrong, at least as far as morality goes.
For instance, abortion. I read a pamphlet today that detailed every week of pregnancy. It was produced to give the fetus very human-like characteristics because it spoke only of how much like the fetus is to being human, and not how alien it really is until a certain point. One reading this pamphlet would not realize the bias unless they had had previous information. They would almost certainly be anti-abortion, or similarly, pro-condom - use.
And so, when I finished saying that morality needs to be objectively taught (and I did NOT illustrate it with the abortion example), there was only silence from a very talkative man.
I took that to mean he didn't agree. I can't say I was surprised - part of me was looking for a fight. My students, when I take the objective road instead of the much kinder subjective road in terms of bending rules, often ask me if I pray. I've made a habit to quickly say "No" and anticipate their response, saying "Yes, and I'm going to hell." It angers me every time that they're taught to think this way - they don't know WHY not praying will send them to hell, but they accept it completely. This is not morality. Morality is a conscious decision.
And so I continued with Carlos, saying that morality is individual. I said that I can respect someone's morality if they have personally developed it within themselves, even if I completely disagree with it.
He finally responded saying that we need to find the truth. I countered, saying that if we ever found it, we would realize that there is in fact no truth. He disagreed. He wants to find the one truth with me.
He started to speak of God. He is interested in an educated perspective because he has argued the following for a long time: You cannot say God is in the moon, because then where does that leave the sun? And not the sun to spite the stars. And not the stars...
And then he hit on my point exactly: And God being everywhere...
"That would mean that God is nowhere and doesn't exist" I said.
He agreed, "Yes, how ridiculous!"
Peace
John
