When the Founding Fathers of the United States wrote up the Constitution, one goal they had in mind was to create a separation between Church and State, which meant the laws should be insolated from religion. In the modern period, people often push the idea that religion is not necessary to create a moral state, or in a more concise manner, that religion is not necessary for determining right or wrong.

Historical Approach

While the Founding Fathers did implement a system that separated Church and State, the goal was not necessarily to remove religion from the idea of right and wrong. All the Founding Fathers practiced some sort of Protestanism, but due to the many denominations and sects that exist in this larger understanding of Protestanism (Baptists, Quakers, Presbytarians, etc.), it was more practical to define the State’s laws in context to the overarching ideas of Christianity instead of the more specific ideals of a certain sect of Protestanism.

If we look at the original Constitution and the Bill of Rights, they were in line with the ethics that all Protestants practiced as a whole as well as dealt with the State’s security issues. This also to follow the historical precedent of the other Western States that all practiced some sort of national religion. So the idea of separating the existance of Church and State was not done with the belief of morals existing without religion, but rather for more practical circumstances that existed in the United States.

Modern United States

So why is this an issue that I want to consider? The general idea of religion is to instill good morals among the masses, but without it, how do we determine what is good and evil. This is a question we will consider later, but let’s assume that without religion that it is difficult or even impossible to determine good and evil. The goal of the law is to create a set of rules that are enforcable to regulate good behavior among the members of the state. But what happens when we remove what good is from the law? This leads to a book of code that doesn’t actually instill good morals, but just a random set of rules someone needs to follow to not be punished by the state.

Assuming this statement is agreeable, two arguments can stem from this statement in my mind:

1. Who cares if people aren’t good as long as they follow the law?

2. If the law was already built with good morals from the start, doesn’t that mean that following it will inherently be moral?

Let’s breakdown the first argument, if the law is followed, doesn’t that mean everyone has a baseline they can agree with? The issue with this argument is that we have to make an assumption that the law is not exploitable, but we know this is not true with problems such as tax dodging and crimes that are, arguably, not being punished to the severity of the crime (we can argue this point, but I believe this to be the case). But this provides a bigger issue, which is that people do not live with the goal of being good, but rather have to create some other goals that cannot be referenced in terms of good and evil. In the United States, a big indicator of success is wealth which is something that can be chalked up to luck rather than effort. Another indicator for success if vanity, which is tied to wealth. But something such as morals, is obtainable for anyone willing to sacrifice their vices for betterment of themselves.

As for the second argument, morals are something where intention goes hand-in-hand with the action. Without both, you cannot be considered doing a good action. For example, do we consider a billionaire good for donating millions of dollars to a charity if the intention was for a tax write-off? The same thing can be said with laws. We begin a game of economics rather than one of good intention, as it’s a question of if breaking the law is more costly than following it rather than one of if following it will build good character.

I believe good morals and the pursuit of good is above all other goals, but in the current state of society, this is not something that holds true for everyone.