Do Societies Need Moral Guidance?

Other related question that one might ask:  Can all people not identify basic moral values on their own?  Through trial and error, or perhaps through some chain of logic?

These questions are ostensibly innocent.  But they also open the door to tremendous and most fundamental elements of our belief system.  To answer those questions, we need to first understand why do humans exist and whether their presence is driven by a simple evolutionary process.

Without getting bogged down into a discussion on the nature of biological evolution, it is important to point out that many philosophers and thinkers have agreed about the unique nature of humans as thinking and moral beings - even atheists and agnostics agree with this point of view.  We as Muslims (as well as Christians, Jews, Hindus and Budhists of various stripes) have additional notions of responsibilities bestowed on us as sentient beings, and a sense of accountability that stretches beyond our own mortal life. 

A number of secondary points emerge if we agree that we --as individuals and as societies -- have certain responsibilities given to us and that we will be evaluated on how we manage them.  I realize that many with the atheistic persuasion will not be convinced with this argument, and that is not my intention anyway.

In a fair, just and balanced universe we cannot be held accountable without receiving adequate resources to act on our responsibilities - particularly considering that many of our societal responsibilities are purely moral in nature.  If we are responsible beings then we must also by provided with a user's manual so that we can determine the correct modus operandi.

And that brings us back to the topic of this blog.  There is no evidence that people can arrive at a code of morality entirely on their own and by following some logical steps.  My argument rests on two pillars. 

First, history has a number of examples in which "logical" thinking has led to bizarre and horrific experiments with society.  The communist philosophy created by the likes of Karl Marx and perfected by Vladimir Lenin is the most prominent one in recent history.  The misery of many millions and a near-complete collapse of the philosophy within a century is a clear example of disastrous human-led creation of societal moraliy.

Second, all societies that appear to be successful today have the basis of their morality embedded in divine inputs.  To use Samuel Huntigton's approach the following civilizations can all track their roots to divine scripts: Orthodox, Christian (Western), Hindu, Muslim, Sinic (Chinese), Japanese, and African.  Those divine scripts may have faded in history or become grossly distorted over time, but their origin remains clear.  Put differently, the moral underpinnings of currently "successful" western civilization can also track its roots to Catholic and Anglican churches.  Again, I will avoid getting bogged into a (separate) debate on the current state of that morality.

In my view, we not only need guidance that is divine in nature but we will surely fail without it. (You can track back to my blog on 12 September 2010 to catch a fuller description of these failures).  We are also blessed in that the Holy Quran provides an un-altered and precise moral GPS to all of us.