From behind the right lens, anything can seem beautiful. From the right perspective, anything can seem good and moral.

Take for instance, a psychotic man who thinks all the people of a certain skin color are actually extraterrestrials out to destroy all humans and thus has a vendetta against them. To most people, this is a hate crime, but to him, he is saving the world.

Or maybe there is a tribal culture which believes that on a certain day of the year, if they sacrifice a single virgin female, she becomes a goddess. To them, killing her seems to be the greatest of honors, while to most of us, this is just barbaric brutality.

A more mundane example: A woman who has been convicted of a crime. To those who believe her innocent, her sentence is in every way unjust, but to everyone who believes her guilty, it is justice.

I would not call the psychotic man, the tribal people, or the judicial system immoral, inhumane, or evil. The difference between them and the rest of us is not our desire to be good, but rather, our beliefs. Our facts. The psychotic man would fear for humans and consider it a hopeless and tragic situation that everyone else is not fighting the “aliens”. The tribal people might consider it barbaric that we do not offer our daughters the chance to become goddesses. And if the woman was deemed “not guilty”, all opinions of justice and injustice would flip-flop.

Now, I am not claiming that all people desire to “do the right thing”. There may be similar psychotics who want to help the “aliens” take over the world. There may be members of the tribe who disallow the girls to be sacrificed in order to prevent them from becoming goddesses. And there may be those who wish to free the guilty and imprison the innocent. Sociopaths do exist.

Also, while I am pointing out that the virtue of an action is dependent on the beliefs of the beholder, I am not in any way claiming that such beliefs (and thus virtues) are arbitrary. There are certain beliefs which are correct, and certain beliefs which are incorrect. Similarly, there are certain behaviors which are truly evil and others truly good when seen from the correct perspective.

I acknowledge that religious folks may have the best of intentions in mind and I would never call “evil”. However, many decisions fully supported by particular religious groups have been made which I consider immoral and tragic. (Many religious groups have made such decisions, but I'm not blaming each decision on religious people as a whole.)

This has been a justification for my interest in convincing the religious that their beliefs are not correct, and that mine are. I understand that some people might take this as a threat, but have no fear. The malleability of your beliefs is entirely up to you, and this is a two-way street. Either the religious views will be changed, and the resulting decisions will resemble my own, or my views will change, and I will see the original decisions as good. I shall make such attempts in future posts and hope to receive some challenging responses.