Ethical monotheism is probably the single greatest contributor to human progress from any source since human culture emerged from the stone ages. This force which emerged first in Judaism and and spread throughout the world via the mediums of Christianity and Islam continues to shape human destiny even in a time when much of the world foolishly rejects it as irrelevant.
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Judaism/mono.htmlNature is amoral. Nature knows nothing of good and evil. In nature there is one rulesurvival of the fittest. There is no right, only might. If a creature is weak, kill it. Only human beings could have moral rules such as, "If it is weak, protect it." Only human beings can feel themselves ethically obligated to strangers.
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Nature allows you to act naturally, i.e., do only what you want you to do, without moral restraints; God does not. Nature lets you act naturally - and it is as natural to kill, rape, and enslave as it is to love.
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One of the vital elements in the ethical monotheist revolution was its repudiation of nature as god. The evolution of civilization and morality have depended in large part on desanctifying nature.
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Civilizations that equated gods with naturea characteristic of all primitive societiesor that worshipped nature did not evolve.
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Words cannot convey the magnitude of the change wrought by the Bible's introduction into the world of a God who rules the universe morally.
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ethical monotheism suggests more than that God demands ethical behavior; it means that Gods primary demand is ethical behavior. It means that God cares about how we treat one another more than He cares about anything else.
Thus, ethical monotheism's message remains as. radical today as when it was first promulgated. The secular world has looked elsewhere for its values, while even many religious Jews, Christians, and Muslims believe that Gods primary demand is something other than ethics.
http://old.explorefaith.org/neighbors/beliefs/nature_j.htmlTo hold that God is the Source and Sustainer of moral values is to insist upon an objective status for ethical ideals. They are not the impulsive fabrication of human minds, but are grounded in the very bedrock of creation. Moral laws have objective validity similar to the laws of physics. They are not our invention, but it is for us to discover them. Just as it would be foolish to defy the law of gravity and hope to escape its consequences, so is it perilous to presume that a human infant can grow to emotional maturity without ever being loved or cared for. In both cases the penalty for ignoring the law is a natural consequence of defying the given realities of the universe. The uniqueness of God in this context is the complex but delicate blend of both physical and spiritual reality in a single deity which accounts for the balance, harmony and order of nature within us and without.
Ethical monotheism is not just a way of talking about God. It is a way of understanding human experience; it is a way of organizing the world in which we live. It is a faith that attempts to explain what we do not know by beginning with what we do know. We do know our awareness of this world is rooted in a unity of our own senses. We do know that defiance of moral law invites a disaster as devastating as any contempt for the laws of physics or chemistry or biology. We know, in short, that we cannot fathom it all and that this world is ultimately grounded in mystery. And that singular ethical mystery is what we call God