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Hell yes. Roll that film, brother…

The follow up question to this can be “can human beings be moral”?

The answer to both questions, I think, is a qualified yes.

I think a more interesting question is “what keeps people from being moral?”

The Religious Right will tell you that rejecting religion is a surefire way to achieve that.

The “do it because God tells you it’s right” dictum is designed to close down argument and, worse, investigation. And, as any atheist will tell you, that position is morally bankrupt to boot.

Yes, that’s a troll.  Sorry, I couldn’t help myself.

Anyway, what keeps people from being moral? A combination of nature and nurture.

On the nature side, there are a plethora of physical ailments, diseases, and good old fashioned genetic flukes that have a tendency to make us less law-abiding that we might normally be.

One can compensate–somewhat–for nature if the nurture part is intact. We hear the horror stories of child abuse, but the truth is that most parents just muddle through.

Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. More later.

You know, I’ve been giving the feast of St. Stephen (December 26th, also know as Boxing Day) a lot of thought, as I have Saint Wenceslas.

I won’t go into the history here, it is better covered in the Wikipedia Article. Nor will I go into the lyrics of the song.

All I’m going to do is offer this as my humble candidate for a secular carol. After all, the Roman Catholic Church ripped off borrowed traditions from other cultures for centuries. Why not us? There must be more to us than cold logic. We are creatures of emotion as well as of thought. And all we have to do is change “Christian” to “hearty” and we’ve done the job.

So raise a glass, and help the poor slob next to you. Because as the carol says:

Ye who now will bless the poor, shall yourselves find blessing.

Happy Holidays.

O.K., I finally got off me flat arse and posted new content!  Lucky, lucky you .

So, as an Athiest in the Roman Catholic tradition, let me say: Merrie Christmas to all, and to all a Goode Night!