Book 4: Chapter 18: Trouble with Snidely
Bob
August 2334
Nirvana River System
It was kind of a good news/better news thing. The good news was that Snidely was now avoiding me. The better news was that everyone else had noticed and was actively hanging around me. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of this tactic when I was alive.
We were on our lunch break and were once again sitting around the fish bowl. By which I mean bowl of fish. Yum.
We’d gotten onto the concept of morality, and Frieda had just asked Theresa how she could have any sense of morality without a deity to define what was or was not moral. And as usual, I was having to grit my teeth to avoid doing a face-palm, which wasn’t a Quinlan expression. They didn’t seem to have a direct equivalent, either, or I’d have used it by now.
“What deities give you aren’t rules of morality,” Theresa responded. “They’re just rules. Do this and you’ll be rewarded. Do that and you’ll be punished. That’s how we teach our pets not to relieve themselves in the house. One would hope that true morality involved more than learning not to poop on the rug by being rapped on the nose.”
I remembered that small animal Garfield had seen wearing the cone of shame. It seemed pet behavior was another universal.
“In fact,” Theresa continued, “I believe that it is only possible to acquire true morality without input from a deity. It is only when you do something because you believe it is the right thing to do, instead of because of any moral desserts, that you are acting morally. Likewise, it is only when you refuse to do something because of the Golden Rule, rather than because of a threat of punishment, that you are behaving in a moral manner.”