You’ll find recently posted on the Facebook page a link to a legitimate and frequent Mormon event in which young girls, some below the age of 10, are dressed up in wedding gowns and led to sing a song entitled, “I Love to See the Temple.”

They are encouraged to imagine the shining husband and family they will have in less than a decade who will, of course, cheat biology and survive well beyond the grave. A few parents performed a delightfully weird musical number called, “The Men in my Little Girl’s Life,” which I assume originated with Helen Mar Kimball, who was 14 when her life got its first man, among the flock of pubescent children wrapped in prophet’s sheets. Full stop.

Needless to say, non-Mormons might differ on what’s wrong with this picture, but the  reason it’s important to mention is that it addresses a very crucial bigger issue: the moral rights and wrongs about educating children on things like marriage.

If children are being educated wrongfully, is it the business of society?

I can already hear mumbling and grumbling about who gets to say what’s “Right or Wrong,” in a situation involving another person’s children’s education. (Secularists hold a belief in the separation of church and state – that everyone has the freedom to think for themselves about such things. My opinion, however, that child-brides and pedophiles are vile and hard to look at will remain the same.)

So why do we educate children about marriage, or anything else?

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How often we forget that we are all free.

We forget that the essence of humanism is to allow and appreciate the freedom of others, while expecting the same in return. It is an exciting aspect of naturalism, provided in the constraints of certain moral theories, to be able to allow our inventive, creative, wonderful nature its full blossoming.

It is easy to be willing, out of fear for scorn, whether personal or (more despicably) politically, to put a cage around our minds and hearts in the name of some standard of conduct, or out of some respect for an invisible punisher. We do this by disguising our emotions – our brilliance, our love, our passion, especially our most human trait, sexuality – under acceptable clothing, mannerisms: How you doing and thank you very much.

Do we walk in within these boundaries because it is good to do so? Or is it true that we walk in line because someone has told us, “Behave, or else.”

We look upon ideals of conduct as valuable maps for our lives – schematics for robotic behavior that ensures we will be accepted by the bigger machine. But why? Given you are not causing any suffering, are there not untold riches to be found when you have elbow room to express yourself naturally? I believe this healthy rebellion and freedom is what gives us all the humanities – what reveals that we truly are fascinating, talented creatures rather than quiet, efficient automatons.

We are a suppressed creature, and naturalism can give us the key to health by establishing a moral standard like this:

The human being is only rightfully constrained by ability and material nature, and that there is no such thing as a victimless crime – there is no act, which when it has caused no suffering nor loss, that can be reasonably described as wrong.

This freedom is in contrast to the whims of the omnipotent and supernatural beings, who would have us appreciate a poisoned freedom from within their regulations – Gods who would make themselves exceptions to the Golden Rule so often preached by their devout by placing others within a caged and non-free system while they remain at large.

Any restraints against the freedom of victimless human expression, experimentation, cognition, opinion, art or activity go against the values of the humanist.

But some would have us believe that you can be religious and also stand up against these wrongs – but I don’t believe that’s true.

They would have us actually consider the freedom of those who crouch under an otherworldly dictator (whose government is conditional love), those who are seeking warmth in a supernatural source of validation and acceptance of their miserable state, seeking to be owned as a form of currency or loved conditionally or within a system or rebirth in which our future is deliberated – can these people, who so desire to be controlled and systematized  that they imagine supernatural beings to do it, say anything at all about what it means to be free?

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After ripping this computer away from an elderly woman in an elevator, I want to talk about secular morality.

Between Aristotle laying the foundations for proper angry-looking-statue-faces and Burger King picking up the highly overpriced veggie patty, for years questions about what’s right and wrong have pestered some bored professionals such as yourself who have the leisure time to worry about such things.

Universally, we’ve got a severe problem with finding out what, exactly, is actually “Good.” Even though, unlike the Greeks, we don’t have slaves to bother with menial tasks while we talk, like refilling the wine and getting slapped (and speaking of which, what good did the Romans ever do us, anyway?) we still find time to ponder establishing some kind of moral theory. At this time of crisis (I can say that because there’s never really not been a time of crisis) we should really figure it out once and for all, right here on the SHAFT blog.

We have different ideas among each of us about what it means to be a so-called Goodie Two Shoes. “Well,” you might say. “Being good is to live a virtuous, compassionate, healthy, flourishing, righteous, happy, socially-concerned, knowledgeable, altruistic, rational lifestyle and obviously have a nice riding lawn mower and a set of porcelain figurines in the kitchen and frequently scowl at smokers outside of K-Mart.”

A policeman next to you might remind you, “Wrong. All that matters is what you actually cause to happen by doing things. It’s not who you are – it’s the consequences of your actions that count. I’m watching you.” (If you’re defenseless and part of an American protest, you may then receive a complimentary dose of bear mace.)

In addition, should the setting of this commentary be at the zoo, you may have an additional mind-exploding Daniel Dennett-esque moment when you realize that gorillas seem to have generalized standards of give-and-take or simple group moral theory as well – “AHA!” you proclaim through a cloud of pepper spray, jabbing an opposable thumb in the air. “Evolution is the place where we must go to seek an ethical foundation for all these good things!”

Shady, smelly little figures might slither out of postmodern art galleries and scowl at you. “Fool!” they hiss, “All ethics are Relative to our culture and Subjective to our personal lives!” Thereafter they would insist on pulling their pants down and shitting all over the conversation.

All of these ideas are nice, but I feel that there is something missing. Whether defining Good as a sort of lifestyle, consequences of our actions, some kind of evolutionary behavior (or even as some kind of indescribably annoying relativism) it’s all very nice, but I want something truly concrete.

What, really, is Good – and what are we going to do about it?

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