The Necessity of Moral Strength

There's a lot been said about the compatibility of science and religion and I think that's because people who have rejected religion see it as some kind of superstition or as something made up to help a primitive society to deal with its fears.  I find this most unscientific.  I speak personally but I think of religion as the science for happiness and peace.  The only social science I subscribe to.

The problem with most moral laws, unlike physical laws, is there there are rarely immediate consequences.  It's difficult to explain to your teenagers the importance of saving themselves for marriage without pointing out the importance of the things they already take for granted like a stable family life.  It's even harder if they don't have one.  You need to convince them of the glory that could be theirs all the while not being sure if they'll ever attain it.  A tricky sell indeed.  But that does not undermine or negate in the least the happiness of a secure home and family.  Of peace at home.

The studies pitting children from single parent homes versus traditional nuclear families always end up the same.  No need going over the results.  They help prove the gospel is true but are usually couched in terms sociologists use.

What's true for individuals and families is true of society in general.  The oft-quoted British statesman Edmund Burke made the following observation regarding society and goverment:

Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites, — in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity, — in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption, — in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves.

Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.

We've forgotten a lot of this kind of writing.  Alexis de Tocqueville also said

Liberty cannot be established without morality nor morality without faith.

Finally, the father of our country, George Washington, from his farewell address:

Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports...And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion.

Nobody knows why there's gravity but we're aware of how it works.  Isaac Newton figured out the gravitational law, F = Gm₁m₂/r2 and it was a big breakthrough.  Nobody ignores the physical law.  Religious truth is revealed by prophets instead of scientists.  But its laws are as immutable even if the consequences are not immediate.  Historians disagree on the causes of the decline of the Roman Empire but Moroni never blamed the fall of the Nephites on their political system, their military, their economy or foreign invaders:

Yea, woe shall come unto you because of that pride which ye have suffered to enter your hearts, which has lifted you up beyond that which is good because of your exceedingly great riches!  Yea, wo be unto you because of your wickedness and abominations!  And except ye repent ye shall perish; yea, even your lands shall be taken from you, and ye shall be destroyed from off the face of the earth.

 In order for any individual, family or people to succeed, they must "build on the rock" of virtue.  It catches up with you if you won't.