You can now read this post in Polish at Racjonalista.
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How many times do we have to say it in order to get it across? You don’t need religion to be a moral person. In fact, religion itself has very little if anything to do with morality. It may be, as Philip Kitcher suggests in his book The Ethical Project, that, at a certain point in the development of morality, religion served as a way of getting people to avoid altruism failures when they were all alone, and no one would know that they had not acted altruistically — which Kitcher takes as a helpful but dangerous stage in the ethical project — but the idea that we need religion for that purpose was discarded long ago. As long ago as Plato, and perhaps earlier. And people who assume that morality is bound up with religion often prove that it is not, for they themselves are prepared to make judgements about religious morality. If morality depends upon religion, this should be impossible, but it isn’t, so it doesn’t.
In fact, the truth seems to be diametrically opposed to the assumption that religion and morality are dependent on each other. Now, I know it’s difficult for some people to see this, because they’ve already done all the work necessary in order to sort out, from amongst all the possible prescriptions and proscriptions of their religion, those things that they consider bad or good. However, the truth is that almost everyone has done this sorting for themselves. Catholics, for example, don’t need the Church to teach them what is right and wrong, because large numbers of them don’t follow the moral dictates of the Church in the first place. They figure — and they figure correctly — that they can distinguish bad from good on their own. Of course, they may be stuck — if they’re at all serious about their faith — with telling some little white lies when and if they go to confession. After all, if the Church says that abortion is wrong, and a woman has had, for perfectly good reasons, an abortion, then that’s something she might find herself confessing, and being shriven for; but she’ll keep her fingers crossed, because she doesn’t really think she’s done such a bad thing.
I remember when I first got out on my own. My mother and father were fanatical teetotalers. My father would never use the words ‘alcohol’ or ‘drunk’, or any of the names for alcoholic beverages, like ‘beer’ or ‘whisky’ or ‘wine’. I don’t remember him ever using those words. He would use some periphrasis of some kind, if conversation got steered in that direction. Alcohol was so taboo, based on his religious values, that using the words was (or so it seemed) as if he were to place his foot on the banana peel that would send him careening down the slippery slope to alcoholism. So, when I found out that I rather liked beer and wine and scotch, and practically any other beverage that had alcohol in it, my initial feelings of guilt were pretty strong, and years later, whenever my mother and father came to call, I would always put the scotch somewhere they were not likely to look. In fact, I kept that up until I married Elizabeth, and one day she said to me, “There is no way you are going to hide that. You’re a grown man, for fuck’s sake!” And that was that, and from that point on my mother and father would just have to like it or lump it. They never mentioned it! Not once. But before that, there was in fact a moment of truth, for at our wedding, rather embarrassingly, the only liquid refreshment was champagne, because the caterer had forgotten to provide a non-alcoholic punch, as promised!
But we can distinguish between feelings of guilt, and the knowledge that we have done something that is genuinely wrong. As Sister Margaret Farley knew, people very often masturbate, though practically every religion holds masturbation to be a grave sin. Sister Farley pointed out that, not only is it not morally wrong, whatever the Church says — though she temporised a bit, I think, when her book was criticised by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith — but that it can even be a good thing. Women, for example, can learn from self-pleasuring what really works, what really gives them pleasure, and they can tell their partners what would make sex better for them. But according to the Church, masturbation is gravely sinful and disordered. But we know that that’s just one of those hangups that religious organisations all have, and that, for historical reasons, they seem unable to rid themselves of.
Interestingly, the Roman Catholic Church assumes (falsely, as it turns out) that Jesus prohibited divorce absolutely, so, for the Church, marriage is forever, no matter what happens, whether one’s partner is abusive, or gay, or regularly unfaithful, or controlling, or just someone you don’t like any longer. It doesn’t matter. Marriage is forever. Divorce is an oxymoron. However, it is possible to get an annulment. At one time, only the wealthy or the upper classes could avail themselves of this remedy, but now it is more readily available. Now, here’s a problem. Suppose that you are married, and, so far as you know, things are going well, the family seems a safe haven of love and happiness, and no serious problems loom on your horizon when, suddenly, your spouse says they are going to leave you and marry someone else. Presumably, they’ve decided to do this no matter what the Church says about it. However, think of where that leaves you. You didn’t want a divorce, but that’s what you’ve got, and you still want to be faithful to the Church and take part in its life. If you assume that your divorce gives you the right to get married — well, you’re only partly right. In law, there’s no problem; but the Church won’t recognise your divorce. So far as the Church is concerned, you’re still married.
If you want to get married again and get on with your life, you have two choices: (i) you can ignore the Church, and accept your excommunication; or (ii) you can seek an annulment of your first marriage — that means, you can get the Church to declare that you were never really married in the first place. For some people, this is a serious problem. Suppose you have children, and that you lived with your husband or wife for 20 years. Are you ready to say that there never was a marriage? And should the Church say this? Does it sound right to you that the Church should be able to say that there was never a marriage? It doesn’t to many people. I’ve met some of them, and they find this an impossible choice. Indeed, I think it is immoral of the Church to prescribe moral absolutes in this way, as if there were no situations in which a divorce and remarriage could not possibly be a good thing, and in which declaring that there was no original marriage would be not only false, but positively harmful and bad.
Of course, this is only a short consideration of the problems with religious morality. But the major one is implicit in the foregoing, and is as follows. Morality serves a human purpose. If, as religions assume, the purpose served is a divine one, then the question arises how we have access to a demonstration that precisely these rules — for any set of rules — achieves this purpose. And it leaves the end obscure. What purpose does it serve? The old Westminster Catechism said that the chief and highest end of man “is to know God and enjoy him forever.” The problem is that this leaves the way of achieving this end (even supposing this to be correct) largely obscure, and, if not obscure, it leaves it in the hands of those who are held to know the answer, obedience to whose word is necessary in order to achieve this chief and highest end. But this obscures the fact that the purpose of morality is mainly to make relationships amongst human beings go most smoothly, in the first place, to correct for altruism failures, as Philip Kitcher says, and then, beyond that, to improve relationships in progressive ways. The reason that we can sit in judgement of any of the gods so far imagined is that we know, better than the people who lived at the times when gods were constructed in imagination, what will best satisfy our desires, and what will make our relationships go most smoothly, consistent with a general improvement in human relationships.
Thus, if we simply take the question of divorce and remarriage, we can check to see how our marriage customs came into existence, and why it was thought that commitments “until death do us part” were thought to be either desirable or necessary in order to fulfil the purposes served by marriage. I have no intention of looking at this in detail here, but it is worthwhile mentioning two things. At the time that most marriage customs first came into effect, women tended to be looked upon (to a large extent) as property. There were probably good reasons for this in the context of the development of human societies, but it is clear that this is no longer a useful category under which to understand the status of women, if it ever was. Another point to notice is that, in the past, the time until death parted a husband and wife tended, on the whole, to be sooner rather than later. The commitment was, to a large extent, a short one, and was expected, by one of the partners or the other, to be repeated several times before death, if one survived the death of the other. Yet even then, as Roman society, custom and law indicates, there were still good reasons, from time to time, for the termination of the marriage relationship. Jesus is said to have said, on at least one occasion — and even then it is put in terms of the man — that anyone who divorces his wife and marries another, except for unchastity, is guilty of adultery. Even Jesus, in other words, saw that there might be exceptions to the general rule. But even that was not enough, and it shows that he still saw morality as a matter of divine commandments. But marriage, like other human institutions, is only a human good when it serves the purposes of human good, and many marriages do not accomplish that. To make it a rule, anchored in God’s command, that marriages may not be terminated except by death, is to make it necessary, either to create the polite fiction that there was never a marriage in the first place, or to bind people together until the death of one partner, no matter how much harm this bondage causes to one or both of the partners. This is clearly not a moral outcome.
Why do I raise this issue at this time? For the simple reason that, as Jerry Coyne tells us in recent post, another scientist has added himself to the list of those who fail to understand the relationship between science and faith. I address myself to the moral issue, while Jerry looks a bit more closely at the scientific one, but, whichever way you look at it, yet another scientist simply misunderstands the problem. David Tallmon, in a HuffPo piece called “Teach the Non-Controversy“, makes too huge mistakes. First, he thinks that it is the fault of scientists that religious people are fearful of science. Scientists have simply failed to teach clearly what science is all about. Listen:
Another important lesson from this newsworthy event is that it highlights what makes science, science. Namely, that one must posit testable hypotheses to do science. That is, if a question or theory about how the natural world works can be turned into a testable and falsifiable hypothesis, then it is a scientific question. If a question cannot be falsified, or disproved, it is not scientific. Science progresses by transforming raw ideas, however outrageous or iconoclastic, into formal statements that can be tested with results that either support or refute the initial idea.
Although this might seem a trivial point to some, I think we scientists have failed to teach the general public that falsifiable hypotheses lie at the core of science.
This may be faultless so far as a description of the nature of the project of science, but it is simply beyond reason to think that religious people are suspicious of science because they do not understand “that falsifiable hypotheses lie at the core of science.” I mean this is just weird! This is precisely why religious people are distrustful of science, because, in fact, it makes religious assumptions doubtful, since they simply do not measure up on the falsifiability scale. And religious people know this. We don’t need to remind them!
But just as serious is Tallmon’s idea — borrowed from Gould — of the NOMA hypothesis. He ends his article on this note:
We need to make sure the general public understands that science is about proposing testable mechanisms for how the natural world works. Let us teach evolution (and particle physics) in our science courses. Let us teach religion in our religion courses. Let there be no controversy; they address different topics. Science is a method of learning about the world that need not be threatening. To suggest otherwise is to add sound and fury that divert resources away from learning how the world works. Our students deserve better. Our society deserves better.
But if what he means by this is that morality is the preserve of religion — and he does mean this, as his immediately preceding sentence shows – then he is doing a disservice to all of us. Religious morality is, to a great extent, a failed hypothesis. If morality cannot provide the means for making our lives better — and religious morality fails in this along many different axes — then it is falsified, just as scientific hypotheses are falsified when our observations and experiments do not turn out in the way expected by the theory.
Morality is not, pace Harris, scientific, but it is empirical and naturalistic. We know that our morality is not working when it fails to provide the basis for living a good, fulfilling, meaningful life. Religious morality today has shown itself to be a failure in many different respects. That doesn’t mean that it was all wrong, but it does mean that we need to revisit our moral assumptions when we see that they are not working to provide the basis for good lives. And Tallmon does a disservice to morality when he suggests that it belongs to religion. It doesn’t. It may not work by way of theory and hypothesis, experiment and verification, but it does require testing in the fires of real life.
Tallmon, sadly, is mistaken in practically every way in his attempt to reconcile religion and science. He thinks the world can be neatly divided into two different realms of knowing. No, it can’t. Religious people are right to be afraid of science, because science, and empiricism or naturalism generally, are corrosive of religious belief. But the truth is that most people already know this. They already make moral decisions based on what makes life better, not on the basis of what a few men in dog collars or with long beards may say. And it really is time that we simply sidelined religion as a pastime for those who get a charge out of religious feelings and experiences. But the experiences that people get at a rock concert or climbing in the Himalayas or sailing or cheering for their favourite team or athlete are just as valuable, and perhaps even more valuable than the ones that some people think take them to the fountainhead of all things. For the fountain is in their own minds, and the illusion is built up on the basis of community. It is, if you like, a kind of communal delusion. Of course, if religious people like dwelling there, and having those experiences, that’s fine, but they should not come back and tell us that they know what their imaginary friend requires of the rest of us, because we all — well, almost all — some may simply lack the experience or the part of the brain that gives the rest of us – some insight into the good of things, and it doesn’t take communication with imaginary beings to accomplish it. It’s something that comes with being brought up in communities in which we can learn what human goodness is, and what we learn when we learn how to be good, and to desire what is good for ourselves and others, is that sometimes we can discover ways to make things better. And that’s an important part of morality that religions simply do not understand.
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Morality “may not work by way of theory and hypothesis, experiment and verification, but it does require testing in the fires of real life.”
I agree.
Let’s say I claim lying is irrelevant. So I become a habitual liar. Will I go through life unscathed? I don’t think so. I think eventually the lies will catch up to me. People won’t trust me. They won’t play with me anymore. If I’m smart and observant, I’ll see this as empirical evidence that lying is not the best way of interacting with people. Most of us learn this lesson at an early age. Sometimes we learn it on the other end — when someone lies to us. So I think morality is, in principle, falsifiable. The question, imo, is not should we value honesty but do we value honesty.
I’m still sorting my thoughts about morality. My early thoughts are that ‘Morality’ doesn’t exist as such, although each individual has a perception of which behaviours are acceptable, and which are not, in his or her culture at the time. ‘Morality’ then is just a handy mental label for a stochastic cloud of habitual judgements about the acceptability of behaviours in society. Of course when we try to define a particular moral view we tend to trim off the contextual fuzzy bits to make discussion more direct. Think about all the exceptions to ‘moral laws’ like ‘killing people is wrong’.
So ‘Morality’ is not scientific as such, but the capacity for making socially aware judgements probably is scientific. I suspect this is where Harris struggled to get from ‘science’ to the basis for living a good, fulfilling, meaningful life. You can’t get there without using social perceptions.
As societies change those socially aware judgements must also change (hand in hand as it were) and so each new flavour of ‘Morality’ smacks straight into the religious eternal god given certainties.
Interesting point that ‘morality may not work by way of theory etc’ Morality is a very vague concept that means different things to different individuals and cultures. E.g lying, in Tanzania I found that many people lied in my understanding, in that they did not express factual truth, but to some it meant, ‘tell the listener what he wants or needs to hear’. For them that was honesty. To most people in most cultures killing is wrong. To certain Muslims, killing an infidel or a heretic is a righteous thing to do! Most Westerners consider female circumcision abhorrent, to many tribal cultures it is an honourable and necessary procedure to ensure a happy marriage!
An habitual liar will have problems changing his habit regardless of how he may get found out and lose people’s trust. Because his way of distorting the facts have benefited him enough for him to see lying as a default way of getting what he wants and of getting out of trouble, it is unlikely that the social inhibitions for lying and consequences of such behavior will convince him to change. (look at some politicians, news reporters, habitual criminals, adulterers etc)
So I don’t see that your evidence is empirical. Many, perhaps most people learn as a child that lying, (some are told it is immoral) if found out, has consequences, but not being found out and many liars get away with it, therefore for them lying hasbeneficial consequences.
Well Eric, I know atheist get upset when we assert that they do not believe in morality, and i certainly do not wish to imply that you are not a decent person who would make a good neighbor. Nevertheless, i think we have a huge problem here.
First of all, when you say that you believe in morality, it is clear that you do not believe in the “Divine Command” theory of morality, and as a result it is not clear whether or not an atheist thinks that there is any kind of duty or obligation to a cosmic truth of reality of any sort. Either he is in the position of not being able to say what makes a given action “right” or “wrong,” or he has a morality of convenience — morality is a human invention to make life more pleasant for ourselves.
At the conclusion of your essay you stated that morality is “something that comes with being brought up in communities in which we can learn what human goodness is . . .” But therein lies the rub. I am always amazed at how easily atheists, who live in civilized places like Canada, can think that if we only got rid or religion everyone would get along just fine. But what if you do not live in a community “in which we can learn what human goodness is” — let’s say Mexico instead of Canada? A lawless place run by drug lords, where might makes right? What happens to your morality then?
The problem lies in human nature. There is a part of us that is idealistic. If you ask almost anyone, is it wrong to lie, cheat and steal, nearly everyone will say yes. Yet most of them have lied and cheated at some point in their lives. And if everyone else seems to be doing it, it is tragically easy to rationalize our own shabby behavior. To get along we go along. So much for morality based on community values!
Which brings us back to the original question: what exactly is the difference between right and wrong, and how do we know. My answer: through a divine command.
Sorry about the typos. I wrote it fairly early in the morning!
Bob, Bob, this has been dealt with again and again, as early as Plato’s Euthyphro. But it is evident in the story of Abraham and God’s decision to destroy Sodom. Abraham says: “Will not the judge of all the earth do what is right?” An indication, if one is needed, that Abraham has an independent ability to assess what is right.
And you’re wrong. Atheists don’t get upset when the religious claim that they can’t have a morality or act morally. They know it’s wrong, and that the religious are rather more likely to act immorally than atheists.
This doesn’t mean that there will be no dysfunctional societies, of which parts of Mexican society may be examples. I emphasise parts. I don’t think the whole of Mexico is living with that kind of dysfunction, nor is all of Canadian society without it.
You say that the problem lies with human nature, as if you know what you mean by the term. The problem lies with the fact that we show limited altruism. As Hitchens used to say, we are primates, and it shows. Certainly, in some cases, belonging to a religious community may in fact solve some of the problems of limited altruism, but it may exacerbate some of the problems too. So it’s not just a simple one-to-one relationship between religion and moral goodness.
The problems with the divine command theory of morality are manifold. At the first going off they may have dealt with the problem of moral probity when no one is watching. Eventually, however, they cause morality to be the possession of a few men (for the most part) who have the requisite knowledge about what god is supposed to command, and, ultimately, they make it difficult, and sometimes impossible, for moral progress to occur.
How do we know the difference between right and wrong? Well, there is no absolute difference, to start with. As Kitcher points out, morality has a fairly definite core of stability within a penumbra of uncertainty. The problems with the divine command theory are manifold. It does tend to put “experts” in charge of moral life. It makes moral progress difficult. Often the deliverances of the experts are just wrong, as when the Roman Catholic Church forbids divorce, for example, when there are much better, and much more creatively moral solutions to marriage breakdown. The biggest problem is one of confirmation. How do we know that just these commands are divine ones? We may assess them, and determine that some of them are just plain wrong, which shows that moral value comes from some other source. Divine command theory is bankrupt, because there are simply too many problems with it.
Bob Wheeler @I know atheist get upset when we assert that they do not believe in morality,
Well, it does cause this atheist to wonder how you can consistently tell such bald faces lies and in general act in such an immoral manner.
I would like to be convinced in the idea of social moral progress but I’m not. I only see morality as part of a person’s psychological conflict with the natural and social world. The existentialists have had the greatest affect on how I view morality.
Bob:
1. There is no “divine”, therefore “divine command theory” is horseshit.
2. Atheists derive their moral code from the exact same place theists do. Their community, society at large, as part of our evolutionary heritage as social beings for whom cooperation is more adaptive than isolation.
3. Over time, community values change. Show me where in the bible it says that child abuse is wrong. Show me where it says slavery is wrong. Show me where it says subjugation of women is wrong. Can’t. Ain’t in there. Our morality has evolved over time.
4. That does not allow you to claim that we can therefore “do anything we like” under an atheistic (secular) moral system. There are rules in place guided by societal values and norms. They are to be followed. Catholic priests should not rape children. Their superiors should not hide and excuse child rape.
5. In the evolution of morals away from the so-called divine command theory, our societies have become more just, more equitable, less prone to using violence to impose our moral standards on others.
6. Your personal moral code is not my personal moral code. You attempting to impose your personal moral code on me is an assault on me. Stop it.
A thing Christians like to claim is that their god not only reveal itself to Noah, Abraham, Moses, the prophets, the apostles, Paul, etc as recorded in the Bible, but also continues to reveal itself to believers on a daily basis. If this were true, then why were additions to the Bible forbidden 2000 years ago? Why aren’t all of these new revelations added to freshen outdated morals? In no other subject, would we use such an outdated text to teach from. It is like being handed an iPad® with instructions for counting on you fingers and toes.
For the record, Mexico is one of the most Catholic of countries.
Not only will Bob fail to show you where in the bible it says that slavery is wrong, he will (presumably) be content to quote Charles Hodge (his model and inspiration according to an earlier posting) who pointed out that the “right sort” of slavery is perfectly justified because it was approved by the bible.
@Bob: Define “moral.” If you believe in divine command theory (DCT), then “moral” must be defined as “that which God commanded.” But if this is your definition, then this has nothing to do with what we typically think of as “goodness.” In your response to Eric you talk about goodness and about people treating each other well, but this cannot have anything to do with what you call morality, because your definition of the word includes no mention of “good,” or “that which increases human flourishing.” DCT is a sorry substitute for the type of morality that Eric talks about.
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I should mention, while I’m here, that I don’t entirely agree with Eric’s use of these terms, either. I prefer to say that “right” and “wrong” are made up. There is no objective morality – there is only what people want. I want people to be happy. I don’t want to see people hurting each other. These wants are a result of the way my brain works – nothing more, nothing less. I think I probably agree largely with Eric on moral issues because – even if his system pretends to be more objective – he is at least concerned with human suffering. DCT is not, by definition.
messengerpigeon, since you showed up here, are you going to return to Eric’s post “Betrayal” and provide us with evidence for a young earth and intelligent design as was asked of you?
Last I heard Mexico is an overwhelmingly Christian country and in fact some of the drug lords are using religion to glue together their crime network.
With God everything is permitted.
But is wanting objectively measurable? I think it is. Does it have an objective presence in the human animal? I think it does. Is it totally random in nature? I don’t think so. Is it a kind of valuation? Obviously it is. Then is wanting a possible basis for morality? Maybe.
That would be arguably unusual. But it’s still empirical.
But your answer is a non-starter.
I’m going to ask you what reasons you can give me for an action, be it moral or otherwise.
If you can’t give me a reason-to-do-X, then you have failed to say why I ought to do X.
To paraphrase the Euthyphro: Does God command X because there are reasons-to-do X, or ought we to do X simply because God commanded X?
If the latter, then it’s simply arbitrary. God is commanding X when there are no reasons-to-do X, making it arbitrary. There is nothing logically compelling us to do X. “God commanded X” is merely a descriptive statement, like “the child demanded the toy” – it offers no reason to follow the command. (It still suffers a fact/value divide).
But if it’s the former, we ought to take an action by virtue of the reasons to do that action, then God and his commands is not necessary for the action – only the existence of the reasons to do the action are necessary. Identifying the reasons leaves God unnecessary.
There are attempts to get out of this (and avoid a fact/value divide) by trying to mash all these things up into God’s “necessary character.” Apologists like William L. Craig try to have their theistic cake and eat it too by saying “Oh sure there are reasons to do moral things. God has those reasons. But those reasons are part of God’s Necessary Nature!” They “flow” from God’s necessary nature (in the type of sounds-nice-but-wtf? parlance of theology).
But all that does is attempt to smuggle away the same question under God’s Necessary Nature. We are still left asking if the good-making comes from the reasons to do an action, OR from God’s commanding it. You can’t just say “both” without explaining the necessity of God having to command it, which theists fail to justify. If it’s God’s NATURE that is necessary for for doing X, then it isn’t the reasons-to-do-X, hence the reasons are superfluous (and you are back to having to argue why anyone need accept the seemingly arbitrary claim of God’s nature making for reasons to to X). But if the reasons ARE still necessary, then it is necessary that a God have reasons-to-do-X for X to be good. Hence the reasons-to-do-X
remain the standard to which any “necessary” God must meet, making the reasons necessary for morality, not the God.
But wait…what about the epistemological issue? You can bite the bullet and say “Ok, yes, it’s the reasons for an action that make it good. BUT…we still have to find out which reasons make which actions good, and hence which actions are good. A God can help out here. Being omniscient, He would know the reasons for moral actions, and transmit those to us in the form of Divine Commands.
Except…how can we decide when to trust that any PARTICULAR entity we encounter is “good” and therefore trustworthy in terms of telling us moral truths? We are simply put into the same epistemological dilemma. Even a Being who displays miraculous powers could be evil or untrustworthy. So how do we decide whether to follow any Being’s commands? Answer: the only way we have: look at the evidence we have for how this Being behaves and evaluate it’s behavior for trustworthiness. But then, the only way to do this is by already having a standard of “good” by which to evaluate any Being. A Being would be trustworthy only insofar and only so long as it measures against our standard for “good” and “trustworthy.” Hence, God just doesn’t help out here. Epistemologically, we are stuck in the driver’s seat again.
So I do not see how you are going to give me reasons for a moral actions derived from a God’s command, that escape these problems.
But when you ask a secular person for reasons to take moral actions, I can say that you can see that the very seeds for the ontological status of morality are to be found in assumptions you bring to your own religious beliefs. This is one idea among many in secular moral thought, and I find it most compelling:
Why is it that Christians say we need a God for morality to obtain? Why not just underlying non-sentient sub-atomic forces? Why not…a magic non-sentient rock that just happens to “cause” universes? What are these things missing that are NECESSARY for meaning, value and purpose to come into being? It turns out if you examine it: things like consciousness, intent, desires, goals, actions taken to fulfill desires. We want a “person” there because persons can have desires and take intentional, rational actions to fulfill those desires. An action has “purpose” and “meaning” insofar as it is taken to fulfill some desire. Something has “value” insofar as it is desired by a personal being – insofar as it fulfills some desire. This is how we note things take on purpose and value in our everyday lives, and we IMPORT these assumptions when trying to come up with a cause to the universe that would give the universe value and meaning. So it turns out not that God is necessary for meaning and value and purpose; rather, it’s necessary that God have characteristics LIKE US in order for HIM to create these things. In other words: whether a God exists or not, we already know that beings with the necessary characteristics for value and meaning to obtain already exist: humans.
To make sense of any of God’s “moral” commands providing reasons for actions, you will have to appeal to the fundamentals of desire fulfillment to make sense of them. And that posits that desires, and rationalizing about how to fulfill desires is the fundamental element from which morality rises, not a God per se. As it turns out there will be facts about the universe that constrain the routes we can take which tend to fulfill our desires. Further, we can ask which desires we ought to encourage in a society (since many desires are malleable). Just as an object or action would be have value or be “good” insofar as it is such as to fulfill a desire-in-question, we would evaluate desires the same way: is this a desire that has the tendency to fulfill or to thwart desires? The answers will be factual: objective – you can be right or wrong about the answer. When you look at it this way, you’ll see how many of the desires we consider “good” have the tendency to fulfill desires in general in a society, and those we consider “bad” have the tendency to thwart desires. (Note this does not evaluate actions fundamentally but desires themselves that drive actions. the desire to rape is a “bad” desire because it is an inherently desire-thwarting desire…)
Now, not every secular person of course will agree to this particular specific value theory. But I would say that some secular value theories at least get much further along a sturdy road than any theistic theories, which seem to me to fail right out of the gate on several fronts.
Anyway, these can be long subjects obviously. I’ve blathered enough for now.
Rich H
I would want to clarify that as an evangelical Protestant I stand on the principle of “sola scriptura.” On the one hand I would reject the Pope’s claims to speak infallibly “ex cathedra,” and on the other hand I am skeptical about the claims of some in the Pentecostal and Charismatic movements to be receiving ongoing revelations.
We have access to the divine command through two channels: written revelation (Scripture), and the conscience, which Paul calls “the work of the Law written in their hearts.” The one confirms the other. Thus Abraham had an inward sense of right and wrong that was placed there by God. Abraham was perfectly right in expecting God to act in manner consistent with His own moral attributes.
It is true that the Bible does not condemn slavery outright. Society needs a variety of hierarchical relationships in order to function, and some are inevitably placed in subordinate positions — and to add fuel to the fire I did believe that God intended the husband to be the “head” of the wife. That does not mean that subordinates are necessarily being “oppressed.” If you get pulled over by the RCMP for speeding, you are not being “oppressed.” But the Bible does enjoin the Golden Rule. If roles were reversed, how would you want to be treated? Authority entails responsibility for the well-being of others and is not to be used maliciously or capriciously.
Where the problem of evil comes to the fore is whenever public law and order breaks down, as happens when the politicians and the police are corrupt, which occirs from time to time in big American cities. Then a sociological morality evaporates. An objective moral code is needed to resolve human conflict. Real character is based on the conviction that there is a real (objective) difference between right and wrong, and we do what is right as a matter of principle.
Bob,
You’ve made statements that you think morality is based upon God’s commands, but you don’t provide any reason for someone to agree with that claim.
(All too often Theism is given a bit of an easy ride, where theists think they get to say “But if God doesn’t exist then what makes anything objectively wrong?” That of course presumes the existence of God WOULD make something objectively wrong – a proposition I’ve yet to see established by any good argument so I don’t have to take it as given).
Given I outlined some problems with Divine Command theory, above, what would be your response?
Cheers,
Rich H
To respond to Rick H (#19), who apparently posted his comment while I was writing mine, there appear to be two factors that determine moral values. One is God’s one character, and certain things are wrong simply because they run counter to His character. The Bible typically describes these actions as “abominations.” A second factor is God’s purpose in creating the universe. The biblical injunction surrounding human sexuality are grounded on the idea that God created sex for a specific purpose. It is to be done in the context of a binding commitment between a man and a woman. Everything else is a deviation from the norm. It can also be argued that our well-being is in view as well: part of the reason God condemns adultery is undoubtedly because it hurts the people involved. And then there is the factor of God’s own sense of justice, which requires that all human beings enjoy equal rights are are therefore forbidden from harming each other. It all comes down to God’s own character and His moral governance of the universe.
@Bob Wheeler
Which bits of scripture do you accept? Do you wear mixed fibres? Do you eat pork? Do you abstain from work on a Saturday? Do you give all your possessions away if someone asks? Do you turn the other cheek?
If not, why not? What part does conscience play in allowing yourself a bacon sandwich? I suspect that you adopt the morals of the society that surrounds you, and are just kidding yourself that you have ‘religious moral principles’. From my point of view this doesn’t automatically mean you are a ‘bad’ person – I just think you cannot demonstrate any absolute or objective foundations for your morals.
Bob,
So your god stopped communicating with humans 2000 years ago, why? Cat got its tongue? Out of 200,000 years of human history, your god shows up for a couple of thousand, chats to a few along the way, and then goes away never to speak again…. odd to say the least.
The idea that anything has a single purpose, e.g. sex for procreation, is flat-out nonsense; many other purposes for sex exist and all of them are completely normal. How did humans manage to stay alive for the first 196,000 years without your god telling them what sex was for?
Tim,
That just strikes me as an insufficient value theory. It doesn’t seem to explain much of what would need explaining in terms of the questions that arise in morality, in terms of our behavior and reasoning in general.
Morality is concerned with reasons for actions. What “ought” I do and why?
At a fundamental level we need to ask where do reasons for actions come from?
If you want to say no reasons to do anything exist, then you are going to crumble human reason into incoherence. (Not to mention you could not even give a “reason” for anyone to accept your argument for why there are no reasons to do anything).
So presuming as we normally do that we have reasons to do things, where do reasons come from? I agree with certain value theories that desires (some call them “goals” or “inclinations” but I think desires is a better term) are the only reasons for actions that exist.
When someone does something deliberate, and we want to know “why” we will appeal to their combination of beliefs and desires to explain it. Why did Bob walk to the fridge and open the fridge door? Answer: Bob had a desire to drink orange juice and he believed there was some orange juice in the fridge. He reasoned therefore that the way to fulfill his desire was to search in the fridge for the orange juice. This is what makes sense of Bob taking the action he did – his desire for juice gave him the reason for action. Take away such reasoning and you take away reasons for actions. (Unless you want to start denying humans are intentional agents…which would get even more wacky).
So when asking “what ought I do?” we are asking for reasons for actions. And desires provide reasons for actions. In other words, the answer for why you ought to do an action would be the fact that action would be such as to fulfill some desire. So understanding our actions, and understanding what we are asking morally (or prudentially as well) would seem to necessitate asking not merely “what do I like” or “what do I want.” It has to do with telling us which actions will be such as to fulfill those “likes” and “wants.” And once you get into our reasons for actions, then it follows that you must talk about the relationship between which actions will IN FACT fulfill a desire vs those that will not. Hence to say “you ought to look for juice in the fridge” only makes sense as it relates to a desire “If you have a desire for juice, you ought to look in the fridge” = “looking in the fridge will be such as to fulfill your desire to find juice.” And these are objective claims based on facts about our desires, facts about the world, and facts about the relationship of our desires to the world. We can make true or false claims about what we “ought” to do due to this necessary relationship.
Whereas your depiction of there ONLY being a “want” seems insufficient. It correctly identifies we have desires…but it leaves out that these wants, these desires, provide our actual reasons for action. And that “ought” statements must be based on appealing to a desire AND a state of affairs that would fulfill the desire to give a “reason” for an action. And hence…the possibility of objectively true statements seems to follow.
Cheers,
Rich H
Bob you aren’t answering my questions. I already know what you claim; I’ve pointed out the problems with trying to justify those claims. What REASON can you give for why I ought to accept that the moral “wrongness” of X derives from running counter to a God’s character?
You’ve merely stated it as so; not provided any reason to accept your claim. Go back and read the problems I detailed.
So what?
All you’ve stated is that God had a purpose for his action. But it does not follow that a being having a purpose therefore makes it “good” and what we “ought” to do. Bio-terrorists have purposes for making pathogens. So what? It doesn’t follow that WE should accept their pathogens are “good” or that their purposes are “good” or that we “ought” to become sick because Bio-terrorists want us to.
So far this is all you’ve got for your God claim: God has a desire. How does it follow that THEREFORE it is good or that we ought to do as God desires? There’s this biiiiig logical gap you are leaving open. (I showed how I think the gap can be closed, without appeal to God, from my perspective in my previous post).
“Undoubtedly?” Why?
Is adultery made “bad” because of the reasons: “it hurts the people involved” or not?
If so, then we just need the reason for it to be wrong – which exists (it hurts people), not the God. But if you say that’s not enough for adultery to be bad, what else is necessary?
God’s purpose for us perhaps? Again, you provide no bridge from God having a purpose for us to therefore WE ought to do as God desires.
What if God’s “justice” required that innocent people routinely be punished instead of the guilty? Or that mothers routinely torture their children? Would that therefore be “justice?”…no matter WHAT God’s sense of justice happened to be?
Or is there something about “justice” that requires even a God adhere to it’s principles in order to be “just.” (Hence..making God unnecessary since the principle would be primary, not God).
Rich H
donjindra & Rich H: In my experience, most people naively believe that “right” and “wrong” are objective qualities of actions, as if morality were somehow written into the universe, as the physical laws are. This is what I’m talking about when I refer to “objective morality” – this is what does not exist. donjindra, I do not deny that it is a fact that people want things. Rich, I do not deny that modus ponens is a valid form of inference.
Understood. But I deny objectivity implies something needs to be written into the universe (or beyond the universe).
Obedience to authority will not build character.
I find it useful to compare morality with language. Both are ultimately social conventions, and both have fuzzy boundaries and occasional points of disagreement, but that doesn’t make them subjective. Once you assimilate a language — or a morality — you can recognise the points at which it is underdetermined and use your rationality — or some other guide — to suggest ways of filling those in, but whether your suggestions are adopted is up to the community in which you live.
And of course — as with language — if you don’t like the moral community you happen to be in, you can go elsewhere, or even establish your own community. What you can’t do, however, is have a private morality of your own, any more than you can have a private ‘language’. Interaction with others is the basis of both language and morality.
Many many years ago, I found myself alone in a place where there was something I wanted very badly. I could take it and no one would know. And I really wanted it. I distinctly remember thinking “No one would know..No one would know. …. but I would know.”
Since then, I have had to make many moral choices, most of them trivial. For larger questions that I feel conflicted about, I consult the “person in the mirror.” That is, which choice will better make me able to look in the mirror and think “You’re all right.”
It’s not a sophisticated approach to morality but it’s served me pretty well. That doesn’t mean mirror-gazing is infallible or that I’m a spectacularly good person but I’m at least as moral as the general run of religionists. (I know that’s setting the bar pretty low.)
I’ve never been interested in “theology” because the idea of seriouly studying various forms of delusion strikes me as a bit silly. But then, so does sociology.
Eric: Thanks for litle quote from Elizabeth. I wish I could have known her.
Social morality is not the same as personal morality. Most people follow convention or if not, the unconventional morality of their unconventional social group. Personal morality rests on freedom and personal choice, and therefore rests on character and uniqueness, not in any objective sense.
First, I’d like to make my usual defense of Gould’s NOMA. He didn’t claim that morality belonged to religion, but rather that both, like much of what is intensely interesting to us humans, lies outside the domain of scientific explanation. Even Jerry Coyne conceded as much in reviewing Harris’s recent book, insisting that an Is can’t imply an Ought. I read Gould as placing religion in the humanities, somewhere between art history and music appreciation, something to be passionately argued but safely out of the way.
I actually think, without having read his book, that Harris is probably right. We have pretty universal agreement on the basis of morality. I’d argue game theory, someone else will note we’re wired for empathy, another will recall how we were raised. As Freud might have said, our behavior is over-determined. To the extent that we have a consensus the problem is solved.
The details of what to do in any given situation remain problematic, of course, which is to say sometimes heart-wrenching, furniture-smashing, teeth-gnashing and sleep-depriving. It’s easy to be good when life is easy. When things go wrong, it’s practically axiomatic to blame the victim, and more often than not the victim has done something wrong, but unless you’re dealing with young children that point of view may be somewhere between irrelevant and useless.
When you’ve spent years taking care of an aging parent, the more praise you get the more bitter it tastes: what a saint you are for wasting your life on someone else! The only comfort on offer is from others who’ve been through it, tough stuff: you’re nothing special. Look who thinks he’s nothing.
Consider recycling. There’s a certain point to it as a personal discipline, balancing intake and output, but there’s nothing to recommend it unless everyone else is doing it. The same thing is true of every other moral precept. The good news is that enough of us are cooperating for it to be practical in everyday life.
If you actually pay attention you’ll find out that almost everybody is a habitual lier.
The song “Things are Not What They Appear” by the Gothic Archies sums up the situation pretty well.
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The problem with the objection, “What if God commanded you to do something different. Would that still make it right?” is that it is a hypothetical question. The fact of the matter is that the universe is what it is, and if God exists, He is what He is. Things are structured the way they are because that is the way He designed it. So it is kind of useless to ask, what if He had done something different.
As I see it, the two alternatives to the divine command theory would be a social morality and a personal morality, but there are problems with each. The problem with a social morality is that there is no room for non-conformity. If the government is tyrannical, engages in wars of aggression and systematic human rights abuses, you have no basis on which to condemn it. The problem with personal morality, based on individual choice, is that you have no basis on which to criticize someone else’s behavior. If someone is a drug lord or a gangster, a corrupt public official, or a simply miserable spouse or parent, he is simply exercising his personal choice, and who am I to impose my morality on him? But every society has to have a system of laws in order to function, and in order to protect individual rights. This is why beginning of life decisions (abortion) and end of life decisions (euthanasia) cannot simply be left of to the individual to decide for himself.
The charge deserves more evidence than a song.
If you’re under tyranny you’re in a jam no matter what (which is a good reason to reject the tyranny of a god). But if you’re in a democracy you certainly do have a basis to condemn. It happens every day on all sorts of issues. A social morality implies people can agree, can compromise and can protest. The members work out their differences in the open as a group.
Of course you do. Your morality doesn’t disappear simply because someone else disagrees. Two individuals either work out their differences (because they want something that requires cooperation) or they refuse to interact with each other.
Bob,
You are completely avoiding the substance of the objections I raised, concerning the nature of morality. You aren’t answering the questions about the relationship of reason to moral actions – whether something is good on the reasons it is good, or something is good simply because a God told us to do it. The way you answer this will send you off into one problem or another.
As to this:
That’s nonsense. Hypotheticals are exactly how we untangle problems in reasoning and actually get a better hold on reality.
You could say about any serial killer, racist, tyrant, genocidal maniac “He is what he is” or of any bad situation “the universe is what it is.” But does that mean we can’t talk of what would be better? Of course we can! You do it all the time.
Are you saying that God actually didn’t have the smarts or powers to structure the earth so that, for instance, death-causing earthquakes didn’t happen? That wouldn’t be much of an omnipotent or omniscient God.
But, again, this doesn’t even get to the foundational conversation, the ontological conversation about morality that I’ve tried to raise with you in terms of Divine Command theory (and secular versions).
Again, nonsense. I think you need to do some more research on moral, ethical theories (outside of your own theistic version). The abuses you mention can be condemned from any number of angles. If your moral axiom concerns general human well-being and reduction of suffering, then obviously the actions of a government that clearly act against human well being and which result in gratuitous human suffering would be violating those axioms, and easily condemned.
In my case since I see desires as the object of moral appraisal, I would condemn the desire to be tyrannical, to be aggressive and to desire to engage in systematic human rights abuse as “wrong,” because those are obviously desire-thwarting desires. (Whereas desires for cooperation, mutual respect, compassion etc are “good” desires because they tend to be desire-fulfilling desires all around). If this value theory is sound, then desires form the ontological basis of value and moral actions, and morality is the objective relationship between desires and objective real-world facts about what would and would not tend to fulfill desires.
So…I think you have quite a lot more to consider against your position.
Rich H
It’s an observation, not a charge and the song is a good one.
Here is a rephrase:
I find that the better I get to know anybody the more apparent it is that they lie habitually and the more frequently I find myself detecting, and realizing it is pointless to confront or attempt to refute, their lies. I don’t think that the people I know are so terribly unusual so I suspect that if I got to know a wholly different group of people that my experience would be the same. From
(1) the observation that the better I get to know people the more apparent it is that they lie frequently, and
(2) the hypothesis that the people I know are probably a fairly representative sample of people
I am forced to conclude that most people are habitual liars.
Is there anything wrong with my reasoning?
If Tim Martin had grown up in Beverly Hills, CA, what would his zip code have been?
How most people would answer: 90210.
How Bob would answer: Nonsense, that’s a hypothetical question! Can’t ask it!
Looks like Bob wins via argumentum ad “I don’t want to deal with the implications of my beliefs-em.”
mulhern,
You might be making a fallacy of anecdotal evidence. However, I am sympathetic to your conclusions. Although I don’t think lying is necessarily bad, bad people do tend to lie, especially to themselves. M Scott Peck wrote a book People of The Lie , expressing his anxiety about the nature of evil and how lying is involved. Unfortunately, he did so from an evangelical Christian perspective, unable to see his own self-deception and counter-transference to the patients or ‘victims’ he was supposedly treating. He did not realize his own evil.
I’ve got to wonder at the company you keep. Are you a lawyer by any chance? In prison? Going through a divorce?
Consider my dilemma. A person who falls into the category of “most people” tells me “most people” lie habitually. He proceeds to give me his subjective account of why this is “true”. Doesn’t this representative of “most people” discredit his own testimony?
None of this really affects my point. If lying was “okay” nobody would care about being labeled a liar. I could be wrong but I do believe most people do care.
Since you offered a song I’ll offer Protagoras (with no claim it’s better evidence). Protagoras contrasts honesty with flute-playing. If a man claims he is a flute-player but is really not a flute-player, his friends and family say he is crazy for making that false claim. But with honesty it’s the reverse. Even if the friends know he is dishonest, “yet, if the man comes publicly forward and tells the truth about his dishonesty, then, what in the other case was held by them to be good sense, they now deem to be madness. They say that all men ought to profess honesty whether they are honest or not, and that a man is out of his mind who says anything else.”
As I stated, I think the people I know are reasonably representative of society as a whole. I’m not a lawyer, I’m not in prison, and I’ve never been married. However, like many people, I have a family, colleagues, and some other acquaintances.
Also, that question could be interpreted as an ad-hominem attack, but I’ll assume you didn’t mean it that way.
Just because you think I’m in the set of “most people” does not mean I am.
A lot of people don’t like being labelled gay, even if they really, in their heart of hearts, think they are. Some people don’t like being labelled gay at work, but don’t mind being labelled gay among their friends. Is being gay, whatever that means, OK? If your argument about being labelled a liar is correct then the fact that many people don’t like to be labelled gay is proof that being gay is bad.
I certainly never claimed that the song I mentioned was evidence, just a more pleasing statement of the observation I had made.
I meant it as a joke. I know not everyone appreciates my sense of humor.
That’s the rub. It’s always someone else. And what sort of lies are we talking about? Most lies fall into a fairly harmless category. “You look good today.” “I’ll get back to you on that.” “This was fun.”
I don’t know you well enough to tell when the text associated with your name is a joke and when it isn’t. Even knowing that it was intended as a joke, I’m still not able to see where the humour is.
I think what you’re saying is that the lies that people habitually tell are mostly harmless. I expect that I would classify more lies as harmful than you do and that is the real source of our disagreement.
Over many years, my entire family, including my mother, engaged in conversations that were absolutely riddled with lies about the state of my mother’s health. Probably at least one of those lies was “You look good today.” or something similar. This powerful fabric of lies, each individual one of which you would probably label as harmless, postponed adequate medical care by about 20 years. I considered them then and continue to consider them now, to have been harmful. I even tried telling a few truths, but they did not get much of a hearing.
That is just one example.
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