This piece by Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby (whose work I generally like) is an excellent illustration of what is probably the most common fallacy in discussions about atheism - the belief that atheism necessarily leads to moral relativism:
What society loses when it discards Judeo-Christian faith and belief in G-d is something far more difficult to replace: the value system most likely to promote ethical behavior and sustain a decent society. That is because without G-d, the difference between good and evil becomes purely subjective. What makes murder inherently wrong is not that it feels wrong,but that a transcendent Creator to whom we are answerable commands: "Thou shalt not murder...."
Obviously this doesn't mean that religious people are always good, or that religion itself cannot lead to cruelty. Nor does it mean that atheists cannot be beautiful, ethical human beings. Belief in G-d alone does not guarantee goodness. But belief tethered to clear ethical values — Judeo-Christian monotheism — is society's best bet for restraining our worst moral impulses and encouraging our best ones.
The atheist alternative is a world in which right and wrong are ultimately matters of opinion, and in which we are finally accountable to no one but ourselves.
Jacoby's claim that atheism is antithetical to morality is far from unusual. As I note here, survey data shows that 51% of Americans believe that "“[i]t is necessary to believe in God in order to be moral and have good values” (thereby going even farther than Jacoby, who concedes that atheists can be "ethical human beings").
While some atheists are moral relativists, there is no necessary connection between the two beliefs. Atheists, like theists, can have strong commitments to objective views of morality based on reason, tradition, communitarianism, and so on. There is absolutely no reason why atheists can't have "clear ethical values" just as much as theists do. Indeed, most prominent atheist thinkers (consider, for example, Karl Marx or Ayn Rand) argue for very strong non-relativist views of morality. The standard form of the argument that atheism=moral relativism implicitly assumes that belief in a deity is the only possible source of moral values; but that assumption is simply wrong.
In the last paragraph of his column, Jacoby hints at a more moderate defense of the atheism=relativism equation. Perhaps atheists can have nonrelativist views of morality, but the lack of a single divine authority for moral principles leads to disagreement and a reduction in the certainty with which people hold their moral beliefs - thereby causing a widespead perception that "right and wrong are just matters of opinion." Maybe so (though I am skeptical), but theists have exactly the same problem. After all, they disagree amongst themselves about 1) what kind of God or gods exist, and 2) what the relevant deity or deities want us to do. Disagreement over moral issues between different groups of theists is every bit as deep as that between divergent secular views of morality. If the latter could persuade people that right and wrong are matters of opinion, so too could the former. Even if we limit our focus to the "Judeo-Christian" tradition to which Jacoby refers, there is still tremendous disagreement between different groups within the Christian tradition (to say nothing of the deep disagreement between Christians and Jews that the term "Judeo-Christian" is often used to elide).
Finally, it is possible to argue that, even absent any logical connection between atheism and relativism, atheists in fact are empirically more likely to be moral relativists than theists. I have not seen evidence definitely settling this issue either way. But even if the empirical claim is true, it doesn't follow that atheism is dangerous.
This is so for three reasons. First, it could be that the causation runs from moral relativism to atheism rather than the other way around. People attracted to moral relativism may become atheists as a result rather than vice versa. Second, even if the causation runs in the direction that critics of atheism posit, the harm caused by an increasing prevalence of moral relativism must be weighed against the harm caused by non-relativist, but deeply flawed views of morality. I would rather live in a society dominated by selfish moral relativists than one dominated by nonrelativist believers in Nazism, Communism, or radical Islamism. Whether increasing moral relativism is harmful depends on what values people give up to become relativist.
Finally, even if increasing moral relativism is indeed socially dangerous, there may be ways of persuading atheist moral relativists to give up moral relativism without also giving up atheism. Just as religious groups often successfully persuade theists to convert from one religion to another, it may be that some moral relativist atheists can be persuaded to become moral objectivists. Indeed, to the extent that becoming an atheist does cause people to become moral relativists, it may be because of the widespread prevalence of views of like Jacoby's. Some who conclude that God does not exist may also come to believe that there is no objective morality because they (like Jacoby) wrongly assume that the latter is a necessary implication of the former.
Thus, those who worry about the alleged trend towards moral relativism might be better advised to oppose it by emphasizing that moral objectivism is compatible with a wide range of views on religion, including atheism.
Morality requires free-will, and free-will is often held to be unscientific (science, after all, claims that everything happens according to laws). Sam Harris, I believe, denies free-will, as have many prominent atheists; and if atheism is seen as a matter of a rationalist rejection of anything supernatural, this may indeed be a logical entailment.
Obviously, there are atheists who believe in free-will (Ayn Rand for one), but, dependng on the grounds of the atheism, there is some question as to whether such a combination of beliefs is tenable.
I'm not aware of "many" prominent atheists denying free will. But in any event, it's highly unlikely that more than a small fraction of atheists hold this very unusual belief. Moreover, some theists (e.g. - Calvinists and other Protestants committed to the doctrine of predestination) also deny the existence of free will.
Putting that aside, let me add another reason to your list:
It's important to distinguish the philosophy of moral relativism from the actual behavior of its proponents. A moral relativist might well behave in ways that outsiders find perfectly moral based on their own absolutist standards. Even if we assume that all atheists are moral relativists (a very dubious proposition -- consider, at the extremes, Marx and Rand, neither of whom remotely qualifies as a moral relativist), that wouldn't, by itself, make them bad citizens.
The problem with free will is not a particularly scientific one. It is just as problematic for the religious faithful who think that god is omniscient and knows what we all are going to do. Even if you wiggle out of this problem it gets worse.
For instance I know that some people have a good character and will donate generously to charity. Yet the very fact that I can predict this behavior means that their giving is caused by some aspect of their personality and if you view freedom as incompatible with prediction (as is necessary to get the conflict with science) then you can no longer credit them with moral goodness for their act.
Ultimately the entire business over free will seems to be a confusion. We don't feel that we lack moral culpability for acts that our own character compels. It is only external compulsion that really causes moral problems, being compelled by your own moral virtue is the very essence of moral behavior. But once understood this way the apparent tension with determinism vanishes. The apparent conflict was only the result of our intuitive failure to identify ourselves with the muck in our brain. In reality determinism only says that we are compelled to act by who we are thus solving any conflict.
Basically science just gets a hard rap on this because the scientific laws are easier to get a hand on. If you buy into the religious world view you are going to run into the same problems with souls and such. Either the nature of your soul determines what acts you do, in which case you have the same sort of determinism as one does in science, or it does not and it seems deeply unfair to hold your soul responsible for acts it was not responsible for deciding to do.
No, Calvin believed in both predestination and free will. See, e.g., this link or this one.
In particular there is no satisfactory account of where objective morals come from in theistic traditions. Sure they may be rules given by god but that doesn't answer anything. If whatever rules a omnipotent being postulated became moral obligations even if they demanded torture and other horrors then religion would suffer from the same problems of relativism it tries to smear atheism with. On the other hand if the answer is that god's laws are moral obligations because god is good (or some variation of this) then your in the same boat as the atheists. In order for 'god is good' to make (non-trivial) sense you must have a concept of good independent from your notion of god. In other words for the theist to dodge the relativity bullet they must postulate the very thing they allege the atheist cannot, an objective notion of morality independent from god.
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More generally this is also a confusion of what would be good to believe with what we have reason to believe. Even if atheism/lack of belief lead to all sorts of horrible consequences it would be totally irrelevant to the question of whether it was true.
If you really believe that belief in judeo-christianity is necessary to keep social order shouldn't you expect massive increases in crime in Europe given the much lower percent of churchgoers there?
finally, the fact that Jacoby must use the word G-D instead of God seems to me more a belief in superstitution than in an actual god.
Mark Field,
You may be right I've always thought that this must have been what Calvin believed but everyone told me I was wrong. However, the core of Ilya's point still stands. There are many religious denominations that believe determination (at least in the form of God's foreknowledge) is compatible with free will. Once you accept this then atheists get to be compatibilists as well.
Oh sure, they say that some of these people can be good, but that's little more than condescending baloney -- they don't even believe it themselves, but in a public newspaper, they have to at least pay lip service or else they would be branded as elitist and self righteous. Which they are.
So true. In fact, Jacoby himself falls victim to this fallacy when he says (quoted above):
"The atheist alternative is a world in which right and wrong are ultimately matters of opinion, and in which we are finally accountable to no one but ourselves."
Jacoby seems to be saying that atheism is a problem not because it's false, but because it leads to bad behavior. This in no way proves the existence or non-existence of God.
But all this has no bearing on whether morality exists. Morality is a set of rules that a member of society is obliged to live by -- a list of shoulds and shouldn'ts. When we observe someone violating one of those rules, we can claim that person is immoral as a factual matter. Some people are good at adhering to these rules on their own while others have to be threatened or coerced into obeying them -- that is why the criminal justice system exists.
If we acknowledge that humans are intelligent enough to comprehend moral rules and respond to incentives, justifying punishment or censure is straightforward. It is necessary to ensure a moral society. The issue of free will doesn't really come into play.
http://www.tnr.com/doc.mhtml?i=20061218&s=wood121806
How many wars have been fought because "it's wrong to kill, but G-d wants these people dead," or treasures looted because "it's wrong to steal, but G-d wants these to go to glorify His church"?
On the other hand, the old "how many wars have been fought in the name of religion" argument fails to move me. The Khmer Rouge, the Nazis and Communist Russia and China committed some of the worst atrocities in world history based on secular ideology and the pursuit of an imagined utopia. Religious fundamentalists and totalitarian ideologues are two sides of the same coin.
I argued that atheist moral relativists might be so persuaded. Marx and Rand, of course, were not relativists.
I think the argument is more a practical one than a philosophical one. It goes something like this: Christianity inculcates a world-view that includes a wide array of socially beneficial attitudes. Even when it is utterly ridiculous (say, no meat on Fridays) it is relatively benign. It is not good for this advantageous social instrument to disappear.
This also has very much to do with human nature. For example, what if it is true that humanity has a "built-in" tendency to crave moral absolutes, or at least moral clarity? (It's late; I'm simplifying. Give me a break). If Christianity's benign influence goes away, what will replace it?
As an example, let's look at Europe. The power of the Church in Europe has been on the wane throughout the 20th century. As a result(?? yes, begging the argument), the European soul was seduced by two of the worst "-isms" in history: fascism and communism. These political systems satisfied man's craving for absolutes, but also brought about the deaths of hundreds of millions. Given those alternatives, maybe plain 'ol Christianity ain't so bad.
This obviously is not an argument that Jeff Jacoby would put forth (being a believer and all), but is it completely crazy? America has been one of the most Christian and religious societies in history. At the same time, it has provided an admirable example of prosperity and progress. Are the two completely unrelated? Perhaps. I suspect we'll find out in the next 50 years.
The argument is not that atheists cannot have strict moral codes but that their "systems" by dint of their own view of the world can obtain no objective truth or certain knowledge in matters relative to human affairs qua human. Morality is one aspect of human existence. Another would be political order in the classic pre-Enlightenment use of the term.
But when the good professor blogs and states that there is a fallacy in the logic which holds that atheists are moral relativists but then just concludes that of course atheists can have "objective" moral systems, he provides not one example. He lists names of three systems but they would prove the opposite point.
A challenge to the good professor: detail one moral system that you believe is atheistic and does not fall prey to the charge of moral relativism, and I will demonstrate you are wrong. (Clue: Kojeve goes about as far as on might to make your point but I doubt if we will get that far.)
As to the Buddhist remark, Buddhism is not atheism. It began as a non-theistic religion, but it most certainly teaches the existence of a transcendant truth valid for all people at all times in all places and one that is not accessible empirically.
Atheism begins with the view that there is no transcendant truth available to man relative to human affairs because there is no transcendant being and that the only certain truth available to man is what he can reduce to mathematical symbol or reducible to countable matter. All else he might have opinions of or beliefs about and much support from others. But precisely because it is not reducible to quantity, it cannot be certain or what you term here to be objective truth.
Two additional notes. Mr. Jacoby is obviously Jewish and just as obviously sensitive to the the Jewish law which does not permit an observant Jew to write out any of the "Holy names", thus "G-d". According to that law, if the name is written out in full the document must be disposed of ritually rather than casually. Why that might bother some in this thread might be the subject of a blog entry in and of itself.
Looking forward to the challenge, assuming the Professor is up to it. At the very least he should demonstrate his point of a fallacy by describing a moral system and explaining how it is objectively true.
As to the free will question, even though I'm an atheist, I'm with Calvin on this -- free will and determinism aren't mutually exclusive. If the universe is deterministic (and I suspect it is) I'm still making my own choices. It's just if you rewound me and gave me all the same inputs, I'd make the same decisions again.
Not true. Atheism is simply the belief that there is no God. That is quite compatible with the possible existence of "transcendent truths" or of other facts that aren't reducible to mathematical symbols or reducible to countable matter.
As to the demand that I provide an logically foolproof atheist theory of morality, that is obviously not a demand that can be met in a blog post, if at all. Moreover, theists have been no more successful in meeting this challenge than atheists have been. The post shows that atheism doesn't necessarily imply moral relativism. Fully outlining and defending a specific moral theory is a separate matter.
Religious "systems" don't seem to be particularly good at coming up with objective truth either.
Utilitarianism. No need for a deity, and not relative at all. Hard to quantify, sure, but not relativistic at all. Nor do Kantian ethics require a deity as a starting point.
Atheism begins with the view that there is no transcendant truth available to man relative to human affairs because there is no transcendant being and that the only certain truth available to man is what he can reduce to mathematical symbol or reducible to countable matter. All else he might have opinions of or beliefs about and much support from others. But precisely because it is not reducible to quantity, it cannot be certain or what you term here to be objective truth.
You seem to be confusing atheism with materialism. One can be an atheist who believes in transcendent truths, but just not believe in one specific possible transcendental fact: that there exists an omniscient, omnipotent and omnibenevolent being that created the universe. That is distinguishable from materialism, which would lead one to ask whether any statement of transcendental "fact" even has a truth value. The two positions often coincide, as a materialist will always have great difficulty accounting for something as improbable and unprovable as a god, but they are not identical positions.
So, in summary, materialists are usually atheists, but not all atheists are materialists. Those who are not, are perfectly free to recognize transcedent moral facts, and believe that they have truth values. Now, in what respect are A and B somehow radically different, when A asserts that "X is good" because he believes based on a study of religious sources that God would not prefer X, whereas B asserts that "X is good" because he believes that moral rules are deducible from ontological facts about human existence, or simply because he believes, on faith, that all persons have a moral duty to reduce aggregate human suffering?
Anytime you try and parse some bright line between theistic and atheistic ethics, you're going to run smack into the wall of the Euthyphro problem. Either goodness is whatever god says it is, in which case it is just as arbitrary as whatever system an atheist might choose, or else there is a standard of goodness external to god, in which case both the theist and the atheist are looking for the same thing. Either way, it's a big problem for the notion of purely religious good and evil.
And furthermore, even if both transcendant truth and a transcendant being did exist, such truth would still not be "available to man relative to human affairs" because there is no trustworthy mechanism for transmitting or receiving that truth. End of story. Where is Prof. Dennett when we need him?
Consider that a moral system based in human nature may prove less relativistic than ones based on the various flavors of received religion, filtered as they are through human designs in diverse cultural and political pathways. Or better yet, consider that the moral systems of religion are distilled from the same evolved human (nature) sources that atheists cite directly.
Several hundred thousand years of evolved nature trumps a few thousand years of clever fiddling with right and wrong. You may choose to believe the ten commandments came from god, as implausible as that is, but it seems much more likely that they codify a long standing moral sense that is common across the human carnival.
Unable to defend atheists from the charge, you challenge "theism."
Judaism and Christianity have a revealed truth. What "proof" do you want. If I sought to prove it empirically, it wouldn't be a revealed religion. But religion need not "prove" its revelation; that is the point of revelation. It is true that the Jews claim an unbroken empirical chain of title from Mount Sinai of witnesses, 600,000 adult males to be exact, which have testified generation to generation. But nowhere in their law or dicta is that claim the basis of the truth of their religion.
Now, as to the childish point made by someone in the thread that because different religions might differ on the truth, that somehow establishes the lack of truth, you certainly don't abide by that argument. I have two very young children. One comes home and says 2 times 3 equals 8. My other child says 7. I correct them both authoritatively and say one day you will learn the truth and why it is so. But for now, know it is 6.
The whole point of the atheist position, certainly the "mainstream" and important ones, are that it is precisely because you cannot prove the existence of a transendant being empirically one must not exist.
Tell me how Rand or Marx were not moral relativists? That statement is quite provocative in and of itself, and false. While Rand and Marx are of course subject to many interpretations, I leave it to you, the one who claimed a fallacy existed by virtue of the existence of other systems that were atheistic which were not relativistic, to offer some proof. It is your complaint professor. You have not even stated a cause of action.
I have simply challenged you to provide even the barebones outline of such a case. It doesn't exist.
But, I challenge the rest of your Volokh "libertarian" professors to a dual. Prove to me that liberatarianism or any other ism of an atheistic bent (adhered to by more than a few kooks) is not relativistic.
I will then demonstrate you are wrong.
"Either goodness is whatever god says it is, in which case it is just as arbitrary as whatever system an atheist might choose, or else there is a standard of goodness external to god, in which case both the theist and the atheist are looking for the same thing."
Isn't this solved by a observation that God may be more good than man is capable of cognizing? Don't the horns of this dilema assume the sorta atheistic conclusion that cognizability by humankind is the measure of reality? This dilema doesn't seem to work if we presume humility rather than presuming that directionally focused understandings which are nonetheless not fully comprehensible are incoherent (that is, I don't understand what the teacher is trying to say... I'm trying to get it... well, I don't understand it so it must be meaningless/arbitrary). Insofar as humankind is static in development, I'll buy it... but that seems a rather radical presuposition.
You suggest utilitarianism? That is most certainly relative. From whence comes the view that what is useful is the good? What is the starting point? If it is within the system, which is what I have said and it could be understood from what the essay author said, there is certainty.
But the system doesn't claim certainty outside of itself. Meaning, a utilitarian cannot claim he knows with objective certainty that his system is the correct one. He can believe it but no more.
Kant is no different and he says as much.
As to the Euthyphro dilemma you raise, the problem exists because you reduce the fact of a revealed truth to a belief. Having done that, you've rigged the outcome but ignored what it is that revealed religion asserts. And that is because you start with the proposition that there can be no revealed truth.
Also, an atheist might indeed "believe" as you say in some transcendental truth, such as the power of crystals. But it is just that. There has been no revelation outside of his own speculation of that.
No. The dilemna exists even if humans remain totally incapable of perceiving any moral facts. Either goodness is defined internally by reference to whatever God prefers, in which case it is arbitrary, and it would be "good" for humans to rape, pillage and murder if God ordained it, or else goodness is a quality separate from God, in which case it must procede from some other source than God, and thus exists as an external fact that cannot be altered by God, in which case there existed something other than God before God created the universe, and in which case God can not be considered truly omnipotent (since he cannot alter the nature of what is good).
It is certainly one possible state of affairs that Good exists separately from God, that God is well aware of what it requires, and that the best way for humans to do Good is to follow the commands of God. But such an argument would have to exist apart from evidence, and would leave us with no ability to determine whether God was in fact behaving in this way, or if God was in fact deliberately evil, apart from our own exercise of moral reasoning. But the dilemna leads inescapably to the conclusion that either goodness is an arbitrary and tautological property of divinity, or else it is external to god, and theists and atheists alike must struggle to perceive it, using whatever methods they think best.
Moral relativism has the unusual distinction — both within philosophy and outside it — of being attributed to others, almost always as a criticism, far more often than it is explicitly professed by anyone.
SANE, I suspect your definition of relativism is as different from what others would call relativism as your defnition of atheism fails to describe the fundamental properties of atheism. It is said that one can demonstrate anything from false premises. Unfortunately demonstration of this kind is neither enlightening nor entertaining.
Moral relativism in the usage I read into Jacoby is the notion that either there is no transcendant culture-independent truth value to moral judgements. Or, again quoting the Stanford Encyclopedia:
That the standards of justification in the two societies may differ from one another and that there is no rational basis for resolving these differences.
Strong relativism rejects the very notion that rational resolutions can ever be found, since it rejects the idea of 2 x 3=6 transcendent truth values in the realm of ethics. Libertarianism, as a descendant of the Enlightenment elevation of reason over revelation hardly qualifies as relativistic by this standard. In my view, very few ideologies that warrant labels as "isms" qualify, since they are usually based on claims, justified or not, that they describe the one true way to live.
quotes from: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-relativism/
If you think that utilitarianism defines good by reference to "what is useful," you clearly are so ill-informed as to its definition that your opinion of the theory is of little use. But I'll address your claim anyway.
You say that there is some inherent difference between "revealed truth" and probabilistic beliefs conditioned on reasoning and evidence. In the end, you are arguing from authority, and from an invisible, highly cryptic authority at that. Your "revelation" provides me with no more basis for believing that the things you say are likely to represent the good than if the same list of ethical views were propounded by my cousin Steve, or for that matter by a monkey pecking away at a typewriter. Your "revealed truth" amounts to a "because I said so," and moreover, permits of so many divergent "revealed truths" that it is hardly credible to think that everyone is listening to the same revealer.
On what basis can you prove that your "revelation" isn't just a hallucination? If you can't, you are no more "certain" of your ethical system than anyone else. And if you say "I have faith that I received a revelation," than I can say, I have faith that one ought not to cause unnecessary harm to one's fellow sapient beings. We both stand in exactly the same relation to fundamental premises which we cannot prove -- we think they are likely to be true, and assume that they are so and act as if it were the case.
Please explain to me how your revealed truth is any different from my fervent belief that everything my cousin Steve says to me is absolute truth (other than that when Steve speaks ambiguously or I am confused, I can ask him follow up questions to which he can give clear answers). You can't say that it's because your faith reveals it to be true, because my faith in Steve also reveals to me that what he says is true.
You dismiss Euthyphro without grappling with its central problem -- what is the source of goodness? If it's in god, then describing god as good is tautological and meaningless; if not, then god can do wrong (and even if he doesn't, he can't have been the alpha and omega).
In closing, SANE, I think you need to realize that you've fundamentally misunderstood what it means to be an ethical relativist. A relativist believes that there are not moral facts -- that saying that "it is true that it is morally wrong to murder" is a meaningless statement. Utilitarians are not moral relativists -- they believe that it is true that it is wrong to hurt people needlessly. They think that this is an ethical fact, and that you are wrong when you disagree with them. You think the reverse. Neither you nor they are moral relativists. You both believe that there are ethical truths, and that you know what they are.
Humility about our inability to comprehend all (or even some) of reality does not require invoking the existence of a G_d who can.
While I was composing the earlier reply, I see that SANE was posting a confirmation of my speculation that his use of relativism is very different from mine. I fail to see how the mechanism by which the utilitarian or Kantian atheists come to their premises is relevant to whether or not they believe them to be absolute.
Agreed. Although, on an amusing level, your link to the Stanford encyclopedia proved that two can play the game of misconstruing moral relativism. I was equating it (as I tend to) with non-cognitivism, while I see from the link that some types of descriptive moral relativism would say that some moral relativsists would assert that (locally-referenced) moral propositions have truth-values. Of course, that doesn't make SANE's view of it any more reasonable (no meaningful definition of MR would equate it with all positions that do not claim an infallible access to moral truth), but it does show how important it is to be careful of terminology in these discussions.
This is completely incorrect. The mainstream atheist position is that the lack of evidence for any gods means they likely do not exist.
Unable to defend atheists from the charge, you challenge "theism."
The issue is whether Christians are any more likely to behave morally than atheists. The issue is directly addressed by showing that the basis of any Christian's morality is exactly the same as an atheists. Specifically, they get it from the people around them and internally by reflection. They may say that they are receiving moral guidance from elsewhere, but of course there is no evidence of that. And in the end, the actual morality of Christians' and atheists' behavior is indistinguishable.
For those able to observe the fifth and possibly higher dimensions, where God is apparent rather than merely omniscient, omnipresent, and omnipotent, there are no doubters. This is the fundamental reason why we live in a polarized world, as some live within a four dimensional world view while others live within a 5+ dimensional world view.
Where is this mysterious, magical fifth dimension? Well, it's not so mysterious or magical- it's right there in your head as you read this right now. The fifth dimension is language- or in Biblical terms, the Word.
Nothing has a greater impact on our world than our individual and collective use of language. It is the force that overcomes the entropy that is omnipresent in four dimensions. It is what allows us to build an orderly civilizaion with a wonderful internet where we can stay up late at night and debate the existence of God and whether G-d is appropriate in naming Him.
However, not all words are entropy fighters. Some words tear down while other Words build up.
If you want evidence of God, listen. Listen to people around you speaking in the ordinary sense. Discern the spirits of the words. Do you hear those Words that are kind, loving, and building others up- those are the Words of the Holy Spirit. And do you also hear the words that are harsh, negative, and tear people down- those are words of an evil spirit.
The living Word of God surrounds us. When we turn our minds to Him, He speaks directly to us through other people.
God loves you and designed this whole world so you, like Him, have the self awareness to be able to say, like Him, I am. And beyond self awareness, He has created you in His image and His image is- Creator. You are called to join Him in His marvelous ongoing act of creation- this is what gives my life meaning and I pray gives your life meaning. We are.
Where is this mysterious, magical fifth dimension? Well, it's not so mysterious or magical- it's right there in your head as you read this right now. The fifth dimension is language- or in Biblical terms, the Word.
Nothing has a greater impact on our world than our individual and collective use of language. It is the force that overcomes the entropy that is omnipresent in four dimensions. It is what allows us to build an orderly civilizaion with a wonderful internet where we can stay up late at night and debate the existence of God and whether G-d is appropriate in naming Him.
It's a spin on the argument from beauty that I've never heard before, but it's still just the argument from beauty.
I wonder if that is true, or just something we would like to believe.
- Alaska Jack
Argument from beauty.
U. Va. 2L, now that I believe I understand what you mean by "argument from beauty", I don't comprehend how my post is at all similar to that argument from beauty.
First things. Utilitarianism indeed does reference at its most basic level to usefulness. The word's meaning, in its Latin, surely does because that is its meaning. And there is good reason: the good of a thing is its contribution to overall utility (in other words, its usefulness in achievig the end). The utility at issue is usually some form of pleasure. But the crux of a thing's moral worth is in its usefulness to achieve the end sought, whatever it may be.
Second, you're confused by assuming or concluding that I am. I never proposed that revealed truth would stand tall in a moral philosopher's classroom. Religion doesn't seek to persuade a moral philosopher of its worth. I never sought to convince you nor certainly does revealed religion, in the context of a debate among moral philosophers about the logical integrity of a claim to revelation.
That burden rather falls to the man who claims to know for reasons of human demonstration or speculation that religion's claim cannot be true and his is. A man belongs to a religion out of an experience of the Divine ground of being, as it has been termed. That is not something I can even begin to discuss with you if you or the other has not experienced it; and indeed, as a participatory experience in being, even if you were a true believer, we could not discuss it as such. We could discuss our faith, but we could not penetrate the experience at the level it is lived.
Now, that might turn you off and so well it does many. But, certainly the vast majority of the world still experience this and men like Dawkins might rail at it and simply consider it a bastard child of evolution, it remains.
As to Plato's Euthyphro, it has been said by men more learned than I, that the point Plato sought to make in this dilemma is the very point I am making now.
But you remain with the challenge you and the good professor avoided by going on the offensive to "prove" revealed religion to be no more useful than a tautology. A defense of which I don't much take up.
From whence comes the base ontological position of utilitarians that man's purpose is to increase pleasure? Or, per others, to decrease pain? If we accept Bentham at his word, is it due to the observation that "nature has put man under the governance of two sovereign masters: pleasure and pain"?
Revealed religion, by being not an empirical statement about the world but a participatory experience in the Divine ground of being qua human experience of the Whole of existence, it need not confront Bentham's obligation to prove empirically or rationally how he arrives at his reduction of the world to these two masters as an ontological proposition. If he were to say it was revealed to him, fine. He would be back in the theistic boat. But he doesn't and certainly not in the way we intend it.
Anyone who claims he can make a "rational" demonstration for a revealed truth would be as you say confused. But anyone on the atheisitic side who refuses to make a "rational" demonstration of the ontological proposition being relied upon (be it U or Marxism) (since we know it is not revealed) is shall we say confused.
Your point is the rather simple one that once you have bought into U, then it is not relative since the simple statement of aggregating pleasure or avoiding pain is absolute to everyone within the system. So what? If the system itself is relative because it's fundamental ontological proposition is opinion or belief or speculation, then everything within the system when viewed from some point outside the system is relative. (By the by, Leo Strauss, now much falsely maligned as the father of neocons, made this point rather persuasively in his writings and quite demonstratively in Natural Right and History.)
And when we say "outside" we don't mean from the vantage of someone who disagrees, because that would render this discussion meaningless. It means that according to Bentham and Mill or anyone of its meaningful variants, or at least their logic, that the system is not one which has an integrity outside of itself.
Are you serious? The communists and fascists took over in countries (Russia, Italy, Germany, Spain) where the Church was still officially and practically ensconced in the power structure of the state (and Nazism arose in the more devout and Catholic south of Germany, not the more secular and decadent, protestant north). The countries that resisted communism and fascism were the more liberal and secular ones.
That argument allows anything, if God commands it. Murder the entire population of Jericho, including the babies? There's nothing wrong with that -- if God doesn't think so. Smash an airplane into a skyscraper to kill thousands? That's fine too, depending on which version of God you follow.
The argument quoted assumes that morality is relative, either to God's wishes, or if there isn't any God, then to people's wishes. It assumes relativism, then ascribes relativism to others.
God, of course, may give you more of a reason to value those opinions (for better or for worse), but let's not confuse the bad arguments about textualism for the even weaker arguments about the binding role that "religion" plays on one moral center.
It's not comparable. If you can count to 6, I can prove to you that 2x3=6. Count out 3 pennies. Count out 3 more. Now count them all.
Notice that I did that without reference to any ancient holy books or authority.
Though in that thread many people sided with her right to follow her understanding of her faith, that is, to refuse to uncover, I don't recall any of the commenters agreeing with her that indeed God requires women to hide her faces. On the contrary, everybody seemed to be moral relativists, where a morality that requires women to hide under a veil or that requires men to cover their heads with a yarmulka is as valid as a morality that does not require it, and to each its own.
If Morality is one, and comes from God, there is no difference between "You shall not kill" and "You shall not uncover your face in front of a strange man".
For the lady in question it was indeed a moral command, and she would rather have her lawsuit dismissed than unveil, just as many people would rather loose a lawsuit than kill another person, if that was the threshold for getting before a judge. So, which one comes from God? the veil? the "do not kill"? both? neither? How can anyone know from sure? I can't.
But pretty much every system ends up with certain core values. Take care of children and sick people. Don't kill or steal randomly. Try to help the poor. Offer hospitality. Don't be a a jerk. Interpretations differ, of course. Can you kill in self-defense, and what exactly does that mean? Is it best to help the poor by means of charity, socialism, or letting capitalism generate more wealth? What's the best way to take care of children? But I submit that nobody would apply the word "moral" to a system of thought that advocated torturing children and sick people, killing and stealing randomly, exploiting the poor maliciously, preying on strangers and travelers, and generally being a jerk.
Assuming we are talking about an issue of the second type, and that we are actually trying to arrive at a "correct" interpretation of the rules rather being jerks for the heck of it, what aids to interpretation do we have? Religion is one, and other systems have been put forth. I happen to think that the more sophisticated religious systems -- the ones that have grown up over time and that seem to have staying power -- work best precisely because they make you keep transcendent truths in mind at the same time you make all the extremely non-transcendent trade-offs that real life demands. You can't just say "greatest good for the greatest number" to justify pulling the plug on a patient who is terminal. You have to keep the tragic nature of the choice in mind the whole time, whichever way you end up going in the end.
It's the opposite of moral certainty (and therefore the opposite of most fundamentalisms), but somehow it manages to be the opposite of moral relativism at the same time. I think you can get there without personified deities, but I don't think you can get there without some notion of transcendence, wisdom, goodness, etc. that extends beyond everyday activity. That extra level is essential, whatever you call it.
It seems you might still be confused as to what moral relativism actually means. An ethical thoery is relativist based on to whom it applies (ie., an antonym to universal), and not based on its source (be it reason, inspiration, or some sort of perceived supernatural command). Otherwise you're left with the rather silly idea that Utilitarianism could avoid being "relativist" (by your apparent definition) if John Stuart Mill had left every one of its edicts unchanged, but simply claimed that a unicorn came to him in a dream and dictated it to him.
What you are arguing is that ethical theories are only valid if their source is supernatural. You're welcome to believe this, but it has nothing to do with the standard definition of moral relativism.
Actually, it's The All-Powerful Flying Spaghetti Monster, if you want to get technical.
Take, for example, the hot button of abortion. Atheist pro-lifers can and do exist. Sure, as a factual matter many people come to their beliefs thru their religious beliefs, but that is true of anti-racism as well, as has often been debated on these pages. But try to promote policies restricting abortions, and even if you NEVER mention God, you will be accused of imposing religion per se. That, to me, is using the formula that everything promoting morals is inherently promoting God/religion.
Two-way streets are so inconvenient.
How does being an athiest prevent one from arguing that schools should not be taking sides on hot button ethical issues, religious or otherwise? What about theists who believe religion shouldn't be taught in public schools, are they hypocrites as well? Athiesm is nothing more or less than a lack of belief in God-- in no way does it tie one into supporting any and all secular arguments as appropriate in any and all contexts.
What you say is standard fare for a moral philosophy course. This is how the subject is taught given the framework from which this discussion is usually had. But there are plenty of smart men who reject this framework and "standard definitions." I mentioned Strauss. You can add Eric Voegelin who set out a life's work critiquing the notion that moral philosophy can be had outside of the "Divine ground of Being." He referred to most of the modern attempts, the thrust of the comments and their disdain for the claim of revealed truth, as gnostic. But I don't need to make the argument. The point is now that we have semantics behind us, let's address the substantive issue you raise independent of the definition used in the typical university classroom.
You say Bentham could have solved the silly problem my argument raises by keeping the content of his system intact and having a revelation from a unicorn. And indeed that would be a resolution but why is it silly? You and the majority of the world might find the particular claim of the unicorn to be silly, but that merely goes back to the issue that there most certainly can be (and are) competing claims of a revelatory experience incompatible one with the other. But the particular silliness of the claim or the fact that there are such competing claims does not affect the validity of the claim of the human experience of revelation. The revelatory experience is what it is because it comes from an experience not reducible to counting or rationcination.
Finally, I have never said that a moral or ethical system is not "valid" if it does not come from revealed religion. Indeed, even the essay originally quoted does not make that claim. Is there any doubt that a man might rationally conclude that murder and mayhem is a bad thing for himself and his society? A man might very well live his life attuned to a revelatory experience or claim of one and still conduct his moral life per his own rational thought fully independent of the revelatory experience. That revelatory experiences also bring moral guidance is an addition to the ontological experience.
I simply made the point that it was indeed "relative" in the way that we have now understood the term. You might think that the revelation at Mount Sinai or of Jesus to be as silly as the unicorn, but your argument does not touch upon my point that Bentham's and Marx's theories are predicated on the idea that man has no access to a transcendental truth available to all men at all times everywhere UNTIL you buy into their system. The revealed religions say this truth is there and it controls whether you buy into it or not.
This is the crux of the matter, and a question to which SANE will not get a straight answer. Ultimately, everyone always appeals to an unprovable, unquantifiable, presupposed truth that they just believe.
I was going to write a post called "Shorter SANE", but it was too short even to be funny.
Is this really disputed? It's not that atheism leads people to not be decent members of society. One of my college roommates and closest friends is an atheist and he's a great guy--in many respects a model citizen.
Yet, the key distinction between those who believe in God and atheists is the source of morality. The Judeo-Christian worldview teaches that humans have special value because God created them and assigned special value to them. They are "created in the image of God." Unlike all other living things, they have an eternal soul (or, more precisely, humans are eternal souls with temporal bodies).
It is not merely a fear of divine punishment that leads adherents of the Judeo-Christian worldview to behave morally, though there is perhaps an element of that. The distinction is that people are objectively valuable and deserve to be treated well. It's not just that if I murder you I would invoke God's wrath (I would), but also that murdering you would destroy a thing of objective value.
Now, certainly an atheist can adopt a moral system. There are many to choose from or he could design his own from scratch. But whether it is his own or someone else's (such as society's) that he adopts, it is ultimately arbitrary. Unless we believe in the "ghost in the machine" as discussed above, what makes humans in any real sense more valuable than animals? Why is it murder to take the life of a human but preparing dinner to take the life of a cow? If the only difference between humans and cows is that we are more evolved, why should that create a basis for special value? If all of life as we know it is the product of unguided, random mutations over billions of years, humans don't have any objective value. We are just another link in an unending evolutionary chain, eventually to be replaced by superior beings.
But back to the main point, any moral system an atheist adopts is ultimately his choice, his preference. For example, Kant's Categorical Imperative says we should "act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it would become a universal law." (Interestingly similar to "do unto others as you would have them do unto you". Matthew 7:12) But, on what basis could such an adherent criticize another atheist who adopted another conflicting moral system? Perhaps one could adopt a view that superior beings can do whatever they want to inferior beings. You could adopt an IQ measurement, a physical prowess measurement, or any other measure of "superiority." But, clearly such a view would contradict the categorical imperative. Yet, to dispute the superiority of a moral system one could only make two kinds of appeals: (1) You could appeal to the effectiveness of a moral system in sustaining an orderly society. A "which works better" kind of approach. Of course, that creates the problem of defending why your view of civilization is better. Basically, this is an appeal to some sense of morality that is common to a majority of people, a democratic approach to morality. Clearly it would be difficult to have a civilized society as we generally understand it if "might makes right" was the guiding moral principle. But, an appeal to society intrinsically says that "moral rightness" equals the views of 50% + 1 of the people. There would be no basis for arguing for minority rights because, by definition, they would be minority wrongs. (2) You could appeal to a higher authority. However, as an atheist what higher authority can you appeal to than nature? How do the laws of nature spawn laws of morality? If there is no "ghost in the machine" and no "ghost outside of the machine," and all we have is nature, in the end it's hard to see how nature can tell us how we ought to behave. Nature can tell us what we're made of, but not how we should act.
So, atheism doesn't lead to immoral behavior, per se. Plenty of atheists choose to live in such a way that their lives conform to societal norms. Many are genuinely kind people--even in ways that go beyond societal norms. But all that means is that their subjective choices conform to the subjective choices of others...or that their subjective choices happen to conform to the objective moral standards imposed by a higher authority.
Morality either derives from a higher authority than nature or derives from the preferences of purely natural beings. And if the preferences of any two natural beings differ, how to resolve that difference? Perhaps, in a nature only world, in the end might (physical or political) does make right...
I don't think so. Moral relativism just means that morality is not absolute--that an act can be seen as moral by one person and immoral by another, and that neither is "right." The real distinction is not between relativism and objectivism, but between relative morality and absolute morality. If you believe in a supernatural source for morality, humans are irrelevant, and what is immoral for one is immoral for all. Even objective morality is not absolute morality. One can be an objectivist and not believe in an absolute morality. Reason can lead one to objective moral laws that are always applicable. However, when humans are gone, those moral laws go away. In that way, they are not absolute moral laws. But God gives absolute moral law, and even if all humans are gone, that absolute moral code would still exist.
To whom would God's absolute moral code apply in the absence of human beings? In what sense do moral laws exist if there are no moral agents to be bound by them?
Here's a "moral universal" for you, courtesy of Rabbi Hillel: "What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor." This is the negative variant of the Golden Rule and is pretty close to, if not in fact what the socio-biologists would call an Environmentally Stable Strategy (ESS). "Moral" behaviors are essentially ESS's - they are demonstrably objective and not at all relativistic.
Nature is replete with examples of "moral" behavior among social mammals (predator pack and plant eating herd animals). Kinship obviously plays a major factor in "moral" behavior but modern homo sapiens have, through natural selection, expanded moral behavior to included unrelated others. And I emphasize "through natural selection."
The problem arises in discussions of "morality" when they revolve around "philosophy" divorced from science. If we put things in scientific terms, we can do a much better job of discussing what is objectively moral and what is not. Robert Heinlein, incidentally, was talking about moral absolutes before sociobiology caught on. One of the moral absolutes - the need to insure the existence of the next generation - he described as "women and children first". Smart man, that Mr. Heinlein.
My comment about Buddhists was in response to this passage from Jacoby: "What society loses when it discards Judeo-Christian faith and belief in G-d is something far more difficult to replace: the value system most likely to promote ethical behavior and sustain a decent society."
Jacoby tied ethical behavior not to "transcendent truth" (as you put it), but specifically to the Judeo-Christian God.* Without going into the merits of your view of Buddhism, Buddhists do serve as a counter-example to Jacoby's claim.
*I'm skeptical that the God of Jews and Christians can be equated for this purpose. While most Christians today don't emphasize it, official doctrine in most denominations remains that no one goes to heaven except through Christ.
How exactly is this different than a theist's world, in which the "good" is defined by the fiat of a purportedly omnipotent being and backed with the threat of eternal damnation? Why, other than deference to power, should we accept God's own assertion that It is good? There's an awful lot of things in the Bible that God supposedly commanded that strike me as abhorrently evil.
That aside, what exactly is your point? Even if we accept your argument that a secular theory of morality lacks the universally imperative nature that theistic morality enjoys (an assertion that I reject for the reasons noted above), then the point I made earlier becomes even more relevant-- the ontological status of atheism is not affected by its social consequences. In other words, God either exists or does not exist, and the truth of God's existence is affected not in the slightest by whatever consequences it might have on the moral behavior of human beings. Even if we accept the suggestion that people are more likely to behave morally if they believe in God, that argument provides no reason to actually believe in God, assuming that we want our beliefs to accurately reflect reality.
If you identify someone as Christian. You know alot about their beliefs. Not all of course but a lot. The same goes for any religion.
Weither the atheist is moral or not you can't know even if you know his actions because you don't have a clue what he believes in. That is a problem.
It is not a belief in moral relativism to recognize that different people/religions have different moral codes. What one considers moral may be totally wrong by another. This is not a statement that the Others moral code is just as right as yours (only moral relativist say that) but that it is sincere and different. A Thugee's belief that murder is moral doesn't mean we agree with him. It just means that as we hang him we know that he by his sincere beliefs was a moral man. Doesn't stop us from hanging him or believing that his moral code is WRONG.
Atheism taken to its logical self-consistant conclusion is materialistic. There is zero foundation within atheism to build a set of "transcedent moral facts" from the ground up. Any transcedent moral facts that a self-proclaimed atheist believes in were received by philosophical inertia from theism.
"If the only difference between humans and cows is that we are more evolved, why should that create a basis for special value?"
If cows could talk, and tell us how they feel, would we still kill them for dinner?
"I detect insecurity and fear of that they do not understand. Also the fear of death which plagues secular humanists who have nothing to believe in or live for."
You're projecting. I don't read anything like that here. And one could just as easily say that fear of death drives people toward a fable that assuages their fears.
Also, in general: if God doesn't exist, then whence the Bible?
This may be too simplistic for the likes of this board, but revelation for Jews and Christians comes from the manifestations of God in the world - from Moses receiving the Ten Commandments to, for Christians, the ultimate manifestation: the incarnation of God as Man, in Jesus Christ, who was born of a human mother, lived, was put to death, and then rose from the dead. He wasn't an apparition or hallucination. As God, he was the Truth. Believing the revelations of God-as-Man and God in the world requires faith, but does not mean Christians stand in the same relations to truth premises as utilitarians or atheists stand in relation to truth premises.
Oh, please. If you're going to use any examples, these are poor ones - the Bible says "Thou shalt not kill," which perfectly clearly covers abortion; the Bible condemns homosexuality (along with all sexual sin and activity outside of marriage); and the Bible perfectly well distinguishes between homosexuality and cotton linen clothing for Christians by the nature of Jesus Christ in the history of salvation -- Christ was the new covenant, so most of the old (external) purity rules were no longer necessary to keep the covenant of salvation, but only baptism (but many laws regarding internal purity and morality were affirmed).
Italian Fascism also comes out of the socialist tradition; Mussolini was editor of the Italian Socialist Party newspaper until just a couple of years before founding the Fascist Party.
Spanish Fascism doesn't really have that much (but name) in common with Italian Fascism or German National Socialism.
You mean like Catholic Poland and France? Like the fiercely Christian United States and Canada? Like Britain?
J.F. Thomas, as usual, knows no history.
Ah, that question itself presumes moral relativity. God is supposed to be the moral agent, in the thiest view.
I was only trying to get away from the relativist/objectivist distinction, and point out the absolute/inabsolute (or relativist) moral law distinction. Athiests can be moral objectivists, but they cannot subscribe to an absolute moral law. Example: An athiest can use reason and arrive that a given moral law should apply to everyone. He can reject the idea that someone has the right to gainsay his opinion. This belief would make his moral law objective--he doesn't think it depends on opinion, but on necessary reason. He could use syllogism, for example, starting with very basic facts (like existence, and free will) to arrive at an objective moral code. Hence, this athiest is not a moral relatavist.
But still he wouldn't subscribe to the idea of an absolute moral code. Only a supernatural entity can provide that. Because, as you point out, once all moral actors are absent, there are no more morals. Nietzche said:
But if God exists, then we mere mortals need not exist in order for morality to exist.
And if you take away God? Well, to a thiest, that question is not to be asked. But you are right, without God, there is no "absolute" moral code either, for lack of a moral actor.
I read this earlier but forgot to reply to it in the midst of writing my previous post. I was going to commend you for that point. I agree that the existence of God is neither proved nor refuted by the social consequences of such a belief.
Well, I could suggest any number of reasons but I'll just offer one. In the Judeo-Christian understanding, God is both the creator of the universe and all-knowing. In other words, God knows best. Moreover, God cares for his creation. It's not just that we ought to obey out of fear of punishment, but because it makes sense to defer to an infinitely wiser being. This is similar to why it makes sense for children to defer to their parents. A mother might tell her young son not to stick his fingers in electrical outlets. The child would probably obey partly out of fear of being disciplined, but also he would probably trust that his mother knew better that it is a bad idea to stick fingers in electrical outlets. I'm sure there's a better illustration than this, but the point is that it just makes good sense to follow the rules of a wiser being that cares for us--and how much more so an infinite, all-knowing being that designed the entire universe.
As you said, this is not a persuasive argument for God's existence. It just is to show how morality derived from God's laws is distinct from morality derived from any other source.
I'll probably leave further discussion to others. I have an ever so exciting civil procedure final to study for. Yay tests. :-/
Capable of, or willing to do?
You say:
I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at. On one hand you fault secular ethics for giving no "access" to transcendental truth until one "buys into" a particular system. But how is this different from religious, "revealed" ethics? How does one have access to Christianity's transcedntal ethical truths without "buying into" its system, either through revelation or conversion? There are plenty of religious "truths" promoted in the world, many of which are contradictory. How does one know which "truth" is the correct one?
And why couldn't Kant have said that his categorical imperative was a logical truth of ethics that was waiting to be discovered (assuming you allow that there are non supernatural logical truths that have been and can be "discovered")? What prevents Kant from claiming that his categorical imperative has always been the proper judge of behavior, and applying it retroactively? Surely something similar must have happened when Abrahamic religions first came on the scene.
Not really. Just more than they are used to using. Indeed, one thing that might explain Frank Cross's statistic is that, as they have to think more carefully about the source of their ethics, atheists are likely to have a much more thorough understanding of their ethics than theists, on average.
What if I choose Thuggism (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thuggie), and it is now reveal