Some elementary remarks about “objective” morality
June 7, 2010
If we did a good act merely from the love of God and a belief that it is pleasing to Him, whence arises the morality of the Atheist? It is idle to say, as some do, that no such thing exists. We have the same evidence of the fact as of most of those we act on, to wit: their own affirmations, and their reasonings in support of them. I have observed, indeed, generally, that while in Protestant countries the defections from the Platonic Christianity of the priests is to Deism, in Catholic countries they are to Atheism. Diderot, D'Alembert, D'Holbach, Condorcet, are known to have been among the most virtuous of men. Their virtue, then, must have had some other foundation than love of God.
-Thomas Jefferson
One the things I hear often when the subject of religion comes up, or more precisely the subject of my non-belief comes up in conversation, sooner or later the notion of morality is raised. You've heard it too I am sure. That if there is no god to tell us what is moral and what isn't, then morality itself is simply a shame. Morals, we're told depend wholly on the existence of a extra-human, immaterial, supernatural warrant for right and wrong, then such things don't exist.
The tiresome apologist William Lane Craig likes this argument a great deal, going so far as to claim that without a god, something like rape cannot be considered immoral! It's a small wonder there are roving bands of atheists just attacking anything that moves!
Of course this argument, if it can be called such, is fairly empty. A great deal is known about our moral and ethical impulses, about how both culture, individual choice and evolution have shaped them. This, I suspect is deeply satisfying to some theists who want to claim an immutable source of morals. (That religious morals have changed dramatically over time is no nevermind to them!) As others have commented, the person who says that unless they have been told by a god not to kill or rape they would be running about doing so has said far more about themselves than anything else.
Given the frequency with which this argument comes up in pop apologetics it is worth examining to see if it is sound.
The standard argument goes like this: in order for moral and ethical standards to have any meaning whatsoever, and to have any authority on people whatsoever, they cannot spring from human minds. No human being has any intrinsic authority over another to enforce moral behavior. Further, we fickle humans can change our minds and therefore our morality is merely relative and impulsive. What is required is an "objective" source of morals that has authority to enforce it, is unchanging and is, above all, extra-human. (hence why they call it objective morality.) That is, it comes from a supernatural source.
Consider what the theist has to do in order to support the claim that their god is the objective source of morals and therefore we ought to obey said deity. By my estimation for this claim to be taken seriously they must, at minimum, met four conditions:
1) Demonstrate there is a god.
Now, at this point I am not saying they have to prove their particular god exists, but instead just show that a god, any god, could exist. On this point it is important to say they cannot use the moral argument for god, because then they will just whip around in circular reasoning: "God exists because there are morals. Morals exist because God does." That doesn't get very far.
Most theists, at least those not those bound to fundamentalist thinking, will likely turn to the ontological or teleological arguments for god's existence. These arguments are by no means conclusive, and have been refuted. But for our purposes here, we can say they are open to debate.
But let us grant them these arguments for the moment. What they have demonstrated by them is, at best, the deist view of a god as the original creator of the universe, but who takes no interest in its goings on, never mind human affairs. So even granting them this argument they have not proved their case. There is more work to do.
2) Demonstrate the god that exists is the god they believe in.
Having presented a case that a god exists, they have then the huge task of demonstrating that it's their god that is the one handing down objective moral standards to us poor slobs. Remember, the moral argument itself is not sufficient, because it results in circular reasoning. Moreover, the moral argument itself does not present us with the identity of the god in question. Is it the Christian Trinity? Allah? Yahweh? The Great Spirit? The moral argument does not say. These gods are specific, with specific personality traits and a history and chosen prophets and so on.
I haven't a clue how a theist would be able to demonstrate that the god demonstrated in point one is the one they happen to worship. They would, I assume, turn to scripture. But each religion has it own scripture, each claiming to be the truth and none of them possess a way to demonstrate the others are false beyond saying "because my holy book says so."
Why is this second point important? Well, according to the theist, particularly of the Abrahamic variety, god's morals standards have been explicitly handed down. We don't know them by instinct (and if we did what would suggest a material source of morality as a product of evolution, which defeats the moral argument for god altogether.) So god handed down his or her or its orders via ancient texts. So if we are to take the claim that god is the source of moral standards seriously, we are going to natural ask, "which standards?" which is to say "which god?"
3) That the identified God has authority over human beings
If by some miracle, if you will excuse the phrase, we actually got this far, the theist is faced with another condition to meet. Where does this god fellow get his authority over us?
This is a question I have asked many theists, and have never actually received a useful answer. Some will claim god has authority over his creations by virtue of being the creator. In other words, we have to do what god wants because god made us. It is a peculiar argument and one we do not accept in our ever day lives on (drum roll please) moral grounds. Consider, parents literally "create" their children through sex. However, we do not regard the authority of parents over children to be absolute. There are things we do not allow parents to do to their children. For instance, we regard it as immoral for parents to beat or harm their children. We do not allow them to kill or imprison their children. Indeed one of the very few legitimate reasons for the state to interfere with religious practice is if someone is being harmed, particularly children. So merely being the "creator" of something does not grant authority over the creation.
This is particularly true of the modern west which long ago dismissed with concepts of absolute rulers. Indeed, the kind of "creator control" suggested by some theists is, by any definition, a dictatorship, which runs counter to every concept of freedom we posses.
So if that doesn't work, what else is there? Well, some use a variant of this argument and say we should obey the moral dictates of god because if we don't, god will punish us. In the case of the Christian/Jewish/Muslim god, that punishment often entails torture forever in some sort of Hell.
This argument fails on two points. First, as Plato explained to us long ago in the Republic, might does not make right and justice never belongs to the stronger party simply because they are the stronger party. In modern terms, we reject the very idea of authority that rests upon the threat of violence. Indeed, a government whose entire authority does rest upon the threat of violence is considered illegitimate.
In fact, the justification for a god's authority of human beings is unclear at best and, in point of fact, merely assumed in most theology. But if we are to accept the moral argument for god, then we need more than an assumption. We need a legitimate explanation for god's authority.
4) Are the standards issued by the god in question actually moral?
Having come this far down the garden path, the theist is left with one last challenge. Are the moral standards issued by god actually moral? And if we reject some or all of them as immoral, then the entire argument falls to dust.
In the dialogue, Euthyphro Plato poses the question this way: "Is what is moral commanded by God because it is moral, or is it moral because it is commanded by God?"
If the first conclusion is true then the entire moral argument for god is rendered inert. It would imply that god orders that which is intrinsically moral - and if that is so then what makes those standards moral has nothing to do with god. He merely recognizes their moral character. Therefore if there is no extra-human source of morality, or if there is it isn't god.
If the second is true, then morality is not objective at all as the theist defines it. It is an extra human morality, but not objective. The whims of human beings is replaced by the whims of a supernatural agency. Anything and everything god orders is moral by definition. That means that any horrible act can be justified simply by saying "god said so."
This argument, if accepted, leaves the theist - particularly Abrahamic believers - in particular moral pickle. Take the often cited Christian idea that god is "love." He is omi-benevolent and does issue orders we recognize as moral such as "thou shalt not kill" or "thou shalt not bear false witness." Some Christians, for example, will go so far as to say that god would never issue a command that was not moral.
Well, even a glance at the Bible raises some serious questions. University of Michigan philosophy professor Elizabeth Anderson in her essay "If God is dead, then everything is permitted?" points out that "if we accept biblical inerrancy, I'll argue, we must conclude that much of what we take to morally evil is in fact morally permissible and even required."
She points to several occasions, complete with chapter and verse references, in which god's behavior is by any definition of morality that we hold true today, utterly and completely immoral. Her list is long but a mere glimpse of what is in the bible, so I will not quote it in its entirety. A small portion will do. (You can find the complete essay in the anthology "The Portable Atheist" edited by Christopher Hitchens.) Anderson writes:
"Consider first God's moral character, as revealed in the Bible. He routinely punishes people for the sins of others. He punishes all mothers by condemning them to painful childbirth, for Eve's sin. He punishes all human beings by condemning them to labor, for Adam's sin. (Gen. 3:16-18). He regrets His creation and in a fit of pique, commits genocide and ecocide by flooding the entire earth. (Gen. 6:7) He hardens Pharaoh's heart against freeing the Israelites (Ex. 7:3), so as to provide the occasion for visiting plagues upon the Egyptians, who, as helpless subjects of a tyrant, had no part in Pharaoh's decision. (So much for respecting free will, the standard justification for the existence of evil in the world.) He kills all the firstborn sons, even of slave girls who had no part to play in oppressing the Israelites(Ex 11:15). He punishes the children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren of those who worship any other god. (Ex. 20:3-5). He sets a plague upon the Israelites, killing 24,000, because some of them had sex with the Baal-worshiping Midianites (Num. 25:1-9)...He sends two bears out of the woods to tear 42 children to pieces because they called the prophet Elisha a bald head. (2 Kings2:23-24)..."
One can add to this list, as Anderson does, the several ethnic cleansings ordered by god, ordering a father to murder his own son as a test of loyalty, and the sanction of slavery including beating slaves to death provided they live for a couple of days after the beating.
All of this, and more, we consider fundamentally immoral. Christians, however, will sometimes argue that, yes, this is all pretty horrible. But along came Jesus and everything improved. Now, it is true that for much of the New Testament God appears to have mellowed out and doesn't spend a lot of time destroying cities and ordering the taking of sex slaves. But the good times don't last. God requires a human sacrifice to "forgive" the sins of the world, and come the Book of Revelation, its back to old school blood letting and genocide and Jesus, armed with a sword, personally executes non-believers. As Anderson writes:
"Death is not bad enough for unbelievers, however; they must be tortured first. Locusts will sting them like scorpions until they want to do die, but they will be denied the relief of death. (Rev: 9:3-6)"
So what can we conclude from this orgy of violence and general behavior that would be categorized as evil by Christians in any other context? For one we can dispense, easily, with the notion that god's orders are moral because they came from god. Which brings the theist back to the conundrum of Plato's second option - if not god, then whence come morality? Why does any normal person recognize the actions of god as described in the bible as utterly immoral if anything done by god is moral by definition?
A typical objection will be to say that we cannot judge god. If that is so then we are utterly incapable of recognizing immoral acts when we see them, meaning the entire notion of an extra-human objective morality is pointless - we are too damn dumb for it to have any impact on us at all.
If however, we regard the texts as reflections of the time in which they were written, where the moral standards we hold today were simply not in effect, then we realize there is nothing "objective" about any of it. The morals of thousands of years ago are not the morals of today. What a Christian believed to be ordered by god 200 years ago is not what a Christians believes in 2008. The zeitgeist changed and for most of us living in the west it changed for the better.
of us living in
Comments:
#2 Todd Howe (Guest) on Saturday June 19, 2010 at 12:27am
Mr. LaFleche;
Thanks for the article. I appreciated your tightly woven polemic - there’s a clarity of structure here, and you demonstrate in your four points some primary metaphysical, epistemological, political, and ethical objections to theism. Anyone ought to find this framework useful if they find themselves tongue-tied in the moment while confronted with a particularly adamant believer. These paper tigers have claws (as history has shown), but while I’m mixing both metaphor and phylum here, point 2 on its own - “because my holy book says so” - should make it clear how this should really be just shooting fish in a barrel.
Of course, faith and reason occupy entirely seperate realms, which to a theist becomes the whole argument. One of the best insights I’ve noted is how closely related the Platonic idealism of the sort theists lean on is to moral skepticism, or should I say moral relativism. Faith, we’re often told, is received only by direct experience, by communion - I’m fairly certain I’m not misrepresenting this argument, do correct me if I’m wrong - and so is neither verifiable nor falsifiable to the non-believer, seeing as how we have yet to be gifted with God’s grace. The grace, that is, of whichever god we’re talking about.
Pull the canard of communion from the argument, and you’re left with the relativism of the hundreds of holy books and sects available worldwide, each camp nearly equally convinced of its divinatory powers, its chosen status. And not a one of them seriously looks at this fact. Which is too bad, really, because it could highlight the tribalism of the thing.
It’s probably worth considering at this point moving past the authoritarian gloss of priests and politicians - they’ve words to thank for their positions - and addressing the deeper philosophical problem, which you raised in your article, at least implicitly. On the subject of morals:
“A typical objection will be to say that we cannot judge god. If that is so then we are utterly incapable of recognizing immoral acts when we see them, meaning the entire notion of an extra-human objective morality is pointless - we are too damn dumb for it to have any impact on us at all.”
I find it disturbing how closely aligned this is to the analytical position we’re still being spoonfed by modern philosophy departments. I must admit to being a novice in the details of this, but pulling a representative quote of Wittgenstein’s, my point ought to be clear enough. From the Tractatus, conclusion of the 6th proposition:
“God does not reveal himself in the world. The facts all contribute only to setting the problem and not its solution… When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words. The riddle cannot exist. If a question can be framed at all, it is also possible to answer it. Skepticism is not irrefutable, but obviously nonsensical when it tries to raise doubts where no question can be asked. For doubt can exist only where a question exists. A question, only where an answer exists. And an answer, only where something can be said… There are indeed things that cannot be put into words. They make themselves manifest. They are what is mystical.” [Edited for length]
Substitute the limits of language in Wittgenstein’s skepticism for the limits of reason in Christian dogma and one gets an inkling of how far we’ve actually come from the Platonic essentialism that suffuses the Bible, that inspired Christian theology, that still underlies many of our supposedly seculular premises today - not very far I’m afraid.
#3 ibvpuxuqt (Guest) on Sunday June 20, 2010 at 11:06pm
9N5JE2 lcndxdvjtkcy, imkslwjslsav, [link=
#4 ptnpybcqxw (Guest) on Saturday July 31, 2010 at 1:02pm
8cRLUh yjmrorndwshc, wxebazwrcrkc, [link=
#5 psgtiw (Guest) on Saturday July 31, 2010 at 3:01pm
6whnfv ndzzgjttkqys, gpykiblikdxx, [link=
#1 ypvgcx (Guest) on Thursday June 17, 2010 at 8:21pm
DTWuul lszuijcgbdzg, ijpwtpltqbsl, [link=