Atheism and ethics

 Atheists often bristle at the suggestion that, given their rejection of religion, they are any more likely be unethical. Many of them are ethically motivated. But I have trouble believing that religion makes no moral difference.

Religion, Morality, and Kitty Wells

A redated post/ 

Country music, as most of us know, is  the most theology-laden form of popular music. The lyrics of this song, sung by Kitty Wells in the early 60s, illustrates, I believe, something interesting about the effect of religion on morality. It is a song of a woman who supposes herself to have been a wrongly deserted wife whose husband has given her divorce papers, all legal and proper. However, she asks whether "God is satisfied" with his actions, telling him that he will be called to account for what he has done by God, and implies that his lawyer won't do him any good when he stands before God and must be held accountable for his actions.

Your lawyer called and said he had the papers all prepared
To sign my name was all I had to do
He saw the judge, now he seen me, there's only one thing left
Will your lawyer talk to God for you?
Will your lawyer talk to God and plead your case up on high
And defend the way you broke my heart in two?
Manmade laws to set you free on earth but is God satisfied
Will your lawyer talk to God for you?
We all face that final judgment and it's very strict they say
When your time comes, I wonder what you'll do
Will you bow your head in shame or will you turn your head away
Or will your lawyer talk to God for you?
Will your lawyer talk to God and plead your case up on high
And defend the way you broke my heart in two?
Manmade laws to set you free on earth but is God satisfied
Will your lawyer talk to God for you?

I am not saying anything about the morality of divorce in general. Clearly, it is evident that at least some people desert marriages without adequate moral justification, and the law, as we currently conceive it, cannot prevent them from doing so. I bring these lyrics up because it seems to make nonsense of the popular idea that somehow religious belief, or lack of same, isn't a game-changer when it comes to morality. Assuming atheism, this appeal would be plain nonsense. Again, I am not arguing that no one can follow a moral code without a belief in God. But I think we must admit the force of this sort of consideration, and face that fact that many people, over the centuries, have turned away from a wrongful act because they believed that God would hold them accountable if they performed that action. I am thinking primarily here of the accountability and shame for these actions, as opposed, say punishment in hell. If someone can't see the moral force of this sort of thing, then I would have to say there is a screw loose somewhere.

Good without God?

 Where does the objectively valid moral standard come from for being moral except from religion, or at least metaphysics (something like the Form of the Good).  If on the other hand it is subjective whether something is right or wrong, then all we mean by being moral is that we like what they do. If that is all you mean, then, sure, there are plenty of nonreligious people who meet that standard. But is that interesting?

Dostoyevsky was right!

If there is no God, then everything is permitted. According to this atheist. HT: Triablogue.

A redated post.

Turning Weinberg on His Head

I wouldn't say morality has no basis without God, because we are still social beings. But there do seem to be cases and situations in which having a God to which one must account provides a basis for much moral conduct. In fact, I am inclined to turn Weinberg on his head: Good people will always do good things, but getting bad people to do good things, that takes religion.

Killing in the name of anything

I posted this on the comment line, but I think I should make it a post as well.

As I understand it, some atheists have been using the admittedly bloody history of Christianity as grounds for atheism, claiming that atheism is pure in that regard. I find this patently absurd. You get the blood when the power of the state is attached to any ideology, whether it be a Christian ideology, a Jewish ideology, a Hindu ideology or an Islamic ideology, or an atheist ideology. Can people be fanatical enough about atheism to kill for it? I realize that they don't believe in hell, but some of them are exclusivists in the sense that they think everyone who is on the atheist side is right and everyone who is committed to "religion" is doing damage. When someone can't recogize the fact that Gandhi received profound inspiration from his Hindu beliefs while challenging the worst in Hinduism, if you call Martin Luther King insane because he was caught up in the "God delusion" and can't see how important his faith was in undergirding the social transformation he spearheaded, then you are an ideologue, and I'm going to start getting worried if you ever have a gun in your hand.

State-sponsored Christianity, state-sponsored Islam, state-sponsored atheism. Is the problem with the beliefs, or with the misguided attempt to support these ideologies with coercive power. The bad news for atheists is that the bloody history of Christianity does nothing to support a case against Christianity. The good news for atheists is that these things do support something that I think most atheists believe in: the separation of Church and State. That is the correct use of the"holy horrors" argument, and atheists who want to use it in that way can be my guest.

The Three Parts of Morality

A redated post.

The Three Parts of Morality
Book 3, Chapter 1

“There is a story of a schoolboy who was asked what he thought God was like. He replied that, as far as he could make out, God was the sort of person who is always snooping round to see if anyone is enjoying himself and then trying to stop it.”

By contrast, “Moral rules are rules for running the human machine.” They are, to use my example, the instructions in the owner’s manual of a car, that tells you to keep the oil level up in the car and to change the oil every 3000 miles. These rules may seem at first to go against our natural inclinations.

Should we speak of moral ideals instead of moral rules? If we think of them is ideals rather than rules, then different people might have higher or lower ideals. Everyone is expected to try to follow the rules, even though no one comes close to following them perfectly.

Lewis mentions two ways in which “the human machine” goes wrong. One way is by bad relationships amongst people. The other is when things go wrong within the individual. Much discussion about morality on the part of modern people has to do with how people should relate to one another; that it is wrong to cause harm to others. He compares the moral life to a fleet of ships. The fleet may fail because of internal failures within the ships, or may fail because they drift apart or collide with one another.

But there is a third component to our moral lives. Are the ships going where they ought to be going? They may work well internally and sail in formation, and yet not get to the right place. Of course this means that there is a proper goal for human life.

So that means morality means:

1) Fair play among human beings.
2) Harmonizing the person internally.
3) Fulfilling the purpose of human life.

Modern people think of 1) and do not think of 2) and 3). They say “There can’t be anything wrong with it if it doesn’t harm anybody.”

2) is a moral tradition that goes back to Plato. According to Plato, reason (the desire for the Form of the Good) should command, and spirit (the interpersonal self), and appetite obey.

3. Is a tradition that goes back to Aristotle. The good life is the life that fulfils human nature. It assumes that human life has an inherent purpose. For Aristotle that purpose is inherent in our nature as humans, for the Christian tradition it is given to us by God.

Lewis thinks that we should pay more attention to 2 and 3. “You cannot make men good by law: and without good men you cannot have a good society.

Christianity is a set of claims that, if true, will profoundly affect how we ought to behave.

Christianity teaches that I am a creature created by God for God’s purpose. Do I simply belong to myself? Many people think we do. If there is no God, then we own essentially belong to ourselves. “Whose life is it anyway?” So if we want, for example, to commit suicide, all we need to consider is what it would do to others. “If someone else made me, then I shall have a lot of duties which I should not have if I simply belonged to myself.

Suppose I am addicted to video games. “It doesn’t hurt anybody,” I say. But am I fulfilling my nature as a human being?

Immanuel Kant thought that it was wrong to lie, first and foremost, because our capacity to speak was given to us in order to speak the truth, in lying we damage ourselves by using a facility for something for which it was not intended. In fact, he maintained that all lies were wrong, something thought by most people to be too strong a position. But the emphasis on this motivation for truthfulness is something Lewis would approve of.

Christianity also teaches that human beings last forever. This has two implications:

1) States of character are more important than particular actions. If my bad temper is getting worse, this may not be a big deal if we feed the worms after 70 years. If I go on forever, then my bad temper will be just hell until it is corrected. “Hell is the precisely correct term what it would be.”
2) If individuals are gone after 70 years then a state, a nation, or a civilization may last for a thousand years. (Hitler, for example, promised that the Third Reich would last for a thousand years.) But if Christianity is true, then an individual is more important than a civilization.

Lewis says that from here on he will give an account of morality with the assumption that Christianity is true. Although this is an apologetic work, Lewis is content simply to give an analysis of what ethics looks like on Christian assumptions, without feeling the need to prove the truth of Christianity first. It attempts to answer the question “Can we get sensible answers to moral questions if we adopt a Christian viewpoint.”

Ethics and World-Views

A redated post.

This is a response that I will be presenting to my students in Introduction to Ethics. I thought I would get feedback on it. The textbook is Jacques P. Thiroux and Keith W. Krasemann’s Ethics: Theory and Practice, ninth edition (Pearson Prentice Hall, 2007)

In this chapter there is developed an account of what morality is, including some reflections on the relationship of religion to morality. I’ve got some pretty significant differences with the chapter, and so I am going to give you some points to ponder with respect to these issues.

Morality, as I conceive it, is concerned with three different things. The first has to do with how humans relate to one another. The second has to do with how one ought to relate to oneself. The third has to do with how one should relate to one’s creator (if there is a creator). These are three different things, and so if we ask, for example, what relevance religion has for morality, we have to look at all aspects of these things.

In our present day, whether one practices a religion or not depends on what world-view one holds. One highly prevalent world-view springs from the monotheistic traditions of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. These religions maintain that one being is the creator and sustainer of the world, and as such has handed down or communicated certain moral imperatives. Even if you are the President of the United States, from the standpoint of these religions, you cannot rightfully set aside, say, one of the Ten Commandments and say that it does not apply to you.

A second world-view would be the world-view of many Eastern religions, such as Hinduism and Buddhism. In those religions there may be concepts of deity or there may not, but the deities in those religions do not have personal wills and, for the most part, do not issue commandments. Nevertheless, humans are thought to be caught on a cycle of birth and rebirth, and certain states of character (such as nonattachment) are thought to help humans get free from this cycle.

The third world-view is the view of philosophical naturalism. On this view what is real is the world as described by the natural sciences. On this view humans are wholly and completely products of evolution. The processes which produced us had, in Bertrand Russell’s words, no prevision of the end they were achieving.”

And there are other world-views, or mixtures of the two. Aristotle didn’t think that God had any purposes for our existence, nevertheless there were purposes inherent in nature. Other world-views are polytheistic, and accept numerous deities without supposing that any one has an absolute right to give commandments.

Now let’s look at how different world-views might answer the question of what the purpose of human existence is. For those in theistic traditions, the purpose for human existence is given by God. This would be an intended purpose for human existence. Aristotle seemed to believe in inherent purposes but not intended purposes. For those in Eastern traditions, God does not give purpose for existence, but the desire to escape the cycle of birth and rebirth functions something like an inherent purpose. Eastern traditions operate on the presupposition that sooner or later (it may be several incarnations later) humans are going to want to get off the wheel of rebirth. Naturalism, on the other hand knows nothing of intended purpose or inherent purpose. They do believe in Darwinian function; for example a naturalist might explain the prevalence of heterosexuality over homosexuality by explaining that the former is far better suited to the passing on of one’s genes than the latter. However, we have no reason to believe that one’s chosen purpose (one that one chooses for oneself) is or should be identical to one’s Darwinian purpose, ethicists who are philosophical naturalists do not ordinarily oppose homosexuality because if fails to satisfy our Darwinian purpose.

Now, given this analysis, how is world-view going to affect morality? Let’s take human relationships with one another. Here, we are most likely to find the greatest agreement on moral matters. People of all religions and no religion desire to do what is socially useful or advantageous. If you want others to treat you will, it is often to your advantage to treat them well. Besides, we humans do have a natural sympathy for one another. Nevertheless there are some differences, because naturalists think that humans can expect about 70 years on earth on oblivion after that, while Hindus think we are going to be reincarnated, and Christians think that humans are headed for heaven or (perhaps) hell. Theists think that we have an intended purpose for our existence and naturalists do not.

In assessing our duties to ourselves, these world-views differ more markedly. Do I have a duty to myself not to commit suicide? How we answer the question of the purposes of human existence is certainly going to affect that question, will it not? And as for our duties to a creator, a lot, of course, is going to depend on whether one thinks a deity exists. It is plausible to suppose that if a deity exists we ought to worship that deity in public, but if no deity exists then the time we spend worshipping ought to be spent elsewhere.

The textbook argues that morality should not be wholly based on religion. I agree, in that whether we have religious beliefs or not, we still want to know how one goes about conducting relationships with other persons. He also seems to think that our inability to prove the existence of a supernatural being is a reason not to base religion on morality. I happen to think there are reasons one can weigh for and against the existence of God, so I am not sure how strong that reason is. Everyone has to assess, as best one can, what is true about the question of God, and if one decides that one does believe, then the fact that one may not be able to justify one’s beliefs to the satisfaction of all reasonable persons is not a reason not to base one’s morals on what one does believe. However, we have to share social space with people who differ with us religiously, and even people who are atheists have an interest in questions of how we ought to conduct ourselves. That said, I think that persons of differing world-views can only go so far in agreeing on their ethical convictions. I also think it would be silly for people who have moral convictions based on religion to set those considerations aside when doing ethics. If we are talking not about individual moral decisions but about decisions that have to be taken by legislators or society as a whole, then the solutions will have to come to terms with the fact that there is a plurality of religious viewpoints out there. That’s part of why ethics isn’t electrical engineering.

Lovell on the Euthyphro

The Euthyphro objection keeps showing up, so even though I had it up on a previous site, I am making a special thread to deal with Lovell on the Euthyphro.

No one has ever been killed in the name of atheism

A redated post.

Is this true? Millions have been killed in the name of atheistic ideologies. But some maintain that this is not the same as being killed in the name of atheism. Why not? Consider this quote from Richard Wurmbrand's Tortured for Christ:

The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The Communist torturers often said, 'There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.' I have heard one torturer even say, 'I thank God, in whom I don't believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.' He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflected on prisoners.8

Theistic ethics

This is a redated post.

This is in response to some comments of Ed's.

Most theistic ethics is far beyond the "Becuase I said so" or even the "Because is said so and if you don't you're going to hell." That's an awfully crude and misleading picture of Christian ethics. The overall view that could be sketched goes something like this. God creates humans so that they will be able to get along for an eternity if they develop certain states of character. Certain states of character are reinforced by certain types of actions, and undermined by certain other types of actions. God then reveals to humans (slowly, over a period of evolving understanding) what kinds of actions will result in eternal flourishing. God creates you in such a way that your intended purpose and your inherent purpose are the same. You can only by happy forever by allowing yourself to be converted in to a person with a certain type of character.

It seems to me that, depending on some contingent features of human life, you might be able to be happier overall, by being a completely immoral, selfish SOB if it were really 70 years and out. With an eternity I think that's ruled out.

Purpose, morality, and God

There is a complicated issue as to whether a belief in a purpose for human existence commits you to some religious view or other. One ordinarily thinks of purposes as requiring a purposer. Aristotle was one philosopher who did not think in this way; there is an inherent purpose for human life but it is not a purpose intended by the Unmoved Mover (Aristotle's version of God) but is inherent in human nature itself. However, modern forms of atheism, such as materialism, tend to eliminate that kind of purpose as well. On these atheistic views we acquire certain behavioral propensities from nature, we are taught other in order to make us easy to deal with as members of the social groups of which we are a part, and it seems as if on these world-views the question is left open as to whether "being moral" is in our interests as human beings or not.

Behaving in ways that at least appear moral seems necessary for the fulfilment of the goals of many of us as social beings. But we also have social motivations for doing things that morality ordinarily considers to be wrong. You faced a lot of disapproval if you opposed segregation in the pre-civil-rights South, for example. We also have sympathetic feelings for other people, and those feelings often push us in the direction of socially praiseworthy behavior, with or without religion. But sometimes the sentiment of sympathy can lead us to act unjustly.

But if our makeup isn't terribly social and isn't terribly sympathetic, what motivation to we have to be moral?

Buddhism, of course, has no God, per se, put it has an ulitmate goal for human life: Nirvana.

Adding religion to the mix is also double-edged in the sense that if someone can convince themselves that what they want to do is what God wants, even though it isn't what most of us would call moral, how do you argue with them? How do you argue against God? But at least rationally, such religious position can be criticized from the standpoint of religion itself.

Craig vs. Kai Nielsen on Moral Values

This is a debate between Bill Craig and Kai Nielsen on morality and objective moral values.

A question concerning the relations of religion to morality

1.) Consider the following cases of the relation of morality and religion.

a) The 9/11 hijackers thinking they are doing the will of Allah by attacking the World Trade Centers.
b) A Christian refusing to get an abortion even though carrying the child to term would cause economic hardship.
c) A religious couple delaying sex until marriage because of their religious beliefs.
d) Hakeem Olajuwon refusing to market an excessively expensive basketball shoe because of his belief that Allah does not approve of gouging the public. (Remember the kids who were murdered for their Air Jordans?)
e) Thomas Jefferson saying that we were endowed by our creator with certain inalienable rights.
f) Girls forced in the name of religion in Colorado City to enter into polygamous marriages with older men.
g) Martin Luther King’s conviction that there is a law above the laws of the state of Alabama which make it wrong to discriminate against African Americans, even though it’s the law.

All these are instances of religion influencing morality. But they don’t seem to be all equal. What makes the effect of religion on actions good, or bad, or in different?