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Can the Secular Define Evil?
I’m a fan of Dennis Prager, though I split my listening between him and Rush, as they’re both on at the same time. Dennis is an unabashed advocate for religion, and the notion that goodness flows from it. He frequently challenges secular people or atheists — like me — to contradict his claim that “[w]thout God there is no good and evil.”
It’s a good challenge, and I’ve been contemplating it for a long time. Not only do I think we should always confront our opponent’s best arguments directly but I really do think its important to ask myself — as secular person — how I draw the distinction between what is good and evil if I am not going to trust religion to define it for me?
First, how does religion define good and evil? Christian philosopher J.P. Moreland defined evil thus:
Evil is a lack of goodness. It is goodness spoiled. You can have good without evil, but you cannot have evil without good.
I think this is gibberish. First, it assumes that these are measurable quantities in any meaningful sense. Second, there’s a pseudoscientific feeling to it as well which mimics the notion that cold is the absence of heat and darkness is the absence of light. I don’t think this is a very good definition of evil at all. Evil is supposed to be the antithesis of good, not its absence; further, it implies that the mere act of not doing good is itself evil. It seems to negate the possibility of benign neglect.
From my outsider’s perspective, the Judeo-Christian tradition defines evil:
- As either against other people or against God;
- As acting in a fashion which is morally reprehensible, sinful or wicked;
- As violations of the Decalogue, or the Ten Commandments; and
- As violations of the Golden Rule.
Being as I am secular, I’m going to write off the evils against God right off the bat. Each person who isn’t a a Jew or a Christian in the world commits these “evils” either passively or actively on a daily basis. I don’t think I or anybody else is committing a sin or acting evilly when we don’t observe the proper obeisances to God. Why? Because none of us is harming anybody by not doing so.
So, what about the rest of those commandments? I can’t imagine another morally normal person who would assert that murder, theft, rape, perjury or adultery are acceptable or not evil. The secular generally agree on these. So where do I draw the distinction?
The things that all of us — secular and religious — seem to agree on as being evil is when someone acts maliciously in one’s own self interest without regard to the harm that those actions cause others. Compare this to enlightened self interest or the Harm Principle. Violating these is an outrage to the conscience of morally normal people. The Golden Rule (do unto others as you would have them do unto you) is generally a good thing; violating it may not be explicitly evil, but to do so wantonly most likely is.
So let’s talk about some examples and see which of these responses are either good or evil:
- You come across a person on the side of the road who is unconscious and bleeding. Do you a) keep on walking, b) render aid and call 911 or c) rape, rob and kill them because they don’t know any different?
- You pull up to a red light. Standing in the intersection is a bum who is disheveled and inebriated. The bum has a sign with something cute like “Not going to lie, I just need a beer.” You have $20 in your pocket which you do not need. Do you a) Give them the $20, or b) keep on driving.
- A person who is a perfect stranger to you approaches. The stranger asks for a gun with which they can kill themselves. You have a gun. Do you a) hand them the gun and plug your ears or b) insist that this person get assistance?
Why or why not you do any of the options is just as important.
There are right and wrong answers. I’ll reveal mine in the comments.
Published in General, Religion & Philosophy
I am enough of a relativist to say that while nobody was perfect, some were certainly better than others. And of course I consider ancient Judaism, with its flaws, to be morally superior to ancient Greek or Roman or Egyptian civilization. It more closely hewed to the Torah.
No, I follow you and it’s a totally legitimate point.
My Jewish history is shaky, but Judaism before the First Century is quite different — or “unrefined” one might say — compared to its later manifestations, yes? I’m not sure pre-Misnah Judaism is much superior its contemporaries.
Universal legal code (applicable to citizens and aliens alike)? check.
No child or human sacrifice? check.
A High Court that required very strict burdens of proof before putting someone to death? check. (The Gemara says that if they put one person to death in 70 years it was considered “bloody.”)
Not engaged in aggressive military expansion? check.
Respecting rights of women more than any other civilization of the age? check.
Celebrating literacy, study and scholarship? check.
Perfect? Of course not.
I would first ask what you mean by a d”defined morality?” The question assumes–a clever evasion in my view–that ethical systems can be boiled down to a scientific calculus. Of course there are failings. Human nature being what it is, men fall well, very well, short of the ideal. But it is inescapably true that the west is firmly grounded in Judaeo-Christian morality, together with Greek and Roman antecedents.
You seem to focus on material wealth, but I offered art, music, and now I offer literature, as hallmarks, not just of culture but of morals. True art, i.e., art that follows from a true aesthetic sense, is moral. Rembrandt’s paintings carry moral meaning, even if only intuitively. Shakespeare and Dante are inconceivable outside the Christian culture. Dante is also inconceivable without Virgil. So, too, the Divine Comedy is grounded in Scholastic philosophy–including its moral teachings. These are western accomplishments, and are a reflection of Christian principles.
Medieval Muslim philosophers, before they fell out of disfavor, were among the great minds of scholasticism, and their works were influenced, and influenced by, western philosophers like Aquinas. Averroes, for example, though a Muslim, lived much of his life, maybe all of it, I don’t specifically remember, in Spain.
Jewish thinkers like Maimonides were also influenced by Christianity. And influeeced Christian thought in turn.
Western culture is steeped in Christianity, and it is incongruous to suggest either that that is accidental, or that the culture which arose in the west is just one of many equal cultures. Again, that’s not to say other cultures are without value, but it is to say that the west is the best.
Material success of the United States over 2+ centuries since its founding can be attributed to a specific slice of western morality, namely, rule of law in an ordered secular civil society where trust in day to day business dealings is fostered by fair judicial treatment of contractual agreements. When this prevails, any individual has an opportunity to reap the benefits of creative effort. Of course, we are now in a period of extreme corruption making this trust very fragile. This is what ails most of non-western cultures and we are working to abandon this great tradition in the U.S.
Let’s keep in mind that the West didn’t always lead the world. The historical norm is for China to be the world’s largest economy. What does that do for the theory?
Where is your evidence that the Nazism was “masterminded and carried out primarily by people who were Catholics”? Hitler was an atheist, and accordintg to wikipedia: “The areas of strongest Nazi support were in rural Protestant areas such as Schleswig-Holstein, Mecklenburg, Pomerania, and East Prussia.”
Who the heck is talking about the universe? I don’t even know what that’s supposed to mean. There are moral principles laid out as divine on how humanity needs (actually “is required” would be more acurate) to interact. That is the foundation of morality. If you don’t believe in these moral principles, it is invariably relativist, because they shift with time and necessity.
The West has indeed led the world in economic and material prosperity since the period called the ‘enlightenment’, say 3+ centuries. Not much broadly experienced material prosperity can be attributed to any of the earlier periods. What is the ‘theory’ you reference?
And am I to assume your moral principles never changed throughout your life? Fixed, constant, since you graduated high school?
Absolutely.
Very curious where you’re going with this.
Yeah, I’m not sure where this is going. I don’t recall a time when I thought that murder, rape, robbery or lying were ever OK. I’m not sure how that makes me a “relativist.” If what he means is that I don’t think that human evil is cosmic and that makes me a relativist, then, well, I guess we have a disagreement over terms.
There might be more high culture around than you think. A few years ago, Heather MacDonald at City Journal wrote about “Classical Music’s New Golden Age”. As someone marginally involved in the classical music scene myself, I can affirm that most of what she wrote is true – except for the bit about tonality in musical composition being quite so spent: amongst the composers I know, it’s making a comeback (finally!).
Modern technology also facilitates traditional fine arts. I’m not in complete accordance with the Art Renewal Center (as I do believe there is a place for pure abstraction in visual art), but their online presence is doubtless helpful for those interested in making or appreciating realistic drawing and painting, especially of the human form. Modern technology allows for virtual choirs, too! Kinda awesome:
Specifically Majestyk’s claim that Western economic success is evidence that Western morality is superior. I worry that I’m oversimplifying his position, though.
There’s a lot here. I don’t know if I can unpack it all in one post, but I’m going to throw a flag on your economic statement from earlier regarding China traditionally having the world’s largest economy.
First off, that claim could only be considered to be true if you take China in aggregate and discount GDP per capita – I don’t think you can do either.
The amount of economic interconnectedness of China before colonization was pretty scattershot because it was essentially a backwards, feudal nation. Also, everything that I’ve read about China’s growth before the 19th century centered around a plan which essentially amounted to growing the economy through brute force of making more people – not improving the economic output of individuals. This subordination of the individual to the interests of the larger society is part of what traditionally held China back.
There’s plenty of evidence that Chinese explorers actually discovered the Americas in the 14th century (?) if I recall but that any plans of either colonization or further exploration went backwards because of these cultural inhibitions.
I don’t want to go on for too long outside of my word limit, but good discussion of this can be found in Guns, Germs and Steel, and while I don’t agree with Jared Diamond’s cultural relativism it is interesting history at the very minimum.
Just realized I misread the question. I should have said:
While my morals have changed a little around the edges — I’m less tolerant of some things, more of others — my basic principles are pretty much unchanged. They’re recognizably Judeo-Christian and that’s neither surprising nor troubling to me.
No secularist has yet answered how they determine the value of individual lives. If God is not the reason to give absolute moral worth to innocent lives, how do you assign moral worth to individuals?
Regarding the claim that western material and cultural hegemony (although I question the cultural claim) proves our superior morality, without conceding that it makes logical sense to attribute that hegemony to our morality (since I haven’t seen a coherent argument presented to establish that causation) I would point out that for the purposes of the original question in this thread, that claim is beside the point.
That is because the western morality that the secularists here are claiming is the morality of the judeo-christian tradition. That morality comes from and is based on the divine revelation and belief in God that jews and christians profess. Now it’s possible for a time to subscribe to this morality while rejecting God, however, it’s not possible to sustain that morality without God for more than a few generations.
That is because without belief in God the underlying premises that form the basis for the judeo-christian morality, which secularists evidently believe to be simply a sophisticated evolutionary accident that has has survived because of its utility, rather than divine truth, become vulnerable to question and doubt. Indeed the perversion of the culture, the weakening of belief in western values, and the insidious creep of multiculturalism and moral relativism that Majestyk bemoans are all abetted by atheism and non-religious agnosticism. And I think it’s easy to argue that is because once one removes the notion of an afterlife and eternal judgement, life in this world is simply a will to power and notions of equal justice and individual worth cannot hold.
Well, I gave it a shot back at #127.
Sorry, but citing God as the source just kicks the can down the road. How do you know God exists? How do you know that God assigns all individual human life equal value, etc.?
It’s an act of faith, or an assumption if you prefer. If you require absolute proof for the questions you ask, you are down the path to nihilism. If we cannot make assumptions about the nature of the universe, God, and ourselves, we can’t justify our existence as anything but arbitrary.
Now we can go down the road as to why one might have faith in these fundamental beliefs, these assumptions, and discuss what evidence supports them, but they will never be satisfactory to someone who wants perfect rational closure. But more importantly, why those who believe in God accept the morality that their faith brings forth isn’t the question, the question is what is the basis for atheists or agnostics to champion that same morality when the reason for it, God, is removed?
How does that morality hold up when the thing that establishes it and justifies it is removed?
Agreed.
Perhaps we should work on some verifiable justifications just in case the main buttress of your argument is somehow overturned or damaged. Just a thought.
Agreed.
For the record, I think modern American Christianity and Judaism are tremendous forces for good and they’ve shown themselves to be robust, long-lasting, and attractive; they’re very effective and that’s great. I applaud them for this, even though I don’t share their metaphysics and theology.
What I’m just a little flummoxed by is the implication that they are the only means to receiving a moral education.
Seconded.
One of the problems with the Prager approach is that it has nothing to say to people who don’t believe in God. Saying “But you should really believe in God!” doesn’t help.
Worth noting that most of Judaic and Christian ethics make just as much sense with invocations to God as they do without.
Just for the record, I don’t do that.
Moral propositions can’t be empirically proven and I don’t pretend otherwise. Anyone who does is, IMHO, being foolish.
Actually, I think the first question is whether the morality you’ve been talking about, Majestyk, is essentially the judeo-christian morality, that until about a hundred years ago reigned supreme in the west. If that is the morality we’re discussing, I’d say that morality relies entirely on belief in God, His truth of the sacred nature of each individual life He created, and the eternal judgement and afterlife He will reward or punish us with. If those cornerstones of judeo-christian morality are removed, that moral system loses coherence. And while a society can go through the motions of living out that morality absent a belief in God, in the long run the incoherence of doing so will implode that moral system.
This isn’t an answer. You’ve really just said “because …” You have to actually layout the philosophy to answer the question.
You’ll note that our founders did not apply Locke’s thinking in establishing our government without making also an appeal to our creator. I’d point out that Locke starts with the assumption of the innate, inalienable individual worth of each person. However, that assumption is not really defensible empirically or logically. It is only defensible from a theological argument that involves divine justice.
Is our legal system in the U.S. in disarray? If yes, why? If no, please help me understand how what we are experiencing is good or moral.
I also think it’s worth pointing out that you must account for the bad with the good when you accept appeals to authority as the basis for morality.
I don’t think that it’s a moral teaching to mutilate the genitals, for instance, but that’s a fairly common commandment across many religions. You can debate the utility of circumcision, but there is absolutely no justification for female genital mutilation. At. All. Take for instance all those infants who contracted herpes while being circumcised by mohles who put their mouths on those infants. Disgusting.
Many explicitly evil things are to be laid at the feet of religion, so that tradeoff must be accounted for as well.
Then I’ll pose a question I’ve posed before. What would the substantive difference be between the Declaration and the edited version below:
Now, I’m hardly suggesting that we excise “by their Creator” from the Declaration; it’s great as it is. What I want to know is whether and how it would have made a difference had those words been absent.