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Moral Facts, Opinions, and Suppositions
Discussing a New York Times op-ed by a college professor about how young people are taught that all value statements are matters of mere opinion, Dennis Prager blamed the problem on a lack of religious faith. He went on to say that the kids have the logic, if not the conclusion: without religion, all moral statements have no truth claim:
If God doesn’t say “Do not murder,” murder isn’t wrong. Period, end of issue… Morality [becomes] just an opinion for “I like” or “I don’t like” if ultimately, there is no moral God in the universe that makes morality real. Without religion and God, there is no moral truth…
You can say “I think murder is wrong,” and I certainly hope you do. You can say “I believe murder is wrong.” But you cannot say murder is wrong.
I agree with Prager that it’s vastly easier to argue in favor of objective morality if we stipulate the existence of a moral God; indeed, I’d list that as among the top benefits of religion. I’ll further agree that the lack of belief in objective morality is likely related to the decline in belief in God (though I wonder if we’re seeing a similar effect as with voting; i.e., people’s habits and beliefs change — often for the better — as they get older and wiser).
However, I’ve two problems with Prager’s argument, one that he’s made before. Logically, I think he’s making a false choice by sorting all things as either demonstrable facts or mere opinions. As Professor McBrayer writes in the piece Prager cited, there’s a third option:
Things can be true even if no one can prove them. For example, it could be true that there is life elsewhere in the universe even though no one can prove it. Conversely, many of the things we once “proved” turned out to be false… It’s a mistake to confuse truth (a feature of the world) with proof (a feature of our mental lives).
So while demonstrating that the intentional taking of an innocent life is objectively wrong is difficult to do if God doesn’t exist, that doesn’t actually comment on the truth or fiction of the statement. The Earth was, objectively, the fifth-largest body orbiting the Sun even before we had the means of showing it (assuming, of course, that we actually have that correct now). As such, “murder is wrong” isn’t necessarily a mere opinion, but unproven supposition or speculation — perhaps with a lot to recommend it, logically and otherwise, but supposition nonetheless.
But there’s another, more practical problem: by switching the burden from proving the moral validity of a statement to proving God’s existence — which is the effect of Prager’s objections — you leave people without a belief in God with nothing else to work with. In a civilization with an increasing number of unbelievers, is it wise to essentially dismiss all ethical philosophy that isn’t explicitly religious?
I’m not making an argument against religion, let alone in favor of atheism (I’m not an atheist). But just as we seek independent lines of evidence in other pursuits as a means of moving suppositions and hypotheses toward the realm of working theory, it strikes me as a fool’s errand to abandon an entire line of pursuit. Civilization is too important.
“Vitrail de synagogue-Musée alsacien de Strasbourg” by Ji-Elle – Own work. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons.
Published in Culture, Religion & Philosophy
Remember that we make distinctions between (a) what you believe, (b) what you know, and (c) what you can prove/demonstrate.
The traditional theory of knowledge is justified true belief. You can [believe] … well, anything really. You [know] something when you have a sufficient justification for believing it. You can [prove] something when you can offer a justification that can be corroborated publicly.
Life presents many issues about which one must decide to believe, but which do not allow corroboration. The strictest of positivists argue that no one should believe anything that can’t be publicly corroborated (although that is itself an arbitrary rule imposed without proof).
But belief without corroboration isn’t the same thing as belief without justification. You can’t just say that anyone who believes something without corroboration is insane or stupid and must be false; no, it just means that we can’t prove it.
Moral rules aren’t tangible objects, either, and can’t be demonstrated like a chemical test. You can believe them, and know them, but not be able to demonstrate them.
It’s more than that. Pascal in essence assumed a binary choice — between something much like atheism or something much like the Christian god with a Christian heaven and hell. In the absence of knowledge, there are so many other possible choices. What if eternal bliss is earned by mass murder and disbelief?
Because humans are, generally speaking, not rational. They operate on fear. If you convince them there’s a God and he’s real, they’ll follow his rules.
There are some folks who argue that the above is rational, and I suppose it is in a way, since you have to operate while you’re pondering the rational basis for morality.
But try raising a kid on a rationally-based morality.
“Why?”
“Because I said so!”
And they’d better think there will be consequences, or you’re in trouble!
Better to be honest and roast in Hell for all eternity? That’s brave. Maybe not smart, but brave. ;)
But this tells us nothing about morality qua morality. It’s just a specific practical implementation scheme.
Pascal’s wager is the religious equivalent of telling a young girl to pretend to love an old rich man so that he’ll marry her and she will inherit all his wealth when he dies.
She may put on a good act for the rest of the old gent’s life, and he’ll go to his grave thinking that his wife loved him. Maybe for him this was good value. Win-win, so long as she manages to maintain the fiction until he dies.
The problem in applying this behavior to God is that God is omniscient, and will see right through Pascal’s little charade. God demands that you love him and believe in him, not that you pretend to believe in him so that you can sneak past the pearly gates with the true believers. And he’ll know the difference.
The problem with faith is that you cannot choose it. You either have it, or you don’t. You can’t make a pragmatic choice to just start ‘believing’ as a strategy for playing deity-roulette.
I’ve been a devout believer and a non-believer. I know the difference. When you are devout, you’re not faking it. You’re not adopting a conscious strategy. You simply know. And if you lose that faith or never had it, you can’t pretend it’s there ‘just in case’. Don’t you think God can tell the difference?
Centering a national morality on God removes man completely from that equation. Which binds man to something nobler than his baser needs.
But it doesn’t because man is needed interpret ‘God’. This interpretation process is where man inserts or massages the message to incorporate his baser needs. And of course man then gets to claim it’s not his authority that is being pushed but gods.
Practically speaking, Prager is correct. With God as universal Judge of right and wrong, we have not only universal standards but a force to measure the difference and to reliably administer fitting consequences.
Without such a Prime Judge and Enforcer, there are only a few alternatives: (1) individual conscience, (2) society, and (3) physical nature.
Consciences vary widely, are frequently distorted, and can be ultimately ignored. And which aspect of consciousness must a man heed: emotion or logic? Can he even distinguish the two with certainty?
Society, composed of culture and government, is ever changing, arbitrary, haphazard, occasionally careless or inattentive, inept, and similarly vulnerable to corruption. Why must a man care about society? In practice, don’t atheists, agnostics, and pagans value society to widely varying degrees? Aren’t some patriots and some hermits, some philanthropists and some misanthropes? Nothing is required of a Godless man beyond what boundaries and goals he accepts for himself.
Physical nature, perhaps best summarized by evolution, alone among these alternatives might exist as wholly external to human nature, objective (relatively, since our environments change), and impartial. But Nature doesn’t care about humanity. To ascribe to Nature the role of judge is to accept a bleak and cruel morality.
All of this will be moot when robotic overlords assume control of humanity. ;)
That tells me how one human terrifies another human into a course of action. It tells me nothing about how either human knows what’s morally right.
Have you made your sacrifice to Ra?
That’s right. Because morality is right behavior because of fear of bad consequences.
If you’re really moral, you don’t think about the bad consequences all that often.
It’s also known as well-trained.
Oh look, we’re right back at pragmatism!
Morality is simply a con to encourage good behavior so society and your parents don’t kill you.
How is human conscience any different, in practice, than a god who leaves it to humans to interpret or divine his will?
Without said deity being present to continually dispense justice and clarify moral quandries there is no practical difference between a religious based morality and a reasoned one.
Why else would the same alleged deity profess a prohibition against murder while simultaneously advocate for jihad?
Savage Continent by Lowe.
That’s not true at all. It’s much easier to scare children into good behavior when their parents are not around with God than with reason.
One of many good reasons why Islam doesn’t appeal to many of us. It’s fundamentally irrational.
I think this is a lie some religious people tell themselves so that they can delude themselves with unnecessary certainty.
“If I didn’t believe in God, my life would be I giant game of hedonistic amoral brinkmanship”
Two things: I hope not and I doubt it.
The issue hinges on the distinction between an objective reality and human knowledge, which is to some degree subjective. Does the fact that our knowledge is subjective – to some degree at least – invalidate any possibility of knowing objective reality? Does the presence of any degree of subjectivity render all objective knowledge impossible? In this current case, does the fact that moral knowledge is at least somewhat subjective mean that we can’t claim that there is anything objectively real?
Questions which philosophers have been haggling over for about 3,000 years …
Thank you. Just ordered it. Looks very interesting.
A universal objective morality cannot come from ‘religion’, because there are many different moral systems practiced by many different religions.
So you are now reduced to saying, “There is a universal objective morality, and it’s the one that MY God espouses.”
But that’s not good enough either, because many followers of the same God (and the same bible) come to drastically different moral systems. Some believe adultery is punishable by death. Some believe you cannot divorce and remarry without risking your eternal soul. Some believe homosexuality is a grave sin, while others welcome homosexuals into their priesthood.
So now our ‘objective morality’ is dependent not just on religion, or on one particular God, but on a specific textual analysis of a book, made by fallible humans with their own prejudices and biases. But even that doesn’t close the loop: There are many protestant sects that agree with the basic tenets of the faith but translate them into very different moral codes. Unitarians and Baptists don’t exactly march to the same beat.
So what are we left with? “There’s an objective morality, and it’s the one that my particular branch of one particular faith happens to practice. Everyone else is wrong.”
At that point, your moral code is indistinguishable from any other moral code developed through rationalization and experience. And I believe that’s exactly what religious moral codes are – the codification of rules that have proven successful in propagating the populations of those that believe in them.
A religious moral code is an evolved social construct, with religion becoming the rationalization and God being the sovereign authority that can be invoked to punish those that do not follow the code. The promise of a glorious afterlife if you stay in line and eternal damnation if you don’t is a pretty good carrot-and-stick for enforcing a social order.
I don’t see the difference between that and a moral code derived from an understanding of man’s nature as a rational being who must also exist within a larger social structure in order to thrive. No religion necessary.
That’s an excellent point. I call myself Christian because I’m fond of the world it’s created, basically.
I’m long on reason, short of faith. I’m very envious of those I know who seem to have both.
I think I understand what you’re saying, and I think doesn’t address the question I was asking. I am by no means denying the possibility of objective moral truth. I am simply asking whether, given that we can only strive to know it, our actions would be different if it did exist vs. if it did not? In other words, don’t we do the same striving, under the same conditions of ignorance, leading to the same actions, whether it exists or not?
Are you implying that we’re not going to wrap this up to the satisfaction of all concerned in this thread? ;)
Beautifully explained.
I think that’s right. I have no reason to believe that there is a universal objective morality…
Although many have pointed out the commonalities in morals between the different religions.
LOL. You can take that bet to Vegas. (Assuming that betting is morally allowed.)
This shows that we have to coordinate terms.
There is (1) objective reality and there is (2) knowledge of that reality, which is inherently subjective to some degree.
A “fact,” however, is not objective reality, although it sounds like it should be. No. Instead, a fact is a claim about objective reality, where the one who calls it a fact believes that it’s a claim that is so obvious or has already been proved. But yes, indeed, it is still a claim about knowledge, as is opinion.
Now, I presume you mean that the objective reality about mass-body is different from our knowledge of that reality. Of course.
But authority (which is what my post was about) stands at the intersection between belief and reality. God’s authority justifies belief even in cases where our subjective knowledge is unable to justify it on our own.
Man’s not a rational being, though. And we’ve never seen a moral code that didn’t derive from religion.
So you’re arguing for something that doesn’t exist…
And yes, I’m familiar with Utilitarianism, which posits:
So if being a serial killer makes you happy, that’s moral? That doesn’t really work now, does it?
Even then:
Which, frankly, strikes me as infantile.
The Jews had it right when they recognized that we can’t understand God’s motive. But it’s surely not to make us happy.
Can’t you say the the same thing of a God who says aborting a fetus is murder, but executing a criminal is okay?
And if Islamists truly believe that Christians are the ones who aren’t following God and therefore they must be converted or die, what biblical reference would you offer to show they are wrong? I seem to recall more than one place in the old testament where God orders his followers to do exactly that – and worse.
Many people have said that Islam needs its own ‘reformation’ so that it can leave its medieval beliefs behind and join the world’s modern, enlightened religions. But what if the reformation is seen by God as a rejection of his harsh commandments in favor of an easier, more ‘modern’ religion that more closely aligns with the current social mores at the expense of ignoring God’s explicit rules? Isn’t that the argument that conservative Christians are making today with respect to homosexuality and its acceptance by more liberal Christian sects?
My own church was destroyed by that, by the way. It was a baptist church that was overrun by liberals when its neighborhood gentrified. There was a huge split in the congregation over moral issues, which culminated in a total meltdown when the new pastor announced the hiring of a gay minister. Half the leadership quit, and the congregation split down the middle and half of them left, never to return.
The presence of a Christian God there certainly didn’t expose any kind of universal morality. In the end, it was just people arguing and differing with each other over what was and wasn’t moral – just like they do when having secular moral arguments.
Only if he exists.