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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
This is not entirely true. You actually do have some choice in the matter. Which is why, “Lord I believe. Help my unbelief!” is such a famous prayer.
Like you, I know what it’s like to both have and not-have faith. Unlike you, I realize these two states can occur at the same time, in the same person, and that the person does have some control (not complete control, but not nothing, either) over which state to cultivate.
Maintaining faith is like composing music. When the inspiration strikes, it feels like it’s all coming from an outside source. But you can affect your chances of having that inspiration by choosing to cultivate the skill, even during times when inspiration seems dead.
This seemed to be the crux of the matter when I considered morality from the premise of atheism. The dominance of general moral standards, like those against theft and incest, can be made sense of in relation to society as a whole. But that is premised on an individual’s commitment to society.
If the individual prioritizes himself over society, or if the individual believes he can act against society in secret, or if the individual determines that he can be an exception to the normal rule without disrupting society, then he can abandon the rules without consequence.
With the Christian God, there is both an ultimate consequence (Hell/damnation or Heaven/salvation) and a temporal consequence (orientation of the soul toward its predetermined purpose, resulting in greater personal harmony).
From an atheistic standpoint, it would be foolish to reject social norms absolutely (“rebel without a clue”), but would be an act of strength to accept only those norms which serve oneself… and perhaps only accept them in particular circumstances. If free will is one’s highest value, then exercising that will independent of both nature and society is strength. As Nietzsche put it, “will to power”.
The same way that other cultural information was passed – before writing was common, we passed moral rules down by osmosis (new children born into a society are taught the rules by their parents and through their interactions with others). Before the written word was common we used poetry, song and parables as mnemonic devices for packaging and spreading ideas without having them change between tellings.
Pre-written religions maintained consistent belief systems by adopting a priesthood and having them devote their lives to painstakingly learning the rules from their elders then passing them on in turn when they became the elders. And of course, once we learned how to write we were able to codify the rules on paper and pass them down through generations.
As for how these particular rules ‘came down to us’, I’d say primarily because they proved themselves to be closest to what satisfies our true human nature and desires, and therefore they kept surviving challenges from other religions.
Had Christianity not resulted in a thriving Europe, it might have been Islam that spread to the west first. Had the Aztecs not believed in a God whose rules prevented them from thriving, maybe we’d be worshipping Aztec Gods today. Had the ancient Egyptian religions resulted in better outcomes for its people and been more logically consistent with the observations of people from other cultures, perhaps the Romans would have converted to them.
The dominant religions of the world today got where they are not because their claims of the existence of God are correct (they all can’t be), but because the actual, real-world practices those religions demand resulted in the societies that followed them out-competing their competitors.
As for why these rules were codified into ‘religions’ rather than into mere secular rules is rather obvious: Because religion in a pre-scientific world was the best explanation for the strangeness people saw all around them. Because a religious authority and the prospect of eternal joy/damnation is a pretty powerful tool for binding together a culture and to be used by political leaders – especially if they can claim to have divine knowledge or the ear of God. How else am I going to get people to pay indulgences if I can’t claim to be able to put in a good word for those in Purgatory?
But we live in the age of science, and we have tools to see far more of the universe at both large and small scales than we ever could before, yet our religions were codified before this was the case. This is the current challenge to religion – can it adapt and incorporate what we continue to learn empirically while still maintaining an internal logic and coherency?
Christianity is in a bit of a crisis over these issues today. Belief in a 6,000 year old earth is not consistent with what we know. Belief in a worldwide flood that eradicated all but two of every creature is not consistent with what we know. Its morality is also in crisis – I don’t believe there are many Christians who follow God’s demands explicitly any more. They all pick and choose which ones to continue to follow and which ones to ignore to best fit into modern society. This may be a good thing for the faith – we live in a modern world, and any religion that wishes to survive in it must adapt to modernity.
In my Mennonite religious community you can divorce, but not remarry. My mother divorced a violent drunk who she married young, and my grandparents never gave approval for her to remarry, so she remained alone for the rest of her life. The community had a number of single women who often moved in together as ‘spinsters’ after their marriages ended, because they were not allowed to remarry.
I heard many biblical quotes for why this had to be the case, yet almost no other Christians follow that rule any more. For an objective morality, sometimes it seems awfully fluid. But it fits in with my thesis: My community is shrinking and their specific set of moral rules will die with them, because telling women they can no longer be fruitful and multiply is probably not a healthy moral imperative for a community that must compete against others.
On the other hand, Mormonism is growing because its moral code emphasizes large families, good parenting, and rewards good citizenship and responsible economic behavior.
That doesn’t mean Mormons are more moral than Mennonites. It just means that they have a better chance of their moral code surviving into the future.
Certainly, there are dominant moral views which emerge “naturally” from social economies.
Metropolises (metropoli? metropoles?) are universally liberal. Does this mean that liberalism works best for major, densely-populated cities? Or might it suggest only that conservative values are difficult to maintain in cities? Or that liberal idealism becomes more attractive in such environments? However we interpret the results, it seems a strange sort of “evolution” if that is the model we judge it by.
Gradual drift of societies toward and away from moral norms is certainly common and occurs in predictable ways, but it seems hard to argue that these adaptations are generally oriented toward societal promotion or even survival.
I agree with my atheist and agnostic friends that the practical effect of Christianity in modern society does not demand that non-Christians or even the endless variety of “Christians” adhere to a single moral framework, nor even to fear a vaguely imagined notion of God. Modern circumstances are very different from the Medieval West in which a single Church identified basic standards of morality for many cultures and even wicked criminals had been raised to believe in God as omniscient, inescapable Judge.
Nice post.
“Religion” is simply shorthand for a fundamental and comprehensive set of beliefs about reality. It is an assertion of what the world is, what human beings are, how we relate to the world and to each other, and (consequently) what that reality demands of us (morals).
There is no chicken-and-the-egg problem with religion and morals. They necessarily exist simultaneously because one cannot have a perception of reality without responding to it, consciously or subconsciously. But morals obviously depend on those perceptions.
A pivotal perception of life and humanity is the existence and nature of God, souls, and spirits. This question is a part of every morality, expressed or not.
Likewise, every person is religious in the sense of adhering to a shared perception of fundamental realities and consequent morals. What atheists tend to confuse as the core of religion are the expressions of it (formal worship and organized statements of belief) and/or the particular assertion that reality includes non-physical components.
Yeah, I suspect that “If I didn’t believe in God, who would I trust? Where would I get the hope that’s necessary for responsible, forward-looking behavior?” is an even bigger fear.
Amoral, hedonistic self-seekers at least have a sense of purpose, even if that purpose is narcissistic and ultimately short-sighted. True purposelessness, where no behavior, neither “being good”, nor “seeking pleasure”, can be relied upon for that little endorphin hit that keeps you coming back for more, is vastly more frightening.
On the other hand, analysis paralysis is counterproductive. Time is a scarce resource, and not being able to make snap, instinctive judgments when the situation demands it is a huge handicap.
A morality that cultivates our instincts, so that even our snap judgments become more moral, is vastly preferable to a morality that relies on time-consuming articulated rationality (as Sowell calls it) in order to make any and all decisions.
As members of a civilized society, yes, we are expected to be able to articulate a justification for our actions if one is demanded. But those justifications can be constructed after-the-fact, on an as-needed basis. Being rationalizing, rather than “rational”, actually makes a great deal of sense! (One might even call it “rational” in the economic sense ;-))
Or, as Burke put it:
Supposed reason is often a poor tool, which is why Conservatives so value tradition, and are cautious of claims that it can answer all questions.
Ah. The October question. Let me explain.
Part of Jesuit training is “regency,” where the not-yet-priest is assigned to some regular ministry to see how he does in a real job. I was assigned to a high school, and they
stuck me<-cough-> asked me to teach religion to sophomores.Every year, about the first week of October, some sophomore raised his hand to ask a “real” question. While the other sophomores gasped at his audacity, the brave sophomore would haltingly ask, “Mr. Mulville, did you ever think, that you know, maybe, and I don’t mean to offend you or anything … that maybe, like … religion is just a fiction? That they made up a lot of stuff and you know, forced everyone to believe it?”
As if I would melt (Margaret Hamilton-style) at the suggestion of doubt.
As if the possibility of doubt would give me the vapors.
As if I would invoke a Red Sea catastrophe, shaking like Charleton Heston, shouting at Edward G. Robinson, “Behold!”
* * *
You’re asking whether I could be fooling myself and psychologically repressing my inner doubt, throwing my sanity away to cling passionately to a cultural myth, all so I can soothe the pain of realizing that it may all be a cruel joke at my expense.
Nope. Never occurred to me. ;-)
This is not what I’m talking about. When I say that man is a rationalizing animal, what I mean is that our actions are determined through a process of using our brains to determine the action. We have volition, and our choices are optional and determined by a process of rationalization rather than by pure instinct.
You can have a non-religious moral code that doesn’t require you to stop and rationalize every action you take – it can certainly be as internalized and automatic as a code based on religion.
For example, I’m guessing that when you stop in a grocery store you don’t have a little mini-theological discussion in your mind about whether God would approve of you stealing something. You just know that stealing is wrong. That’s not because it’s a religious commandment – it’s because you learned it well enough for it to be part of your automatic behavior. That’s equally true of non-religious moral codes.
For example, the bible says nothing about whether you should call someone fat, but I’ll bet you don’t land in analysis paralysis every time you see a fat person, wondering if you should point out their obesity to them. You simply don’t do it because it’s rude. You know it’s rude because it’s a non-religious social stricture. You don’t have to analyze it because you’ve internalized such rules and don’t have to think about them constantly.
Well, beautifully explained but obviously wrong. Let me see if I can convince you. When I say “obviously wrong,” I don’t mean that your conclusion is necessarily wrong, but rather that it does not follow logically from broadly accepted principles.
“A universal objective morality cannot come from ‘religion’, because there are many different moral systems practiced by many different religions.” So it’s somehow impossible that one of the religions is right and the others are wrong? Of course it’s possible. This argument is the equivalent of saying that there can’t be a tallest mountain on Earth, because some people disagree about which mountain is the tallest. Or that there can’t be a best basketball team in the NCAA, just because people disagree about which is best. (Hints: Its mascot is the Wildcat. And it’s not from Kentucky. And it’s not from Kansas.)
“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.” This essentially assumes your conclusion, doesn’t it? Your “evolved social construct” assertion is simply an implicit assumption that a religious moral code could not have been revealed by an actual deity.
Have I claimed otherwise? I haven’t, as far as I know.
You seem to be confusing two issues here: whether a moral code needs to be religious and whether it is ever moral to respond on instinct alone.
Of course a moral code doesn’t have to be religious. I know too many atheists and agnostics with recognizable moral codes to believe otherwise.
I still don’t buy your claim that moral choices are “determined by a process of rationalization rather than by pure instinct”, since it is possible use instinct alone to make moral choices. Indeed, it’s efficient to train your instincts so that many important decisions (moral or otherwise) can be made by instinct, as you yourself note here:
What is internalized and automatic is now instinctual. The rationalizing process no longer plays an active role, though hopefully it’s still hanging around in the wings to be called into use if someone asks you to justify your decision.
I think that Prager is incorrect.
I submit that any moral code, religious or not, consists of one or more moral axioms, generally together with rational deductions from such axioms. I suppose it may be possible for a moral code to consist purely of a list of moral axioms, with no need for rational deduction.
The axioms of a moral code may be based on religion or not. Ayn Rand’s Objectivism is an example of a non-religious moral code, the existence of which disproves Prager’s argument.
I do not believe that a moral code can be based on pure reason. In fact, from a prior thread, I think that Cato and I agree on this. [That’s right. Cato and I agree. If that doesn’t convince you, what will? :) Actually we agree on a lot, starting with dogs.]
I have searched in vain for a moral code based on pure reason. There is none rational, no, not one. Utilitarianism asserts that the “greatest good for the greatest number” should be the guiding principle (and was, incidentally, undermined by Kirk’s demonstration that the needs of the one sometimes outweigh the needs of the many). Objectivism rests on a variety of assertions about the nature of “man qua man,” which means “the way Ayn Rand thought people ought to be” (and don’t get me wrong, I often agreed with her). The theory of natural rights or natural law is based on assertions about human nature (and is even less satisfying than Objectivism, because the way that people are does not begin to tell us the way that they should be, or should act). Ancient Greek philosophy rested on the assertion of a variety of “virtues.”
And yet there is near-universal agreement that people should have, and follow, a moral code. I suspect that this is because God so very much wants us to, but I have no proof beyond the still soft voice that Elijah supposedly heard after the wind, and the earthquake, and the fire, and that I sometimes hear. If you don’t hear it, I don’t know what to tell you, and I know that it may be all in my head.
I doubt that anything we do is based on pure reason. Even logicians do what they do because logic happens to appeal to their peculiar (sometimes very peculiar) passions.
This is a very faithful statement, Mike. Nicely done.
“(and was, incidentally, undermined by Kirk’s demonstration that the needs of the one sometimes outweigh the needs of the many). ”
Actually, that was Spock.
Pardon me if I’m being dense, but what is it about the pragmatic consequences of rules like “Murder, robbery, rape and lying are wrong” which makes them insufficient? Is the implication here that they’re extra-wrong because God said so – or worse… that God might decide to metaphysically change the moral law so that Murder is OK, you know, just to prove a point?
As far as the pragmatic argument goes, as a parent I’ve noticed that the practical consequence of using Santa Claus is more effective as a tool of pedagogy than God. Does that make Santa Claus immoral because God didn’t say in the Bible “let there be Santa Claus… and he was good”?
Liberty is the natural condition of man, you say? Based on what? Who says?
It comes down to personal preference without a higher order arbiter, as KC said.
Cato makes a good point (to which there is no other answer than “faith”), though, that since we can’t prove God then we’re functionally choosing according to our own wills anyway.
If there were an easy answer then we wouldn’t have had the last few thousands of years worth of philosophy and science.
Mike, you don’t even have to leave the confines of my fair city to observe places where the only problem with murder is the possibility of getting caught and punished.
Agreed. I primarily believe in God. I also believe that that means somethings and demands recognition in how I live. What that works out to in practical terms, well, again I think that “faith” is the only available answer. I realize that doesn’t exactly help, but I don’t think we’ll get any more than that.
The practical difference between a religious based morality and a reasoned one is that the a reasoned one is impossible (in terms of arriving at an objective truth). Right reason can lead to different courses for different people. The religious system, on the other hand, serves as a common axiom that doesn’t obviously favor anyone over anyone else (depending on the religion).
Otherwise an “alleged deity” might prohibit murder while encouraging jihad. This is not necessarily in conflict because not all killing is the same. We can reason out the distinctions, but only judgement can assess whether any of it is right or wrong. Judgement is inherently subjective, unless we’re talking about the judgement of the Alpha and Omega.
How do we know the judgement of the Alpha and Omega? A combination of faith, discernment, observation, reason. Again, I know that doesn’t offer the unimpeachable solid ground that people are seeking, but I don’t think any better is available to us.
Mike we’re currently on another thread which is at least partially a direct result of a “hedonistic brinksmanship” (the single mother thread). Of course hedonism is appealing when it’s not proscribed. Are humans otherwise wired to eschew hedonistic impulses? I don’t see the evidence of that. I see the reverse, in fact.
There is no arbiter of the truth. Who says that any true scientific facts are actually true? No one, it doesn’t matter what anyone says. They are true regardless of anything else. Truth is found through intuition and observation.
Disagree.
I have “faith” that my observations about the world tell me about real things, but that’s because nihilism is stupid and pointless.
I agree, but we’re getting there.
Most humans are weakly but malleably wired to seek our hedonistic impulses. So what? If it wasn’t sustained by coercive transfer payments, it wouldn’t be nearly as much of a problem.
Indeed. It reminds me of all those former Christians taking up Eastern religion because it seemingly didn’t demand anything of them. Well, hell, Christianity can offer redemption on the cheap too. The common theme of the great religions of the world is humility, study, and prayer – putting “truth” or “god” above yourself. There is no easy path. There is no provable path.
Also, when our natural hedonism, whether because of personality type or training, is future-oriented and anticipates the rewards of delayed gratification (which is after all a form of gratification), that is a very good thing.
People with anhedonia are in even worse shape than those who don’t know how to delay gratification. If you can at least feel gratification, then there’s hope you can learn to delay it. If you don’t feel gratification to begin with, how do you motivate yourself at all? The prospects are grim.
Personally, I consider anhedoina and acedia intimately related. Acedia was considered by the Desert Fathers to be perhaps the greatest sin. I think they were onto something.
It’s surprising how much of life can be chosen. Love, for instance.
I look upon life as an inextricable mix of chosen and unchosen. The chosen portion is important not because it’s necessarily the largest portion, but because it is the part we can actually do something about.
Sometimes the decision to choose love will be crushed by the weight of circumstance. But not even trying to choose it almost certainly guarantees its obliteration.
“Pragmatic consequences” are morally insufficient when a person stands an acceptable chance of getting away with it.
Suppose I could get away with robbery, and I’m a clever enough thief that no one would know I did it. No chance of getting caught.
By what theory, then, could you convince me that I shouldn’t go ahead and steal?
Note: if you suggest an “what if everyone did it?” argument, that only means that I want everyone else to obey the law … but not me.