For some odd reason I was thinking back to my high school days. As a student at a Catholic private school (which sounds far worse than it was), we had to take Religion class until grade 13. At some point I remember talking about several ethical issues and our objection to teaching Religion -and naming the class thus- instead of simply teaching ethics, and having an Ethics class instead.
I have never made the connection, but tonight I realized what a stupid idea that was. I named this post Ethics without Religion to draw the parallel to the class I had to take, but since I am no big fan of religion, it would be more accurately named “Ethics without God.” My friend Alan (see the blogroll for a link to his blog) frequently takes on atheists and their moral positions, so you can get some more stuff from him if what I present is not good enough for you.
There is no moral argument for the existence of God per se, in the sense that the argument doesn’t lead to the conclusion that God exists, but it does provide a framework for true justice, so I’d like to present it here.
In most conversations about morality in a world without God that I have witnessed or been a part of, I see two things happening. Either good and bad are arbitrarily defined, or the fallacy of begging the question is committed. Let me explain.
Most people would say they learned right and wrong from their parents. In a sense that’s true; we did in fact learn from our parents. However, what if I was taught that raping and murdering little girls was good? Or eating other people? Or child pornography? Most people would agree that those things are indeed bad (if not, congratulations! You are indeed consistent in your world view, though I find the result exceedingly sad). So we cannot take our upbringing as the standard for morality.
Society is another candidate for determining morality. There are social norms and rules that shape us. However, if society is our standard, then Hitler wasn’t wrong because his behavior was socially acceptable. If society is our standard, then the little (imaginary, I hope) tribe in Africa that’s still eating people and sacrificing women by burning them is not wrong because their behavior is socially acceptable. Instead of one person making up the standard, it’s now many people making up the standard, which doesn’t solve the problem.
In both cases, good and bad are based solely on personal or collective opinion. We can try and define good by saying that it’s “whatever is beneficial for most and doesn’t cause harm,” which is begging the question: What does “beneficial” or “harm” mean? How are those defined beyond personal or collective opinion? This definition madness can and unfortunately sometimes does go on forever, but the bottom line is always opinion.
The problem with opinion is that it’s not binding. Who am I to say that my opinion of not raping and killing little girls is in any way superior to somebody else’s opinion who enjoys those things? It’s not. So without God, there can be no justice system. Sure, we can define laws and enforce them, but on the one hand legal doesn’t always mean moral, which is very apparent with the legality and immorality of abortion. On the other hand, those laws would be based on the opinion of some group of people, which again raises the question of why one set of opinions is superior to any other set of potentially conflicting opinions.
As a Christian who realizes that God does exist, I can say that raping and murdering is wrong, because God said so, thereby setting the absolute standard. Anybody adhering to a non-theistic world view who is judging right and wrong is borrowing from a theistic world view or trying to impose his opinions on others, something that Christians are ironically often charged with. I hope I made my point clear. I am not saying that atheists cannot act in a moral way, i.e. do the right thing; they can. What I am saying is that there is no true justice without God.Â
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Hi again.
Have a look at this. http://www.bluegrassreport.org/ChurchBodies.gif . Why do you think the map is clustered like this? In a bigger scope: http://www.wadsworth.com/religion_d/special_features/popups/maps/matthews_world/images/w001.jpg
Doesn’t this somehow indicate that religious beliefs (and thus, ideas of morality) are just as dependant on society as “atheistic beliefs”? Even if there is a god who favors a certain system, the key to following this system can’t be to just practice religion, it has to be one specific religion. So the name of your post shouldn’t be “Ethics without religion” but “ethics without my religion”.
That’s an inherent problem with deriving an absolute standard for morality from an authority of some sort, be it king, famous philosopher or prophet. In contrast, the categorical imperative for example doesn’t take it’s authority from the fact that it was issued by Kant, but by the fact that it’s a concept that is rationally comprehensible. You asked “who am I to say that…”. You are a being that can very well empathize with others, and that can assess the result of your actions. Yes there are people who can not empathize with others, they’re called sociopaths and are in need of psychological treatment (and not of for example execution).
Additionally, I think it’s more a blessing than a curse that moral values can, in fact, change. It is possible that concepts which are accepted as right at some point of time (like slavery or the surpression of women) eventually turn out to be wrong. Keeping a stance on one immovable set of rules would be short sighted, and it doesn’t even work in the long run – generally the church changed it’s dated standards, only often slowlier than the rest of society.
Cheers, Thomas
Thanks for you comment Thomas!
Christian morality is not dependant on society, that’s the whole point. They are dependant on God. Your map shows different Christian denominations across the U.S. and the world, but I am saying that morality as defined by God in the bible is absolute across all nations. Are they practically? Of course not. Should they be? Yes. Geographic location has nothing to do with it.
You said: “You are a being that can very well empathize with others, and that can assess the result of your actions. Yes there are people who can not empathize with others, they’re called sociopaths and are in need of psychological treatment (and not of for example execution).” My question is, who are you to say that they need psychological treatment? Because they don’t agree with your idea of how society should work? They don’t agree with your society? What makes you think your society is better than what they think society should be?
The standard that God sets never encouraged the supression of women or slavery. I don’t care what any church says, if it doesn’t fit with God’s standard. Equality of men and women? Set long ago by God in the bible, Genesis 1. Not always adhered to, even by the church, but I am arguing that you don’t need to change God’s standard; it’s perfect.
I still stand by what I said in my post: Without some absolute standard, it’s your opinion vs someone else’s.