Evolutionary Morality

Aaron Snell has offered a good hypothetical pushback for the point made in my last post. The question at hand is: How do selfless human virtues like heroism shoehorn into Darwin's theory of survival-of-the-fittest?

I'll begin by restating Aaron's reply, which I call "hypothetical" because he is not advancing it as his own belief.

Humans are social animals, and as such their social interactions are the context in which morality evolved. When practiced in such a social context, altruism has certain social benefits that ensure a better chance of offspring survival. This then translates into an evolved moral impulse.

As for your objection about the converse "selfish streak", I have seen two counter-arguments offered: 1) this is an evolutionary hold-over from our pre-social past; and 2) individuals sometimes benefit from selfishness in certain social situations, which means both can be present in the behavior of a biologically-programmed human animal.

And here are my thoughts:

When was this pre-social time in our past where anti-social behavior was supposed to be advantageous? All creatures are social creatures to some extent. What is it that makes a prior behavior less valuable to survival simply because we become more verbal and intelligent? I think the unintended implication is that humans are now self-conscious and able to know good from evil — that we have risen to some higher metaphysical plane where we are attuned to true virtue. But as another commenter (Duane) points out, in an amoral, purely material world, there is no good and evil or better and worse in the sense we generally mean those words.

If morality is only evolutionary, then there is no higher morality that stands above whatever evolution delivers. This means that the only thing that could be said to be good is whatever lends a survival advantage. "Good" would be, by definition, whatever successful organisms happen to do. However, we find various creatures acting in many ways, some of which we would think of as very "bad" were it imitated by humans. Consequently, there is no reason to even think of our own behaviors, such as heroism, as objectively more virtuous than the diverse behaviors that we see in other successful creatures.

Evolution only has to do with replication and survival. If it could be said to produce morality it would only be related to what is most advantageous to the survival and dominance of any given species, and it does not care about ethics in its pragmatism. For evolution, any means is justified by the ends. And it seems we could get along just as well by evolution's reckoning if we ate our genetically inferior offspring and killed off our elderly once reaching a certain age. This doesn't fit the model of virtue and heroics as we think of it, since we regard some of the most heroic acts to be on behalf of the weak and defenseless.

Mutations do not appear in communities, which could all share in the benefits of cooperation and heroism; they appear in individuals, and if those individuals do not reproduce, then that characteristic will be lost. Even if heroism may add theoretical value to the community, it still has to be established as a characteristic in that community. Those with the strongest heroic traits would seldom manage to pass their genes on, while those in need of rescue would be perhaps more likely to dilute the gene pool.

We tend to think of some behaviors as being morally superior to others, for example, being heroic, practicing equal human rights, and living in peace and harmony with your neighbors are all considered to be good. But this type of environment is not conducive to allowing the superior genes to dominate. Bacteria are supposed to have evolved by means of the more fit organisms crushing out its competition. It could easily be seen as more advantageous to allow weak and helpless victims to die than to allow the virile gene-carriers to lose their lives in the efforts to save them. Practicing equal rights, welfare, pacifism, and heroism does not seem to be consistent with the spirit of evolutionary progress.

To say that some supposedly bad behaviors are a carryover of primitive times only works if we can say that those behaviors are in a different category from our newer behaviors. For example, we might only be aggressive toward others while we are good toward our own offspring and spouse. Perhaps we can develop the new in one area while retaining the old in some other; like a dolphin is supposed to be a land mammal, which retained its old lungs while developing new swimming apparatus. It seems problematic to the theory to have both the new and the old in the same area, but that is exactly what we find in the area of morality. We find loving parents and abusive parents, heroes and cowards, lovers and rapists, pacifists and warmongers, philanthropists and swindlers.

It might make sense to say that morality can be evolving along a continuum, like legs slowly forming into flippers, but that would imply, for morality, that we were fairly consistent in our moral expressions, wherever we happened to be on the scale. Experience shows that humans exhibit moral behavior along every point of the scale, from heroic to monstrous. Some of us still have legs while others have fully developed flippers, so to speak.

Perhaps moral character could be controlled by something like genetic alleles, which determine eye and hair color, among other things. This would imply that there could be "good" people and "bad" people, just like blondes and brunettes, or at least people who are good and bad in certain areas of morality. This seems a very testable notion, since by this reckoning we should expect to find solid and predictable patterns among kin and, especially, identical twins. But I think it has been difficult enough to establish that things like personalities and preferences are determined by genetics at all; and if not by genetics, then we aren't really talking about evolutionary morality in the first place.

Alleles can also be bred out of the genetic stock, so we might expect to see tribes of incorrigibly noble aboriginals or irreformably wicked savages, as we see blue-eyed Scandinavians and dark-skinned Africans, and their children would be expected to be cut from the same cloth. But we seem to find that there is no race whose infants consistently surprise or disappoint us if we adopt them into our "mainstream" society. And if we claim that this is not so then we can be assured of facing charges of racism.

In the end, this is an idea that sounds good in theory, but it turns out to be circular reasoning: we happen to value certain moral behavior and so we imagine that there is an evolutionary advantage for those who practice it. Unfortunately, it begs the question as to the true source of morality, why we should exalt human morality, and why evolution would have us be repulsed by social practices that would actually improve our genetic stock. If, as Tennyson said, nature is red in tooth and claw, then why should we expect to escape the breeding and discipline of our own Mother?

The Problem of Heroism

While you wait for me to shake off my post-Thanksgiving lethargy and complete the next MIT biology commentary, I submit this article for your consideration.

It is on the "problem" of heroism, and these excerpts get to the point of the article (which is longish):

Twenty minutes after the crash, the sun was going down, and no one had been able to reach the six survivors. They were doomed...until suddenly, miraculously, a rescue chopper came whisking across the darkening sky. It dropped a life ring right into the hands of one of the survivors and plucked him from the water. Then things turned really strange.

The next person to receive the ring handed it over to someone else. The chopper lofted her to safety, then wheeled back.

The man gave away the ring again.

And again.

He even gave it away when he knew it was his last chance to live. He must have known, because when the chopper thundered back seconds later, he was gone. The man in the water had vanished beneath the ice.

Who was he? But far more perplexing: Why was he? Why would anyone put the lives of strangers ahead of his own? He couldn't even see the faces of the people he was saving, because they were on the opposite side of the wreckage, yet he made a sacrifice for them that their best friends might have refused.

. . .

Even Charles Darwin, that human decoder ring of bizarre behavior, found the idea of saving a stranger's life to be a total head-scratcher.

"He who was ready to sacrifice his life, as many a savage has been, rather than betray his comrades, would often leave no offspring to inherit his noble nature," observed Darwin, who consequently couldn't figure out how to crowbar heroism into his survival-of-the-fittest theory.

Die for your own kids? Perfectly logical. According to Darwin, your only reason to exist is to pass your genes along to the next generation. But to die for a rival's kids? It seems totally counterproductive. No matter how many virile, healthy heroes you bore, it would take just one selfish bastard with a hearty sex drive to spoil the whole species. Selfish Bastard's kids would thrive and multiply, while SuperDad's kids would eventually follow their father's example and sacrifice themselves into extinction.

Even if evolutionists can propose a story to explain how such an altruistic streak could have survived in the gene pool, despite its most dominant carriers' untimely demise, they are still left to explain why we also seem to have an equally strong selfish streak. I do not think I am overplaying my hand here to say that such behavior is a problem for naturalism, which entails that all instincts must be part of the biological programming, whereas seemingly conflicting noble and fallen natures is perfectly consistent with biblical Christianity.

Santa Claus Morality

"I think [heaven is] a bad concept to have because then everything you do, you want to do good things in order to get to Heaven. Then everything becomes a selfish act, and I hate that, it creates bad patterns in your mind. I like doing things not as a means to get into Heaven but for the sake of doing it themselves."
Natalie Portman, Actress, Inside the Actors Studio, Episode #11.7 (2004).

"The threat of damnation is designed to be an incentive to right action; but this is a phony morality. Humanists think we should do good for goodness' sake, not for the selfish prospect of reaping individual rewards or avoiding punishment."
Dan Barker, Atheist and Former Pastor, "For Goodness Sake", Freedom From Religion Foundation.

"I believe in goodness for goodness' sake, not because you're getting some reward in the afterlife. If you're being good for an award, then what sort of person are you anyway?"
Bill Maher, Political Satirist, "I'm spreading the anti-gospel", Chicago Sun Times (10/24/04).

~~~~~~

This common objection is meant to be a defeater for the concept of Christian morality, but it really does nothing so much as to demonstrate a deep intuitive knowledge about morality. Claiming that we ought to "be good for goodness' sake" assumes four very important things about the nature of morality.

Morality is Objectively Real

The first thing this claim demonstrates is the belief that good, and by extension, evil, are real things. Indeed, "good" is being held up as some ideal, perhaps even independent of God, which we should strive to pursue for its own pure ontological beauty. For this reason, a moral relativist is not well served by this objection. In his mind, morality is simply behavioral preferences and cultural conventions. Morality is not something "out there," apart from humanity and applicable to all times and places. There is, then, nothing other for the sake of which we might attempt to be good.

If there is no objectively real morality, then we can only be good for our own sakes, that is, for the sake of our own feelings about morality. We might be good for the personal benefits that are achieved by acting in certain ways, but we cannot be good for the sake of an abstract, transient concept. It is not something that we separate from ourselves and put upon a pedestal as though it had an existence apart from us, its maker. You might just as well say we should eat ice cream for the sake of The Favorite Flavor. No, we eat it for the sake of our enjoyment, whatever our favorite happens to be, assuming we even have one.

Even if "good" turns out to be a changing and subjective thing, then the very idea that we should take pains to follow it is itself an objective principle, which would in turn foil moral relativism. If morality is not a real thing with some purpose and value behind it, then what right or meaning is there in a relativist telling us we should bow to the idol of morality? And exactly whose idol should we bow to anyway?

Moral relativism makes it difficult to meaningfully speak in moral terms, but it is the legacy of those who do not allow a God that meddles in human affairs. Consequently, atheists, who employ this objection most often, are admitting far too much in even voicing it, since it requires morality to be tangible and particular to even make sense.

Morality is Personal

The second thing that this claim implies is an understanding that morality has a personal basis. We don't do things "for the sake of" inanimate objects. We do things for the sake of personal beings who we seek to honor, impress, love, protect, appease, etc. It makes sense to say that I should care about hygiene for the sake of my spouse and stay married for the sake of the kids, but it does not make sense to say that I should shower for the sake of the soap and stay married for the sake of the appliances.

To say that we should be good for the sake of goodness is to ascribe a personal nature to morality. But this cannot be done if morality is merely a human, subjective phenomenon. Yet even atheists have a deep sense that we ought to do certain things and that other things simply should not be done. But "should" and "ought" are the language of moral incumbency, which is born of law. And law implies a law giver.

The question is whether we humans are making up these laws ourselves as we go along, or whether the laws have been written for us by someone higher. If by ourselves, then we can only be good for the sake of our own self-interest. But if morality has another author, then we should be good for the sake of that One, not the inanimate thing derived from that One.

The Highest Morality is Selfless

The third thing that this claim demonstrates is the belief that self-serving morality is a parody of true virtue. To say that we should be good for the sake of goodness suggests that we should behave in a way that looks beyond the resulting personal benefits. You aren't thinking about morality in the traditional sense if doing the right thing requires you to first ask, "What's in it for me?"

But if morality is simply a creation of society, then it will surely reflect (at best) the shared self-interests of the individuals which compose that society. And if we are just creatures of nature, then evolution (our supposed creator) is the ultimate master of our moral urges. The problem with this is that evolution is selfish by definition. Its primary focus is the survival and competitive advantage of individual gene carriers. Advantages to broader communities are of concern only insofar as they benefit individual reproducers.

There is really nothing practical about the idea that we should expend our precious resources to care for, and allow reproductive rights to, the unproductive and genetically inferior members of society. The theory of evolution certainly doesn't give cause for such thinking. And there is no sense in the idea that a fit and fertile person should lay down his or her life to save the life of someone else who is weak and impaired. Yet one of the most egregious moral crimes in society is to abuse or neglect the helpless, and one of the noblest acts is to dedicate one's life to their aid. This is self-defeating sentimentalism in a purely material world, but makes perfect sense if there is something higher than self and the survival of the fittest.

Good Works do Not Earn God's Favor

The fourth thing that this claim reveals is the intuitive knowledge that works-based righteousness is a spiritually bankrupt idea. If the Christian God indeed exists, then it would be petty for us to only seek to do good in order to win His favor. The objector is right to see such self-interest as tarnish on all our good works, and just how good would we need to be for a God to whom we owe everything in the first place? Seventy-five percent good? Fifty percent good? Whatever the line, it would mean that both heaven and hell are home to many borderline cases. 'Tis an awfully wide gulf that could separate two souls by one four-letter word.

The irony is that Christianity does not even teach that we win heaven by virtue of our good works. In fact, it may be the only religion that explicitly rejects such an idea. For example, Islam actually teaches that our good deeds must outweigh our bad, and Eastern religions teach that we must work our way to enlightenment through various moral and spiritual practices. By contrast, Christianity teaches that we must put aside our futile thoughts of measuring up to God's perfect standard and throw ourselves upon the mercy of His court. We have but to accept, as spiritual beggars, the provision He has made to cover our sin and win our righteousness in Christ.

Good works come as a result of our love and gratitude toward our creator and redeemer; they are not the cause of our redemption. The Christian ideal is to be good for God's sake, not for the sake of what He can do for us. God is not to be confused with Santa Claus. To think otherwise is to make the mistake that Satan made regarding Job's motivation for righteous living (Job 1:9-11).

Conclusion

The claim that we should "be good for goodness' sake" is problematic at face value for the non-religious and does not even manage to apply to the Christian understanding of God and morality. It assumes a rather more substantial view of morality than atheism has a right to claim; it assumes a higher form of virtue than what evolution would be concerned to impose; and it assumes something about how God ought to view moral effort that Christians have been teaching all along.

Matthew 12:36 says that every idle word will be brought to account in the final judgment. The use of this complaint will surely come back to haunt those who have applied it against Christianity and have not availed themselves of God's mercy, do not think of themselves as being so bad as to deserve hell, and even go so far as to doubt the existence of an Author of morality. The objections of the skeptic often say far too much and contain the seeds of his own destruction.

Moral Atheists - Good by what measure?

In all my interactions with atheists I have noticed a curious thing: they are very keen to be thought of as "good" people and insist that it does not require a deity in order to seek to act morally. Indeed, they claim that it is nobler to be good for its own sake than to be good for the sake of rewards gained or punishments avoided, which they believe theism entails. There are several problems inherent in this idea, but what I want to explore here is the problem of defining the "good" and considering whether we find atheists, in fact, acting according to such a definition.

(Note: for the purposes of this essay when I use the term "atheist" I mean anyone who builds his or her ethics apart from the idea that moral imperatives find their source outside of nature. I might alternately have chosen a term like "secular humanist," but that is at least a form of functional atheism.)

In my last post there was general agreement by my atheist respondents that morality must reduce to subjective human constructions in a world without anything beyond matter and human minds. Even if our moral urges come to us as a result of evolution or social conditioning it is still up to the individual to determine which, if any, of these urges is to be preferred. If it were to end here an atheist could have little further to say against those, like me, who disagree with them. It would simply be one preference holder against another, and all differences would be settled by sophistry and coercion (the emerging methodologies in our culture, by the way).

As it turns out, most atheists who like to think of themselves as moral do so with a sense that they are saying something particularly meaningful. The implication is that they have access to moral knowledge that they are committed to put into practice. It is something like saying that you are a good baseball player, which refers to a particular game with known rules and objectives that you skillfully follow. If this is not true, then a moral atheist is just asserting that they follow their own desires; they are saying little more than, "I do what I feel like doing, and whatever I do I call 'good.'"

For the atheist who insists on being seen as moral, he is faced with a humanistic version of Euthyphro's Dilemma. Either morality is something imposed upon him by forces outside of his control, or "good" is just whatever he happens to favor and "bad" is just whatever he happens to reject. The buck must stop somewhere, and for the atheist it must be somewhere within nature.

The solution to this dilemma as it applies to deity is not available, since human will and character is not, by nature, a uniform and unchanging thing that morality can be said to describe. The only universally descriptive axiom regarding human behavior is, "Nobody's perfect." Such a statement only begins to make sense if there is some "perfection" to which humans fail to conform. But if humans define the standard, and all humans fail it, from whence comes the impossible scale?

If morality is purely subjective, then it is meaningless to claim to be moral, since everyone is a subject and can be moral by definition. But if morality is not pure subjectivity, then to what external (though non-transcendent) standard could an atheist appeal in order to measure himself as "good?" In my experience, the three most common things offered are "reason," "moral intuition," and "natural constraints." Let's look at each and see where they fail the atheist, or vice versa.

Reason

As the late philosopher James Rachels said, "Morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one's conduct by reason."

It's fine to be reasonable, and I'm not sure if anyone has ever claimed that their moral system was "unreasonable." Unfortunately, "reason" is not enough; it is no better than a car without fuel and a destination. If I told you to go to Xanadu, and you asked me how to get there, it would not be a helpful answer to say, "By car." Additionally, if you asked why you should care about going to Xanadu, I would have to appeal to something other than the car to make an answer.

As a car is only a tool for comfortable ground travel, reason is only a tool for careful, logical thinking. Tools in themselves do nothing; they must be employed for specific purposes. Someone wishing to use his reason must first be given ideas and objectives to process, like a math problem or a puzzle. And like a math problem, reason needs rules of engagement. For math, these are the laws of mathematics and logic, which may themselves be discovered by reason but are not produced by it. And like a puzzle, reason needs a known goal toward which to work.

Reason itself is not a moral system. It can only help you navigate through the world by way of the constraints and objectives contained within a given moral system. Reason may help to refine an existing system, but it is not the author of the foundations upon which any system rests. That foundation is something prior to the exercise of reason — things like preferences, intuitions, divine revelation, or natural constraints. If I see a woman drowning, I may use reason to assist me in determining the best way to provide aid, but it is something else that tells me that I ought to risk my safety to help her if I am able.

So, reason is not enough. It is only the vehicle between our true moral driver and our behavior destination. It still remains to identify what it is that employs our reason toward its ends.

Moral intuitions

One atheist recently said to me, "I do have objective moral standards. They just happen to be inspired by reason and compassion, not religion." Adding compassion we have gone a step further, but is it enough?

"Compassion" hints at something deep and emotional, which is not simply the product of reason. It is like our love of music, the scent of a rose, and the look of a sunset. These touch our hearts not because we have reasoned that they should, but because of the very mystery of human nature.

This same atheist (and others), when cornered on his grounding for certain moral positions, claimed that he just knew that some things were wrong. If a statement like this is not simply referring to deeply seated preferences, then it must be the case that there are shared human intuitions. A moral atheist might then claim to be a disciple of these intuitions.

If these are indeed human intuitions, then this implies that we are not required to merely introspect upon our own personal feelings on any given matter. Indeed, anyone else's feelings ought to be as good as our own. However, since we observe that there are differences of opinion on certain moral issues it must be the case that some people can be mistaken. They can either mismanage their intuitions, like applying the moral "good" of tolerance to criminal behavior, or they can warp them by way of personal bias, like saying that charity is not "good" because of the love of their own wealth.

Even if moral intuitions are real and universal things, the danger in leaning upon them is that one may easily mistake personal inclinations for actual intuitions. For this reason, a true student of moral intuitions will look to the corporate conscience of humanity to temper his subjectivity. He will also understand that no matter how much he might personally desire to engage in a behavior, or tolerate it in others, that behavior may in fact be contrary to our core intuitions.

In my observation of atheism it appears to be the case that they are primarily social liberals. There are many controversial behaviors that they are perfectly willing to tolerate or even celebrate, and the line is often drawn only where issues of harm and consent are at stake. But surely there is more to our moral intuitions than, "I won't rob and kill you if you don't rob and kill me."

In the process of being inclusive, atheists implicitly affirm as "good," or at least morally neutral, certain behaviors that may well be candidate items for our moral intuitions. I'll use homosexuality and abortion as examples. If our intuitions do not cover matters of sexuality, reproduction, and how we ought to treat our offspring, then I can't imagine that they are very comprehensive and helpful guides to begin with.

In spite of the increasing secularism of society and the continual advocacy for same-sex relationships homosexuals still find themselves victim of a large-scale cultural "homophobia." Even the most liberal states cannot seem to muster the votes to resist same-sex marriage bans. It takes judicial activism to circumvent the popular stance on this issue. And the average person (religious or otherwise) still has a reaction to flamingly effeminate males and struggles to push past the "yuck factor" when confronted with the reality of what homosexual relations actually entail (all jokes about attractive co-ed lesbians aside).

Are the limited gains toward the full acceptance of homosexuality just because society has not yet been fully "enlightened" to the virtues of sexual diversity, or is it that homosexuality actually rides against the current of our moral intuitions? What is it that should fire our intuitions that homosexuality is a morally good lifestyle: That families should consist of non-reproducing units? That penises and colons seem designed for each other? Homosexuality is an anomaly that defies sexual teleology from the most superficial to the deepest social level.

I suggest that it is merely the fact that some people happen to have desires for same-sex relations that causes us to wrestle with our intuitions about what is sexually natural and good. And this subjective bias seems to carry over to supporters of the behavior in that, according to The Journal of NIH Research, the strongest predictor of positive attitudes toward homosexuals is that an individual knows a homosexual. Having a personal investment in a behavior — either first-hand or via friends and family — fosters less objectivity regarding that behavior. And no matter how "nice" homosexuals might be, how much we may love a particular one, or how much pleasure they derive from their behavior, it says nothing about its moral status.

On the matter of abortion, a significant percentage of the population is flatly opposed to the practice. Of those who are "pro-choice," many are personally opposed to abortion. Of those not opposed to it, many say they don't like it and would like to make it rare. And of those who have actually had one, it is common to see them writing goodbye notes to their fetuses or suffering guilt and depression for years afterwards.

There is nothing on the face of it that would make parents killing their own offspring seem morally benign, and there is a reason why abortion centers prefer not to show ultrasounds to their customers, that abortion photos send pro-choice advocates into orbit, and that showing an abortion on TV is a taboo, or at least rare, act. It is an ugly thing that nobody likes and that we'd rather keep shrouded in privacy and ignorance, but that we feel "necessary" because some parents find their offspring's existence to conflict with their own personal desires.

Again, the reason we would override our moral intuitions regarding this nasty issue is merely to accommodate those who happen to want to do it. Indeed, it is murder if someone else kills an unborn baby, but it is just elective surgery if the mother gives consent to the act (remember, they call it "pro-choice," not "pro-abortion"). If no woman chose to terminate her pregnancy we would not intuit that we were missing a valuable maternal rite, just as if no one were compelled toward same-sex relations we would not feel that we were missing an important sexual demographic. Life would go on its merry way.

If one wishes to be considered "good" by measure of human intuitions, then it is not particularly noble to adhere only to those moral principles that one is not tempted to violate. The minimalistic ethic turns a deaf ear to a whole raft of moral intuitions and focuses, instead, primarily on those behaviors that have obvious impact to life and property and are already broadly condemned by all but sociopaths. It is pragmatic and little more. The typical atheist's libertarianism is not the pinnacle of virtue; it is simply an institutionalized apathy toward confronting common vice.

Natural constraint

Another atheist (near and dear to this blog), who is intent on finding an objective basis for his morality, has suggested what I will call "natural constraints." As I understand it, this is the idea that natural law and consequence provides the license and limits for our behavior. Just as gravity and topography guide the flow of water, physics guides the flow of morality. So, drug use and violence are "bad" because they damage body and mind, whereas love and charity are "good" because they contribute to physical and mental health. While this may be helpful input for certain moral equations, it is not adequate to define morality itself.

The funny thing about moral laws is that, unlike physical laws, we can choose to break them. Water has no choice but to flow downhill, just as we have no choice but to fall when tripped. However, no matter what the moral precept and where it originates, humans can manage to violate it. Even if it is true that natural health constraints play against such behaviors as smoking and overeating, it still remains to be argued why one should care about such consequences and curb ones behavior as a result. Nature and its workings are just neutral data and causal systems; one must impose a prior moral theory upon it to say how we ought to respond as a result of its operation. Some other premise must be supplied to make the connection between bad for you and morally bad to do.

While it may seem self-evident to assert that whatever is unhealthy for you and others is to be considered wrong, there are several problems inherent in this foundational idea of natural constraint theory.

First, many people don't concern themselves about consequences and some flat out rebuke them. How many millions of people regularly eat junk food, smoke cigarettes, drink too much, and/or are couch potatoes? The vast majority of these know there are health consequences, but either have made a conscious choice to gamble against them or are committed to take them when they come. A perfect example is one of my friend's responses when I commented on his affinity for meat and carbohydrates to the exclusion of vegetables. "Everybody dies sometime," he said. His own dining pleasure trumps all other considerations.

According to natural constraint theory, then, everyone who knowingly and intentionally embraces unhealthy pursuits is engaging in immoral behavior. From cigarettes to junk food to sunbathing: it's all vice. And since promiscuous sex and homosexuality are bedfellows with many undesirable consequences, then these become morally suspect as well. Merely having the desire — casually or compulsively — toward an unhealthy lifestyle would not change the morality of it, since exceptions to the rule of natural risk and consequence would negate the very system and return the atheist back to the dominance of subjective preference over any other criteria.

Second, in many cases it is not so apparent what is a "good" consequence or result. It is easy enough to say that we should not stab someone for health reasons, but it slightly complicates things to ask if a surgeon is wrong to cut. No problem there, I'm sure we can all agree that the end healing justifies the means in this case, but what about how we should treat the poor? What about our children? Should we just hand them whatever they need and desire? The answer to these questions will ultimately lead to further questions of purpose and ideals: what kinds of people do we want to make of our children and the underprivileged? What end do we have in mind and is it worth the necessary means to achieve it?

There can be diverse answers to such a question that all fit within a natural constraint ethic and which will influence how we arrive at our goals. For instance, if our goal is weighted more toward hard work and virtue than wealth and pleasure we may use distinctly different means in the process of getting there that would not otherwise seem reasonable to us. For this reason many important issues will be driven by philosophies that precede the natural constraint ethic. Where do those come from and how do they not reduce to preferences on par with a bias toward chocolate over vanilla ice cream?

Third, some things we will always insist to be wrong even though they harm nothing at all. For instance, if a doctor fondles a patient under anesthesia, who is "hurt," especially if the patient has no way of finding out? Is it only wrong if the person finds out, thus suffering emotional distress? Is it only wrong because the patient might find out? Nature and her effects cannot give us guidance here; we must appeal to some other more abstract principles of "rights," "privacy," and "consent," which are difficult enough on their own to defend as something other than subjective standards. We would need not only a transcendent standard of human dignity but a god's-eye witness of such "harmless," anonymous thrills to claim any wrong had actually been done.

Even if our responses to natural constraints were uniform and it could be said to be a self-evident basis for morality, I do not find that in practice the limits of nature are given principled deference. By "principled" I mean that the cues of nature are read and taken as the primary drivers of absolute morality. Nature would be said to whisper the ways of virtue and we would be her devoted students. As it turns out, nature is treated more like an overbearing father who is obeyed wherever necessary and evaded wherever possible.

Let's visit our twin issues of homosexuality and abortion again. An unbiased reading of nature suggests that sex is best reserved for long-term relationships between members of the opposite sex. Unwanted pregnancies, communicable diseases, and other related health issues (not to mention psychological issues) are clear consequences of a libertarian sexual ethic.

Someone committed to natural constraint theory would need to consider the idea that homosexuality should be classed as immoral due to the inherent risks involved, and that abortions are simply an ugly remediation for the consequences of bad sexual behavior. Instead, we find the moral status of the causal behaviors left unaddressed — nay, even celebrated — and all attention placed upon artificial preventative and corrective measures. In fact, if one is not on the bandwagon for HIV research, condoms for teens, and unrestricted abortions he is far more likely to be thought of as the immoral one.

Far from being students of natural law, atheists tend to make a practice of bending nature to serve their own wills. Someone declaring himself morally good by natural constraint theory may in fact be saying nothing more than, "I only do what science and nature allow me to get by with." By this measure, every advance of science puts more options on the moral buffet. This is hardly an impressively noble ethic, and I would wager that there are few atheists who would consent to anything close to this characterization of their claim to virtue.

Conclusion

As I've argued, for an atheist to make a claim to virtue he is either just saying that he successfully marches to his own drum or he is saying that he has a fixed standard, common to humanity (at minimum), by which he has held himself to account. Unfortunately, the various systems employed to objectify morality turn out to be inadequate and impotent. There is always something else not contained within the system that drives the application of it, even if it is only to answer the question of why one ought to care about that particular moral system. Additionally, the chosen system is not given preeminence in the atheist's moral thinking. It is trumped wherever it is found personally inconvenient or where it conflicts with ideology not derived from the system itself. I do not mean that atheists simply fail to live up to their own standards at all times, for that would be understandable; I mean that they consciously repudiate things that ought to be a part of those standards.

Even if atheists identify a moral system that they believe to be objective, and which they do in fact use to inform their moral choices, it is still personal desire that has the final say. Their will is king and their moral system is a hand-chosen adviser, to be heard or ignored according to their sovereign pleasure. In the end, they have not escaped a subjective moral relativism, which voids the idea that they can be "good" in a way that is universally meaningful. To repurpose a very old observation, if there is no king in Israel, then everyone will do what is right in his own eyes. Fortunately for the rest of us, the majority of atheists prefer to be liked and to avoid social chaos and poverty, and so they often make reasonably good citizens. But of course I am just assuming those to be good things based upon my own moral framework. I could be mistaken, but only if there is no God to invest us with real moral capital.

A Challenge to Atheists

Nick is a bright, attractive, and financially successful young man who was raised in a nominally Christian home. He has a wife and a kid on the way. He's not particularly unhappy in his marriage, but it's been 3 years now and the passionate zing has pretty much faded. He's also not thrilled with the thought of a kid intruding on his lifestyle — maybe some day, but not just now. He only agreed to one at his wife's nagging insistence.

His wife is a semi-regular churchgoer and has been getting increasingly religious and domestic, particularly now with the pregnancy. Nick doesn't much care for church these days, especially now that she's gotten so serious about it, and her increasingly conservative attitude has affected their relationship and social life. It seems to Nick that they just don't have any carefree, spontaneous fun anymore and that she thinks his friends are irresponsible and immature.

Nick's been hanging out on the Internet a lot, doing things we won't talk about. But of particular interest is his time spent on a prominent atheist website. With the proverbial "open mind" Nick has absorbed it all. It deeply resonated with his current thinking and he found it just the kind of rational fuel he needed to take his life to the next level, but not before writing the following email to the author of that website.

Dear Sir,

I've been reading your articles with great interest over the past weeks. I must say, you make a strong case for atheism. In fact, I thought you'd be happy to hear that you've finally convinced me that god is just a fiction! I wanted to write and thank you personally because this is a big breakthrough for me. I feel like a great burden has been lifted from my back. Ironically, I feel "born again" as an atheist.

It's a relief to know that there is no god haunting my thoughts and actions, no spiritual quests to waste my time, no church to bore me, and no money to be surrendered. My mind is free and my goals are my own to set. I know now that my conscience, which was my last hurdle toward atheism, is just the product of my Christian upbringing, or perhaps it is an evolutionary instinct meant for my survival. In any case, it doesn't need to trouble me again, since I am free to make my own values and follow my own natural desires.

"Guilt" is as meaningless now as the fictional and repressive concepts of "good" and "evil." I am free to live according to the knowledge that this is my one shot at existence, and I don't want to waste it "storing up treasures" in a mythical place I'll never see. Best of all, there is no hell or judgment, so there are no "wrong" choices to make and no "bad" behaviors to avoid. As long as I'm okay with it, and society allows it, then it's all good!

I've grown so tired of trying to resist my desires and fight my conscience that it feels so liberating to reject the god hypothesis and everything that goes with it. If I want to party and do drugs, or view any kind of pornography, who's to say it's wrong? In fact, if I want to have an affair, so long as my wife doesn't find out, it's no problem with me. Heck, even if she does find out and doesn't like it, divorce is a perfectly acceptable option. For that matter, murder is on the table as well!

I'm a pretty smart guy; I could probably get away with it too. And if not, I'm willing to skip the country. I'd probably be happier in another country anyway. The US is too uptight and morally restrictive. I understand that there are many countries where drugs and prostitution are legal, and the age of consent is quite low in some. If things don't work out for me, I can always take the escape clause. It's my life and I can live it or end it whenever I want.

I realize that your writings haven't tried to convince anyone to go out and kill people or commit suicide. But you know what? The way I see it everything is fair game now. A world without god is a whole new adventure and I plan to live it out.

Thanks again for all your great articles. They really gave me something to think about, but I'm outta here now.

Nick

My question to any atheists who might be reading right now is this: Do you have a problem with Nick's attitude, and if so, what do you say to him?

Imagine No Religion

One of the insistent claims of the new atheism is that "the world would be a better place without religion." All the atrocities of history are typically laid at the feet of "religion." Consequently, if there were no religion, there would be no problems. There would be no religious extremists to fly planes into buildings; there would be no religious causes to fight wars over; there would be no heretics to persecute; and there would be no dogma to stand in the way of pleasurable pursuits and scientific progress. In the words of John Lennon, if we imagine there's no religion, "all the people" would be "living life in peace" and "the world will be as one."

A reply to this would begin by questioning whether it is indeed true that all, or even most, of the atrocities of history are religiously motivated. As it turns out, an objective survey of history will turn up quite a number of murderous and oppressive examples that are purely secular in nature. A few that come to mind include the Columbine massacre, the eugenics and racial elitism of Margaret Sanger and company, the killing fields of Pol Pot, the systematic purges of Stalin and Mao Zedong, the sadistic and bloody French Revolution, and probably the bulk of the barbarian invasions and national conquests of the ancient world. Only by a definition so broad as to be meaningless could we attribute these things to "religion."

Perhaps it may be argued that these persons and societies were not properly atheistic, or an appeal might be made to examples of virtuous atheists. To the issue of what constitutes a "proper" atheist, I will speak latter, but here I would point out that the same could be said of religious people. Innumerable examples of selfless devotees could be brought to bear, and religious contributions to society could also be referenced, like hospitals, universities, orphanages, emergency aid organizations, youth programs, and soup kitchens. In my own small town alone there are several dozen relief organizations which are founded, staffed, or provisioned primarily by Christians. And I will gamble that it is the same in your own town.

I would argue that the charitable contributions of religion far outweigh any of its real or alleged abuses by orders of magnitude. This could only be denied by attempting to secularize certain key contributors, but it is not fair to selectively secularize only what is flattering and then turn a blind eye to atheism's culpability in the unflattering. Or perhaps it could be denied by defining certain contributions as something other than "good," but that begs the question as to why atheism's standard of good should prevail in arbitrating this dispute. One cannot simply assert that things like proselytizing, opposing abortion, or defending traditional families are strikes against religion without first demonstrating the fiction of such things and the religion(s) that sponsor them.

The atheist's argument begins with the assumption that there is no truth in religion, but then lodges complaint against actions that may be consistent with that religion in order to condemn the religion itself. This means that if one assumes, for the sake of argument, that the religion is true, then any act consistent with that religion is removed as grounds for complaint, and, conversely, any act inconsistent with it is exempt from complaint.

Of course, what the religion actually teaches about humanity and how it ought to behave may offer grounds to question the religion itself if it is contrary to all reason and experience. However, if there is any truth in religion, then there will surely be some hard teachings involved that are distasteful to human preferences, and we must also deal with the question of how we might, outside of a transcendent standard that religion would provide, judge certain doctrines "bad" or against "right" reason.

When asking whether a behavior is caused by a belief system it must first be determined if that behavior is consistent with the beliefs in question. For a religion like Christianity there is some hope of doing so, since it is founded upon certain doctrines and is in possession of a guidebook — the Bible — to which one might appeal in making a ruling. For this reason a strong case can be made that most of what is commonly credited to Christianity is actually a violation of its fundamental principles. It is not consistent with Christianity; it is antithetical to it. And if something is inconsistent with a thing it is hard to make a case that it is caused by that thing.

I once had an atheist insist to me that Timothy McVeigh, the Oklahoma City Bomber, was a Christian, as if to blame Christianity for the bombing itself. To answer such a charge it is not necessary to know anything at all about Timothy or his motivations; you must simply ask yourself if it is reasonable to imagine Jesus helping him pack his truck full of explosives. Since the answer is obviously "no," then even if McVeigh thought of himself as a Christian he must have a very different thing in mind when he uses that word — a thing which no classical Christian would care to defend.

If religious wars, inquisitions, and heretic burnings were in fact consistent with Christianity, then we should expect to have seen such things from its very inception and Christians would be repeating the behaviors even to this day rather than apologizing for them. This is exactly why the events referenced as "Christian atrocities" are generally isolated episodes in history and not things that invariably spring up wherever the Gospel is preached. Christianity has within itself exactly what it needs to be self-reforming. But no matter how divine her doctrines, because the visible church is composed of humans (some of which are only arguably "believers"), it is guaranteed to manifest flaws large and small. If the skeptic is looking for proof of God in the perfection of His followers, then the skeptic is presuming something about human nature that Christianity does not teach.

Of course, I have here been defending Christianity as opposed to "religion" in general. However, most of those arguing against religion train their guns primarily on Christianity and only employ things such as Islamic extremism for the sake of the juicy examples it affords. I will not take pains to defend religion at large, though each group surely has its own defenses to offer. I am only obliged to defend what I believe to be true: classical Christianity. If any who consciously differ from that truth consistently commit offenses, then it is not Christianity's burden to bear, and they "prove" the truth of atheism only as much as they prove Christianity, or anything else in opposition to themselves. The sins of the one, or even the majority, do not categorically invalidate all. If this were not so then we must condemn all thought of government because of the abuses of communists and fascists.

In fact, the rejection of religion would be a bit like the rejection of all formal government. Gone would be any objective moral framework, historical narrative and vision, or idea of absolute justice. But what would take its place in a strictly atheistic world? What ethical theory follows from atheism? John Lennon thought we could all "live as one" if we gave up on religion, but given that atheism's only dogma is the rejection of the supernatural it is impossible to say what such a world would yield.

Many atheists would propose something like secular humanism, but that is merely a broad ethical creed that begs for consensus over details, and it is no more objectively binding on its supporters than a New Year's resolution. And even if its followers were all passionately committed to it and everything derived from it, it is not the case that all atheists are on-board with it. Some atheists are nihilist. Some are anarchists. Some are communists. Some are hedonists. Some are quite sympathetic to religion. And some are just psychopaths. The frightening thing about atheism is that while it is difficult enough to say what is consistent with it, it is quite impossible to say what is inconsistent with it.

Unlike with Christianity, there are no grounds on which to even begin a debate over how atheism is to be lived out. So long as there are no gods and souls being appealed to, then it all equally qualifies as atheism. But worse than that, without a transcendent standard of morality, there are no grounds for saying how atheists ought to behave or why they ought to behave in any proposed way. Along with God goes any idea of fixed and binding moral imperatives. Morality simply becomes whatever humans define it to be at any given time and place. Lennon's imaginary world of brotherhood would be spoiled in the determination of which humans have the power to control the definition of the good and true. And the hunger for power is a very human trait. History has taught us at least that much.

Religions that explicitly teach violence aside, from a purely theoretical perspective it only makes sense to think that if one believes in divine justice, from which even death is no escape, then one is more likely to be concerned about his or her own good behavior. If people do bad things in contradiction to a system that teaches otherwise, then it must be the case that something else is driving them. I would suggest that something more subjective is at the bottom of human aggression — something at the very heart of humanity. As one sage has said, human depravity is one of the most empirically verifiable of all the doctrines of Christianity.

If we removed religion, people would simply find alternate grounds for oppression. There would always be substitute causes, movements, and justifications for evil persons to employ in their service. People have an incorrigible need to feel justified in their actions — even hardened criminals will make excuses. Religion is simply one very powerful justification to be leveraged. Removing the "excuse" of religion will not magically make bad people into saints. It would be as reasonable to believe that removing gangster rap and heavy metal will leave us with responsible and well-adjusted teenagers.

Some might argue that Europe has become largely secularized and it is doing just fine. Well, that returns to one's definition of "fine." When the news delivers stories of moral absurdities — stories that could make even an atheist cringe — they often will originate in one of the European bastions of secularism. Some notable examples would be: sex vendors at sporting events, a woman marrying a dolphin, the mainstreaming of pornography, problems of child pornography rings, lesser standards for what qualifies as child pornography, welfare recipients being forced to take available jobs in the sex industry, involuntary euthanasia, porn stars in politics, football (soccer) riots, and the breakdown of the traditional family. (Of course, I am begging the question to think that an atheist will take issue with such things. But for those who merely shrug at my list, it proves my point that it is indeed consistent with atheism; and for those who are troubled by it, it proves my point regarding the diversity of atheism.) Additionally, when it is said that Europe has become secularized it does not necessarily mean that it has become atheistic; it has simply become more diverse and "spiritual" but less inclined toward organized Christianity.

But even if all religious people died tomorrow in some great pluralistic rapture, I would expect that the world would not immediately descend into a pre-modern barbarian chaos. Modern atheists are so fat with the moral capital of their Christian heritage that they could probably live for decades before suffering bankruptcy. And most are either in denial or have quite forgotten that if there is no God anything is permissible. Well, anything that you can get away with at least. In a world without purpose and standards beyond personal happiness, what taboos can stand?

Is it really true that it would be the end of evil if we made an end of religion? As I've argued, it would only be the end of evil in the name of religion and the end of our grounds for naming anything evil. Evil would remain, but would be called by a different name, and it would be celebrated, tolerated, medicated, or carefully regulated — but never judged.

Presuppositional Kung Fu

The late presuppositional apologist Greg Bahnsen used to teach that the best way to handle an attack was not to dodge the bullets, but to disarm the attackers. Applying this to dialog and debate with non-Christians, this meant that one was to force the opponent to live consistently with his own worldview and not allow him to reach beyond it for concepts to justify his attacks and objections — to remove the weapons to which he is not rationally entitled.

In the case of atheism, these weapons would include such things as fixed laws of logic, objective morality, timeless values, human dignity, and freewill. In order to level certain objections, an unbeliever is generally dependent upon ideas such as these to make sense of his objection. For this reason, the objection itself is secondary to the very assumptions upon which it depends, and it is first incumbent upon the objector to make sense of those assumptions before his case can be considered coherent.

I recently ran across a blog with a community of atheist contributors who spent much energy in voicing their opinions on certain moral issues, particularly things which they viewed as "evil" and "immoral" as practiced by Christians or as documented in the Bible. One post particularly caught my attention, since it expressed the strong moral conviction that slavery is wrong and that the Bible, in (allegedly) advocating the practice, is to be considered immoral by association.

The natural instinct of many Christians (and a couple of responders fell in to this) is to exegete and clarify the texts, or to launch in to an explanation of God's overall purposes for certain biblical events. But Bahnsen's advice would be to eschew the moral complaint and go straight after the moral presuppositions, one of which is that there is such a thing as objective morality by which we might judge slavery wrong or consider events in Scripture as immoral.

Here is my attempt to answer this atheist using Bahnsen's recommended approach. His replies are offset in blockquotes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

Slavery is “obviously evil” and “definitely wrong.” The Bible is “notoriously immoral.”

These kinds of statements imply a belief in objective morality, i.e., that something like slavery is wrong for all time and in all cultures. Is there a moral standard that stands outside of time and place being appealed to here, or is this simply a matter of personal or cultural preference?

Well, I think some things like slavery are wrong no matter where or when they take place, so, according to your definition, I do have objective moral standards. They just happen to be inspired by reason and compassion, not religion.

Others have historically and geographically used their “reason” to come to other conclusions than you in this and many other matters. And they place their compassions elsewhere or have it not at all. Reason and compassion do no work without guiding principles and objectives. You may as well tell me you get to El Dorado “by horse.”

What are these transcendent principals of morality to which you appeal to say that all others are simply mistaken, and how is it that you have managed to discover them where many have failed? And I wonder what other moral truths are hidden within the treasury that you are robbing to pay this debt.

I am not trumpeting myself as some kind of master philosopher or guru, or saying that I have cornered the market on virtue. If this is the impression I have given, I sincerely apologize. I am convinced, however, that slavery has always been an affront to the timeless values of human dignity and freedom. If you wish a more detailed explanation of my reasoning in this or other issues, read my other posts, and then, by all means, please ask.

I’m not reading anything in to your comments here and in other posts (and the comments of the other non-theists here) other than that there is a very strong implication of moral objectivism being exercised. All your judgments, social positions, and moral outrages depend upon some ethical grounding. You don’t have to be a master philosopher to identify where this originates in your own case.

There either is an objective moral law that stands outside of time and culture, or morality is merely a product of the human mind. You seem to be inclined toward the former, in practice, though I’m sure you can see how problematic that is for atheism. On the other hand, grounding morality upon human convention removes the fixed nature of all moral positions. Humans change, cultures change, preferences change, and individuals are unique. Making morality a human invention boils down to a matter of personal and cultural “preference.” You may think that we are making progress in fine-tuning our cultural conventions (by way of “reason”), but that is merely another admission that there are true and right objective standards toward which we can make progress.

I know that certain moral positions are just so obvious to you that it seems academic to justify them, but the very question is why we should have these incorrigible moral intuitions, where they come from, and why we “ought” to bow to them. Many atheistic philosophers, in fact, reject moral objectivism because they understand the problems I raise here. Most people, however, are blind to this issue, borrow moral capital from the theistic worldview, and merrily condemn injustices and champion their moral causes. In practice, they are just as dogmatic as any religionist that they condemn for holding to moral values with which they disagree.

And you have similar problems with the ideas of “timeless values,” “human dignity,” and “freedom” from a purely materialistic perspective. Justifying such notions has been the confounding project of atheistic philosophy for many centuries, and it is why, intellectually bankrupted by the attempt, many have surrendered in this age to a postmodern relativism. You seem not yet to have arrived there, but I believe that it is the ultimate, rational conclusion of atheism, even though it is not a livable position.

For the record, I do assert that morality is a human invention and that it can and has changed over time, often for the better. The Bible describes, for example, how it was morally acceptable at one time to put to death homosexuals, adulterers, blasphemers, fortune tellers, women who were not virgins on their wedding day, and those who worked on the Sabbath. Any sane person living in the 21st century is horrified by such outright brutality and injustice. So how do many Christians reconcile this with their concept of a loving and righteous god who is the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow? They dismiss it by saying those rules no longer apply, that Jesus and the New Testament somehow nullify all that nasty business in the Old. It was a different time, a different place. Yet this is exactly the kind of relativism that you and many other believers seem to find so problematic when it comes to secular philosophies.

I am perfectly aware that morality, as any other human endeavor, is imperfect, filled with personal and cultural biases and preferences. This doesn’t make it any less profound or legitimate than the so-called objective standards promoted by religious prophets and sacred texts; in fact, I think that recognizing the fact that morality is to some degree fluid and subject to improvement has led to many of the rights and standards we value so highly today.

You admit that morality is a “human invention,” but you say that it can change for the “better,” is subject to “improvement,” and can be “imperfect.” Better and improved and less than perfect according to what standard? You cannot move toward, or run afoul of, a position unless that position first exists to be approached.

If morality is just a human invention, then morality is just whatever happens to be defined by the humans in any given place and time. There would be no higher morality than that, only different morality. You could only say that your 21st Century Western morality is better out of a sense of chronological snobbery.

To say that the Hebrews, Romans, or Huns had not arrived at the “rights and standards we value” is to say one of two things: Either it says that each living individual or culture is the standard by which history is measured, which means that you shall be found wanting by your descendents even if they are little barbarians; or it is to say that at the time of these societies there was a fixed standard that lay wholly outside of humanity — indeed, outside of time — to which these persons failed to measure up.

You are faced with either affirming a transcendent moral principle, thus negating pure materialism, or you must admit that your own moral standards and sensibilities distill to arbitrary ethical preferences that compete with the preferences of other cultural groups and are only different, not better in any real sense. Your moral intuitions that have you horrified by certain behaviors are either shadows of a true divine Form (to use Plato’s model), or they are nothing more than fashionable moral reactions (like my wife’s “horror” at seeing white shoes after Labor Day). The fact that you feel so strongly about your moral positions and think of them as being so “sane” and modern does absolutely no philosophical work toward raising them above mere subjectivism.

That being said, it is difficult to know how to take any of your moral assessments of the Bible or any other issue. If you are merely emoting, then there is nothing further to discuss unless I choose to volley with my own feelings. But to unpack the theological issues that you raise against the Bible would require us to first share some common ground of understanding regarding morality, not to mention the concept of a God who has dominion over, and purposes for, humanity. Such things are complex and nuanced (would you expect a God to be otherwise?), and so long as one has a misty and minimalistic view of ethics and God’s sovereignty then one will have no comprehension or sympathy for anything I have to say.

In any case, I would certainly not concede a relativistic view of God’s moral will, as you have either received or perceived from other Christians willing to entertain your complaints. Perhaps I can hint at the common limitations of thinking in this area by pointing out that we have different expectations for our children vs. other people’s children, our children at school vs. at home, and our children as youths vs. as adults, even while our overall values and objectives remain constant.

~~~~~~~~~~~~

The dialog continues, but as you might expect, this person is not moved by the argument; as he essentially refuses to recognize my point, or comment further upon it, and instead merely takes offense that I consider him too "morally and intellectually deficient" to respond to. He simply wants to sit in my tree and complain about my apples without need of acknowledgement that he must trespass to do so.

Eugenics: It's Only Natural

Something's been troubling me since it first occurred to me many years back.

According to a purely naturalistic view of the cosmos (i.e., there is no God and we are merely children of nature) our moral urges can only find their origin in evolution. And evolution's only purpose — if it can be said to have a purpose at all — is the survival and reproduction of the individual and, by extension, the species. Now, even if it were argued that morality is purely a social construction, then surely the welfare of our species would figure as prominent criteria for what qualified as "good." So by whatever source, according to naturalism, one of the chief ethical concerns must be the survival, reproductive health, and, perhaps, pleasure of the human race. And since there is no outside agent to rescue and preserve us as a species, then it is in our own hands to insure our future.

What is so troubling about this so far? Well, nothing in general. Caring for humanity is certainly a Christian concern as well. The problem is that there is no reason to think that naturalism can have any higher concern than this (but this is not to say that in practice many naturalists are not, in fact, driven by more personal agendas). If there are two courses of action, one of which may seemingly lead to the demise of humanity and the other to its flourishing, what higher standard exists that would suggest that the course of survival is not the preferred route?

And here's where things get dark.

Look at the world around you; look at the condition of its people. How many people do you see suffering from illness or simple imperfections? Retardation, diabetes, muscular dystrophy, heart conditions, paraplegia, schizophrenia — these are just a few of the many conditions we find. And there are many less severe from which even more people suffer, like hypertension, obesity, poor eyesight, color blindness, and baldness. Can it not also be said that simply being unattractive is an imperfection as well?

What is the culprit of all this suffering? Is it not primarily the fault of our genes, since most of what I can list would be considered congenital, hereditary, or genetic disorders? Even where illnesses are triggered by lifestyle conditions, it is often the case that our genetic makeup predisposes us to be affected in one way or another.

Genetic disorders are sourced in mutations that affect the reproductive cells of an adult, or in genetic errors that occur in the developing embryo. Such mutations that are not lethal or sterilizing are carried on by the offspring of the affected person. Evolution is indeed occurring. Well, at least half of it. We are indeed seeing mutations, unfortunately none of which are doing us any favors. What is not happening much in the case of humans is the "natural selection" half of evolution.

The wonders of medical science is remediating the effects of more and more of these disorders, and where once a person with a serious genetic condition might have died before reproducing, today they can live a reasonably normal life. We like to think of this as a blessing, but what is it really doing to our genetic stock, our quality of life, and our economy? Couldn't it be said that if we could remove such anomalies that we could reduce the amount of human suffering and eliminate a huge financial burden from the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance industries? Why spend all that time in research and treatment when we could just as well test fetuses (and infants) and dispose of the rejects? Why continue to allow the gene pool to be polluted?

Of course, I am not the first to point out such a concern. The genesis of Planned Parenthood and the Nazi eugenics programs where founded upon the issue, which began to germinate in the late 1800's. Hitler was not the instigator of the Nazi eugenic scourge; he was merely a product of his intellectual time and its most powerful enabler. What Hitler did, however, was to generate negative publicity for the idea of eugenics by means of his zealous application of it and his mistaken idea that the Jew was a genetically inferior race that must be cleansed.

In the nauseating wake of Hitler's pogrom, the idea of ridding ourselves of "human weeds" (to use Margaret Sanger's words) fell quickly out of vogue. While I would argue that it has remained in the ethical climate in some circles, it has dared not show itself publicly to garner an official place in medical and social policy. But as soon as the Nazi stain is erased from our collective hamster-length memories, and a kinder, gentler way to market eugenics is advanced, we will be disposing of our human refuse just the same. As one modern eugenics advocate said:

We are deteriorating genetically, and the only alternative to leaving future generations an increasingly chaotic, violent, degraded society is called "eugenics." What a dilemma! Have we no other choice than to bequeath to our children a poorer genetic legacy than the one we ourselves inherited? And what if they too live in terror of the ghost of Adolph Hitler? Where will it end?

What is to be done in a purely secular society? Isn't eugenics inevitable? Isn't it evolutionary, and aren't we supposedly creatures of evolution? Indeed, how can we rise above our natures in order to find a "higher" moral path? How could there be said to be anything higher than nature for a naturalist? But nature is a cruel matron, especially in that she taunts us with compassionate instincts that are at odds with her purposes. Mother Nature is a hustler and child abuser. She will have us kill our runts with tears in our eyes and think ourselves noble all the while.

Coin Toss Morality

Awhile back I had a dialog with a cousin where we discussed the merits of different ethical systems. He is something of an agnostic, so I was keen for him to recognize morality as an objectively real concept that he must work into his thinking. To this end, I asked the leading question, "Why not just flip a coin for each moral decision?" Now, this may sound flippant (no pun intended), but I think it begins to expose one of the problems of ethical theory.

You could say, as my cousin did, that this simply removes reason from the equation and replaces it with chance. But what is it that reason can do that chance cannot? Flipping a coin certainly qualifies as an ethical system, but why is it a "bad" or "wrong" one? You can certainly use "reason" to lay down the options, manage the coin toss, and implement the resulting decision.

I think the real problem is that the outcome of a coin-toss moral decision can clearly lead to undesirable results. Think of the following situation: Your neighbor's toddler wanders over into your yard (you've left your gate open) and falls into your pool. Do you, heads, save her or, tails, wait for her parents to come retrieve the corpse? You know what to do and you don't need an ethical system to help you out. You know that the coin toss may lead to the wrong decision.

Ideally, you want your ethical system to act as a sort of formula for helping you to get to correct decisions, and it is most helpful when the situations are complex. But the entire system can come crashing down if it runs afoul of your moral intuitions. A well placed reductio ad absurdum can prove the shortcoming of the theory. For instance, you might at first hold to a utilitarian ethic that whatever promotes the happiness of the majority is what is "good," but then it could be pointed out that the torture for sport of a single human could give a large (depraved) viewing audience a large sum total of happiness. For most people, that would put an end to that moral theory (and for those who it wouldn't I haven't got much more to say here).

The point is that we seem to have preexisting moral intuitions, and we will never be satisfied with any ethical system that does not accommodate them. (Well, perhaps not entirely true, since we also have competing selfish desires that we often seek to rationalize.) I would argue that in our ethical theories we are simply trying to systematize our moral intuitions.

A chance ethical system cannot do the trick if it is true that there are right and wrong answers. If there are indeed objectively right answers to moral questions, then reason is certainly an ally, since it can help us to assess the conditions and marshal our intuitions, but it does not in itself make the answer right. Neither does an ethical system make right answers; it can only (if legitimate) help us to navigate through real passes with real reefs and currents. But you could never say that any ship of history had hit a reef unless you were first willing to admit that things such as ships and reefs actually existed. That's a very big pill to swallow for anyone committed to a purely material world, where truth and ethics extend no farther than the will and imagination of the biochemical flukes we call "humans."

Euthyphro's Dilemma and the Character of God

The dialog following my last post on the implied moral relativism of atheism eventually hit the topic of Euthyphro's Dilemma. This is commonly offered as a trump card by non-theists against the idea that God is a proper grounding for objective morality (i.e., Is the "good" just whatever God commands, or does God command things based on some preexisting standard of goodness).

I offered this article as a solution to this dilemma, which was summarily rejected by Dagoods. We then exchanged a round of dialog, to which I offer a more detailed response below.

Dagoods said: You are quite correct that the Euthyphro Dilemma does not eliminate the possibility of moral realism. However, it does bring into sharp focus the problems associated with it.

I don't see why. There could still be a God who merely decrees what is good and creates a universe accordingly (like Allah). Perhaps you would then take issue with the basis of that morality, but to what avail? It would still be real and binding upon you in spite of any of your philosophical reproaches.

Dagoods said: As we have no possible way to even verify why God does it, any claim as to that standard is pure speculation. We don’t know God, let alone a step further beyond God!

Well then, this debate must be unsolvable and at an end, unless, perhaps, we had some revelation from this God to constrain the discussion. But you deny that. Even so, you press on...

Dagoods said: If discussing the God of the Bible and his interactions with humanity, this possibility [of changing whims/morality] becomes probability. A creature that cannot change cannot have regrets. . . . If God’s [character] can change, it is no longer absolute. It becomes “good because God does it.” Scripture says God has regrets. Can a sentient being that is unchangeable have regrets?

If you want to exegete my Scriptures you will have to take it all into consideration — even that which speaks of God's immutable nature and demonstrates His regular use of anthropomorphic communication devices. Even so, this would not demonstrate that God has changed His moral character, only that He grieves at the results of what willful humans have managed to do. And what is it that they have managed to do? Violate His moral commands! (e.g., 1Sa 15:11)

Dagoods said: When I say “whim” with God, it is possible that God could make a moral mandate and it is the same for all time. It is still not absolute, because there is no reason God could not have chosen some other moral mandate, even the opposite. What God chose was based merely on his particular choice. He was not limited by any fashion.

This is a good point at which to address the root of the problem. The horn of the dilemma which would have goodness outside of and beyond God is certainly untenable. This may have been a solution for Plato, since he was seeking to defend "the gods," but it is not consistent with Judeo-Christian monotheism, or even our intuitive concept of what it means to be God. This means that morality is grounded in God, but there is still much opportunity for nuancing.

Perhaps the problem is that you would like to leave it at that. If it is from God in any way, you believe that the other horn of the dilemma is being maintained and any further defense is just so much double-talk. However, I believe the qualifications make a great deal of difference.

(First I must say that I hesitate to hang the veracity of theism on an answer to this question. It is one in which lurks some of the most difficult theological and philosophical questions, which are not apparent on the surface. I am not trained to speak in the kinds of categorical terms that would be required to unpack the hidden difficulties. I also believe that its complexity and the unknowns involved in speaking of something like a non-physical, atemporal, self-existent Being guarantees that important data fall through the cracks in the discussion. And deeply theoretical discussions of this kind can land us in seemingly sound states of reasoning while still being brilliantly mistaken. I'm thinking here of Zeno's Arrow, where it was suggested that motion was a fiction because an object must travel through an infinity of points in order to reach a given target. While the thought gives me pause, it has never stopped me from getting into my car in hopes of reaching my destination.

In any case, this topic is very interesting to me, and so I press on...)

If morality were merely based on God's "whim" or some arbitrary choice, then this would seem to qualify for the spirit of the second horn of this dilemma. That is to say, goodness would not be grounded, just invented; it could have been otherwise, and may be in the future. The solution that Greg is describing removes the "arbitrary" nature of the decrees of God and connects them to the character of God. God is creating and decreeing those things which are in harmony with His own nature. So, He would not, just as easily, have made some laws to be opposite of what they are.

I find this a very intuitive direction to take the solution. It is difficult to imagine God simply flipping coins when making moral imperatives. Surely He is doing things which are desirous and pleasing for Him to do — according to His own nature. I'm not sure that the Dilemma, as it is generally formulated, excludes such a solution. However, I think this "solution" may then press onward into other difficult ground, though I'm not sure where the scope of one dilemma ends and another picks up. When is Euthyphro's Dilemma resolved? Must we put all ontological conundrums under its umbrella?

Two areas of further concern I see arising are as follows: 1) Is God, then, bound by His nature (i.e., He's not "free" to do anything other than what His nature impels Him to do)? 2) How do we avoid tautologies and define attributes and essences in relation to God? It seems as though your issues (measured by volume of your text) fall more in the latter area, though I think once you concede the possibility of goodness being grounding in God's nature the former concern emerges as primary.

In any case, it is not clear to me why equating "goodness" with God's "character" is problematic. That truth may not give you a categorical listing of all that qualifies as good and bad, but I take it as a reasonable starting point for the concept of morality. It is sourced in the very nature of the Being who grounds every other thing that we might ponder, e.g., knowledge, consciousness, logic, being, will, etc. Such things I suspect you will not deny, but will you deny that a thing such as "consciousness" can be sourced in the self-conscious nature of the one who creates conscious creatures? Does Euthyphro's Dilemma extend to challenge this essential aspects of God as well? Do you also reject the possibility of a self-conscious deity? Perhaps you simply have problems with the idea that God could BE anything at all!

I said: In fact, it is not at all clear to me why anyone would suggest that God would create and decree things that were not according to His own character in the first place.

Dagoods said: Not clear to me, either. I would agree that they are one and the same. But that means that God is bound to do it by God. Which places us squarely on the horn that “it is good because God does it.”

So you agree that His decrees could be rooted in His own character, but you simply want to distill it to what "God does." If God's character is equivalent to His actions, then it is true that goodness is "what God does," but it is conversely true that goodness = God's character. In looking for a grounding for morality we have found the ground: it is an essential thing, not simply an arbitrary decree.

Perhaps you are then concerned with the question, "How do we know that God's character is actually good?" But this presupposes a standard for judging that must transcend an eternal, immutable author of all things that exist; it presupposes that the other horn of the dilemma is what must be true in any metaphysical system.

You may like to think of this solution as making morality arbitrary in some way, but I think it is a meaningless complaint. For instance, you may think it arbitrary because God's character could have been something else, but what else is there for it to have been? That is the nature of God: He defines and produces all things which exist. There is no external set of attributes from which He was randomly assembled, no other way He could have been.

Now you may complain that this is no definition of morality — goodness just happens to be whatever God is — but it's not clear what this complaint buys you. It is still the case that morality has been sourced; it is still the case that morality exists as something outside of the creation; and it is still the case that being moral is incumbent upon the creation. How is it that you will judge the goodness of the good? You have nothing with which to judge that has not been given to you by the creator of the intuitions by which you would seek to judge. You might just as well ask if logic is logical.

Dagoods said: By placing a smaller circle of “God’s character” within a “God” circle, we need to determine what is in that larger circle, but not in the smaller circle. (Why I like the Venn Diagram.) All you have done is provide even smaller circles within the “God’s Character” such as “knowledge, essence, being and power” and said, “See—these are not ‘the same’ as God’s character.” True, but that is not what we are looking for. . . . Using Venn diagrams, we can see how your example of yourself is incomplete. We draw a circle of “Paul.” We would draw a LARGER circle of “Father” around you. You are either a father (have child(ren)) or do not. There is nothing in you that is “not father” whereas other parts are. You may assume different roles, but even when talking with a customer on the phone, you still fit the descriptive term “father.”

It occurs to me that the solution lies between these two points. I am not at all inclined to advance the idea that God is simply a collection of properties, i.e., that you can make smaller circles within His being and say that He "has" these things. While it might make sense to say that I "have" goodness, it is only "some" goodness. It does not pervade my being and others have a measure of it as well.

On the other hand, the things that God "has" are pervasive and He has them in complete measure. For example, His knowledge is complete and it informs everything He does. So, if you were to draw circles labeled "knowledge," "power," and "goodness," these things might, perhaps, be a smaller circle within me, but they would not exist as a subset of God; they would more accurately fill God. And looking from the other angle, if you made a circle called "good" only God could go in it. But since He and only He is in it, then God and goodness are synonymous — just as if I were Adam, then the words "Adam," "man," and "husband" would all be redundant (for a time at least).

So, each circle that you choose to ascribe to God would find no boundary within His being. He both has those things completely and is those things simultaneously; even while you may say that they are not the same thing as each other. While His justice may be informed by His knowledge and express itself through His power, they are not identical things. For this reason you could say that God is justice, but it would be incomplete to say that justice is God. And all of the plurality of things which God is describe His nature — His moral character being but one of those things.

But even my circle analogy is not an accurate depiction, because it rests upon the idea that such attributes are things external to God which we might ascribe to Him when, in fact, God defines and grounds what these things are. So, when we talk about something like knowledge or power, we are really discussing those things which are parallels to what God manifests. Any circles we make in hopes of assigning them to another being are ultimately meaningless unless they are reflective of some divine "attribute."

For example, there is no knowledge beyond the mind of God, and humans can only hope to have some of that knowledge. Any belief that you have that does not line up with God's knowledge would be a fiction and would not hold true in any possible universe. And attempting to act according to that fictional belief would ultimately cause negative consequences in a world that proceeds from the author of truth and knowledge. Is that fair? Is that arbitrary? There is no external measure by which we might judge this fair, no other way that God's knowledge could have been, and no other possible realities in which one-ended sticks could exist.

Dagoods said: Are you saying that moral intuitions could be wrong? (Just like I say.) And that we must gauge those moral intuitions “correctness” by obtaining more knowledge? (Just like I say.) And upon learning more knowledge, use that knowledge to “trump” what our moral intuitions initially determine? (Just like I say.)

I don't think a straight yes or no answer can be given without qualification.

First, I will point out that it seems with humans that any right intuition, instinct, or commonsense notion may be violated at will. Even if our conscience were inerrant it would still be possible to "suppress the truth in unrighteousness" and to allow it to atrophy from disuse. Hunger is a proper instinct, but the anorexic feels it and handles it much differently from you and me.

Second, intuitions are complicated things which are not simply designed to work reflexively. Here I am undecided how best to characterize them. It could be that they are rudimentary building blocks that must be assembled to fit the circumstances, or it's possible that they are broader in scope and invested with nuance. So in my original example, regarding imprisoning someone, it will be the case that we need full knowledge of the situation to first apply our moral intuitions. We then might be doing one of two things: 1) We are pitting our intuition that humans ought not be subjugated and mistreated against our intuition that crime demands justice 2) We are simply employing an inherent qualifier that it is "innocent" people who deserve to be treated in certain ways.

In any case, it is reason that applies the facts to the intuitive principles. Knowledge is merely fuel for the moral engine. When you say that you believe that knowledge may "trump" or "correct" our moral intuitions I have to wonder what you think it is that knowledge is doing for you. Knowledge is neutral; you have to apply the knowledge in some way. Exactly what ethical principles are you using in order to apply your knowledge which are not informed by your moral sensibilities? When you see a man in a cage, and then come to know that he is a serial killer, what is the dispassionate methodology you use to silence your intuition that humans ought not be caged like animals? In reality, your moral intuitions pervade your reasoning from start to finish.

It strikes me that the entire history of ethical philosophy has been an exercise in mapping our moral intuitions to a systematic definition, and its failure has been largely due to the tendency toward skewing the results to grant latitude for individual passions.

Might one come to a morally wrong conclusion? There is no denying that, since people do come down on different sides of certain issues. Some situations are morally complex, knowledge is an undervalued commodity, and the will to defer to our intuitions is thin. However, this does nothing to abnegate the fact that those intuitions exist or that their Author will hold one accountable to yield to them as best as we are able.

Dagoods said: If moral intuition is not enough, and we need knowledge too, and God has not provided that knowledge (according to your concept) then we cannot determine what is good! This is my point on genocide. What knowledge has God provided that means your moral intuition has gone from “uninformed” to “informed” other than your presumption that God must have a moral reason for committing genocide?

You have no new information. Any other theistic belief that claims promulgation of its people through the use of genocide is “moral” you would deplore. But because it is your God, it becomes “good” because you suppose your God is good.

(Addition: 9/20/06 - Note that I use "Amorite," rightly or wrongly, as a general ethnic term to represent the people occupying the lands of Israel.)

I'll have to take exception with your premises. First, God has indeed provided us with knowledge to reinforce and supplement our intuitions. That is a major claim of the Christian: God has intervened in the creation to reveal Himself. But I think you specifically mean that He has not bothered to reveal His motives for the displacement of the Amorites. Again I must disagree. Scripture speaks in several places of the various reasons for the Amorites to be "driven out" (which it mentions more often than the extreme measures that you note). Several times it offers a litany of offenses — incest, adultery, child sacrifice, idolatry, homosexuality, bestiality — and even indicates that God withheld judgment until their iniquity had reached its full measure (Gen 15:16). The taking of the Promised Land was coincident with the judgment of God. It differed from the fate of Sodom and Gomorrah in that it was executed by the agency of humans and not all suffered the penalty of death.

Another thing with which I must take issue is your characterization of this judgment as "genocide." Genocide looks more like the Nazi treatment of the Jews, where they are all ferreted out and executed merely upon racial grounds. For a parallel from God we would expect to find verses saying broad things like, "I despise the Amorites. Find them wherever they hide and destroy them. Let not one Amorite remain alive upon the face of the whole earth." Instead, we see variety in the treatment of the inhabitants of a fixed area of real estate according to their individual circumstances (some destroyed, some subjugated, some driven out, some left alone, sometimes spoils allowed, sometimes not, etc.) and no blanket license for hostilities. We can't derive a general moral or theological principle that transcends the context of these people, this place, this time, and this covenanted nation of Israel. So it would be unjustified to say that God "promulgates His people through the use of genocide," as though Jews or Christians should feel warranted to show aggression toward any heathen group they meet.

In reality, it was the practices of these people, not their race, nationality, or even their culture per-se that was at issue here. We know this to be true because God tells the incoming Israelites that if they take up the practices of those who they are driving out, then they will be dealt with likewise. And this is exactly their ultimate fate (Lev 18:24-30, 2Ki 17:7-23). There is no moral inequity here; though justice may sometimes be averted by way of mercy, which none are owed.

So, we at least know the broad rationale for the treatment of the Amorites, and there is further data to explain some of the specific treatment of the various subgroups. However, I must admit that at least I do not have an explanation for all the details. But must I know every justification to have assurance that there is some justification, especially if I have other grounds for arriving at such assurances? And if I am reconciled to the idea that God has a rightful claim to someone's life, even if not guilty, then His sometimes lethal treatment of a particularly barbaric people would find certain grounds for justification.

There is much "knowledge," which you would deny, to be applied to this situation that can inform our moral intuitions about what humans alone (all things being equal) should or should not do to each other as a regular course of action. Especially the idea that if there is a God, and He has eternal purposes in mind for His creatures, then the game as we see it may have higher stakes not to the liking of one who denies eternity and measures his life in the personal glories and idle pleasures of four score and ten years.

In the end, I think your objection actually works against you. That is because if you take the Bible to be an actual record of the God who grounds morality, then you must accept its premises and the knowledge it provides to augment your moral intuitions. But if, as you do, you reject any grounding for an objective morality, then your distaste for "genocide" cannot be a true moral intuition. It would be as much of a fiction as the God you reject; it would be a belief originating from personal preference and cultural convention, which might have been as different as the ethics of Nazi Germany.

It is only because your moral intuitions stand reasonably unmolested by something like a satanic Nazi ideology that you find this to be such a visceral grievance against the Biblical deity. I have no intention of humoring any claim that this is merely an academic exercise of finding internal inconsistencies in the Christian worldview. But if you wish to judge, you must first have not only a fixed moral standard by which to judge, but a fixed rational standard as well. Otherwise, you are saying nothing more than, "I do not like your Christianity." It is the dilemma of atheism.

"My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, so to speak, why did I, who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in such violent reaction against it? A man feels wet when he falls into water, because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course, I could have given up my idea of justice by saying that it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed too--for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my private fancies. Thus in the very act of trying to prove that God did not exist--in other words, that the whole of reality was senseless--I found I was forced to assume that one part of reality--namely my idea of justice--was full of sense. Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning." ~ C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity