rimey@ucbvax.UUCP (06/17/83)
(Posted for Lorenzo Sadun)
There was a recent message (#132), that purported to examine
the consequences of accepting an absolute morality. Unfortunately, this
treatise degenerated into an anti-sex, anti-choice piece of fundamentalist
Christian propaganda.
This is truly a pity, since there is much that COULD be said on the
subject. In the interest of argument, let me present my own (highly subjective)
view. I hope you find my line of argument (if not my conclusion!) interesting
and thought provoking, or at least nasty reply-provoking.
Let me warn people that I am going to argue, not to prove. I am trying to
present a motivation for my own point of view much more than I am trying to
construct any form of rigorous proof.
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Accepting an absolute morality opens up the obvious question: What (or
who) defines this morality? Surely human beings cannot do the defining, or
what is moral would vary from group to group, contrary to our definition of
absolute morality. Rather, anything absolute must be "handed down from above".
For lack of a better term, let's DEFINE God to be that agent that defines our
absolute morality.
Notice that by this definition God need not have any physical attributes
at all. His essential role is spiritual -- to define good and evil. He need
not necessarily manifest himself physically. It is then quite possible that
he cannot be detected physically, so that lack of physical evidence of a god
would in no way preclude the existence of god.
That's one possibility. Let's consider the other approaches to the nature
of morality. One alternative is that morality is relative; societies
define morality, or individuals define morality, but morality does exist. It
is meaningful to call an action right or wrong, but only within the context
of the situation. The other alternative is that morality is an illusion;
"morality" is merely a convenient name do fortify the rules of society, and
there is no true right or wrong.
I must admit that the second alternative is logically waterproof. We
have no evidence that ANYTHING is right or wrong. Indeed, we can never
have any such evidence; the only evidence we can gather is physical, and
physical evidence does not address moral issues.
On the other hand, I CAN argue that nobody REALLY accepts this
possibility as the truth. If you have a conscience, then you have accepted
that some actions are wrong, and so you have abandoned the notion that
nothing has value or meaning. No more need be said on that score.
Let's look then at relative morality. First we must ask :"how relative
is relative?".
If a (large) group of people believe that mass murder and sadistic torture
are the height of virtue (with generosity and kindness presumably being
unspeakable vices), and if they acted on their beliefs, would we not all react
with a sense of moral outrage? This sense of outrage is clear evidence that
deep down none of us believes that morality is quite THAT relative. (Note
that I have not claimed to have shown that morality is NOT that relative.
All I've said is that this position has no true adherents that I need convince.)
If morality isn't completely relative, then there must be some basic,
fundamental moral ideas that are absolute. Pain and suffering are bad. Joy
is good. Death is at least usually bad (some would say always), if for no
other reason than that it deprives one of the joys of life. The list of
more-or-less basic values goes on.
I claim that accepting that such a list exists is almost tantamount to
belief in in God. For one, accepting ANY absolute standards leads to the
question "who or what sets the standards?", and we are back to the absolutist
dilemma of page 1. Moreover, there is the folowing problem, which led me,
a few years back, to firmly believe in God's existence.
Take an ordinary, garden variety stone. Smash it into bits, and ask
yourself if I could pin any moral blame on you. Unless you are an absolutist,
who also believes in the sanctity of rocks (in which case you get to flip
back to page 1), you will deny having done anything absolutely wrong.
There is no overwhelming moral principle that all must accept which protects
rocks.
Now take an ordinary, garden variety person. Smash him to bits, and ask
yourself if now I could pin any moral blame on you. If you accepted our
minimal list of rights and wrongs then you have to accept that murder is
wrong. Smashing a rock was OK while smashing a human was not.
What gives the human this protected status? If a human were a purely
physical being (i.e. an incredibly complicated rock), then there should
be no such distinction. For a human death to carry moral value, a human
life must be more that a peculiar configuration of electrons. Man must
have some supernatural nature, which is what I define a soul to be.
Either that, or there is some higher being who has decreed that human life
is to be protected (i.e. there is a God).
From accepting that souls exist to accepting that God exists is then
a small step only. We have accepted the supernatural, and we have accepted
some sort of absolute morality, and we need only look for the source and call
that God. End of problem.
Of course, the souls and God that we have defined need not have the
properties that we usually associate with souls and God. The souls need
not be immortal. God need not be omniscient nor need He be omnipotent.
God need not perform miracles. In fact, God need not physically interfere
in human affairs at all!
Of course, it would be very nice to believe that God interferes in at
least one way: he lets us know (more or less) what the standards of
morality ARE. It would be pretty useless for Him to define a moral
standard without telling anybody. If we claim that the morality we
believe in stems from God, then we must believe that either God does
something physical to get us the knowledge of right and wrong (for
instance, he could give us your favorite holy text. ), or that our
souls, which exist in the spiritual realm, have an intuitive idea of
right and wrong which they then transmit to our physical being. In
either case we do not have a completely passive God.
However we fill in the details, a few things are clear. The gods of the
ancients, who existed to explain the lightning and the rain, are gone. In my
scheme, such beings would be merely super-powerful humans who provide no
help whatsoever in answering "whence comes morality". We have progressed, in
the last 3000 years, to the point where we do not need gods to explain the
physical world around us. Indeed, we do not need gods to explain things.
We need a God to JUSTIFY the moral structure of our world.
-Lorenzo A. Sadun
sadun@ucbbachtim@unc.UUCP (06/22/83)
Lorenzo Sadun has posted a variant on the moral argument for the
existence of God. I feel this to be a very flawed argument, and this
article is an attempt to explain why. His article was long, so I
won't reprint all of it here; I hope that I do not do the arguments
injustice by my extraction.
If a (large) group of people believe that mass
murder and sadistic torture are the height of virtue
(with generosity and kindness presumably being
unspeakable vices), and if they acted on their
beliefs, would we not all react with a sense of moral
outrage? This sense of outrage is clear evidence that
deep down none of us believes that morality is quite
THAT relative....
If morality isn't completely relative, then there
must be some basic, fundamental moral ideas that are
absolute. Pain and suffering are bad. Joy is good.
Death is at least usually bad ... The list of
more-or-less basic values goes on.
I claim that accepting that such a list exists is
almost tantamount to belief in in [sic] God. For one,
accepting ANY absolute standards leads to the question
"who or what sets the standards?", and we are back to
the absolutist dilemma of page 1.
Why does this require any such belief? Why can it not be humans
who create the standards, based on our behavior and desire patterns,
which originated in evolutionary processes? The fact that I see the
color "yellow" does not in any way imply that there has to be a God
who created "yellow". The phenomenon can be totally explained in
evolutionary terms. To apply this argument to morality, postulate
a "moral sense" which discourages killing and so on. Obviously any
tribe of proto-humans which did not have this would have an
evolutionary disadvantage over a tribe which did, since fewer of its
members would survive to breed. As Kepler said when asked why there was
no mention of God in his model of the Solar System, "I have no need of
that hypothesis."
Moreover, there is the folowing problem, which led
me, a few years back, to firmly believe in God's
existence.
Take an ordinary, garden variety stone. Smash it
into bits, and ask yourself if I could pin any moral
blame on you.... There is no overwhelming moral
principle that all must accept which protects rocks.
Now take an ordinary, garden variety person.
Smash him to bits, and ask yourself if now I could pin
any moral blame on you. If you accepted our minimal
list of rights and wrongs then you have to accept that
murder is wrong....
What gives the human this protected status? If a
human were a purely physical being (i.e. an incredibly
complicated rock), then there should be no such
distinction. For a human death to carry moral value,
a human life must be more that [sic] a peculiar
configuration of electrons. Man must have some
supernatural nature, which is what I define a soul to
be. Either that, or there is some higher being who
has decreed that human life is to be protected (i.e.
there is a God).
Whoa there! That's a pretty big leap to make. Your argument
boils down to, first, "Since we perceive humans differently from all
else in our universe, there must be a unique quality to humans." I
move that the difference comes about from the fact that we, the
observers, are humans, not from any intrinsic quality of the human
race. Is that clear? What I am saying is that, given evolution, it
would be incredible if members of a particular species did NOT
perceive other members of the same species in a special way. What
gives the human the protected status FROM OUR POINT OF VIEW is the
fact that we are the same species as each other. And except from our
point of view, there is no difference. Humans are subject to exactly
the same physical laws as any other object.
Second, even if I did grant you the uniqueness of humans, the jump
from there to a soul or God is completely unjustified. I will not
prove this, since it is prima facie obvious; instead, I challenge you
to justify this jump.
From accepting that souls exist to accepting that
God exists is then a small step only. We have
accepted the supernatural, and we have accepted some
sort of absolute morality, and we need only look for
the source and call that God. End of problem.
Speak for yourself, Lorenzo. I accept nothing of the sort. Even
granting your soul assumption, which I do not, that's still a doozy of
a leap. Again, I challenge you to justify this. In particular, why
do you assume that there is A THING which can be considered the
source? The use of the word "God" shows me that you believe certain
things about the nature of this God, or you would have no reason to
use the word "God". You would refer to it as "the source" or some
such if all you meant was "the source of morality."
Of course, the souls and God that we have defined
need not have the properties that we usually associate
with souls and God. The souls need not be immortal.
God need not be omniscient nor need He be omnipotent.
God need not perform miracles. In fact, God need not
physically interfere in human affairs at all!
Once again, you undermine yourself. You call God a "He", which
implies at least singleness and sentience, even if we strip away the
gender. Where do you get the belief that God is sentient instead of
just an abstract force, or singular instead of plural? It sure
doesn't follow from your argument! You just pull it out of thin air.
As far as I can tell, your argument exists solely to justify your
prejudices about the existence and nature of what you call God;
otherwise, where did all this other stuff come from? Why would you
call it God, if not to support a religion? Why do you assume
singleness and sentience, if not to support monotheism? Nowhere have
you supported these beliefs in your argument, so I am forced to the
conclusion their source is elsewhere.
... The gods of the ancients, who existed to explain
the lightning and the rain, are gone. In my scheme,
such beings would be merely super-powerful humans who
provide no help whatsoever in answering "whence comes
morality". We have progressed, in the last 3000
years, to the point where we do not need gods to
explain the physical world around us. Indeed, we do
not need gods to explain things. We need a God to
JUSTIFY the moral structure of our world.
Say what? Do you really think there is some meaning in this
doubletalk? The last two sentences in particular? What do you
mean by "justify" in this context?
Finally, about God as lawgiver. Here I will quote from Bertrand
Russell when he dealt with the moral argument for the existence of God
in his lecture "Why I Am Not a Christian":
"...if you are quite sure that there is a
difference between right and wrong, you are then in
this situation: Is that difference due to God's fiat
or is it not? If it is due to God's fiat, then for
God himself there is no difference between right and
wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to
say that God is good. If you are going to say, as
thelogians do, that God is good, you must then say
that right and wrong have some meaning which is
independent of God's fiat, because God's fiats are
good and not bad independently of the mere fact that
he made them."
Are you willing to throw away the idea of divine benevolence for
the sake of your rather weak argument, Lorenzo? I suspect not; but
that means that the argument must go. This is of course just frosting
on the cake. Your argument is so foolish that it needs no more
objection before crumbling of its own accord.
Tim Maroney