Moral Progress Without Moral Direction?

October 3, 2011 By vorjack 34 Comments

Two stories that may or may not be related:

Stephen Pinker suggests that violence and murder per-capita has been in decline through modern history:

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I really don’t know how if I’d accept a decline in the murder rate as a sign that humans have become less culturally prone to violence. On the other hand, I’ve heard very similar statements from historians. I’ve heard it suggested (though I can’t remember where) that the past century may have seen less murder per-capita than all previous centuries, despite the horrifically murderous wars.

(Pinker has a 90 minute talk available here, but it’s not embed-able. There is a transcript and charts.)

The second is a column by David Brooks at the New York Times:

During the summer of 2008, the eminent Notre Dame sociologist Christian Smith led a research team that conducted in-depth interviews with 230 young adults from across America. The interviews were part of a larger study that Smith, Kari Christoffersen, Hilary Davidson, Patricia Snell Herzog and others have been conducting on the state of America’s youth.

Smith and company asked about the young people’s moral lives, and the results are depressing.

It’s not so much that these young Americans are living lives of sin and debauchery, at least no more than you’d expect from 18- to 23-year-olds. What’s disheartening is how bad they are at thinking and talking about moral issues. [...]

When asked to describe a moral dilemma they had faced, two-thirds of the young people either couldn’t answer the question or described problems that are not moral at all, like whether they could afford to rent a certain apartment or whether they had enough quarters to feed the meter at a parking spot.

This falls into an abundant category of articles roughly titled “How stupid we are.” You know the kind, “three quarters of young people think Joan of Ark was Noah’s wife,” etc.

I wonder what they expected. Throughout all of history, the majority of people have not had the time or resources to seriously engage in moral philosophy. Our common morality is something that we are socialized into. Perhaps in different ages we’ve added a religious gloss to it, but it all boils down to the same thing: most people believe what we were raised to believe.

A large amount of what passes for moral philosophy – religious or secular – is just an attempt to justify what we’ve been socialized into believing. It can’t be helped. It’s not just about what feels right, it’s about what makes sense to us using the preconceptions that have been shaped by our culture.

And according to Pinker, this has led to a period with reduced blood-shed. And I’m not sure what that means.

Filed Under: Morality 34 Comments

Does god Make Us Moral?

July 12, 2011 By vorjack 261 Comments

The following post was submitted by Jeremy Wells, AKA the Not So Friendly Atheist, who blogs about the logical flaws in religious arguments.

Many religious people tend to claim the moral high ground. There is no doubt that many religious people are moral, but is religion truly the source of morality? Would a world without god make some people immoral? If this is the case then what does that say about their morality.

“That’s not morality, that’s just sucking up, apple-polishing, looking over your shoulder at the great surveillance camera in the sky, or the still small wiretap inside your head, monitoring your every move, even your every base thought.” -Richard Dawkins

If god was the source of morality then there would be two major observations that would support this claim.

First, the moral code would be absolute and never changing. Religious people say that their morality comes from their religious texts and they claim those texts are the infallible word of god. Many quote the Bible for moral guidelines, but dismiss the examples in the Bible that contradict those guidelines. The Bible lists god’s commands, but it also contains many stories in which god commands the children of Israel to commit murder, rape, and enforce slavery on their enemies. These instances are considered null and void since they are in the old testament, but why would god pick and choose the times to justify these heinous acts? If god’s law changes over time it can’t be immutable.

Second, all moral truths would originate in a religious text. Historically, Hammurabi’s Code from Sumer predates Hebrew law by at least 700 years and has many similarities. Hebrew law is common to the three main monotheistic faiths, but evidence suggests that it borrowed several elements from the older Sumerian text. What about the teachings of Jesus? I will concede for the moment that the story of Jesus is based on historical evidence rather than Biblical references. Jesus commanded his followers to love their neighbor as themselves and to treat others the way they want to be treated. The idea of loving one another isn’t unique to Jesus and was mentioned in classical Greek philosophy [1]. The golden rule goes back to ancient Egypt at least 300 hundred years before Jesus was born (That which you hate to be done to you, do not do to another); just because Jesus used a positive statement doesn’t make it a new concept.

It is apparent that morality isn’t derived directly from religious texts, but perhaps a reflection on history can show that religious people are morally superior to nonbelievers. The Crusades, Inquisitions, witch hunts, genital mutilation, 9/11, and many more events have been used to show the cruelty of religion, but to reuse those examples would be unfair to modern day Christians. I am sure Christians have lower divorce rates than nonbelievers. Nope. Perhaps they have lower incarceration rates. Nope. They must have lower premarital sex rates. Nope. Lower drug and alcohol abuse statistics? Nope. This shows that Christian statistics are consistent with everyone else; that doesn’t sound like being the light of the world to me. If a personal relationship with god doesn’t guarantee a moral lifestyle then what does?

There are plenty of atheists that CHOOSE to do good because they get a sense of joy knowing that they have made the world a better place by their choices. If morality came from god then atheists would be predisposed to sin and unable to do anything contrary to their sinful nature. Isn’t it possible that some Christians CHOOSE to do good things and would likely do them even if there was no god? This would also explain why some Christians CHOOSE not to live moral lives. If morality came from god then there would be evidence to show that religious people are consistently more moral than nonbelievers, but this isn’t the case. Morality appears to transcend religion and seems to be based on individual CHOICE regardless of religious beliefs; if one can be good without invoking god then what is the benefit of preserving the dogmatic belief that morality is from god? Morality is a natural phenomena with origins that we don’t fully understand, but evidence reduces the probability of a divine origin.

[1] The Greek word for love in “Love your neighbor as yourself” is translated agape (unconditional love). Most people say this is what separates Jesus’ command from the ethical writings of Plato and Aristotle, which use philia (brotherly love). If Jesus were real he wouldn’t have preached in Greek, he would have used Aramaic which was the language of first century Galilee. The word Agape was used in translation at least one hundred years after the death of Jesus, but other than the different word for love there are several similarities between this command and classical Greek ethics.

Filed Under: God, Morality 261 Comments

Problems with Divine Morality

May 4, 2011 By vorjack 31 Comments

Greta Christina has one of her regular articles on Alternet titled One More Reason Religion Is So Messed Up: Respected Theologian Defends Genocide and Infanticide. (warning: don’t read the comments. Alternet is as bad as youtube.) She’s reacting to a an old post by William Lane Craig about the slaughter of the Canaanites.

(BTW, contra Christina, I would not label Craig a “respected theologian.” He’s an apologist for a narrow tradition of Reformed Evangelical Christianity that includes such creedal beliefs as biblical innerancy and subsitutionary atonement. Theologians define the faith, apologists defend it.)

As with most apologists, Craig’s real audience are the Christians who are beset with doubt or some other problem within their tradition. In this case, Craig is dealing with the question of the atrocities and genocide committed by the Hebrews in the OT. As part of his response, Craig argues that there is no real moral problem with all of it, as a result of his divine command theory of morality.

It basically comes down to a few points:

  1. Morality comes from God.
  2. Since God does not issue moral commands to himself, all actions by God are outside of morality.
  3. Our moral duty is to follow God’s command.
  4. So God deciding to take the lives of the Canaanites is fine, since God is outside of morality. The Israelites committing atrocities is fine, since they were following God’s orders.

Like a lot of Craig’s arguments, this one fits together quite neatly. Like a lot of his arguments, you can poke some substantial holes in it, such as: is it really objective morality if it is based on the whim of a divine being? PZ Myers and Ed Brayton both deal with this and other problems.

Another problem is more practical, and it comes down to Deacon Duncan’s Undeniable Fact, “The Undeniable Fact is that God does not show up in real life. [...] The Inescapable Consequence of this Undeniable Fact is that anyone who wishes to talk about God can only speak of the things men say and think and feel and imagine.”

Since God doesn’t appear before us, everything we know about God comes from what people say, or what we ourselves feel about God. The problems with trusting divine authority that comes from human mouths or our own intuitions should be obvious. If it’s not, Greta brings up the example of the Lafferty brothers.

This is a selection from Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, his examination of the Church of Latter Day Saints and his report on Dan and Ron Lafferty, two Mormon fundamentalists who murdered their sister-in-law and her baby. Here Krakauer is talking to Dan Lafferty after his conviction, and comparing Dan to the 9/11 terrorists:

What about Osama’s underlings, the holy warriors who sacrificed their lives for Allah by flying jumbo jets into the World Trade Center? Surely their faith and conviction were every bit as powerful as Dan’s. Does he think the sincerity of their belief justified the act? And if not, how can Dan know that what he did isn’t every bit as misguided as what bin Laden’s followers did on September 11, despite the obvious sincerity of his own faith?

As he pauses to consider this possibility, there comes a moment when a shadow of doubt seems to flicker across his mien. But only for an instant, and then it’s gone. “I have to admit, the terrorists were following their prophet,” Dan says. “They were willing to do essentially what I did. I see the parallel. But the difference between those guys and me is, they were following a false prophet, and I’m not.

“I believe I’m a good person,” Dan insists. “I’ve never done anything intentionally wrong. I never have. At times when I’ve started to wonder if maybe what I did was a terrible mistake, I’ve looked back and asked myself, ”What would I have done differently? Did I feel God’s hand guiding me on the twenty-fourth of July 1984?“ And then I remember very clearly, ”Yes, I was guided by the hand of God.“ So I know I did the right thing. Christ says, ”If you want to know if something is true, believe. And I’ll help you know the truth.“ And that’s what he did with me.

“I’m sure God knows I love Him. It’s my belief that everything will work out, and there will be a happy ending to this whole strange experience. I’ve just had too many little glimpses through the thin fabric of this reality to believe otherwise. Even when I have tried not to believe, I can’t.” (pp. 320-321)

The bothers were incited by their prophet, Robert Crossfield, their inner witness (see Dan’s line about the hand of God) and their own internal convictions that this murder was the will of God. The problem is merely that they were wrong about what God wanted. By Craig’s logic, this was a mistake, not a murder.

Filed Under: Apologetics, Bible Absurdities & Contradictions, Books, Christianity, Morality 31 Comments

American Renegades

March 14, 2011 By vorjack 3 Comments


From A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell, who was recently interviewed by Reason.com.

But what the Founding Fathers called corruption, depravity, venality, and vice, many of us would call freedom. During the War of Independence, deference to authority was shattered, a new urban culture offered previously forbidden pleasures, and sexuality was loosened from its Puritan restraints. Nonmarital sex, including adultery and relations between whites and blacks, was rampant and unpunished. Divorces were frequent and easily obtained. Prostitutes plied their trades free of legal or moral prescriptions. Black slaves, Irish indentured servants, Native Americans, and free whites of all classes danced together in the streets. Pirates who frequented the port cities brought with them a way of life that embraced wild dances, nightlong parties, racial integration, and homosexuality. European visitors frequently commented on the “astonishing libertinism” of early American cities. Renegades held the upper hand in Philadelphia, Boston, New York and Charleston, and made them into the first centers of American pleasure culture. Rarely have Americans had more fun. And never have America’s leaders been less pleased about it.

But the Founding Fathers invented a way to make Americans think fun was bad. We call it democracy.

And they largely succeeded. The revolution was followed by wave after wave of moralistic legislation that cracked down on alcohol, prostitution, racial integration, fornication, contraception and pornography.

This is the paradox of American freedom: self-rule allows much greater repression than a monarchy. When the community itself is promulgating the law, it is much more effective at reining in the individual.

Russell’s idea is that American history can be viewed as a tug-of-war between these sides: those who believe that the power of the society should be used to create virtuous citizens, and those who refused to assimilate. That means he focuses on those who we label as “bad:” the shiftless, the shameless and the scandalous. It’s an interesting idea for atheists, since conventional religion is part of what makes a “good” citizen.

I recommend the book, with reservations. It’s easy to read, but uncomfortable reading. I don’t think most of us will react badly to seeing the mafia or pirates viewed in a positive light. His arguments that prostitution was sometimes a positive force for woman’s rights seem harder to swallow. And his chapters on slavery, showing how slaves made the institution work for them, come a little too close to the “slavery wasn’t that bad” arguments of the southern apologists.

Filed Under: Book Reviews, History, Morality, Quotes 3 Comments

Yet Another Paedophile Priest…

March 5, 2011 By fatemeh 15 Comments

On the back of Daniel’s article from last week about the homophobic pastor who tuned out to be a pederast, the UK evangelical community has obviously decided not to be out-done:

“Dr Albert Odulele, who runs Glory House International, admitted indecently assaulting a boy aged 14 and sexually assaulting a 21-year-old man – both former members of his congregation.” [Channel 4 News]

I was going to make some glib comments about this, but I just can’t bring myself to joke about a manipulative priest sexually assaulting a fourteen year old boy.

“[Odulele] admitted to police that he had been ‘battling’ with his sexuality for years. He denied the offences were pre-planned.”

Almost as if his sexuality was… Part of him… Like… It isn’t a choice to be attracted to males… Hmmmmm. I think I’ll just end with this last little snippet:

“Glory House International has been a registered charity for 18 years and has a turnover of £2 million a year.”

Just in case anybody was worried that evangelical Christianity hadn’t crossed the pond in its entirety…

Filed Under: Fundamentalism, Hypocrisy, Morality 15 Comments
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