{"id":816,"date":"2010-03-05T15:17:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-05T15:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2010\/03\/816\/"},"modified":"2010-03-05T15:17:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-05T15:17:00","slug":"816","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/evetushnet\/2010\/03\/816.html","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

HE LOVED SOMEBODY BUT IT WASN\u2019T ME<\/span>: A bit more on whether there are secular reasons. This post is fairly tentative.<\/p>\n

Camassia replies to me and Fish and Steven Smith here<\/a>. I will concur in part and dissent in part!<\/p>\n

First, Fish and Smith are both using a philosophically sketchy definition of \u201creligion.\u201d They seem to be influenced by the (Rawlsian??? is he to blame for this??) notion that all \u201ccomprehensive doctrines\u201d are suspect in the public sphere. They\u2019re also talking about a fairly specific kind of religion\u2013I don\u2019t think this discussion would make much sense if you assumed that \u201creligion\u201d referred to vodoun, or the Greek pantheon, or (maybe?) Shintoism.<\/p>\n

I do think they\u2019re right to say you can\u2019t get teleology from undirected nature\u2013you need a Creator\u2013and that most moral arguments do rely on teleology. Most moral arguments rely on an account of human nature which is about what humans should<\/span> be, not what humans demonstrably are. In fact I\u2019m not sure how you\u2019d get a moral, \u201cshould\u201d argument from a bare evidentiary \u201care\u201d claim.<\/p>\n

And so I\u2019m not fully on board with Camassia\u2019s proposed knot-cutting:<\/p>\n

This experience of looking at yourself as if you were someone else, and liking or disliking what you see \u2014 in other words, having a conscience \u2014 is essentially a brute fact for nearly all people. They have varying explanations of why it exists, or they may have no explanation, but still it\u2019s there. And this experience compels at least a rudimentary morality; if you like people who are good to you, then you must be good to them, if you are going to like yourself. By the same token, if you respect people who don\u2019t take crap from you, you\u2019re going to be uncompromising towards others if you want to respect yourself. I didn\u2019t say this was all warm and fuzzy. But it\u2019s also why I don\u2019t entirely agree with Fish\u2019s claim that ideas like justice and equality are totally empty without God. The ability to see yourself as a person among persons, to put yourself in another\u2019s place, implies a certain equality, or at least similarity. There\u2019s a certain justice that comes when you dislike yourself in proportion to the cause you\u2019ve given someone to dislike you. And \u2014 this is the less obvious point \u2014 this identification with others also means that you assume other people have that capacity, and can therefore make claims on them. I think this is why these words have meaning for people, even if they can\u2019t agree on precisely what they mean or how to apply them to a given situation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Because I agree that we are able to see ourselves in another\u2019s place\u2026 sometimes. We are able to extend empathy, and derive \u201cshould\u201ds, morality, from that empathy.<\/p>\n

But within this human-scale morality, can we ever say you should love someone you don\u2019t? Can we say to the Spartan citizen that he should<\/span> see himself in the face of the helot?<\/p>\n

So yeah: Justice and equality are not totally<\/span> empty without (a specific conception of) God. But I do think they\u2019re importantly<\/span> empty.<\/p>\n

As I understand it, both Judaism and Christianity cut the knot by identifying the source and summit of morality with a Person, thus a possible object of our love. God is not an abstraction but a powerful dude working in history; God is not just a big goon, but the essence of goodness. God is simultaneously (among many other things!) a specific beloved, and that-which-is-to-be-loved. So to say, \u201cWhy should I love God?\u201d is a question which\u2013if you are actually talking about this God, and not denying that He exists or that He is what Jews and Christians say He is\u2013simply unravels.<\/p>\n

Obviously none of that is an argument for the existence<\/span> of this God. Which may be why this kind of argument rarely plays a role in conversion! But I think possibly this line of thinking influences Fish and Smith when they say that morality doesn\u2019t really get off the ground without some smuggled incense in the balloon.<\/p>\n

(\u2026Hmm, I think that metaphor probably fails at physics. Heh.)<\/p>\n

[edited: I think perhaps the next place to go is the Birthday Cake of Existence<\/a>: What do we do when our moral claims appear to conflict with our metaphysical beliefs? There\u2019s more than one option!]<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HE LOVED SOMEBODY BUT IT WASN\u2019T ME: A bit more on whether there are secular reasons. This post is fairly tentative. Camassia replies to me and Fish and Steven Smith here. I will concur in part and dissent in part! First, Fish and Smith are both using a philosophically sketchy definition of \u201creligion.\u201d They seem […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1071,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nEve Tushnet<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"HE LOVED SOMEBODY BUT IT WASN'T ME: A bit more on whether there are secular reasons. 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