Inspired by this discussion initiated by Kevin Beck, comes some more comments on atheism and morality. We are constantly asked things like: "in a materialist universe if two people disagree on a moral question, there is no way to settle who is correct; it is ultimately a matter of taste."
Do you see the non sequitor here? Why would a matter of taste be beyond reconciliation? We are faced with subjective differences of opinion all the time: where to eat lunch, what music to listen to, what style of clothes to wear etc., and we manage to settle the disagreements without too much difficulty. True these disagreements are rarely settled absolutely by reference to some objective external standard, but so what? Why must that be the standard? The methods we do use to settle them serve us just fine. There's no there there to this objection.
Of course, those who make this argument will insist that only with the authority of the absolute code of the gods backing your view can your persuasion be successful. I've already shown that we are able to make persuasive arguemnts without it, and yet they are wrong on their end of the deal as well. One would think, given their boast, that religious people all over the world were settling their disputes quickly and peacefully, if indeed they had any disputes at all. That sound like the world you know?
See, those who appeal to a universal morality from the gods can't seem to agree on the message, even for the most trivial practices. But of course since they all think they have the true morals backing them, their conflicts escalate into violence quite frequently. They would have us believe the practical difficulties with determining what the gods are saying are beside the point.
On the contrary, that is entirely the point. It makes little sense to presume the existence of a god handing down objective moral rules in a world where the moral rules vary all over the place. There is no evidence there even is such a being, and even less that he has anything to do with morals.
If they want to make their case, they can start by demonstrating the existence of moral universals among humans that lack pragmatic value. I know of no such values. All the morals I've examined correlate very well with pragmatic benefits to those who practice them, either individually, or as a group. Paying one's debts increases one's credit. Remaining nonmurderous reduces the chances of one being murdered, and produces a more stable society. Benefits to all galore, and no gods needed.
This puts those who claim gods are necessary for morality in the same class as witch doctors who claim the magic spell, and the arsenic, are necessary to kill one's victim. Newton would not approve.
Even granting their premise doesn't get them out of the woods. The question I keep asking the theological (and not getting an answer) is "So what?". If you prove that gods are necessary for morals, and you still haven't made your case for the existence of gods, that means the reality is there are no morals. OK, so there are no morals. And?
Most of their objections are answered by identifying the mistaken premise that all our behavior is [rationally objectively] chosen. The shrinks have proven pretty conclusively that it isn't. We are driven by instinct far more than was ever suspected, at least as my read of the data goes. And instincts are going to evolve like everything else.
This means that we don't need for everyone to be able to conclude rationally in every case that it is in their best interests to not murder people. All that need happen is to introduce a genetic predisposition to avoid murder into the population, and it would come to predominate, both individually (being less disposed to attack reduces one's chances of dying in counterattack), and collectively (the group that refrains from murdering their own will outoerform the ones that don't).
Now, is there solid evidence this occurred? Not to my knowledge. But it makes a lot more sense than positing some universal lawgiver on high that magically gave us morals that we just can't seem to understand well enough to agree with each other on even with the most basic issues. A god did indeed give us our moral sense. But in this case, the creator god was the evolutionary process.
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This means that we don't need for everyone to be able to conclude rationally in every case that it is in their best interests to not murder people. All that need happen is to introduce a genetic predisposition to avoid murder into the population, and it would come to predominate, both individually (being less disposed to attack reduces one's chances of dying in counterattack), and collectively (the group that refrains from murdering their own will outperform the ones that don't).
Now, is there solid evidence this occurred? Not to my knowledge. But it makes a lot more sense than positing some universal lawgiver on high that magically gave us morals that we just can't seem to understand well enough to agree with each other on even with the most basic issues. A god did indeed give us our moral sense. But in this case, the creator god was the evolutionary process.
Well nice story but no proof for your position here. So in what sense is this a scientific argument? By default? Your phrase “magically gave us morals” really fits more with your statement “All that need happen is to introduce a genetic predisposition to avoid murder into the population,” Which is a magical statement. You are not even positing a cause just saying it happens somehow... by evolution. This is not a description of a cause since the sentence could equally read, “somehow ... by magic.” A scientific cause would be able to describe the exact mechanism for changing the genome, the link between the change in the specific gene on the right DNA strand and how that changed specific proteins, leading to a predisposition to not murder.
It is interesting that in your set of assumptions there needs to be a predisposition to not murder rather than an evolution of murder. Anyway, this reduces what is clearly a choice to kill someone to the wish it were caused by chemicals.
On the other hand, a creator God who is powerful and intelligent enough to create persons who can love, is an adequate cause for a conscience. Not a magic but a personal intervention. Persons can choose to love themselves rather than others which is a sufficient cause for murder.
Finally, if we are all simply following our instincts, our conversation today is meaningless. I am responding inevitably and you are responding inevitably and nothing can really change except the rearrangement of atoms through time and chance. No meaning at all. Your blog is then worthless by your very definition as is my answer. Frankly, a statement that consumes itself is not true.
Below you say,
“Inspired by this discussion initiated by Kevin Beck, comes some more comments on atheism and morality. We are constantly asked things like: "in a materialist universe if two people disagree on a moral question, there is no way to settle who is correct; it is ultimately a matter of taste."”
The question of morality is not if an atheist can be moral or not. Morality is always in reference to a social norm so any atheist can be moral. At times you might find that an atheist is more ethical in a particular context than others around him or her.
[SA: There are armies of people who would argue vigorously here with you, who would insist atheists cannot be moral because they have no objective source of morality. They do not recognize the role of society in setting such norms. I'm not guessing, I've argued with many of them. I'm glad to see you acknowledge that, and I'll address your arguments as they are, and as time permits. Given the length of your submissions, youll forgive me for some noted editing.]
But you avoid the whole argument by avoiding the word “Correct.”
[SA: I do no such thing. I simply see no evidence that there is such a thing as "correct" when it comes to morality. All I see are matters of taste. There's no point in discussing something that doesn't exist.]
The argument is not that a difference cannot be settled “but by an appeal to the gods,” but that the persons who settle the argument cannot know if their settlement was correct or false or simply a matter of taste.
[Sure we do. It is all a matter of taste. Provide evidence otherwise.]
[snip "unique human" argument: putting it's blatant falsehood aside, its simply irrelevant. Your argument could work just fine
without it]
The second part of the argument is that nothing can be determined to be actually good or evil unless there is an external reference.
[SA: This is not only wrong, it's backwards. 2 is greater than 1. It needs no external reference. Further, if the external reference for a morality is a being able to change his mind at any time, there could be no more subjective morality than that. An objective morality would stand independent of what anyone thought. That's the definition of objective.]
So we have the capacity to reconcile tastes but we cannot determine if our tastes have any deeper value to them.
[SA: Nonsense. Our tastes have the deeper value of their evolutionary and social history. Examining our morals is a way of examining ourselves, as deep as we care to make it.]
Some people like to betray and eat others, [snip background], so if you are on the receiving end of a betrayal leading to your becoming supper for a tribe will you be interested in the basis for their moral decision?
[SA: Of course. Knowing that would not only teach me about them in general, it would possibly give me an avenue to persuading them not to eat me.]
Is it objectively wrong to betray another human so you can eat them or just a matter of taste?
[SA: A matter of taste, as all morals ultimately are. Making the details unecessarily gory doesn't change that, though I think it's frequency in these discussions says a lot about the morals-have-to-be-objective crowd]
They have a taste for human flesh while you have a taste for staying alive. Which one is right? Or is there no right answer here?
[SA: There is no right answer. We have to find common ground on which to negotiate, and if not, we go to war. Is there a point to be made?]
“Do you see the non sequitur here? Why would a matter of taste be beyond reconciliation?
Because one wants to murder and the other does not want to be murdered. One wants to steal and the other does not want to be stolen from. One wants to rape while the other protests not wanting the rape.
[SA: Sure we have those differences, frequently, and yet people in fact don't murder and steal and rape constantly, so the position that such differences of taste are irreconciliable would seem clearly refuted by the facts. Happens all the time.]
We are faced with subjective differences of opinion all the time: where to eat lunch, what music to listen to, what style of clothes to wear etc., and we manage to settle the disagreements without too much difficulty. True these disagreements are rarely settled absolutely by reference to some objective external standard, but so what? Why must that be the standard? The methods we do use to settle them serve us just fine. There's no there there to this objection.”
Again, you are not actually stating the argument made.
[SA: I'd be careful making that accusation all the time, since you are about to do that very thing, and I'll bet not for the last time]
No one says that we must settle all differences of taste by some objective standard.
[SA: Well that's good, because no one says anyone does. The point was to show that people can, and frequently do, reconcile their differences on subjective matters of taste. So the argument that without objective morals we cannot hope to reconcile our subjective differences is soundly refuted by the facts. We do it all the time, and easily.]
What is argued is that some kinds of moral choices are universally condemned and rightly so.
[SA: No, because I agree with that. But my standard of right is subjective. Your argument is that those choices are rightly condemned on an objective basis. It is the existence of objective morality that is at issue. As a former Objectivist, I can relate to that sentiment well. That "ex" is there because I am now convinced there is no such thing.]
Stealing is universally condemned (while murder is not as noted above), only the nature of property is changeable.
[SA: As is the nature of "murder". Murder is illegal killing. Stealing is illegal taking. Those legal standards are not universal.]
[snip "three kinds" for redundancy]
Negotiation does not always work.
[SA: So? Neither does appeal to supposed objective morals.]
We create laws to enforce our moral codes. Every human society enforces it's moral codes by physical force. Why is physical force always needed? Why is it that a moral settlement cannot simply be an agreement
[SA: I could ask you all the same questions. Those imperfections pose far more of a problem for the promoter of objective morals than the promoter of subjective ones, because the former has an additional argument he can make. So why do we have so many problems reaching agreement on a supposedly objective subject?]
[snipped "different ways of loving" tangent]
"See, those who appeal to a universal morality from the gods can't seem to agree on the message, even for the most trivial practices. But of course since they all think they have the true morals backing them, their conflicts escalate into violence quite frequently. They would have us believe the practical difficulties with determining what the gods are saying are beside the point."
You seem to think that a moral universe will be one where everyone agrees on everything and it is all referenced to some GOD who will direct all decisions.
[SA: Not necessarily everything, but the basic fundamentals, hell yes. That's the way it is with all other areas of study that are objective, why should morality get a pass? One of the tell-tale signs of objectivity is different people looking at the subject from different points of view and yet reaching similar or even identical conclusions. Subjects where the opinions are all over the place: music, art, politics, and morals, are the subjective ones.]
[snip "matter to energy" tangent]
"On the contrary, that is entirely the point. It makes little sense to presume the existence of a god handing down objective moral rules in a world where the moral rules vary all over the place. There is no evidence there even is such a being, and even less that he has anything to do with morals."
If you wish to examine the existence of God I suggest that you examine the historical evidence for the Resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead.
[SA: Done (how could you really think I hadn't done this?). Multiple, irreconciliable versions of obviously 2nd-hand or worse stories. Epic fail. Remainder of Jesus tangent snipped. We're debating whether objective morality exists, not whether Jesus was divine.]
"If they want to make their case, they can start by demonstrating the existence of moral universals among humans that lack pragmatic value. I know of no such values. All the morals I've examined correlate very well with pragmatic benefits to those who practice them, either individually, or as a group."
Why should morals from God not have a pragmatic value? It seems reasonable that a designer would give instructions that would best suit the design, not ones that had no relation to it.
[SA: My whole argument is that morals are the subjective result of people's pragmatic assessment of how things should be done. You (or those who promote the notion of the superiority of objective god-sourced morals) contend that morality is more than mere pragmatic benefit. I say, fine, then there should be some universal morals that don't have pragmatic benefit. What are they?
[snip your guesswork as to what I think. Please avoid that, I have no problem stating exactly what I think. No guessing necessary.]
"Paying one's debts increases one's credit. Remaining non-murderous reduces the chances of one being murdered, and produces a more stable society. Benefits to all galore, and no gods needed."
Except that your example does not always work, people are murdered and how do you account for that?
[SA: I don't have to. There's no requirement that superior pragmatic moral systems be perfect. They only need to be an improvement over not having them. It's analogous to why evolutionary adaptations are often imperfect, yet functional.]
What impulse from Evolutionary progress gives rise to murder, or cannibalism? Can you give me more than a made up story? Any data here? Which rose first, the impulse to murder or the impulse not to?
[SA: Evolutionary psychology is in its infancy, there isn't a ton of data on this sort of thing. However, some AI experiments with robots offer interesting insights, as computers given nothing more than a drive to achieve some goal, and the ability to replicate with modification, produce cooperative populations with a small number of rogues who cheat and deceive. That combined with chimp studies makes the evolution of a lot of our behavior extremely plausible, and far more kind to Occam than an unnecessary creator who adds nothing to the pragmatism.
[snip remainder, covered ground]
"Even granting their premise doesn't get them out of the woods. The question I keep asking the theological (and not getting an answer) is "So what?". If you prove that gods are necessary for morals, and you still haven't made your case for the existence of gods, that means the reality is there are no morals. OK, so there are no morals. And?"
And we descend into violence, cannibalism, rape, murder, anarchy.
[SA: A theory with no evidence to back it. Those of us who very clearly state we do not believe in morals no not, in fact, descend as you describe. We make up rules and go on just fine.]
By definition, if there are no morals, everyone is immoral or without morals.
[SA: A crucial part of my argument is that there is no reason to define morals as rigidly as you do. Such doesn't exist.]
fearful world indeed, full of despair and danger. I could point out Cambodia, China, the USSR, and others but enough.
[SA: Indeed. You're telling me a world without morals would produce the horrors our world has produced. Indeed, I agree wholeheartedly. So how does this support your argument again? Snipped remainder as redundant, and yes, I've read about the Rape of Nanking. Grisly stuff, just like we'd expect in a world with no objective moral compass to turn to.]
You are assuming that if something is objective that everyone will recognize and agree to it. So you are saying that if we cannot agree it cannot be objective.
The objective part, which you clipped out, is the Character of God and the Nature of love. Love chose its object and we have that capacity to love or reject on our own terms. That does not mean that a person we reject is not real because we reject him or her.
If we are required to agree on the existence of something before it is real then nothing exists.
"Most of their objections are answered by identifying the mistaken premise that all our behavior is consciously chosen. The shrinks have proven pretty conclusively that it isn't. We are driven by instinct far more than was ever suspected, at least as my read of the data goes. And instincts are going to evolve like everything else."
Mistaken premise? How amusing for a person writing a blog and inviting comments.
[SA: My mistake. Rather than "consciously chosen", a better phrase for what I was getting at would be "rationally objectively chosen". Our instincts and experiences shape the way we sift data and credibility, and the way we react. We are not Vulcans who reason coldly and logically about every action. Some things we do just because we are instinctually compelled to, and some not. This is the real reason most of us don't murder people - we simply aren't inclined to - and why most of us can get along just fine in a lot of situations without any morals at all. It's also why some of us look askance at those who suggest they would murder and rape children without objective morals. They apparently have an urge we lack, and one worth worrying about.]
@ Science Avenger,
By the way, thank you for an interesting discussion and for posting my comments. I know they were long and I don't blame you for editing them.
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