Board index ‹ Morality

[Mazzino]

Morality can be defined as coming from God if God is real. However, just for the sake of argument lets say hypothetically no God exists, and evolution is true. Societies work best when cooperation is established within that society. For that to be instituted, laws would need to be designed to support the needs of the people in that community. So thing like thou shall not be a steal and thou shall not murder and thou shall not covet your neighbor’s house. All of these are pretty much common sense and don't require a God to explain to use the usefulness of this type of cooperation. Now under the evolutionary model ethic and morality would evolve over time and there would be a diversity of virtues from one society to the next. So do we see that in our history and do we see diversity in the ethics in different parts of the world? I think you will agree that morality evolves over time. Burning witches at one time was a moral imperative and now is seen as very immoral. Slavery of any kind was accepted as a normal everyday solution to cheap labor and now is considered as evil. Do we see a diversity of morality in different societies? I think you would agree that the morality in places like Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Iran are very diverse from western morality. So, now that the evolutionary model has established that it would work and it is what we see in the world today I would hope that you could conclude that morality by itself doesn't require a God to impose it.

[jimwalton]

Christopher, I agree with your conclusions given your conditions. If God didn't exist, and if there were no objective morality, then it would make sense that morality could evolve in a way that would serve the community both as an anthropological entity and as part of a greater whole. There are a few small problems with your argument, neither of which create any huge problem in what you said.

First of all, "evolution is true" and "God exists" are not mutually exclusive or necessarily contradictory propositions. You portray them as if we are forced to choose one over the other, which is simply not the case. It could be altogether possible that God exists and that He used evolution as his mechanism of creation.

Secondly, while we do see morality evolve over time and we observe diversity in the ethics from one culture to another through history, there are some universal consistencies in ethical expressions that would lead us to believe in the existence of an objective morality. For instance, while some cultures believe that it is occasionally OK to kill children for cultic purposes (child sacrifice) or even for the purposes of convenience (selective abortion), there is no culture anywhere in all of history that deems it right to kill children for the fun of it. In the same way, no culture sees killing humans just for the fun of it OK, nor lying for the fun of it, nor stealing for the fun of it. There seems to be some definition of good to which all humans subscribe, which would betray that under the cultural expressions of morality there is an objective sense of right and wrong. If good exists, one must assume that a moral law exists by which to measure good and evil. But if a moral law exists, must not one posit an ultimate source of moral law, or at least an objective basis for a moral law? (By an objective basis, I mean something that is transcendently true at all time, regardless of whether I believe it or not.)

If morality is true just and only the result of evolution or cultural development or personal choice, then there's really no such thing as rights. "Rights" are just really one culture's opinions about how things should be valued, but there is no basis for that value except common agreement that can be changed in a flash given the right trigger. But if humans really have a right to anything (dignity, not to be sexually abused, not to be enslaved, etc.)—regardless of what their culture says—what is the basis of this value? Did this intrinsic value come from impersonal, nonconscious, unguided, valueless processes over time? The contextual fit is not a good one. A more natural fit is the theistic position. Given materialistic, impersonal, nonconscious, valueless, deterministic processes, the atheist is hard pressed to account for personal, self-conscious, valuable, morally responsible persons. Theism offers a better fit because personhood and morality are necessarily connected. That is, moral values are rooted in personhood. Without God (a personal being), no persons—and thus no moral values—would exist at all. The moral argument points to a personal, good Being to whom we’re responsible. Only if God exists can moral properties be realized or instantiated.

[Mazzino]

Your assessment in your statement, "First of all, "evolution is true" and "God exists" are not mutually exclusive or necessarily contradictory propositions" is valid, BUT most of those I speak with would conclude if evolution is true then God is not real. It is for them I was writing. However, I prefer to talk to someone like yourself who, from what I can read, has put some real thought into morality.

I think you're labeling things as impersonal, nonconscious, and unguided when in fact they are not these things in any way. I will, of course, defend this position and I hope at the end of this you will agree, but If you disagree, I would very much like to read how you object to my points.

You spoke of "objective morality" as "universal consistencies" as if it were a branch of morality that does not change. I would agree that many moralities seem nonconscious and universal, but I think there is a natural explanation for this. You used killing children, killing adults, lying and thieving as an example of nonconscious objective morality but you wisely chose the phrase "for the fun of it." For a quick moment, I objected to "for the fun of it" and then thought I should be able to defend that as well. I don't believe in objective morality. I think all societies and cultures value protection, progeny, and honor on a conscious level. Morality has more to do with how the individual wants to exist in the world. I call it "I morality" and the "I" is all of us, or at least the majority of us (as in all societies you have some percentage of lunatics but I think we can both agree to exclude them). So, the "I morality" is I don't want my kids murdered for fun of it, I don't want to be killed just for fun of it, and I don't want to be lied to just for fun of it. I don't want my possession stolen from me for the fun of it. These core values are associated with protection, progeny, and honor. They would exist whether or not a God existed because you don't want me killing your kids for the fun of it, so you don't want children killed for the fun of it. I don't want you killing my kids for the fun of it, and therefore I don't want children killed for the fun of it. This conscious decision has been around for ten's of thousands of generations and has become a staple of all societies because what is best for society tightly corresponds to what is right for the individual. If a society decided killing kids for the fun of it was moral that society would soon die out as people would leave to find a society that held the individual's same views.

The measure of Good and Evil. Does it need a higher righteous judge to exist? Is good less valuable if humans decide for themselves what good is? Can you offer and example of good or evil that could not exist without a God? Is good and evil the general opinion of the society? Sure, why not. This is one of those weird statements offered by Christian Apologist and for some crazy stupid reason feared by some in opposition to the position. I'm ok saying Good is what I decide good is, and evil is what I decide is evil. My society and my parents taught me what was good and evil. So in other words, I do rape all I want. And the amount I want is zero. [Penn Jillette] If you could somehow know beyond a shadow of a doubt that a God did not exist how many women would you rape? If you say even one, you need to keep believing at all cost and I'm not joking about that either.

You said "If morality is true just and only the result of evolution or cultural development or personal choice, then there's really no such thing as rights. "Rights" are just really one culture's opinions about how things should be valued, but there is no basis for that value except common agreement that can be changed in a flash given the right trigger." Rights are exactly that, a mutual agreement within a society and they do change in a flash, all the time. Some rights added some rights revoked. Give me one example of a guaranteed right that all societies enjoy and is never in jeopardy of being taken away. You added "Without God (a personal being), no persons—and thus no moral values—would exist at all. The moral argument points to a personal, good Being to whom we’re responsible. Only if God exists can moral properties be realized or instantiated." I think I've already shown this to be wrong, morality is a human creation based on the wellbeing of the society. We own the ability to succeed as a group and destroy as a group. No God necessary.

[jimwalton]

Thanks for a great discussion. It's interesting to me that you admit to an objective morality but attribute it to a conscious decision on the part of societies contributing to survival. But that's exactly the disconnect. If every society everywhere in all of history has made the decision, the weight is in favor of an inherent knowledge rather than a conscious decision. Even in what we consider to be abhorrent societies (the poster boy of which is Nazi Germany), they didn't kill children for the fun of it. Even in their distorted morality and Arian arrogance, an objective morality was still noticeable, and it was on that basis they could be responsibly judged at Nuremberg. Without a sense of objective morality, their practice was not "war crimes" at all, but the valid general opinion of a society dedicated to their chosen set of values.

Does good and evil need a higher judge to exist? I would contend that without a standardized plumb line, both words are ultimately undefinable. Without an objective measure, "good" has no fundamental meaning. It means whatever one deems it to mean, and therefore no definition holds. If there is a right way to live, it must transcend you, or all is relative and the only definition of "right way to live" is my opinion; morals are mere opinions and evil is as valuable as virtue. If that’s true (and every culture has their standards of virtue), in the end, who has a right to judge?

For real, consider evolutionary forces. We're talking about blind and random mutations (the instruction manual keeps getting changed, but at random, not with purpose) along with blind natural selection (which end products continue, and which are deleted (also a nonintelligent process, complete blind, no "conversation" with the manual writers (mutation). Every stage is blind and random. No watchful eye to maintain a line of progression, no intelligence overseeing, no information system contributing. Natural selection (a misnomer because "selection" implies both intelligence and purpose) doesn't select for good instructions, but only for good products. Oops, I can't use "good," because "good" has nothing to do with it. Selection is based on relative performance, presumably.

At what point does "reason" and "good" enter this chain? They don't, and can't. Progress is always haphazard and random. Judgment is always blind. Purpose has no place and is not gainable because it is not in the system. All that's in the system is matter, time, and chance. It's impossible for reason to arise, because one can never necessarily trust the process, information is never necessarily reliable, and "good" never has anything to do with anything. All that ever matters is survival: fight, flight, food, and reproduction. You may argue that survival causes one to evaluate what would be good for survival or worse for survival, except that one's thoughts can be trusted. They are randomly generated, purely mechanical biological systems, and not attuned to truth. Atheist spokesmen agree:

J.L. Mackie: “If…there are…objective values, they make the existence of a god more probable than it would have been without them. Thus we have…a defensible argument from morality to the existence of a god.”

Paul Draper: “A moral world is…very probable on theism.”

James Rachels: “Man is a moral (altruistic) being, not because he intuits the rightness of loving his neighbor, or because he responds to some noble ideal, but because his behavior is comprised of tendencies which natural selection has favoured.”

Richard Dawkins: “the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.”

Kai Nielsen: “We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view or that all really rational persons, unhoodwinked by myth or ideology, not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. … Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality.”

I have more to say, but I'll stop here and let you respond. Thanks for a great dialogue.

[Mazzino]

I agree it's often a hostile banter between atheist and theist, but this for the first time this is just two people chatting without egos about our perception of the way humanity functions, so thank you for that.

You said, "It's interesting to me that you admit to an objective morality but attribute it to a conscious decision on the part of societies contributing to survival." If the way I wrote that lead you to believe that I agreed with objective morality I did a bad job of explaining my position, I would literally be saying "I'm wrong but let me tell you why I'm right." That, of course, was not the message I was trying to get across. What I wrote was "I would agree that many moralities "SEEM" nonconscious and universal, but I think there is a natural explanation for this. I also wrote " I don't believe in objective morality. I think all societies and cultures value protection, progeny, and honor on a conscious level."

So, what are we saying exactly that is universally accepted? You gave the examples of, killing children, killing adults, theft, and lies, and you couched that with, for the fun of it. I think we both agree that "for the fun of it" is the immoral constant in this phrase. So, I don't see this as a difficult judgment to make for any social animal. We need to function together to survive. The lone individual perishes quickly without the group. Telling your tribe that you know where to find much-needed food and taking them on a wasted journey where there is no food just for the fun of it is madness. This behavior would cause the group to starve or at the very least go hungry unnecessarily. If this became a pattern of behavior by individuals in the group, the societal structure would break down, and man would never have survived. Truth is a necessary component for group cooperation and the success of the society. This explanation would apply to theft and murder. From the earliest small communities to the big city life of today, any "evil" "for the fun of it" is a drag on a successful community. Now look what I did, I just opened the door for you on good and evil, so let me segue to Good and Evil: does it require a God to define what is Good and what is Evil?

Basic Good and Evil.
I would say the concept of what good is and what evil has been ironed out by what works well, and what doesn't work well for me (again me being all the me's in the group). What works well for me is to enslave you and make you do my job for me, but I don't want to be your slave, so now what works better for me? What works better for me is I do my job, and you do your job, and we collaborate to achieve our goals. Does this follow if I have an army behind me and you don't? Yes, as a virtue it does. If you had the army behind you to force me to be your slave, how would that make me feel? So I may still force you to be my slave, but by doing that, I'm not acting good because I know I'm doing a thing to you that I would not want to be done to me. Is this an opinion? Yes. I think you can apply this to any basic good. Is life always this simple? No, not by a long shot.

Complex Good and Evil
I see a car speeding down the street, and it's heading right for a little girl. She's going to get hit. I know if I push her out of the way I will get hit. I stand there and do nothing as I watch her get smashed by the car. Am I evil? Is self-preservation evil? No, is that an opinion? Yes, and a perspective. I don't want to die, I don't want my own child to be without a father. To the parents of that child my inaction to them might be considered evil. I had the opportunity to save a child, and I refused to sacrifice myself for the greater good. Was I evil? Yes, I'm an older man, 20 years away for death by old age. A little girl has her whole life ahead of her, and I selfishly refused to stop this horrific accident. Is that an opinion? Yes, and a perspective.

Where does the concept of good and evil come from? God? Does God tell me that I'm evil for not sacrificing my life to save the little girl? What about the needs of my 5-year-old son? Would my sacrifice be good for my son who has lost his father? What if the next day another car was speeding down the road, and I'm unable to save my son because I'm dead, and the neighbor whose child I just saved doesn't act to protect my child? Who do I blame for that? My neighbor? God? The answer is neither. The answer must be left to the judgment of the individual. Good and Evil are "sometimes" relative to the perspective of the individual which make it an opinion.

The properties that are Good and Evil are opinions decided by humans, and that is why if there is a God you can't blame good for evil and giving credit to God for good is misplacing the praise. This is what I see theists doing all the time. When something evil happens like I make you my slave and beat you to death, I acted evil, but your family blames me, it's not God making me do evil. If I save the little girl from getting hit by the car, they thank God for sending me to save their child. This is proof in itself that God isn't the arbiter of God and Evil. If Good was always Good and had nothing to do with what is Good for me, and Good was the same in everyone's mind, then you have a claim for a universal Good, but that isn't what we see.

[jimwalton]

Thanks again for your discussion. It's always a pleasure. I'm sure you remember that I never contended that God was necessarily for morality. People can act in moral ways on other grounds than God and for other motives than God (including your examples). My contention, however, is that morality can really only truly be defined if there is an objective component. And if that's the case, then all "morality" and "goodness" outside of an objective standard grounded in God's character are defined as other things that are different from morality (your "what works well for me," the wellbeing of society, or even your "judgment of an individual"). While I agree that there are values swimming around in those phrases, they are not morality, and though they may contribute to the survival of the species, they can only be called "good" in the sense of opinion, but not in the sense of true goodness.

Let me try again from an evolutionary vantage point. Scientific naturalists (and atheists) generally claim that moral values are just the result of human evolutionary development, as I think you are asserting. Moral values just emerged once the human brain and nervous system reached a certain level of complexity. (There is a serious unlikelihood the values emerging from valuelessness, in my opinion.) Others claim that moral values are simply subjective, because they have biological worth, as you seem to be claiming as well. We are just hardwired to believe what contributes to our fitness and survival. The fabrication of moral values helps us to survive.

The problem is, as I said in the last post, we cannot trust our minds if we are nothing more than the products of naturalistic evolution. The evolutionary process is interested in fitness and survival, not in truth or goodness. In addition, we believe lots of things in turn that have nothing to do with survival. The fact that we seek to know the truth about many things apart from their survival value indicates that we are living according to a theistic worldview rather than a naturalistic one.

The evolutionary ethics argument to explain away objective moral values is inadequate. Our basic moral intuitions—along with our faculties of reason and science perception—are generally reliable; there is no good reason to deny them. But if they exist, we have already admitted that reason is reliable above what time plus chance will yield, so you are living either a contradiction or on borrow logical capital. And if we claim that such basic beliefs should be questioned in the name of our impulse to survive and reproduce, then the skeptical conclusion is itself the result of those same impulses.

Naturalism does not inspire confidence in our belief-forming mechanisms. Instead, naturalism has the potential to undermine our conviction that rationality and objective moral values exist. If our beliefs—moral or epistemic—are survival-enhancing byproducts of Darwinistic evolution, why should we think that we actually have dignity, rights and obligations—or that we are thinking rationally? We cannot. A theistic worldview, by contrast, does assure us that we can know moral and rational truth—even if they may not contribute one whit to our survival.

As soon as you make a value judgment (saving a little girl from being hit by a car is a good thing to do), you have already stepped outside of the evolutionary process saying the reason is good because it's good, but on what basis? If the basis is because this is the result of the random processes of evolution, then your ground is a mist, not a rock. The belief that allowing a child to get hit by a car is just as arbitrary as the fact that we've evolved five fingers per hand rather than six. If moral objectives are not grounded in anything but "what works well for me" or contributes to the survival of the species, they are nothing but fog. Who is to say the old man or the little girl will contribute more to the perpetuation of the species? Any value is nothing more than opinion, and not a true value.

You asked if I could think of a good that could not exist without God. I would contend that no good could exist without God. All goodness that we know is an extension of His creation. All who try assert evolutionary goodness are arguing on capital borrowed from theism. As I quote from atheism's heroes in my last post, without God we have "no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference" and that pure scientific naturalism will not and cannot take you to morality.

If we are nothing but the agglomeration of chemicals, assembled by random mutations and blind forces over the course of time, "guided" only by chance, there is ultimately no justification for opposing Nazism, for favoring saving a girl over raping her, or for behaving altruistically to one's neighbor. Morality is subject to majority vote (or the declaration of the power block). Atheist philosopher Iris Murdoch argued that a transcendent notion of goodness was essential if defensible human notions of right and justice were to be maintained. If she's right, morality via atheism is essentially indefensible and theism is the only reasonable conclusion.

[Mazzino]

I think we are at a worldview impasse, and we need to take a new path to make headway. When I read what you have to say, I'm thinking to myself, why isn't Jim getting this point, it's so obvious I'm right. I'm sure you're thinking the same thing about me. So when speaking to a rational individual where neither is getting anywhere, it's time to take a step back and define what it is to be moral. I don't see us arriving at agreed upon definition, but we can at least focus on discussing one or the other. I'm arguing my definition, and you're arguing your definition and neither of us is getting anywhere. I'm going to define what morality means to me and then what I think you mean by morality. If my interpretation of your definition is inaccurate, please rephrase it for me.

I'm one of the most tree hugging liberals you will ever know and every day I drive to work listening to Rush Limbaugh. If you pulled up next to me on the road and glanced over you would no doubt see a madman screaming at his radio (it's truly a scene out of Scarface), but every once in a while I'll laugh because Rush will say something that is embarrassingly true about liberals. I listen to the conservative perspective because I don't trust anything anyone says about the opposition in the media. Liberals lie about conservatives and conservatives lie about liberals. I'm telling you this because I'm a strong believer in investigating things people say, especially if I find myself agreeing with something I don't understand very well. One of the best tools I use to investigate is to flip sides and try to research it as if I didn't agree with it. I want to try doing that here. If you agree to an experiment, I would like us to flip sides purposefully and with intent to win. To show good faith, I'll go first. Placing myself in the mind of a theist and arguing your views. This will allow me to invest more time considering the merit of objective morality and I might even ask you for help building my argument. I would like you to do the same. This will only work if you go into it with the desire to win the point. As always my objective is to know what is true, and worldviews sometimes blind you from that. By doing this, we are stepping out of our worldview and briefly allowing ourselves to adopt something different. It can't hurt to try so let me know if you're up for doing that..

Morality: Refers to the individual or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores. It does not assume a spiritual authority for claims of right or wrong but only relates to that which is considered right or wrong by that societal norms.

Objective Morality: Those virtues that exist independent of the human mind and are self-supporting and not influenced by the individual's perception or belief. Humanity is imbued with a sense or instinct for what is right and wrong by a higher authority.

[jimwalton]

This is an excellent approach, and I really appreciate this discussion. What I'm still confused about is the definitions I read at the end. You said (in your first paragraph): "I'm going to define what morality means to me and then what I think you mean by morality." So is your definition of "morality" at the end what YOU think, and your definition of "objective morality" what you think I think? Or are these both YOUR definitions? Then you say, "Let's try to defend each other's positions," so now I don't know if the two definitions are what you think are MY definitions. Help clarify my confusion and we can proceed. I like the way you think.

[Mazzino]

I'm glad to read you like the idea. I'll start doing more research on objective morality. It will take a few days before I'm ready to present my argument for objective morality.

I don't believe in Objective Morality so this was how I saw you defining it. It was an educated guess based on the way you wrote about it.

This first definition is how I view Morality: Refers to the individual or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores. It does not assume a spiritual authority for claims of right or wrong but only relates to that which is considered right or wrong by that societal norms.

This second definition is how I see you defining it: Objective Morality: Those virtues that exist independent of the human mind and are self-supporting and not influenced by the individual's perception or belief. Humanity is imbued with a sense or instinct for what is right and wrong by a higher authority.

If my definition of "Objective Morality" doesn't fit with your definition please make changes to it.

I lack a belief in a God, so objective morality isn't something I accept as real, and more importantly I don't think it factors very well with the way the world function or at least with the way we see in the world functioning. I agree that people don't murder children for the fun of it unless they're a sadistic sociopath. However, I view that as a simple morality. Don't do that to my kids and I won't do that to your kids. I would add, that I know because it's testable that most species have a chemically-driven natural response to protecting their young. It's primarily a mammalian response, but you do see it to a lesser degree in reptiles and birds as well.

I do want it to be clear that lacking a belief in "a" God isn't the same as saying I know there is no God. I won't say I know that there is no Christian God but I would say that I'm maximally confident that the Christian God doesn't exist in the same way I'm maximally confident Santa Claus doesn't exist. I hope you don't take offense at this; I just wasn't sure based on some of your responses if you understood my position.

[jimwalton]

I'll wait. Take your time. I'm aware from your previous posts that you don't believe in God, and therefore not in objective morality. I was merely showing that there is an objective morality (not killing babies for the fun of it, not lying for the fun of it [to remove the question from a natural response to protect young) to which you and all agree, and therefore there must be a transcendent source for such.

I also understand tha lacking a belief in a god isn't the same as saying I know there is no God. I have had plenty of those conversations.

Write when you get a chance.