At Evolution News and Views, David Klinghoffer presents a challenge:
Man needs meaning. We crave it, especially when faced with adversity. I challenge any Darwinist readers to write some comments down that would be suitable, not laughable, in the context of speaking to people who have lived through an event like Monday’s bombing. By all means, let me know what you come up with.
Leaving aside Klinghoffer’s conflation of “Darwinism” with atheism, and reading it as a challenge for those of us who do not believe in a supernatural deity or an afterlife (which would include me), and despite lacking the eloquence of the speakers Klinghoffer refers to, let me offer some thoughts, not on Monday’s bombing, specifically, but on violent death in general, which probably touches us all, at some time. Too many lives end far too soon:
We have one life, and it is precious, and the lives of those we love are more precious to us than our own. Even timely death leaves a void in the lives of those left, but the gap left by violent death is ragged, the raw end of hopes and plans and dreams and possibilities. Death is the end of options, and violent death is the smashing of those options; Death itself has no meaning. But our lives and actions have meaning. We mean things, we do things, we act with intention, and our acts ripple onwards, changing the courses of other lives, as our lives are changed in return. And more powerful than the ripples of evil acts are acts of love, kindness, generosity, and imagination. Like the butterfly in Peking that can cause a hurricane in New York, a child’s smile can outlive us all. Good acts are not undone by death, even violent death. We have one life, and it is precious, and no act of violence can destroy its worth.
This was actually a response to damitall, which is why it appars under his comment. I guess I made some kind of input error. I had made a separate response to your question that I could have sworn I saw get published.
In any event, if the nature of god was that it is good to torture babies, and it was a self-evident moral truth, then I – and most people, I imagine – would do our best to torture babies.
If you are asking if I could go to sleep today and it be self-evident that torturing babies is wrong, and wake up tomorrow and it be self-evident that torturing babies is good, I’d immediately suspend my belief system and do some critical reflecting and seriously consider the possibility that I suffered some kind of mental breakdown. In my view, self-evident truths do not change, they are innate conditions of existence. Not even god can “change his mind” when it comes to fundamental aspects of the mental landscape, like morality or logic or math. God cannot make 1+2=9.
Robin,
I accept your hairsplitting and agree that you are technically correct. And, as every engineer knows, that’s the best kind of correctness.
Yes, it does, rather! Can you tell me?
Not just social or legal sanctions. Personal sanctions. I don’t feel free to kill or maim someone, even if I could get away with it. There is a restraint which I characterise as innate. This is what WJM at al perceive as the ‘still, small voice’ of God. It would be fundamentally irrational to kill someone when it goes against your ‘nature’ – though obviously there are complex situations which simplistic thinking can’t fully anticipate.
Yes if we go to a religious blog. As this is a scientific blog I prefer to talk about science.
Blas,
Where did you get the idea that TSZ was purely a scientific blog? It’s “The Skeptical Zone.”
There’s a lot to be skeptical of in religion.
I would prefer that we avoid religion and philosophy except as it narrowly pertains to anti-science.
Petrushka,
From the very beginning, TSZ has been about far more than just science/anti-science:
It’s not a scientific blog, per se. See comments above.
And this thread was a very specific response to a very specific callout to “Darwinists” about how they, lacking religion, would comfort those affected by the Boston Bombing.
I haven’t heard from David Klinghoffer by the way.
William,
That’s not what I asked.
That’s not what I asked.
That’s not what I asked.
Let me try rephrasing the question:
You go to bed tonight regarding the torture of babies for pleasure as “self-evidently evil.” Tomorrow morning you wake up and find an envelope on your doorstep. In that envelope is absolute, incontrovertible proof that God, your creator, wants you to torture babies for pleasure.
You now know that God wants you to torture babies. Is the act still “self-evidently evil”? Do you comply gladly with God’s wishes, or do you try to avoid doing what he commands?
I do believe (though I can’t find it specifically) that William has stated that those things that are self-evidently moral stem from the fact that his god exists and is good. Thus I believe the question you’ve posed would be a logical contradiction for William. I’ll be interested to see what he says though.
There are a lot of assumptions packed into that bolded phrase.
It will be interesting to see how he responds to my question.
Did you try to tell to the affected what you have written? How do they react? How do they feel?
By the way are you not going to answer my other questions?
I wouldn’t start torturing babies because something would obviously be wrong with my theistic beliefs if I was commanded by god to violate a self-evident moral truth.
I’d suspend my theistic beliefs at least for a while because something would have occurred that contradicted those beliefs. If such an event occurred, I would know my structure of rational theism was faulty (or I was mentally ill), and so no belief or knowledge I held in that regard would be reliable.
I hold all my beliefs – even that in god – provisionally. It’s not a problem for me to suspend my beliefs or change them if I find them to be faulty.
William,
You’re still avoiding my actual question.
I haven’t stipulated that you believe that God wants you to torture babies. I’ve stipulated that you have incontrovertible proof that God wants you to torture babies. You know this, and you are not mistaken.
What do you do? You now know, without doubt, that God wants you to torture babies. Is the act still “self-evidently evil”? Do you comply gladly with God’s wishes, or do you try to avoid doing what he commands?
Yeah, they did that already in the bible. At least one particular version of God don’t want you in his tribe.
So I guess you’d fail that particular test. Yet one of the more popular themes of “objective morality” is absolute obedience to the god providing that morality.
I’m answering it the best I can, as honestly as I can. Nothing can be incontrovertibly proven to me because I have free will. Therefore, the premise doesn’t apply to me.
I’m answering it the best I can, as honestly as I can. Nothing can be incontrovertibly proven to me because I have free will. Therefore, the premise doesn’t apply to me.
William,
It’s quite clear to me that you’re dodging my question because you can’t think of an acceptable answer.
You’re stuck between a rock and a hard place.
If you answer that you’ll continue to regard baby torture as “self-evidently evil”, even though God wants you to do it, then you are conceding that this particular “self-evident moral truth” is not grounded in God after all.
If you answer that you will gladly torture babies, knowing that it is the right thing to do since God, your creator, wants you to do it, then you’re not only showing an appalling lack of conscience, you are also effectively affirming that “might makes right” — that is, that God deserves to be obeyed simply because he is powerful and because he has created you.
…and that torturing babies isn’t “self-evidently evil” or that he’d gladly strap his wagon to an evil deity. Interesting fire and fry pan…
You can believe that I’m dodging questions if you want, but all valid questions must draw from a valid context. For example, I can ask you if you still beat your wife; but the question presumes a context where you have been beating your wife.
Similarly, your questions presume a theistic context that lies outside of not only my theism, but outside of my view of reality, reason and logic. Just because you can ask a question – if god is omnipotent, can he create a rock so heavy he cannot lift it? – and because I don’t answer yes or no, you could resort to the same claim – that I’m dodging answering because the answer puts me in between a rock and a hard place.
Your question is nothing more than a restatement of the heavy rock question – it’s semantic nonsense and has nothing to do with my theology.
No, because my question isn’t incoherent. There’s nothing self-contradictory about a scenario in which your innate sense of morality tells you that something is “self-evidently evil”, but your creator thinks that the same thing is right.
Declaring that God is perfectly good doesn’t solve the problem.
If God wills certain things because they are good, then he is subject to an external standard, and “objective morality” is grounded not in him, but in that standard. Plus you haven’t demonstrated that God is good by that standard — you’ve simply assumed it.
On the other hand, if certain things are good because God wills them, then you’re affirming that “might makes right”. God is the biggest kid on the block, and he created you, so whatever he wills is good by definition.
The dilemma remains whether you acknowledge it or not.
My question is coherent. Do you have a coherent answer?
Keiths,
The context of your question doesn’t match the context of my theism or worldview. I’m sure your question is perfectly coherent within your projected concept of my theism, but it just doesn’t apply to my actual theism, and frankly, there’s no way for you to know enough about my theology in order for you to even judge if your questions are relevant to my theistic context.
All you can possibly be doing is making an assumption about what my theistic & worldview context is, and if you think your question is coherent in that context, you’re wrong. If you’re going to insist that your projection of what my theism is is accurate, even after I tell you it’s necessarily wrong because of the context your questions require, well – I can’t argue with someone who insists they know my views better than I.
There’s no such thing as incontrovertible proof in my worldview. There’s no such thing as god wanting me to do something in contradiction to a self-evident moral good. There’s also no such thing as an omnipotence that can make the self-contradictory real. Your question assumes the possibility of what are logical and necessary self-contradictions. What you are asking me to consider is that which would be inherently impossible in my worldview.
If you’re going to invent my theism for your own purposes and then demand I answer your questions out of the context of my actual theism, I’m under no further obligation to respond. You have your answer, whether you like it or not.
In other words, you assume that if you think that something is “self-evidently” good or evil, then God necessarily agrees. You then conclude that if you think that something is self-evidently good or evil, then God agrees.
Can you not see the circularity?
WJM (RE: “is wrong to torture babies for pleasure”)
Given that you are not a Christian, you may not be familiar with the Israelite massacre of the Canaanites and the Amalekites:
This is what the LORD Almighty says: ‘I will punish the Amalekites for what they did to Israel when they waylaid them as they came up from Egypt. Now go, attack the Amalekites and totally destroy everything that belongs to them. Do not spare them; put to death men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys.’ “ (1 Sam 15:1-3)
To this day, Christian theologians struggle to make sense of these ruthless acts of genocide. Some say that God did not really say any such thing to Israel. Rather they simply misrepresented God or put their evil practices into God’s mouth. Others argue that these ancient peoples were not “innocent,” (including the infants!) and thus God’s command was just. Some simply insist that God is the creator and grantor of life, and thus his taking of life can never be unjust. And others say that the ends justified the means – protecting the purity of the Israelites.
So, that puts you in a difficult spot, WJM. If Christians truly believe that God commands the death of a population (as some did during the Crusades), then it must be morally good for babies to die.
Lizzie,
Depends on your frame of reference. Since you consider “consensus” to = “objective”, I can see why you consider “social laws” as “non-arbitrary”.
This difference of frame of reference is probably the biggest reason why Darwinists and Theists can’t really understand each other. We’re speaking from two entirely different contexts, as is apparent when you say:
… by which I suppose you mean “Torturing children for personal pleasure is self-evidently wrong.”
But, although we use the same words, we have two utterly different meanings. To a Darwinist, this might refer to consensus sensation or feeling against doing a thing that evolution/physics has produced in most people. So, when a Darwinist is applying that principle, the context is “well, most of us happen to agree on X as a basis for morality, so let’s build a moral system from there”.
To the theist, however, that is not what a “self-evident truth” means. A self evident truth is not just a feeling that happens to be shared by the consensus; just as to a theist, “objective” doesn’t mean “most people agree”. So when you say that you and I agree on the same basis, we do not; we agree to the same wording, but the wording means utterly different things in the two different frameworks.
rhampton,
I don’t see how this puts me – a non-christian – in a difficult spot.
It is a premise I reasoned back towards as I examined what kind of moral system made rational sense. For a long time I was amoral. From there I reasoned to what I have today – a rational, theism based morality.
All rational structures have at their foundation principles that must be assumed or taken on faith, such as the ability of reason to discern true statements from false, or the view that one is not a brain in a vat imagining all of this. The premise that self-evidently true moral statements necessarily reflect an innate and unchanging nature of god is – I believe – required for any coherent and meaningful morality. Tautologies are not necessarily bad logic, especially if they are necessary. I also hold logic and math to be innate qualities of the mind of god in exactly the same sense that I hold morality as such a quality, which is why to me “god commanding me to torture babies” is the equal of “god claiming that from now on 1+2=9” or “the law of non-contradiction no longer applies”.
It’s foolish not to assume that which is necessary for reasonable inference to ensue.
It’s also foolish to assume more than is necessary for reasonable inference to ensue — particularly when one of your superfluous assumptions is the very conclusion you are purporting to demonstrate!
If your extra assumption were logically necessary, then any attempt to deny it would result in a contradiction. That doesn’t happen. The scenario I outlined, in which you, William, have one view of what’s self-evidently good, and God has a different view, is perfectly coherent. Your assumption is unnecessary.
You obviously prefer a scenario in which your moral sense aligns with God’s, but that’s merely a preference, not a rational imperative.
In any case, it should be obvious that the human moral sense can’t be trusted to discern “objective” morality. Some folks believe that homosexuality is self-evidently and objectively immoral, while others believe that it’s perfectly fine. They can’t all be right.
So can you explain what a “self-evident truth” is to a theist? This would seem to be a crucial point.
Frustrating though these discussions can be for all concerned, the frustration can be a distraction. I’ve moved a comment to guano. As ever, no moral judgement is implied 🙂
And perhaps give a few examples, as “the torture of babies” is getting old.
But we (or at least I) cannot see any new posts on Guano!
Censorship!! 😮
Would you say, then, William, that the only rational reason to be moral is if it carries a personal consequence (heaven, hell, karma, whatever)?
Because here is my take on reason and morality:
We are a social species – we live in groups, and, moreover, we figured out in the distant past that division of labour benefits us all – there is economy in scale, so if some people grow enough wheat for all, and other people grind it into flour for all, while other people bake it into bread for all, everyone gets more bread than if everyone had to grow, grind and bake the flour themselves.
However, in such a system, it is rather easy for a few people to do nothing at all, except eat bread. And so we also invented trading practices. But still, some people will figure that they can steal bread. Or exchange worthless goods for bread, with the spiel that they have magic powers. Or whatever. In other words, some people cheat – they seek benefit for themselves at the expense of others.
And so we discovered, collectively (because we can talk), that these people are a very real threat to what is a thoroughly beneficial system. And that if people break the contract (exchange of goods for goods of equivalent value), then they must be denied the benefits of the contracting society – socially ostracised, imprisoned, perhaps killed.
And this idea is then reifed as what we call “morality” – however nice it might be to eat bread you haven’t paid for, it is taboo, cheating, wrong.
In other words, morality, for our species, for whom a cooperative society is a huge benefit, is intrinsically altruistic – we need to consider the consequences of our actions to others, as well as our selves, and not seek personal benefit at the cost of harm to others.
Of course, such a moral system needs some kind of policing. We may be innately motivated to be kind and generous, but we are also innately motivated to benefit ourselves, and for some people the latter drive is rather stronger than the former, especially if the latter carries no deleterious personal consequences.
We can have human police – actual policement, but also judges, formal and informal, who condemn, socially or otherwise, transgressors of the social/moral contract. But we have no perfect surveilance system, so we can invent/postulate/discover the idea of Divine surveilance and Divine judgement. And if we can persuade everyone, including ourselves, that no matter how much you can get away with stealing bread by being a master-cat-burglar, God Sees All, and to Hell you will go.
So far from atheism “borrowing” the concept of morality from theism, I’d say it was quite the reverse. As social species a code of conduct that promotes altruism is of benefit to the community as a whole, as long as we deal with cheaters by denying them access to those benefits.
This seems perfectly rational to me. In fact you can lay it out as a rather famous logical problem – it’s the solution to the Prisoner’s Dilemma.
So the idea that atheists have “no rational basis for morality” is, I suggest, simply bunk. The reason we all find the idea that torturing babies for personal pleasure is self-evidently wrong is that it is a paradigm case of non-altruism (personal gain at the cost of harm to others), and altruism is the rational moral code for social species.
Whether we’d call any other code “moral” is moot, because it’s a human word for the human system.
Sharks may differ.
It is a peculiar view. One lacks belief in God, and truths are not self-evident. One starts to believe, and they become so. I guess one actually has to go through that barrier before the self-evidentness manifests itself. So they aren’t self-evident at all. They are just rationalisations in light of belief. This becomes particularly noticeable when we witness the extensive battles between theists over interpretation – What God Wants. It’s self-evident to Theist A. Something different is self-evident to Theist B. But they can both sneer at the atheist, because the people on that side of the wall Just Don’t Get It.
Oh really? That’s weird. OK, I won’t move any more there.
Your opinion does not constitute an argument. You prove my point yet again that the denizens of UD don’t know the difference between assuming the conclusion and reasoned argument.
It is actually there. However, the posts are being shown out of order. If you search for the date (in your browser) you will find it.
YHWH endorsing the torture of children, even performing it, is not hypothetical.
2 Samuel 11-12, God inflicts David and Bathsheba’s infant son with a 7 day terminal illness to punish David.
2 Kings 2:23-24, God has 42 children torn apart by bears.
Deuteronomy 2:33-34, With God’s approval, whole cities are slaughtered, including children. Dying by sword would not always be swift. Torture enough.
Joshua 7:9-26, Achan, his wife, and his children are stoned to death.
Leviticus 26, for disobedience, God promises that the Israelites will have to eat their children.
Repeated in Deuteronomy 28:53 and Jeremiah 19:9. Oh, and Ezekiel 5:8-10.
Presumably an atheist child who died as a teenager would be subject to the tortures of Hell. Although the Bible is contradictory on this.
Also, Proverbs 13:24, 19:18, 23:13-14, 29:15.
The question is not would William condone some hypothetical X, but rather does he condone these things?
Liz,
Just-so fairy tales about “how morality came to be” and a polyanna view of the history of societies and human nature may be convenient to your argument, and may even be emotionally satisfying in support of your apparently socialistic, kum-ba-yah worldview, but they do not a valid, rational argument make.
Of course not. Perhaps you missed the memo. I’m not a Christian.
Well, William does not claim a biblical God, I don’t think.
As far as I can tell his argument is:
I find behavior X self-evidently immoral, and yet it does not benefit me to avoid it, and may benefit me to indulge in it.
Therefore a deity must have instilled this conviction in me
But such a conviction would be pointless unless the deity had also planned a punishment for me if I violated that moral principle.
Therefore I postulate a deity that punishes those who violate self-evident moral rules.
Which does actually make some kind of logical sense. Do I have this about right, William?
It’s not the complete argument about why morality requires an autonomous free will agency, but I should hardly have to present that since it’s been argued for ages by many well-known philosophers.
Because I do not present the complete argument doesn’t mean my inclusion of the basic claim of such arguments is “rhetoric”.
It just means, apparently, that you’re unfamiliar with free will/moral responsibility arguments.
Please stop trying to paraphrase me. This is not just wrong, it’s amazingly, astoundingly wrong.
God doesn’t “punish” anyone, for anything, period, in any meaningful sense of the word. If you foolishly jump off of a cliff, do you hold “gravity” responsible for “punishing” you? Is gravity willfully “punishing” you? Of course not.
“Necessary consequences” is not the equivalent of “punishment”. Although one might call what gravity does to you “punishing”, it’s not punishment in the same sense of the word.
This is a very effective tool in attempting to clarify what someone else is saying. I often find asking a simple closed-ended question when I am not sure what is being said is very helpful.
“So what you mean is…” followed by the paraphrase will often help where the key point is hidden in the flow of language. Especially helps in conversations in a foreign language.
OK, let me try again. Seriously, William, I am trying to understand. Because on the face of it, your posts aren’t making a lot of sense to me. So, despite your injunction, I’m going to have another go.
How about:
I find behavior X self-evidently immoral, and yet it does not benefit me to avoid it, and may benefit me to indulge in it.
Therefore a creator deity must have instilled this conviction in me
But such a conviction would be pointless unless the deity had created a universe in which there were necessary adverse consequences for committing X.
Such necessary adverse consequences are apparent in this life.
Therefore I postulate a universe in which those consequences occur in the next life.
Any better? If not, can you distill your position yourself, in clear logical steps?
FYI – this was one of the examples that came to mind when I disagreed with the assumption that killing babies is “self-evidently” evil. Clearly it wasn’t to the Israelites. And the bible even presents the act as a “good” act, so it’s not a question of it being an evil act that just had to be done.
I’m having a tough time taking William’s arguments seriously given that many of his bold proclamations do not match reality or theistic teaching.
William-
Lizzie is trying to understand your position. Paraphrasing and then checking with you to see if her paraphrase is correct is an excellent way for her to check her understanding. (Maybe the only way in a discussion like this where definitions are so delicate.) Asking her not to paraphrase is asking her not to try to understand you.
The only correction you’ve offered to Lizzie’s “amazingly, astoundingly wrong” paraphrase is to replace “punishment” with “necessary consequences”.
Was the rest of it accurate?
Your view is obviously very difficult for many people here, including me, to understand. I hope you can provide a more accurate paraphrase of yourself.
Thanks.
Here’s the real problem William – you’re not speaking from a theistic perspective, or at least you’re speaking from an extremely fringe and unconventional theistic perspective. There are few theists who would agree with your worldview. Your claims don’t even match the teachings of the major religions and you’ve freely admitted that few people hereon could even comprehend your particular understandings. So really, the dichotomy is not “Darwinism” and “Theism”, but rather “Darwinism” and “Williamism”.
William J. Murray,
I did miss the memo. I suppose that most of the UDites being Christian doesn’t mean I should assume everyone is. What are the properties of this god/these gods of yours who you claim as the source of morality?