"Am I absolutely moral or not, Mr. Philosopher?" asketh the Moral Rubik's Cube.
This was answered a number of times before, but it helps to go back to set the perspective frame. As I showed in earlier blogs there are objective truths, facts of the world – such as the law of gravitation (the “law of gravity” is a localized version applicable only to Earth) but that morality or theistic speculations do not fall into the province of being moral truths. The primary reason for this is that there are no standard empirical bases for establishing a uniform moral truth, as there are for uniform scientific truths. For example, to obtain the acceleration of gravity which governs falling objects, I can use any number of experimental devices - such as a frictionless air track at different inclines - to find 'g', or even a simple pendulum confined to small angle oscillations. But there is no standard empirical set up to test one moral truth against another.)
For one thing, objective knowledge or facts presupposes open inquiry to obtain it in the first place. Religion’s multitude of dogmas, biblical exhortations and doctrines – not open to critical evaluation- forever forecloses such inquiry. Indeed, it mandates the OPPOSITE – that one is NOT to fully inquire but BELIEVE AND ACCEPT! (See for example, how the honest unbeliever is treated to “Hell” for his trouble at honest inquiry – since the bible believers accept no inquiry as honest that doesn’t reach the pre-conclusion they have from their bibles! It's MY way or the highway! But this means open inquiry isn't allowed if it leads to a conclusion the god mongers don't like!)
What about morality? Is it true that no other pursuits or inquiry or research are worthwhile unless an absolute morality is accepted as a standard? Well, the fundies would have you believe so, but then they’d also have you believe in talking snakes, as well as men who can live three days in the hydrochloric acid vat of a whale’s belly and emerge alive!
But the fact is, as I showed in earlier blogs it isn’t necessary to posit a god to account for morality. Human evolution itself can explain it. In their early agricultural phase, as humans settled into cooperative farming and sharing food mutually grown, establishing a group morality or ethical code became imperative. Common sense dictated this, not any god! The agrarian humans realized if they allowed stronger, bigger members to always take food from babies and mothers, or rape female community members, their tribe wouldn’t last very long! Nor would it if theft and lying were tolerated. So rules had to be laid down ….by flesh and blood HUMANS! Fundies, meanwhile, treat even the early neocortex-attained humans as essential idiots who had to be led by the hand by an imaginary god to know what was right or wrong!
By contrast, what about following a god’s morality –say the one described in the Bible?
One glance at assorted passages would disclose that a god such as in the Bible (“the God who Hates” according to Pastor Fred Phelps) is no example to emulate!
We see:
1)Deut. 22:22"If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel"
2) 2 Kings 2, 23:24 (Concerning Elisha siccing "God's She Bears'" on little children)"And he went up from then unto Beth-el: and as he was going up by the way, there came forth little children out of the city, and mocked him and said unto him: 'Go up, thou bald head, go up , thou bald head'. And he turned back and looked at them, and cursed them in the name of the LORD. And there came forth two she-bears out of the wood, and teared up forty and two children of them"
You can find a satirical re-enactment
here:http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2009/12/bible_story_reenactments.php
3) Deut. 21: 18-21"If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and - though they chastise him he will not give heed to them, then his father and mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of hte place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of the city,'This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard. Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones, so you shall purge the evil from your midst"
Now, on examining and considering these examples, just what do you think would happen if any living human tried to follow this “morality”? Well, for sure they’d be locked up with the key tossed away today, or maybe given a lethal injection! (Say for getting a pet grizzly and sending him after some kids who were calling him “baldy”)
So, divine standards – especially as expressed in the Bible- are useless. No one would be advised to follow or apply them unless he has several screws loose.
What about more generic divine standards? Not even close!
A first test, as Kai Neilsson inquires (Ethics Without God),: "Is an act good because God did it, or is it good independent of such action?"
Consider: if a human parent knows his child is trapped in a burning house, s/he will try to save it however s/he can. There is no way the human parent will simply walk out and allow 'fate' or "free will" of the child to make the decision. If the human parent has an ounce of common decency s/he must intervene. This is exemplary human morality in action!
To be realistic or pragmatic, a divine entity must at least DO or demand as much! If not, it’s worthless. However, god-ists seem quite happy to let their deity off the hook, when and where it suits their fancy. Start then with the standard deity template, say espoused by most Christians. This entity is posited as both omniscient and omnipotent (all knowing and all powerful).
Let us say, as occured back in 1994, It knew from before all time a twister was headed for its "house" of worship in Alabama. Being omnipotent, it also had the power to deflect said twister and let it tear up some nearby forest or woodsheds- as opposed to its church with people inside. Did it? No it did not! It permitted the tornado to demolish the Church and many of those children within it. All innocents. All dead.
Those who would defend such a deity - but who would hold a human parent accountable for negligence or manslaughter by allowing their child to perish in a house fire (when the child could be saved) - disclose inchoate ethics. To wit, demanding a vastly lower ethical standard of behavior for their deity than for fellow humans. Bottom line here? For a genuine ethical basis, any human action must be totally independent of whether a god did it (in scriptures) or ordains it. It must be good on its own merits. And those merits, in their given context (of living humans) MUST factor in HUMAN WELFARE!
We conclude from all this that there is no absolute divine moral standard worth human attention, and further likely no absolute moral standard. How can we say so? Look at the evidence of history! Jacob Bronowski when he visited Auschwitz and pointed to the gas chambers, in the BBC documentary The Ascent of Man and the book by the same name. As he put it (p.235):
"This was not done by gas. It was done by arrogance. It was done by dogma. It was done by ignorance. When people believe they have absolute knowledge with no test in reality, this is how they behave."
And of course, the Christian Inquisition as he notes, was no different. Heretics, atheists ...anyone not kowtowing to the then Church's dogmas could be burnt at the stake or tortured...because the Church held supreme absolute authority- and no one was permitted to question it.
Because of this, Bronowski is painfully aware of what he calls the "principle of tolerance" - which he ties to the Heisenberg Principle of Uncertainty in physics. As he puts it (p. 232):
"The Principle of Uncertainty or, in my phrase the Principle of Tolerance, fixed once and for all the realization that all knowledge is limited."
Because knowledge is limited, and further - the human brain is limited in its processing of it, then no absolutist propositions to do with morality or ethics can be entertained.To show that absolutism is a myth that can't work, one may begin by showing that truth statements cannot be inherently complete, non-contradictory or binding forever. I will not go over all this again, but point the interested reader to two of my previous blog essays:'Truth, Existence Claims and God Talk'
Part I:http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/01/truth-existence-claims-and-god-talk.html
Part II:http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2010/01/truth-existence-claims-and-god-talk_18.html
This also means no complete or absolutist morality or absolutist ethics can be formulated precisely because the cognitive apparatus to validate such simply isn't there (go back to the tri-partite brain and its defects).
Let's take some examples to see:
For example, the biblical literalist may insist the 5th commandment is absolute: 'Thou shalt not kill" (N.B. many fundies refer to this as the 6th). But clearly in practice this is impossible.
Accepted violation (1): An intruder enters a home with a weapon and is about to threaten or kill one's wife and children. The home owner, however, has his .44 Magnum nearby the bedstand.Now, under any absolutist dictum there is no way any killing can be permitted. The most the homeowner is allowed is maybe to shoot the intruder in the knee and phone the cops. But how many will actually do this? I warrant not one in a million. If they have a weapon they will shoot to kill.Further, the LAW in most states allows lethal force in such circumstances (such as the 'make my day' law here in Colo.) and few religions would protest. Thus, the commandment cannot be absolute. ANY exception, no matter how finely drawn, eradicates the absolute nature of the ethic. You can't have an "absolute" morality and also exceptions to it, it's that simple.
Accepted violation (2): An invading country crosses its neighbor's border and begins raping, plundering and klling its citizens. The invaded nation has every right to fight back and kill in turn.Or, as in the case of World War (II) - multiple nations in one alliance are entitled to stop the Hitlerian-Nazi threat of world domination- by invading and bombing (killing) in the German homeland.NO Christians I know - even hardcore bible punchers- dispute this exception to the rule. BUT - if there is such exception, then there is no absolute moral prohibition.
Accepted violation (3): A serial killer, who has slaughtered over 100 women is finally electrocuted by "Old Sparky". In this case- Ted Bundy's end was decided by the state of Florida. Just before his end the fundamentalist Pastor James Dobson assisted him in "finding Jesus" - but at NO time did Dobson tell the state that there was an absolute moral prohibition against killing Bundy!
These three examples disclose that there can be NO absolutist proposition forbidding killing of other humans, since three exceptions are already allowed. Once there's ANY exception, the proscription ceases to be absolute, and there is no "absolute moral truth" underpinning it. There is rather an expedient moral truth used when convenient to do so! (Though some disgusting reprobates, backed into a corner here, change the meaning of words to duplicitously differentiate “murder” from “killing” to try and invent a loop hole. We don't buy it!)
Nor will the honest atheist assert that we can allow moral relativists to have their way. Just because wives who stray are permitted to be severely beaten (and sometimes killed) in Brazil doesn't mean we allow it in the U.S. Merely because young girls are subjected to clitorodectomy in parts of sub-Sahara Africa doesn't mean we permit it here- especially as a means to keep them virgins. And merely because "common law" marriage is the norm or standard in much of the West Indies, doesn't mean it can become the moral norm in the U.S.
So, if neither absolutism or moral relativism is the answer, then what is? Author Michael Shermer (The Science of Good And Evil, p. 168) gives what is perhaps the best solution to the conundrum of ethics:"moral provisionalism" or what I would call: "ethical incrementalism". As Shermer notes (ibid.):
"Provisional ethics provides a reasonable middle ground between absolute and moral relative systems. Provisional moral principles are applicable to most people, for most circumstances, for most of the time - yet flexible enough to account for the wide diversity of human behavior"
Further, for my ethical incrementalism, I would allow increasing moral oversight when EVIDENCE warrants it.Let's look at illustrations:
1) Abortion:According to ethical incrementalism abortion cannot be ethical in ALL circumstances for all conditions. Thus, since Sagan and Druyan have noted that fetal brain waves appear past 6 months, NO abortions should normally be allowed in the third trimester. The only (provisional) exceptions would be: a) the health of the mother (e.g. if she were to have the child she'd die), or b) case of incest or rape - wherein having the child would create extreme mental trauma for the victim. (By that I mean possible psychosis or severe depression, including attempted suicide).
2) War:In the judicious application of ethical incrementalism, NO war would be permitted in the U.S.A. unless an actual DECLARATION of WAR by congress is made. This would give congress the opportunity to exercise its constitutional rights, and impart moral and ethical authority in rendering a war truly just. In this light, we'd have no more Vietnams, Iraqs, Afghanistans or other adventures...finagled outside the parameters of congressional validation.
For too long too many wars have been waged through the back door as it were, at great financial and moral cost to the U.S. The Iraq invasion, for example, never would have been allowed had an actual declaration of war been demanded by congress....as opposed to just meekly rolling over for Dubya.
3) Teen sexual behavior:In the domain of ethical incrementalism, teens are warned that actual intercourse outside of a stable permanent relationship is ethically, morally toxic. As a midway position, however, teens are allowed - as former Surgeon General Jocelyn Elder suggested- to obtain sexual relief via self-stimulation. This balance would immediately stop the increasing rates of teen pregnancy, though likely not without the benefit of a good sex ed. course, which must also include removing the stigma attached (by teen culture) to masturbation.
These are just a few examples, and many more might be cited or found. The point is that there is a middle way, and ethically conscientious humans ought to seek to pursue it, as opposed to pretensions to either a facile moral absolutism or equally facile moral relativism.
No comments:
Post a Comment