I have been known, now and again, to fret over the moral condition of our contemporary world. On such occasions, it warms my heart to think of the brave warriors of culture who are quick to defend precious institutions against the relativising onslaughts of modernity. Two recent cases in point:
- Sixty-six Senators (out of a hundred, for you public-high-school graduates like myself) voted to amend the Constitution to stop our Flag from being burned! Now, it’s true that sixty-seven (“more than two-thirds,” ibid.) would have been required to actually scoot the proposed amendment along its way, but still it’s comforting to know that such a robust majority wants to do the right thing. After all, flag burning is up 33% this year! The amendment was a straightforward prohibition against “the physical desecration of the flag of the United States.” Desecration, of course, means “to violate the sacredness of,” and sacred means “dedicated to or set apart for the worship of a deity” or “worthy of religious veneration,” which is a status I didn’t even know belonged to Old Glory. Always learning something new, I guess.
- One Pope (that’s all there is) came out firmly against guitars in church! Because Jesus (or perhaps it is the Holy Spirit, I’m a little vague on the details) approves of chanting and organ music, but finds string instruments to be annoyingly twangy. This bold gesture fits in well with Benedict XVI’s shrewd plan to revitalize Christianity in affluent, secular cultures, where guitar music has traditionally met great resistance.
I’m not sure which of these stirring tales brings greater joy to my bitter, cynical soul. But it’s good to know that, now that we’ve successfully dealt with poverty, disease, and war, the important battles over appropriate behavior are being fought with clarity and vigor.
My guess is that flag burning has no chance of passing. The fact that it gets 66 votes is no coincidence — I’d be willing to be that those yes and no votes are carefully allocated.
Does opposition to guitars indicate resistance to Strings?
All I can do with regards to the first point is quote The West Wing:
Bartlett: There is a population in this country that seems to focus so much time and energy into this conversation, so much so that I am forced to ask this question – is there an epidemic of flag burning going on that I’m not aware of?
According to that one link the answer is a definitive…no.
I guess this means the Stones won’t be playing the Vatican anytime soon.
There is a protestant denomination that’s fairly prominent in Nashville known as the Church of Christ.
My wife read to me from the newspaper a quote one day that indicated that the Church of Christ (apparently) doesn’t approve of any instrumental music within worship services, because there is no evidence in the Bible that the early founders of Christianity had instrumental music in their services.
My response was that I hoped that no Church of Christ member wore deoderant to church services….
-Rob
No, but Jethro Tull and Roger Waters were nearby in the last month, and Bob Dylan and Depeche Mode, will be playing a few miles from the Vatican this summer too. 🙂
http://www.bed-breakfast-roma.com/blog/2006/04/rome-rock-concerts-summer-2006.html
There actually IS another Pope, in Alexandria: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patriarch_of_Alexandria
There are three claimants to the title, though, so I’ll leave it to your theological sympathies to decide which, if any, or all, “deserve” it.
Amara,
You failed to point out that Madonna is playing Rome as well. That should be entertaining 😉
New Playground Rules to be Posted upon Catholic Bulletin Boards across the World:
Rule#1) Guitars will no longer be allowed to ride upon the Back of God 🙁
Rule#2) Guitars will only allowed to ride upon the Back of Satan 🙂
This warmed my heart A Massachusetts lawmaker is trying to get himself out of a sticky situation by dropping his opposition to Marshmallow Fluff.
Aaron–I would be even more suprised to see 38 states willing to approve a flag burning amendment.
If they were willing to reconcider the ERA along the way, however… (it still hasn’t sunsetted–3 more states needed)
A flag-burning amendment would have the predictable effect of encouraging flag burning, which would thereby instantly become an effective form of civil disobedience. Talking about putting people in jail for flag burning is a good way to play to the cheap seats. Actually putting people in jail for flag burning is something else again. It would give the initiative to the people the right wing hates the most.
I’m not sure which of these stirring tales brings greater joy to my bitter, cynical soul.
Yea, but my happy, cynical soul is quite sure that you’re shining light on just one side of several double edged swords to support some of your claims.
But it’s good to know that, now that we’ve successfully dealt with poverty, disease, and war, the important battles over appropriate behavior are being fought with clarity and vigor.
And why do you keep bringing up morality? You’re an atheist. It must be some sort of con job you’re working. If there is no God, all things are lawful.
But you guys do allow dissent, and that speaks better of you than Humour Me Dembski.
In reply to z.king (And why do you keep bringing up morality? You’re an atheist. It must be some sort of con job you’re working. If there is no God, all things are lawful.): I find this very offensive.
If there is no god, you must decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong, instead of having a few men milennia ago (and some translators and editors in between) doing it for you.
Do you think that as a non-religious person I have no reason to say thou shalt not kill? Should anyone doubt, picture yourself walking through a crowded street. Assume for the moment that “because there is no god I can kill anyone I see”. Then imagine everyone else thinking the same. There is a reason why morality (either with or without religion) is helpful to any society, but should anyone fail to figure it out I won’t mind if any religion fills the moral void and keeps the streets a bit safer, as long as that religion adheres to at least the core subset of my morality. And to be honest, most religions do so regarding most details and that’s not incidental either.
Do not attribute to divinity what man do for himself.
There is a certain a irony in banning guitars. One of the most beloved carols of christmastime was specifically set to acoustic guitar music.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/programmes/advent/carols/index.shtml
Sincerely,
Paul Flocken
Surely whether religion makes people more or less tractable should be a secondary question to people for whom understanding things is the primary value. I have my doubts that the goofier forms of belief make people act better or not, but I have no doubts whatsoever that traditional religious ideas are literally false. Since I actually do have principles, that’s what matters to me.
Hi Sean,
In response to “Because Jesus (or perhaps it is the Holy Spirit, I’m a little vague on the details)”, I would say, being a Catholic, that probably this isn’t some sort of “truth” being revealed by the Holy Spirit. I’m not sure what the correct terminology is, but when the Church makes an “official teaching” on something about faith or morality (as opposed to the details of how the Church is run, what kind of music is played during Mass, etc.), it is the Holy Spirit that guides them, or inspires them, and, thus, the teaching is considered to be infallible. For what the Holy Spirit is exactly, please consult a Catholic dictionary or Catechism, or something like that.
Anyway, if the Pope is against guitars during Mass, it doesn’t mean that some sort of truth is being revealed. It’s just the Pope’s opinion, and if guitars really do get banned during Mass in the future, it doesn’t mean that the Church will never approve of guitars in the future, and this isn’t a teaching about the faith or about morality; for now it’s just an opinion on what is considered to be proper music during the Mass. I’m not sure what “proper” means; but for me, at least, I’m more effectively placed in a spiritual mood if things like organs are playing. Hearing guitars in church is a little strange and distracting, possibly because guitars are so prevalent in popular music, and definitely in the music that I listen to. It’s good to get away from all, I think, and have the traditional organ music. But it doesn’t have to be that way. Anyway, it’s just the Pope’s opinion, and if guitars do get banned or not, only time will tell. But the future Church will still be able to bring back guitars.
So, basically, this is just an issue about what kinds of music should be involved in our worship. It doesn’t mean that the Church isn’t involved in the “important battles over appropriate behavior”. It really is. But it also wants to advise the world’s Catholics on the appropriate form of worship. After all, Mass is, first and foremost, about giving thanks and praise to God, which is a key component of Christianity, aside from social justice.
Hope this was helpful.
I very much enjoy your physics posts, by the way. I’m learning lots about the kind of research being done in physics, and the latest happenings. 🙂
JFH: You said,
“you must decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong”
One question which logically follows is, “How do I know that what I have decided to be what is right and what is wrong is actually correct, objectively?” What goes into that decision?
Also, in what way should morality be helpful to society? How should morality serve society? Why?
Why do I want society to go on?
Thanks.
Ah, morality, that old chestnut again!
Vince, you don’t need an objective morality. In fact, objective morality is nonexistent if you treat all religions equally: All (or at least most) religions come with a morality thrown in, and they all tend to claim absolute truth. Logically, this is not possible, since these moralities tend to differ. So given that there is no objective morality (the atheist’s position) you have to find a morality that “works”. You can invoke the principles of evolution that govern societies for that, for example.
There seems to be a very strong tendency for believers (at least in the US) to assume that atheists are completely without morals. This is no doubt partly because of the old anti-communist propaganda. However, if you are honest and rational, you have to admit that there are other moral philosophies besides religion.
You don’t have to believe that reason is capable of defining the best way to act in each and every situation in order to deny the irrationality of right and wrong. It suffices that there are cogent arguments in favor of acting in certain ways. That doesn’t sound like much, but it actually covers most of the cases–it really isn’t rocket science to figure out what’s wrong with lying and murder, and one hardly needs God Almighty to make the point. Indeed, invoking God Almighty doesn’t ultimately help since we have to decide whether the Voice from the Burning Bush is steering us straight.
I agree that the morality of the Thou Shalts is indispensible. It entirely appropriate for children, who have to be dissuaded from running out into the street before they’re able to understand the rules and resist their own impulses.
The comment I made which, for some reason, got erased was just a link for more info (from a Catholic news agency) about the portion of Sean’s post about the Pope and his opinion on guitar music during Mass. I wanted to submit it only to help clarify things in the other links and in Sean’s post about it. Relax.
If you don’t want people to contribute more reliable information about something, don’t post about it. Here’s the link again. You DON’T have to click on it if you don’t want to.
http://zenit.org/english/visualizza.phtml?sid=91605
JFH, Jim Harrison, and PK,
You all seem to be advocating for an idea of morality without God. Â I have come to believe that the argument you are making — that there is a non-arbitrary way to order one’s actions without reference to any absolute moral principle — is impossible. Â C. S. Lewis made a pretty complete demonstration of this in The Abolition of Man. Â His argument there is made on principles, but more recently there has amassed some emprirical evidence as well, as post-modern attempts to ground ethics have failed. Â I can recommend an article I found helpful, written by Arthur Leff of Yale Law School, called Unspeakable Ethics, Unnatural Law (Duke Law Journal, Vol. 1979, No. 6, Symposium on Law and Ethics (Dec, 1979), pp. 1229-1249). Â Mine is just an amateur’s account; but I have been told that philosophers are increasingly resolute about the impossibility of morality without God, and in many cases they argue for a deity from the need for it (not the social benefit but what they are willing to take as the empirical fact that, say, the holocaust was evil no natter what any of us believes of it).
I am assuming that ethics is a subject of knowledge about which there is the possibility of knowing true things. Â With that in mind, I have a few criticisms for each of you.
To PFH:
Your idea of “having a few men millennia ago (and some translators and editors in between) doing it for you,” is wrong on every point. Â First off, your suggestion that the bible has been substantially altered by its passage through language and history is one of the most readily dismissable of misconceptions about it. Â The evidence that the text is accurate is overwhelming. Â More importantly, you ignore the crucial fact that the Christian reference point is God, not men of any age. Maybe you think that is stupid — after all, your argument must assume the reference to God to be false in order to refer the moral authority of Christianity to ancient men — but at least it is logically sound. Â The same cannot be said for your attempt to demonstrate your moral self-sufficiency by assuming the alternative to be false.
Finally, your assertion that you are better than ancient men is obviously unjustified. Ethics without absolutes always breaks down on this point: on what grounds do you believe your own judgment to be superior to that of anyone else? You merely state that your determination is better than those of ancient men; but you do not attempt to justify this. But never mind, because atheism cannot possibly give you any way of justifying it, because atheism makes no absolute moral distinctions, i.e. indications as to what might ever actually be better. Like you said, it’s up to you to decide. But how do you decide how to decide? And, in turn, how do you decide that? I think you have your feet, as they say, planted firmly, midair.
I think you are hitting on a good point, though. Christian ethics, like every other kind, does entrust to men and women — to individuals, for themselves — the working out of the good life. Atheistic ethics demands this and also demands that there can be no reason for trusting individuals. But Christianity is different in that it gives an ultimate and economical justification of this (as well as a deep explanation of much else) by way of the attributes of God and the salient facts of our creation. We are *meant* to have freedom, rather than it being an accident or an illusion. But it is freedom to be happy, which for us, as we actually know, is in the fulfillment of some purpose, not in the ability to do whatever we want. We are given, says theism, not mere agency but agency conditioned by a moral law which, though we do not fully understand it, bears upon us whether we like it or not. The point is, only a theist has any logical grounds for trusting even himself. The atheist must remain stuck with the mere adolescent assertion of absolute individualism.
You ask, “Do you think that as a non-religious person I have no reason to say thou shalt not kill?” Â If you an atheist, then I think exactly that. Â I am sure you do say it, but I doubt if you can give a reason for it that is compatible with atheism. To be precise, I don’t think you can understand the word “shalt” in that context, where it means “ought to”. Of course you understand it as a person, but only by being illogical as an atheist. If I am wrong, then show me how. Â I am not asking for your feelings on the subject of murder, as they are the same as mine: I know you don’t like the thought of lots of people killing each other. Â But what is the logical foundation of your acceptance of the moral injunction, that would justify your demanding that someone else must abide by it as well? If I were an atheist, why must I care whether people kill each other? Or, in general, tell me what “ought to” means for an atheist. I suggest that an atheist has two choices: either “ought to” refers to a feeling and therefore makes no moral demand, or it is a false and inane conceit, like saying my computer “ought to” do something. Either way misunderstands the commandment, and cannot by reason motivate one to obey it. You also say that religion may be “helpful”. What do you mean by this? I do not understand that word apart from some notion of what is, or can be, Good, with my own personal feelings and preferences notwithstanding.
One last point, at the risk of being presumptuous (and I do apologize if this is misguided advice). It is you who adheres to religious morality, not the other way around. I suspect that you, like me, got your ideas about morality from religion, even if it was indirectly through the religious formation of your society. If you want to be an atheist, then of course you would have the hard work of abandoning the religious ground on which your practical philosophy has come to rest. And it may not be possible to recover with atheism all of the palatable and robust features of the Christian philosophy, such as its condemnation of evil.
To Jim Harrison,
I appreciate your principle of valuing the truth or falsity of religion over the incidents of its practice by people. Sean’s post, for example, does not reflect the same value. But I doubt that your having “no doubts whatsoever that traditional religious ideas are literally false” is helping you to know the truth. It reads like a fundamentalist mantra, which is not usually a signal of knowledge and careful reasoning. I wonder if it is really true of you?
“You don’t have to believe that reason is capable of defining the best way to act in each and every situation in order to deny the irrationality of right and wrong.” Oops, I misread that sentence at first, but now I think I understand it. At first I thought you were saying that right and wrong are irrational, in which case your invocation of the wrongness of lying and murder would have been questionable. But I think you are saying that absolute right and wrong can exist in some way without our having to understand it fully and on our own terms. I agree with you fully on this, and in fact I think it is a crucial part of good ethics. It is central to Christian ethics, for example.
You say we don’t need God to figure out what is wrong with lying and murder — it’s not rocket science. You are right, it is not rocket science. But it is something. I would say that one only needs to be human to know *that* lying and murder are wrong, but knowing *why* takes a bit more. If you say you can know why without needing to refer to an absolute moral authority, then please make the demonstration.
“Indeed, invoking God Almighty doesn’t ultimately help since we have to decide whether the Voice from the Burning Bush is steering us straight.” You are right that we must decide for ourselves whether God exists and is good. But our finding on this matter does not determine the fact. Either God exists or God does not exist, regardless of what you and I think. The insufficiency of our conclusions does not imply, or even suggest, the insufficiency of God. So your argument makes no progress on showing that God’s existence and goodness is not actually necessitated by a belief in absolute morality, i.e. a moral law that does not respect all of our opinions.
To PK:
I think you are right that one cannot logically make a total synthesis of all religious moral claims. But so what? Why would we, as you hypothesize, treat all religions equally? Do you treat all other kinds of claims equally, and then therefore dismiss them all? If each of five paintings of Cosimo shows him looking differently, should I conclude that he looked like nothing? If John tells Bill that dinner is at 6:00 and Susan tells Bill that dinner is at 6:15, should Bill conclude that dinner is off? Should he overlook the near agreement of both statements in order to strain out the small inconsistency? But that is just what you are doing for objective morality. One can call that logic, but it is really a kind of logicism that obscures the truth. Your use of lesser inconsistencies of religious moralities while overlooking their greater uniformities is a blunder, seen all the more clearly when one remembers that the evidence you want to bring in is usually cited by theists, precisely because it strongly suggests the presence of some underlying truth to all the earnest attempts at representation. (See The Abolition of Man for a brief presentation of the evidence on religions.)
“You can invoke the principles of evolution that govern societies for that, for example.” Sure, you can. You could not, however, give any moral reason why this ought to be your choice, as versus another scheme. You might even evolutionary ethics were a good idea, unless you remembered that this has so far been used to justify oppression and ethnic cleansing. I mean, you are providing a perfect example of atheistic ethics, but it doesn’t help your case. Evolutionary ethics is famous only for its cruelty. Atheists like to criticize Christianity for its crimes without contemplating the far greater crimes of the atheistic regimes over the past century. Christians have had to apologize for the Inquisition, the Crusades, its often ruthless imperialism, as they have done. On the other hand, it is rarely praised as the impetus for the abolition of slavery in America, or for giving rise to the universities and to science, or for its countless acts of charity over the ages. (Do you wonder, for example, why hospitals have crosses on them?) But atheism have Nazism, Stalin, and China to apologize for, all while being recommended by what coordination of benefits to society? And note this well: the crimes of Christians have been departures from Christian ethics, while the crimes of atheism have been solidly and deliberately rooted in the philosophy and scripture of atheism. Far from providing a great recommendation for atheism, experience demonstrates its horrifying failure in ethics.
Last point:
I ask all of you: Does evil exist? Â You all know the feeling of evil, and you know it when you see it; why, then, would you deny the fact of evil? Â But if evil exists, it is only by reference to a true standard of good. Â And from where comes the standard?
In regards to “flag desecration” – I suspect that all those good religious folks in the Capitol would be a wee bit disconcerted at being accused of idolatry, eh? But that’s just what it is.
From a strictly philosophical point of view, atheism is not very interesting. Why get excited about the discovery that anvils don’t float? Since “God” doesn’t make the cut as a credible candidate explanation for anything, denying his existence is largely a waste of time. Besides, there is no consensus on what God might be so it’s never clear what there is to deny. It isn’t even possible to make sense of agnosticism since I have no idea what it is I’m supposed to doubt.
If God is somehow necessary to underpin an absolute morality, then so much the worse for absolute morality. As I wrote before, I think it is possible to make cogent arguments in favor of one rule of action over another. That’s not the same thing as maintaining that morality is 100% objective; but it is, as it were, good enough for government work. I don’t expect to be able to specify exactly and comprehensively what the proper and binding rules of behavior for all people at all times. Do you really think that there is an abolute moral rule, mandated by Yahweh, about whether the salad fork goes on the left or the right of the dinner fork? Most people who’ve thought about ethics have wanted to deny that the demand for objective right and wrong applies to small matters, but once you propose that right has an absolute standard, it’s actually quite hard to avoid being totalitarian about such things and not just in theory.
Hi Jim,
Thanks for your response. The answer to your question about salad forks is No. Do you “really” think I was talking about salad forks?
You’re right that ethics is hard in practice, but does that mean it must be groundless? You don’t have to give a complete statement of a system of moral law to say what you might take as the authority on which your own moral determinations can be said to have any worth. To understand right and wrong, even imperfectly, don’t we need some idea of what this authority might be? You can’t know all the answers, but you can investigate whether your own ideas are even coherent.
In fact, I very much doubt if the moral authority of God is much like a law at all, as we think of laws and systems of laws. I would tend to think that it is completely whole and indivisible into separate principles and finite statements; therefore that it gets damaged in the translation to our own understanding. But I also believe some truth gets through, and I am interested in that.
You’re right, anvils don’t float. In my opinion, that is worth knowing if you are dealing with anvils.
You’re wrong about God not making sense as an explanation.
Your point about people disagreeing about God is no help in determining whether God exists. Moreover, the fact that humans so uniformly have a desire for the divine may suggest that there is a thing which fulfills the desire, even if people have secondary differences in their speculations about the nature of this fulfillment. There also might be ways to find out fo oneself whether God exists, such as prayer.
Not every question is a moral question, and many situations seem to involve morality in very complex ways. You are right that it is hard, and again I think this is a crucial insight. There have always been legalists (such as those whom Jesus so consistently and energetically denounced), but to me it is too simple to therefore throw up one’s hands about evil entirely. I ask you again, was the holocaust evil or not?