Blinkered atheism

Daniel Morgan said:

“This question you've asked seems to ruminate around presuppositionalist circles, but few of the philosophers I know seem impressed with it.”

Daniel has not been paying attention to this thread, which began with my post on Sam Harris vis-à-vis the problem of evil, and continued with “George” before Daniel entered the fray.

I have not been judging secular ethics by the yardstick of Christian ethics. There’s nothing wrong with that tack, but that’s not the tack I’ve been using in this thread.

Rather, I’ve been judging secular ethics by its own yardstick. I’ve been citing secular schools of moral relativism. I’ve been quoting secular philosophers who embrace moral relativism.

Moreover, I haven’t been name-dropping. My argument hasn’t been that a famous atheist was a moral relativist. This is not a bare appeal to authority or atheistic opinion.

Rather, I’ve been quoting their arguments for moral relativism.

But, as usual, the details sail right over Mr. Morgan’s head.

“We have empathy. We understand pain, and we have an inbuilt aversion to it, and to causing it in others unnecessarily. “

Other issue aside, human beings also have a propensity for violence—for inflicting pain.

So which “inbuilt” impulse should we indulge? Sadism or altruism?

“Survival is not value-neutral.”

Yes, that’s why a secularist who’s not a moral relativist must be able to justify the value of individual and/or collective survival.

“Steve wants justification for why we should want to survive. Why we ‘ought’ to. This sort of thing makes me roll my eyes.”

Why should this make his eyes roll? Secular humanism claims to be intellectually superior to the Christian faith. So, yes, we expect you to make good on your claims.

Some unbelievers admit to moral relativism, but if you’re an atheist who subscribes to objective moral norms, then you have your own burden of proof to discharge.

Secular ethicists understand this. They are not rolling their eyes at the need for philosophical justification.

It’s only the village atheist like Danny who acts as if this were an unreasonable demand.

“Especially when he admits that egoism is found in Xianity as well -- that Christians don't just obey God because they are interested in what God wants, but because of what may happen to them otherwise, etc. Rational self-interest is enough for me. How hard is it?”

This fails in several respects:

i) As needy, contingent creatures, we depend on God for both our being and our wellbeing.

So, yes, there’s an element of self-interest in Christian ethics. But unlike Danny’s ad hoc position, this has a principled basis in Christian anthropology.

ii) By the same token, Christian self-interest is the opposite of personal autonomy. Rather, it’s predicated on our creaturely finitude.

iii) There are also occasions when a Christian is obligated to sacrifice his immediate self-interest for the welfare of others.

Self-interest is not the only value. For we must take into account the self-interest of our fellow man.

This also has a principled basis in the Christian anthropology, unlike Danny’s ad hoc altruism.

iv) There is no tension between what God wants for the Christian and enlightened Christian self-interest.

v) There’s nothing hard about Danny’s appeal to self-interest. But raw self-interest is not a prescription for objective moral norms. And it’s often at odds with altruism.

“As hard as it is for you to accept, it's quite that simple for me.”

Yes, “simple” is the operative word—as in simplistic.

“Perhaps my answer is not intellectually rigorous enough to satisfy you, but that's fine.”

i) As usual, he dodges the issue. This is a question internal to secular ethics. It isn’t just Christian ethicists who think that secular ethicists have a problem. Rather, this is a much-vexed question in secularism itself.

ii) I’d add that if Danny is going to take the lazy way out, then he forever forfeits the right to raise the problem of evil against Christian theism.

“I don't seem to need to go through a treatise to know why I won't and don't cheat on my wife, or hurt her.”

Thus saith the village atheist.

Bertrand Russell, for one, didn’t suffer from Danny’s quaint old scruples about womanizing.

“I don't seem to need a deep philosophical reason to spoil my Saint Bernards, and enjoy their kisses.”

Of course, this is a trivial example. But the larger point is that Danny, having lost the argument, is making a virtue of anti-intellectualism.

“Humans are like many other social animals, stabilized by their societies, and they learn from behaviors what is ‘good’ within the context of that society, or that relationship, depending on what they want from it, and what it will cost them.”

Yes, and what’s “good” for a member of the Hitler Youth is defined by his social conditioning as well.

“I don't think any of you really see it as much more complex than that in your own life, you just add on...’plus, God commands it’. I mean, if I could somehow, in some way convince you that Jesus never walked the earth...would you abandon your children? Would you stop loving them? Would you start beating your wife, and being unfaithful to her?”

A couple of problems with this hypothetical:

i) There is often a lingering influence of Christian morality on the apostate.

Indeed, one of Danny’s intellectual impediments is that he, along with many other apostates, continues to bask in the afterglow of the Christian tradition he left behind.

They’ve led a charmed existence, and so they’ve been spared the dire consequences of a truly secular outlook.

ii) An unbeliever will maintain the status quo as long as he’s happy with the status quo.

But what happens when he becomes bored with his wife, and leaves her for a younger, sexier woman, and deserts his kids to shack up with his new girlfriend?

“It's like you need to believe that people and their pain aren't enough, aren't valuable enough, to build a moral philosophy around. Why? It's quite enough for me. It's quite enough for many others. Arbitrary? No more so than your God's supposed decision that ‘shrimp is an abomination’ and so are rabbits, and that it's "okay" to kill the infants of enemies (1 Sam 15:3, Num 31:17).”

i) The kosher laws never were moral absolutes. That’s why, in the NT, Gentile converts to the Christian faith are not bound to keep kosher.

ii) Does Danny disapprove of infanticide? What about abortion?

iii) Danny doesn’t bother to interact with the stated rationale for holy war in the OT.

iv) Children are killed whenever we wage war—whether it's conventional warfare or holy warfare. Tragic, but inevitable in a fallen world.

v) And since Danny has abandoned any pretense of defending secular ethics by rigorous argumentation, he has sawed off the very perch from which he could render a value-judgment regarding OT holy war.

“Sorry, but your supposed ‘base’ is a tenuous one -- what you believe that God spoke to people, who wrote it down, who copied it untold times and revised it untold more...”

Which disregards the supporting arguments for what we believe.

“My ‘base’ is what I know and experience. The tears of children invoke a biological sympathy from me. It isn't something I have to intellectually justify.”

i) Consider all those movie scenarios in which the protagonist has been conditioned to be an assassin. Say his mission is to assassinate the child of a military dictator.

The sight of the child evokes antipathy in the assassin.

Because his conditioning is subliminal, he’s unaware of his conditioning.

But due to some accident, he discovers that he’s been brainwashed.

The sight of the child still evokes antipathy in the would-be assassin, but now that he’s conscious of his conditioning, he’s in a position to override his conditioning.

Should he follow his feelings and pull the trigger, or should he rebel against his psychological conditioning?

ii) And notice, once again, how Danny fails to prioritize the frequent tension between altruism and self-interest.

When the Titanic hits the iceberg, should the father sacrifice his personal welfare by putting his wife and kids on the lifeboat while staying behind?

Or should he sacrifice his wife and kids?

If there’s not enough room for everyone, who gets the heave-ho?

After all, he can always marry again and sire a new batch of kids. Wives and kids are a dime a dozen. They’re expendable and easily replaceable, but there’s only one of him.

Or which of his kids does he throw to the sharks?

“Those persons with whom empathy finds no root we call ‘sociopaths’ and ‘psychopaths’, and we tend to treat them according to a different legal standard than normal persons.”

Why should the law treat them any differently if Danny has resigned the intellectual responsibility of rationally warranting his ethical intuitions?

“Secular humanism, the values of the Enlightenment, teachings of philosophy, all of these come together to form a coherent and cogent ‘basis’ for ethics.”

They do nothing of the kind. This is a monumentally ignorant statement. There are many competing versions of secular ethics, including many variations on moral relativism.

“Our politics and civil law depend on the same sort of secular justification that you can read in Plato or Aristotle. Is it really so hard as you theists want to make it?”

It’s pretty hard when you consider how few contemporary secular ethicists are either Aristotelians or Platonists. That’s just for starters.

“This canard is wearing thin.”

No, what is wearing thin is Danny’s paper-thin morality, which is full of holes from cigarette burns caused by contact with the pitiless flame of atheism.

It is only a canard if, like Danny, you live in a fool’s paradise by freeloading on the borrowed capital of a Christian heritage while remaining illiterate to the raging debates within secular ethics.

“Other people, and their pain, are the basis for my ethics. I can't speak for all atheists.“

That’s true. For another atheist like the Marquis de Sade, other people and their pain was the basis of his ethics as well.

Danny’s basic problem is pretty straightforward: having turned his back on the Christian faith, he’s crossed the line of no return—at least in his own mind.

So he has no pressing incentive for find fault with secular humanism. If he can’t go back, then he’s stuck with his atheism.

Even though he’s dealt himself a losing hand, the only cards he has are a pair of Pyrrhic deuces. He has no other deck from which to draw his cards.

So he plays his miserable hand and makes his miserable excuses. And he can get away with it in this life because he lives in a nominally Christian country like the US rather than a militantly atheistic country like N. Korea where we see the payoff when you gamble with atheism and lose.