Explaining evil, part 4

1. There's not much to say about Davis's contribution. He recycles cliche objections to Reformed "determinism". His objections do nothing to advance the argument. They don't interact with the burgeoning philosophical literature. 

2. As a freewill theist, he thinks moral evil originates in the libertarian freedom of the creature. But even if we grant such freedom for the sake of argument, I don't think that gets the job done.

For one thing, that only creates the potential to do wrong. But if human agents are truly free to choose between good and evil, what accounts for the universality of evil? If agents are free to either do the right thing or the wrong thing, then they are free to do the right thing all the time. So why aren't some free agents uniformly good? 

3. Moreover, the capacity to do evil doesn't make evil appealing. Why would a free agent wish to commit evil? What makes evil attractive?

Of course, some vices, like sexual promiscuity, are naturally enticing. But to play devil's advocate, how is it fair for us to have these natural urges, then be blamed when we succumb to temptation? Isn't that like entrapment? It's hard to take his position seriously. 

4. At one point he says:

What I'm talking about is our being aware that we could have decided to act on those different reasons under the same causes on one and the same occasion (43).

i) Are we in fact aware that we could have decided to act on those different reasons under the same causes on one and the same occasion? Does he think our ability to imagine hypothetical courses of action means we could just as well have taken a different fork in the road? One problem with that inference is that it's untested and untestable. We never step into the time machine, go back, and make a different choice.

ii) In addition, the ability to imagine hypothetical courses of action doesn't mean those are realistic. Indeed, many people have goals that turn out to be unattainable. There were so many variables they couldn't foresee. Variables beyond their control. So contemplating alternate courses of action can be deceptive. There are many twists and turns that shortsighted, simple-minded creatures like ourselves can't begin to anticipate or navigate. Like a chess game, we can only think a few moves deep (at best). 

iii) Finally, Calvinism doesn't deny possible worlds. In cases where your hypothetical is coherent, there is a possible world corresponding to that fork in the road. But that doesn't mean the human agent has the ability to open different doors (i.e. instantiate alternate possibilities). Rather, from a Reformed perspective, that is God's prerogative. 

Moving on to Michael Ruse:

This is why the death on the cross has nothing to do with this essential part of human nature…If our animal nature–our ferocity and nastiness–is now part of our biology, the death can no more effect than on the need of eating and drinking and sleeping (71).

i) That's theologically confused. The cross is about justification, not sanctification. It makes it possible for a just God to justly forgive wrongdoers. By itself, it's not meant to  make evil people good. That's the work of the Spirit, not the work of the Son–although the two are coordinated. 

ii) But his objection is germane to theistic evolution. If you think the source of human evil isn't sin but our savage, predatory animal ancestry, then that's a different paradigm, and the atonement isn't designed with that in mind. 

We are selfish genes all the way through. I don't buy insurance because I care about your well-being. I buy insurance because I care about my well-being…The tiger is coming after my pal and me. Should I warn him? If I do, it might take the focus off him and endanger me. 

[Quoting Kant] A man, for whom things are going well, sees that others whom he could help) have to struggle with great hardships, and he thinks to himself: What concern of mine is it? Let each one be as happy as heaven wills, or as he can make himself; I won't take anything from him or even envy him; but I have no desire to contribute to his welfare or help him in time of need (95).

That highlights a distinctive feature in Christian ethics: disinterested altruism. Helping the needy with no expectation that they can or will repay you. That stands in contrast to Ruse's calculating, Nietzschean nihilism–where it's all about what you get in return. 

The "naturalistic fallacy," illicitly linking natural facts with nonnatural facts…What we are doing here is strict science–explaining why we have moral sentiments. Saying these are adaptations…In themselves, they have no special status and could have been otherwise. Darwin spotted this:

If, for instance, to take an extreme case, men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would  think of interfering. The one course ought to have followed, and the other ought not; the one would have been right and the other wrong.

Morality is not writing off God-given eternal truths, but working with natural adaptations (96-97).

Sex with small children is, within the system, absolutely wrong (99).

The position I take agrees with Hume that you cannot cross the is/ought barrier and turn this into a solution. Substantive morality has no justification! It is, as I have said elsewhere, an illusion put in place by our genes to keep us good cooperators. Note, however, what is the illusion. It is not the existence of substantive ethics. It is, rather that it is objective….When I say, "Killing is wrong," it is an emotion but not just an emotion. It is an emotion onto which I project the sense (or illusion) of objectivity, because if I didn't it would break down (100).

I am arguing that Darwinian evolution has no fixed, absolute direction. We have evolved one way, to get our particular set of moral beliefs. We could have evolved another way, to have a different set of moral beliefs. Really, one is as good as another, so there is no reason to think that either corresponds to or found out the true objective morality. The thing about morality is that one system can work as well as another…consider what I have called…the John Foster Dulles system of morality. He hated the Russians. He thought he had a moral duty to hate the Russians. But he knew that they hated him in return. So everyone got on nicely. Why should not the real morality be this rather than the morality we have about liking or loving people? It is true that everyone  perhaps shares the same underlying rules of reciprocation, but, as Kant pointed out, these are not morality. 

I am breaking with the Christians and the secular moral realists–not with realism in the colloquial sense, because I think I am more realistic–and that is shocking. I think evil exists but is  nonreal is this sense that it has no objective referent…I think that philosophy leads to skepticism–about foundations. But psychology kicks in and that, I am glad to say, is enough (100-101).

My position–Darwinian turtles all the way down…I argue that it is an adaptive illusion because, if we didn't have it, we wouldn't function as well a social animals. This incidentally is all cause and effect (117).

Unlike many atheists, Ruse is honest enough to take naturalism to its logical conclusion. Here's an example of consistent atheism in all it's ruthless, vicious clarity. He strips off the padding of secular humanism, and shows us what's underneath. Like walking on broken glass in your bare feet. 

My position is that evil is all part of evolved human nature. No humans, no evil…If there were no humans ever, judging the moral status of the Holocaust doesn't make sense to me (148). 

What Heinrich Himmler did was wrong, even if there is no one left in the ghetto to watch him (117).

But by Ruse's godless logic, once the perps and victims are gone, there is no evil. No humans, no evil. If there's no one left in the ghetto to watch him and he takes the easy way out by committing suicide, that's it. Like it never happened, morally speaking. 

Indeed, by Ruse's godless logic, once an atrocity is forgotten, it ceases to be evil. There's no one to judge it.

And even that understates the barbed austerity of his position. Alive or dead, evil is just a projection. An adaptive illusion. 

We evolved to have certain moral instincts, but that's arbitrary, for if you rewound the evolutionary tape of life, erasing the contingencies, and start over, we might just as well evolve contrary moral instincts.