Blog #2: Naturalism and the death of morality
“The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference.”
-- Richard Dawkins, "God's Utility Function," published in Scientific American (November, 1995), p. 85
No good. No evil. The desperate cry of naturalism echoes forth into a chasm of moral despair. One of the main arguments for God’s existence from natural theology is termed the moral argument. It asks the question, can one; if one is a naturalist retain the ability to make moral judgements? What basis do we have for affirming an objective morality? Where do we get this idea of right and wrong, moral action and obligation? If at bottom we are the results of purely natural evolutionary processes, can we affirm objective morality? No. We cannot. Dawkins and many an atheist before him attest to this fact. In a purely naturalistic reality all we are left with is social Darwinism and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche’s nihilism, will to power. This topic has long been discussed, the foundations of morality, and indeed whether morality itself exists have long been debated amongst the most eloquent of philosophers. C.S.Lewis writes,
“My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust?” - Mere Christianity
If we are purely the product of natural processes, if we are just the products of Darwinian evolution, then our morality or sense of morality is just a by-product. We end up with moral relativism, we can neither affirm something as truly good or truly bad. Indeed over a period of time acts like rape, murder and genocide may have become socially and culturally taboo, but nevertheless they remain empty human inventions. Their only use is in prolonging survival. Who are we to say that those indigenous societies that drop their babies from hut roofs to test whether they should be allowed to live are wrong? Who are we to say that eating our enemies is worse than loving them? Echoing Professor William Lane Craig and Richard Taylor, a lion kills a zebra, but the lion doesn’t murder the zebra. Are we, out of all of creation the governors of what is right and wrong? To say so seems to me in agreement with Craig a kind of specie-ism. Affirming an objective morality, if one is an atheist, is purely an exercise in self-delusion, inconsistent with a naturalistic worldview, a wild fantasy of moral grandeur. (Sam Harris ‘Moral Landscape’ springs to mind) But do you seriously doubt the existence of morality? When faced with the holocaust can you hold up your hands and say Hitler wasn’t doing anything morally incorrect? I submit that I myself cannot make this statement. Craig formulates the argument as follows,
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists.
(Craig, Reasonable faith, pg172)
When we speak of objectivity we are saying that the objective something exists independently of what people think or perceive. Craig states,
“To say that we have objective moral duties is to say that certain actions are right or wrong for us independently of whether any human being believes them to be so.”
(Reasonable Faith pg173)
Now Let me clarify this argument is not saying that atheists are bad or that atheists are incapable of making accurate moral judgements. I believe they can. The question is whether they have grounds for believing morality to be objective. What we are looking at here is not a moral epistemology but a moral ontology. To reach the conclusion that a moral law requires a moral lawgiver we have to assess the naturalistic options available to us and understand where they go wrong. How then might the naturalist reply to premise one of the argument? They try to affirm objective morality apart from God’s existence. But why think that those morals we have are objective if they are just a product of evolutionary development. Indeed, if we rewound the evolutionary history of the earth and started again we may come to end up with a wholly different set of morals. Evolution selects what aids survival, it does not care about the truth value of a belief it only cares about survival value. Thus this objection leaves us with no ground for objective morality. It leaves us with moral relativism, which is the equivalent of no morality at all. A second objection that could be made is that of atheistic moral Platonism which affirms moral values exist but are not rooted in God. But what does it mean to affirm this proposition? Are we to believe that the moral property goodness exists in metaphysical ether? Craig makes it clear in his formulation of the argument that atheistic moral Platonism is incompatible with moral duty or obligation.
“On this view moral vices such as Greed, Hatred, and Selfishness also presumably exist as abstract objects. Why am I obligated to align my life with one set of these abstractly existing objects rather than any other?” (Reasonable Faith pg179)
It seems to me clear that to feel moral obligation under a moral law can only be the result of a moral lawgiver. A cosmic, transcendent ground for morality. The God hypothesis gives ample explanation of why, if objective moral values and duties exist, they should be attributed to him.
Why affirm that premise two is true? Because of our own moral experience. One finds it increasingly difficult to deny that genocide is not evil. That child rape is not bad. On atheism we are forced to conclude that we can make no moral judgements. But to say this seems self evidentially incorrect. If like me, you cannot ignore that nagging moral pressure, the existence of objective morality. The reality of the holocaust being a truly evil act, then it logically follows that God exists.
Peace and Grace
Tim
I would suggest reading Reasonable faith by William Lane Craig and Mere Christianity by C.S.Lewis as they put this argument much better than me.
No comments:
Post a Comment