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Merry Christ-miss from the American Humanist Association
by Doug PowellDecember 17th, 2008
101 Comments
[Doug Powell is a guest author and apologist. His website can be found at www.dougpowell.com]
Just in time for the 2008 Christmas season, the American Humanist Association launched a new ad campaign with the message “Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness’ sake.” The ads feature a Christmas motif with their snowflakes and green and red lettering, and some even picture a guy in a Santa suit. But the campaign slogan reveals a confusion about the nature of morality.
According to Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the American Humanist Association, “Humanists have always understood that you don’t need a god to be good. Morality doesn’t come from religion. It’s a set of values embraced by individuals and society based on empathy, fairness, and experience.” The interesting thing about this statement is that Speckhardt characterizes empathy and fairness as good, but he doesn’t say why these things are good. And that is the real question: What makes good things good? What grounds morality?
There are only two possible sources for morality: God or human beings. If, as the American Humanist Association claims, morality is grounded in human beings and their experience, then some very serious problems arise. The first problem is that it justifies societies that are clearly morally wrong, such as Nazi Germany. If morality is “a set of values embraced by society based on empathy, fairness, and experience,” then Nazi Germany did nothing wrong. Being empathetic does not mean doing good to someone, only understanding their feelings. And the Nazis were fair – all Jews were sent to concentration camps. The morality of their society cannot be condemned by our society since their society simply embraced values that differ from ours.
This leads to the second problem, that morality can change or be something different than what it is. Thus, the grounds for morality become arbitrary and therefore loose their force. What is morally acceptable now may not be later. Or what is okay here may not be okay somewhere else. This system of morality is based on the will of the majority – might makes right.
And that leads to the third problem, that there can be no moral reform if morality is based on human beings. If morality is made of values embraced by society, as the American Humanist Association says, then to stand against those values is, by definition, immoral. This leaves no room for people like William Wilberforce, Gandhi, Mother Teresa, or Martin Luther King, Jr. to better society. In fact, they would be the most immoral people in the society. And this, of course, is wildly counter-intuitive.
So the relativistic approach to morality held by the American Humanist Association fails to account for morality. To be good for goodness’ sake is completely arbitrary on their view. To be clear, I am not saying that atheists cannot do good things. I have been blessed through the good works of many atheist friends. But they cannot answer the question asked earlier: What makes good things good? What must exist in order for morality to exist?
The first thing that has to be taken into account is that morality does not describe actions, it prescribes them. Moral laws say what ought to be, not necessarily what is. The Humanist position says morality is based on empathy and fairness, but it does not and cannot say why we ought to act on those things. The ought-ness we see in moral laws are commands that oblige us, they are commandments. And commandments have authority over our actions. Morality is also universal; it applies to all people in all places at all times. This means morality is objective, not relative. The existence of morality does not depend on our existence.
Prescriptions and commands are forms of communication, and communication happens only between minds. Also, because morals deal with purpose and will, the source of morality must also have purpose and a will. Because morals are universal and transcend individuals, societies, and time, the source must be universal and transcendent. Since morals are authoritative they must come from an authority, and authority can only be held by a person. Finally, this person must have the power to impose his moral will on us and provide us with an ability to know their moral will through intuition. Thus, morals come from a transcendent person who has the power and authority to impose a moral law on us. And we call this person God. Morality is a reflection an outworking of God’s character. It is not arbitrary and does not have an existence independent of God.
The slogan of the American Humanist Association ads means to convey that believing in God is nonsense, while being good for goodness’ sake makes perfect sense. Interestingly, they got it backwards. It is belief in God that is sensible, and being good for goodness sake that is arbitrary and meaningless.
Similar Posts:
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- Morality and Naturalism’s Counterintuitive Claims: Response to Dawkins, Part V
- The Moral Indignation of Richard Dawkins
- Yahweh Wars and the Canaanites: Divinely-Mandated Genocide or Corporate Capital Punishment? Response to Critics
- Is the New Atheism Really Affecting People’s Belief in God?
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101 Comments
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No God, no good and no evil. No God, why be good.
Better to steal, kill and rape and enjoy all the senses have to offer for at death, nothingness.
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Doug has seemingly not read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, or Aquinas’s Summa Theologica. First he needs to distinguish the order of being from the order of knowing. That way, he won’t create false dilemmas like “There are only two possible sources for morality: God or human beings”. It is a false dilemma because the term ‘source’ is ambiguous with respect to the order of being or the order of knowing. Second, he needs to see that there is more than one way for morality to have a grounding in human beings than merely in arbitrary human volition. His voluntarism is a presupposition that itself needs to be substantiated. Voluntarism is what sets up his ‘problems’ with not basing morality [in the order of knowing] in God. Aristotelian ethics, for example, doesn’t face the three problems Doug presents. Being a voluntarist is not the only way to think about ethics. Nor is it the correct way to think about ethics. But the huge problem here is failing to distinguish the order of being from the order of knowing. (We can find this distinction, for example, in the opening paragraphs of Aristotle’s Physics.) Ultimately we can’t have morality without God. But ultimately, we can’t have anything without God, for all that is has its being from Him. But we can know many things (including morality), and have a proximate grounding for their truth, without explicitly basing them on God or special revelation. We can know justice, for example, and the goodness of treating persons with respect. We do know this already, through natural law. We know it through our natural power of human reason, and this is why we are culpable when we violate it, because we already know it. But it is not something that God frontloads into us, the way a computer comes with software already preloaded. Rather, we derive it by a natural habit of reason from the very natures of things, and from a foundational apprehension of goodness by reason, such that we know fundamentally that good is to be done and evil avoided. The way to respond to the Humanists is not to turn to divine command theory, but to show the problems with their *philosophy*, particularly in the order of being, not the order of knowing.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Perhaps you are creating a false dilemma between Divine Revelation through “divine command theory” via Scripture and Natural Revelation/Law in terms of formulating a response to secular humanists.
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I almost didn’t read this post because it is the same, tired apologist’s argument on relativity but come on, Doug, even Lewis managed a False TRIlemma!
Besides if the only thing holding you back from raping your niece is that God said ought not do it, than your character is in serious question. Fortunately I assume that you are mapping the morality your learned and deduced with your lovely little brain onto God.
Speaking of C. S. Lewis, I have always tried to but my finger on where the Nazi Germany argument fails. I think it is the idea that those holding conflicting views of morality must acquiesce to each others’ positions because there is no “ultimate” arbiter of the dispute. In other areas of intellectual life, say economic policy, human beings disagree and vociferously so. Just because my opponent has come to a heinous conclusion, i.e. that amassing wealth in the top 1% of the population is good for everybody, doesn’t mean that I will stop opposing him or even viewing him as motivated by greed or some other negative trait of Human Nature (I will defend my view on the merits of greed, too)
Since no God ever seems to descend and knock heads together to straighten out these contretemps, we get the situation we would expect sans God, one in which people and societies disagree and oppose each other on so-called moral grounds.
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So, you are defending relativism and telling me I’m objectively wrong at the same time? Thanks for helping make my point! Merry Christmas, Scott!
dp
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Doug does not seem to take into account Genesis chapter 3, where God offers the knowledge of right and wrong to man. When Adam took it, he acquired the sense of morality as God has (Gen. 3:22). So now our sense of morality, originally given by God, is inborn naturally. God can refine it for us, but humans can certainly base their moral conduct on this natural sense.
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Rayner, you miss my point. The question is: What is the necessary precondition for the sense of morality we all have? I’m not denying or ignoring it Gen 3 at all. In fact, your comment speaks more to my point than your criticism since it answers that very question.
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Thank you, Doug. Then do you agree that humans can base morality on their inborn sense? It doesn’t seem to matter whether people believe that that sense comes from God or not—it’s the same idea of right and wrong. I see, therefore, no real conflict with humanists on this point.
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Rayner, I think you’ve missed my point again. Humans cannot BASE morality on their in-born sense, only apprehend it. Our moral sense SENSES an objective moral standard. So again, the question is, What is the necessary precondition for the existence of the standard our senses apprehend?
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But people do base morality on their inborn sense. How can you say that they cannot do it?
I see Genesis 3:22 as more than just apprehending that there is such a thing as morality because God says ‘man has become like us knowing good and evil.’ Furthermore, even those who believe that God must be the basis of morality, do not always agree on what that morality is. We are still thrown back on our inborn judgment.
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Rayner, the verse you quoted does not ascribe to man the ability to base morality, only to KNOW it. Moral standards are external from man and man has the ability to know (apprehend) them. And the fact that people do not always agree on what morality is makes my point, not yours. If God gave man the ability to base morality then there should be NO disagreements unless God did a very poor job or gave each man a different morality. However, the biblical passage you keep pointing to does not say God gave man that ability, as was point out above. It does say that man is fallen, and that fallen state effects every part of the person. This includes the mind. As people whose minds are clouded by sin we should expect to see disagreements about morality. These disagreements don’t indicate an absence of a transcendent objective standard, only our fallen state. The last thing fallen man needs is to be thrown back on our inborn judgment (as you say); what man needs is salvation from it.
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Knowledge of morality would imply definitely that there are true statements about morality and that would be the way to begin the argument. Morality needs to be treated as a truth claim and as a truth claim it is either true or false. Consider this statement:
Rape is evil.
Now that statement as I see it is, if it’s a truth claim, either true or false. If there is no such thing as morality though, then it’s not really a truth claim. It’s simply meaningless. Someone can just ask “What do you mean by ‘moral’?” “What do you mean by ‘good’?”
To start with Aquinas, it would be to say that being is good. Insofar as a thing is, it is good. Rape is not good because it goes against the nature of being. It violates the sexuality of a human being which is something divine. (No. I’m not meaning anything pantheistic by that either.) It treats a person as an object rather than as a person and thus denies their being.
For Aristotle, there is no denial that there is such a thing as good, especially since Plato emphasized the form of the good so much. While Aristotle saw several problems with Plato’s teaching, he never outright denied that there is some truth to the idea of the forms.
Now our skeptic says “God is the only thing keeping you from raping your niece?” Well, if moral relativism is true, there is no moral difference between raping her for Christmas and giving her a new doll for Christmas. There are different results, of course, but you cannot say these results are better or worse than another. They are simply results.
Also, divine command is not the only system. If Doug does hold to voluntarism, which I do not see, he is welcome to defend it. I won’t. I instead believe that there is such a thing as goodness and that is that which is desirable for its own sake and this finds its ultimate expression in God who then is goodness itself.
The atheist will still have to give his basis for truth and if I am correct that this is a truth claim, then to deny such would be to deny truth itself. Truth is just as eternal as morality is, when properly understood. I am sitting as I type this, for instance. If I stand up, that does not go against the eternality of truth for it will be true for all people in all times in all places that when I wrote “I am sitting” which is tied to a certain time, that I certainly was sitting.
My approach is that we either assert there is such a thing as moral truth claims that are meaningful and then moral relativism is refuted, or else we say that all moral claims are meaningless and consider if we really live in such a world and realize how much it goes against our basic nature.
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Doug,
Replace ‘morality’ with “principles for good farming” and look at your three problems.
If principles for good farming are grounded in the natures of plants and animals and the environment, then the first problem is that it justifies farmers who are clearly not following these principles (and getting low yields, or going bankrupt). The second problem is that the principles of good farming can change or be something entirely different than they are. For example, presently it is a principle of good farming to farm in a sustainable manner, but if the principles of good farming are grounded in the natures of plants and animals and the environment, then perhaps in the future it will not be good to farm in a sustainable manner. Thirdly, if the principles for good farming are grounded in the natures of plants and animals and the environment, then there can be no improvements in farming. Agriculture innovators would ipso facto be violators of the principles of farming.
Obviously, these three ‘problems’ are pseudo-problems. The person who claims that they are problems does not understand the relationship between the natures of things and the principles of good farming. Now, replace ‘morality’ with “principles for good living”, and it is clear that these three ‘problems’ are pseudo-problems, for the very same reason.
You shouldn’t assume that Humanism entails moral relativism, just as you shouldn’t assume that Humanism entails mathematical relativism, or agricultural relativism. If someone is talking about “goodness”, then to accuse him or her of moral relativism is to attack a straw man, unless he or she explicitly endorses moral relativism. Assuming that Humanism entails moral relativism plays right into their hands, because it shows that you are a voluntarist about morality, not understanding the *proximate* grounding of morals in the natures of things, just as our imaginary objector doesn’t understand the proximate grounding of the principles of good farming in the natures of plants, animals, and the environment. Our imaginary objector presumably thinks farmers need to ground the principles of good farming in God, in order to avoid the three problems that you raise. And we all laugh at such an imaginary objector. But, for the same reasons, the Humanists (rightly) laugh at your description of the pseudo-problems of their position. There are atheists and agnostics in my department (Philosophy), and they would laugh at your pseudo-problems. It indicates more about what you don’t know about morality than it does about their position.
Anyone who ridicules being good for goodness sake doesn’t understand the intrinsic worth of good acts, virtue, or integrity. Plato spends the whole Republic defending this very thesis. So by claiming that being good for goodness stake is “arbitrary and meaningless”, you’ve just rejected Plato and Aristotle, without even considering their arguments. That doesn’t seem like “reclaiming the mind”; it seems more like fundamentalism.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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I see a difference though in that good farming refers to physical effects as well as is essentially being that which produces the best crop. Good action though is simply action which is done for the sake of being good. There is a condemnation in Scripture of doing evil that good may result meaning we can’t be only ends-oriented. Ends will always play some part, but not the only part.
I do believe that humanism does entail moral relativism as goodness is not a physical property of the universe. Actions are simply actions and the only way to speak of something being good is if there is some sort of idea of goodness, a form of the good as it were, although Aristotle and Plato would see this form in different ways and Aristotle and Aquinas would say goodness is being.
If we are to ground morality in man, then we can simply say “Which man?” If we are to ground it in results, then we can say “Why should I think X results are good?” They might be desirable, and while there is a goodness to all that is desired, it does not mean it is good for its own sake. Pleasure is good, but that does not mean it is the highest good. It also does not mean all that brings about pleasure, like some would say adultery does, is good.
If we ground it in God and in being itself then and have God as the ultimate desire of mankind, as Augustine would have us do, then what is good is that which reflects the nature of God himself.
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Nick,
There is a condemnation in Scripture of doing evil that good may result meaning we can’t be only ends-oriented.
Doing evil that good may result is itself contrary to our nature and end; that’s precisely why it is not good for us to do it.
I do believe that humanism does entail moral relativism as goodness is not a physical property of the universe.
Feel free to write out that syllogism. If you do so, be sure not to confuse humanism with scientism.
If we are to ground morality in man, then we can simply say “Which man?”
That’s like saying, “If we are to ground the principles of good farming of wheat in the nature of wheat, then we can simply say, “Which wheat plant?” Or “If we are to ground medicine in the nature of man, then we can simply say, “Which man?” The question [mistakenly] assumes the truth of nominalism or some kind of skepticism viz-a-viz philosophical realism. There would have to be a unique anatomy book written for each individual human being, and a unique biochemistry book for each individual human being, and so on. I agree with your criticisms of hedonism, but Plato and Aristotle likewise condemned hedonism, as something incompatible with our nature and end. And I agree with your criticism of consequentialism, but again, so did Plato and Aristotle and Aquinas. The point is that the Humanist is not necessarily strapped with consequentialism or hedonism, let alone moral relativism.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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As for evil that good may result, it is contrary to our nature indeed, but we may as well ask if that is really our nature in humanism. What is the nature of a man in humanism? Of course, I am speaking of the atheistic humanism. I know of no other origin in such a humanism for mankind than evolution which would mean that man is simply a highly complex entity that’s the result of chance in a universe that knew nothing of his coming or cares nothing of his being here.
As for goodness not being a physical reality, I would say we can start with the idea that something is good if it is desirable. Aquinas even says this is the essence of goodness. While there are many things we desire, they ultimately for the Christian end in God and God is a non-physical reality. Thus, goodness at its root I take to be a non-physical reality.
As for the idea of wheat, I do see a belief that all plants of a certain kind called wheat do share some of the same predicates, just as I believe that there are some essential predicates all men must possess in order to be considered men. If the humanist agrees that all men must possess the same predicates, then he must tell me what those predicates are exactly. What is it that is essential to my humanness that I possess?
If he can’t, then I see the potentiality of simply setting up certain ideas by those in power of what constitutes as a human and what doesn’t and being able to eliminate all that don’t fit that criteria. (Don’t need to imagine it really. It’s already happening with the abortion movement.)
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Nick,
What is the nature of a man in humanism?
Notice that you are not refuting the Humanist’s position, but asking questions. That’s fine, but Doug’s post was stronger than just asking questions of the Humanist.
The nature of man is what it is, whether one is a Humanist or not. What makes a wheat plant flourish does not depend on whether it came about through an evolutionary process, or was created ex nihilo. It depends on its present nature. The wheat farmer can know from the nature of wheat what is good for wheat without knowing its phylogenetic origin. And the same is true of human beings. We can apprehend what makes humans flourish (and what destroys us), without knowing our phylogenetic origin. The atheist as such cannot adequately explain the ultimate ground for teleology, but that doesn’t mean that he or she must deny teleology. Nor does biological evolution entail ateleology, for the same reason that biological evolution does not entail atheism. What may seem like chance at the level of secondary causes is not necessarily chance at the level of primary causes. That’s why theistic evolution is not a logical contradiction. Scientism is false, and a Humanist need not (and should not!) embrace scientism. That’s why Humanism does not entail moral relativism.
If the humanist agrees that all men must possess the same predicates, then he must tell me what those predicates are exactly. What is it that is essential to my humanness that I possess? If he can’t, then I see the potentiality of simply setting up certain ideas by those in power of what constitutes as a human and what doesn’t and being able to eliminate all that don’t fit that criteria.
Why “must” the Humanist tell you anything? Do you demand that the wheat farmer tell you what all wheat plants have in common? I’m not sure how you justify demanding that Humanists tell you things.
If we couldn’t know what human nature is, then yes, de facto, might would ‘make right’. But we can and do know human nature to greater and lesser degrees, even when we can’t articulate in words what it is. This is precisely how we are able to know justice from injustice, even when no one has explained to us that justice is giving to each his due. This is how we know the Golden Rule, and the rest of natural law. This is how we know that persons should be treated with respect; we know something about the nature of persons. This is also how we know what freedom is, and why freedom (with various qualifications) is rightly recognized as a human right. The false philosophy that leads many people astray is scientism, which is a form of [philosophical] skepticism. That false philosophy ends up [by its methodology] denying natures, teleology, goodness, meaning, etc. And probably some significant portion of Humanists is at least sympathetic to scientism, because it is a default position (intellectually) in our time. But I think that Humanists are trying to affirm and preserve goodness and virtue, without appealing to God. So to the degree that they [by default] affirm scientism, there is a deep tension within their position between all that makes us fully human (in the sense of what used to be discussed in Humanities Departments), and the epistemic limitations concerning what we can know about ourselves given the methods of modern science. That’s the better point at which to criticize Humanism; if you get them talking about Plato and Aristotle, you’re much closer to agreement. As for me, I would take St. Paul’s approach at Athens: “This goodness that you speak of, let us tell you what it really is, and why.” Affirm the common ground, and build on it; don’t attack a straw man.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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I am surprised that this is so much disagreement with Doug’s proposition. He is talking about the philosophical grounding for morality. This is much different than farming which is based on a set end or purpose which has a naturalistic result which cannot be relativized due to its purpose.
Morality, on the other hand, as Doug has said, can be relativized in the humanistic worldview precisely because it has no stable/static grounding or set end. God’s nature provides this stablility. Without it, there is no ultimate justification for the philosophical belief that murder, beastiality, incest, hatred, adultury, etc. it wrong. Just look to the animal kingdom for evidence.
The reason why humans are different is not because we live, for some reason, according to some arbitrary morality standards different than the rest of creation, but because we are created in God’s image and we have a moral compass different from that of the rest. Take God away from the equation and you have no obligation to live differently than the animals. In other words, there is no stable epistemic justification for morality without God.
He is not saying, I believe, that without a belief in God there is no morality. For whether one believes in God or not, they live as if there is one, believing that there is a stability in right or wrong, truth and error, righteousness and evil. This is the presuppositional argument at its best.
However, humanism (atheistic), as history has shown, does not provide a sufficient philosophical basis for believing in such. Without this basis, people can justify anything—even the holocaust.
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Michael,
Morality, on the other hand, as Doug has said, can be relativized in the humanistic worldview precisely because it has no stable/static grounding or set end.
You seem to be assuming that a Humanist must be a nominalist. But I know atheists (personally) who are philosophical realists, either of the Platonic or Aristotelian sort. They hold that human nature is no more capable of change than is 2+2=4. So, do you have an argument for your assumption?
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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My point is that there is no epistemic justification for holding to a stable morality with such a worldview. Of course, this is my opinion. Obviously, atheists will make a case for such. But this is precisely the point of the article. No valid case can be made for stability without transcendence.
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Michael,
You seem to be loading nominalism into the concept of atheism, and then claiming that since nothing is stable in atheism, therefore there can’t be a stable basis for morality in an atheistic worldview. But that just begs the question, assuming precisely what is question. There are atheists who are Platonists. (Your conceptual framework seems to be unable to acknowledge that possibility.) And Platonic Forms are eternal and unchanging — so are Aristotelian forms. I have never met an atheist who thinks that 1+1 might some day equal 3. They all believe that mathematical truths are eternal and unchanging. Likewise, most educated atheists are not moral relativists. They believe in unchanging objective moral standards. They believe that rape and torture and child labor and female genital mutilation, etc. are always and everywhere wrong, in every possible world, and that societies that come to discover that such behavior is wrong have discovered moral truths, and moved toward enlightenment. And they ground these unchanging moral truths in [the unchanging nature of] sentience or rationality or personhood. So if we are to avoid attacking straw men, we can’t just stipulatively define atheism as essentially nominalistic.
The better approach, I think, is to show how theism is the best explanation of eternal truths, as St. Augustine does in ‘placing them’, so to speak, in the mind of God.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Brian, 1+1 is an analytic truth. It is not comparable in my opinion. That is the point. Same thing with farming. The basis is in its self. Morality cannot be such.
“And Platonic Forms are eternal and unchanging.” This simply begs the questions of transcendence. If an atheist wants to argue for such, they are really pantheists of some sort. In this case, the point is still the same.
Hope that makes sense. The humanism that he is arguing against is true atheistic humanism, not a modified impersonal theism where the greatest conceivable being or beings exist in platonic forms. Once that argument is made, the discussion has moved toward a “What does your God look like” (i.e. what is your form to transcendence).
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Notice from their website: “We can have ethics and values based on our built-in drives toward a moral life.” This is a subjective argument from immanence which is not ever stable by definition. If we change, evolve, discover that bestiality is beneficial, learn that there is a greater good due to the satisfaction of rape, find that having same-sex relationships is satisfying, so be it. There cannot possibly be an argument for stability with such a philosophy, only conventional norms.
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Michael,
You are using this “transcendence vs. imminence” paradigm, and pigeon-holing everything into one of those two categories. According to this paradigm, if something is transcendent, then, by definition it must be God. If something is imminent, then by definition it must be unstable and capable of change. But truth isn’t determined by stipulating paradigms, and shoving things into our paradigm’s categories, or doing ontology by definition.
Notice from their website: “We can have ethics and values based on our built-in drives toward a moral life.” This is a subjective argument from immanence which is not ever stable by definition.
It is not an argument, but a statement. You seem to be assuming that human nature can become something other than human nature. But why should anyone believe that? A tree can become a pile of ashes. But treeness cannot become something other than treeness. How could it? How could treeness become rockness? It couldn’t anymore than twoness could become threeness. This is why, for Plato and Aristotle, the forms themselves cannot change.
If we change, evolve, discover that bestiality is beneficial, learn that there is a greater good due to the satisfaction of rape, find that having same-sex relationships is satisfying, so be it.
You seem to think that the basis for the immorality of bestiality, rape, and homosexuality is a stipulated divine command. But bestiality and homosexuality are contrary to our nature as animals. By our nature we are fundamentally inclined sexually to the opposite sex (of our own species) for the purpose of reproduction. And rape is contrary to the personhood of the woman, since she has not *freely* given herself sexually to this man. So in all three cases, the act is contrary to our nature. And no matter how we changed biologically, so long as we remained rational animals, those actions would remain contrary to our nature.
If, (contrary to possibility), these actions *could* become truly fulfilling of our nature, then why would God prohibit them? He would have no reason to do so, apart from withholding from us something that truly fulfilled our nature and made us truly happy.
There cannot possibly be an argument for stability with such a philosophy, only conventional norms.
It seems to me that you are just asserting this. But assertions don’t prove anything. The Humanist could just assert the contrary to what you assert, and nobody would be any closer to the truth, or to agreement. But the fact is that Plato and Aristotle both give good reasons to believe that forms cannot change. If forms could change, then there is no non-arbitrary reason to believe that God cannot change. You can pound the table and say, “God’s nature is immutable”, but that’s exactly what Plato and Aristotle claimed about the forms. So if you can insist that forms are mutable, then the atheist can likewise insist that God is mutable, and stick you with the tu quoque.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Bryan,
Thanks for the comments.
“According to this paradigm, if something is transcendent, then, by definition it must be God. If something is imminent, then by definition it must be unstable and capable of change.”
Exactly, that is my presupposition (however, I would put it as “a definition of transcendence, not ‘God’”). Your presupposition is that this is false. And here is the foundation point where we would have to part ways if you don’t agree.
“You seem to think that the basis for the immorality of bestiality, rape, and homosexuality is a stipulated divine command.”
Not at all. I believe that they are part of God’s nature, not an arbitrary commend (which is what ‘divine command theory implied’). And that is the point. Right or wrong are justifiable when transcendence is conceded. However, I would further argue that personality is a necessity as well, but that is a different discussion.
“It seems to me that you are just asserting this. But assertions don’t prove anything.”
I would say that the burden of proof lies on those who claim morality. There aways has to be a transcendent basis. Therefore, the burden is not on me my friend. I would respectfully say that you are the one making assertions.
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Bryan,
You said:
By our nature we are fundamentally inclined sexually to the opposite sex (of our own species) for the purpose of reproduction. And rape is contrary to the personhood of the woman, since she has not *freely* given herself sexually to this man. So in all three cases, the act is contrary to our nature. And no matter how we changed biologically, so long as we remained rational animals, those actions would remain contrary to our nature.
I say:
You have used the phrase “contrary to our nature”…
Is this nature equipped with an intuitive understanding of right and wrong?
Carrie
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Michael,
Exactly, that is my presupposition (however, I would put it as “a definition of transcendence, not ‘God’”).
If you are following a presuppositional epistemology, there seems to be no point in debating the Humanist. It is just preaching to the choir. On the one hand, if you are going to use your presuppositions to evaluate your presuppositions (ad infinitum), then it is fideism all the the way down. But if your starting points are not presuppositions, then there is no reason to bring in presuppositions at all.
Your presupposition is that this is false.
No. I don’t assume that your two-category paradigm is true. That’s not the same thing as presupposing that your two-category paradigm is false. I agree that for anything that exists, it is either God or something subordinate to God. But I don’t assume that everything other than God is unstable and changing. Nor do I assume that anything unchanging must be God. I think the number four can never be anything other than the number four. But I don’t worship the number four.
Not at all. I believe that they are part of God’s nature, not an arbitrary commend
Ok, but what exactly does it mean for a moral truth to be “part of God’s nature”? How many parts does God’s nature have? What holds all the parts together? How is God not contingent if He has parts? How is this anything other than “It has something to do with God’s nature, and God’s nature is unchanging, but don’t ask me any more.”? The move you’re making creates more problems, and just sweeps the problem under the rug, so to speak. It is semantic hand-waving that evades and doesn’t really answer the question.
Aquinas argued that the divine nature is simple, and that it has no parts. The immoral actions we discussed above are wrong, because they are contrary to our nature, which is aimed at God, who is perfect goodness. So these moral prohibitions are related to God’s nature in that sense, namely, that they specify as such, types of behavior that are contrary to the fulfillment of our nature, which is necessarily aimed at God.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Carrie,
Is this nature equipped with an intuitive understanding of right and wrong?
The traditional Christian view is ‘yes’, humans naturally know right and wrong. This is called natural law. As applied to a particular case it is called conscience (i.e. applying knowledge to this case). We can, to some degree, sear our conscience. But we are culpable for what we do, precisely because we naturally know right and wrong through our rational capacity.
That doesn’t mean that everybody knows right and wrong equally well, or that right and wrong in every case is equally clear to us. Our conscience can be more or less informed. But natural law (at least at the primary and secondary levels) is something we cannot *not* know. C.S. Lewis brings this out in the opening pages of Mere Christianity, and also in Abolition of Man.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Bryan,
You seem to me to be arguing just for the sake of arguing, which would make your behavior or words on this blog ones of stubborn arrogance. I am not God, thank God, so I could be wrong. Anyway, the whole point seems to be, no matter how you argue it, you can’t argue about being good and avoid God and having him as the end point. Maybe, that’s to simply for you, if so please forgive me.
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Hi Bryan,
Thank you for your reply.
Carrie
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Bryan,
“On the one hand, if you are going to use your presuppositions to evaluate your presuppositions (ad infinitum), then it is fideism all the the way down.”
But this is exactly what you have to do. Again, the burden of proof is upon the person who argues against transcendence, not me. Unless they want to live as consistent relativists, which is an option, but not one that is ever sustained.
Without God, Romans 2 does not have any justification. Conscious, no matter what its origin, has no grounding beyond subjectivity. Form, eternal or not, are not binding to such.
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Your second part about simplicity is stretching this argument way beyond this thread. While I believe in the necessity of simplicity, it is no more worth reasoning through than creation ex nihilo. Both are mysterious necessities reality.
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I got busy and couldn’t address what was said. I thank you Michael for stepping in. I agree with much of what you’ve said so far. If we are going to have eternal and unchanging truths, they need to be rooted in something that is eternal and unchanging. Plato and Aristotle, we must remember, were not atheists. They were theists, although certainly not Christian theists.
And yes, the humanists do need to back their statement. They say be good for goodness sake. I ask “What does that mean in your worldview? How do you determine what is good?” And they can tell me “Well, loving your neighbor is good. Don’t you agree?” Yes. I agree. But why, if blind material forces are all that exist?
I do have a backing for morality in God that explains the natural law. The atheologian has yet to give me such a backing.
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Oh Michael. I was just checking and I find it fascinating you’re a huge superheroes fan and have a Superman game when I clicked on your name.
We should chat sometime. I’m a Smallville fanatic.
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Amen Brother!!
Smallville is ROCKING this year. Last year was weak…or was it the year before. Anyway, I am all things superhero.
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Michael. Shoot me an email sometime. We must discuss this more in-depth!
And I am a bigger fan than you are….
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all your credibility is now gone for such an overstatement!!!
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Bryan, may I ask.
Why regard Aristotle and Plato as authoritative in this field?
Can you explain their positions in layman’s language?
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Nick,
But why, if blind material forces are all that exist?
Very few Humanists believe that “blind material forces are all that exist”. Just ask any of them: “Do you exist? Are you a blind material force?” Or, “Do persons exist?” Or “How can you be a Humanist if you don’t believe humans exist?” We don’t want to straw man their position — it has just the opposite effect.
If a dog is born with only three legs, we recognize that this is not good. If a horse is born blind, we recognize this is not good. We don’t have to check and see what God thinks about them (or make sure that God exists), before determining whether these are good or bad. We recognize these as bad because they are contrary to the natures of dogs and horses. Likewise, as Socrates points out at the end of Book I of the Republic, the person who lives unjustly fails to fulfill his human nature; we recognize that an unjust person is bad in the same way that we recognize that blindness in a horse is bad. Both are contrary to the nature of that being. The horse, given his nature, *should* see. And the human, given his nature as a rational being, *should* be just. A horse *shouldn’t* be just, because his nature does not include rationality. But it is precisely our awareness of human nature (as including rationality) that allows us to perceive injustice in men as an imperfection, as something that *shouldn’t* be there.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Michael,
But this is exactly what you have to do.
No, I’m not a presuppositionalist. We start with first principles, as Aristotle explains. In other words, we don’t start [epistemically] with a non-rational leap. We start [epistemically] with a rational apprehension of being, and from it we immediately grasp the first principle of theoretical reason, namely, the law of non-contradiction. Similarly, the first principle of practical reason (from our initial apprehension of being under the aspect of good) is that good is to be done and evil avoided. No one can deny that good should be done and evil avoided; this knowledge is not a presupposition, it is a first principle, a truth grasped by reason from the very nature of being (perceived under the aspect of goodness), and not derived from some other principle.
Without God, Romans 2 does not have any justification. Conscious, no matter what its origin, has no grounding beyond subjectivity. Form, eternal or not, are not binding to such.
Conscience is the act of reason applied to a case. Reason tells us what ought to be done in this case, given what we know. We are bound by reason, because we are rational creatures, and so reason is the standard or measure of our actions. This is why non-rational animals are not bound by reason. When we go against our conscience, our conscience condemns us, because our reason is telling us that what we did was wrong (i.e. contrary to reason).
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Bryan, I don’t know why you have such a fascination with the authority of Platonic thought, but to each his own…
“If a dog is born with only three legs, we recognize that this is not good. If a horse is born blind, we recognize this is not good. We don’t have to check and see what God thinks about them (or make sure that God exists), before determining whether these are good or bad. We recognize these as bad because they are contrary to the natures of dogs and horses.”
This only because it is the conventional norm for dogness or horseness to be such. That is exactly the point of the argument. Morality is only a conventional norm with no “oughtness” that is attached in a transcendental way.
If you are simply trying to argue for the humanist position to say “This is how they would argue” not “This is a good argument” that is fine and you should explain such. But if you are actually arguing for this position, it is, due to all that has been said so far, in my opinion, exceedingly weak.
But, as I said, such is the gift of free will (wait, no such thing in a humanistic worldview…don’t want to go there!
)
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Jason,
Why regard Aristotle and Plato as authoritative in this field?
There are different kinds of authorities. One kind of authority is such by designation or stipulation. Another kind of authority is such by recognized expertise or excellence. Plato and Aristotle are philosophical authorities of the latter sort. They saw more clearly and deeply into things than do most men, and those who study these things recognize them as obviously gifted in this way. But I don’t claim that something is right because Plato or Aristotle said it. Neither did they. Rather, I make use of their insights to construct arguments, as did they.
Can you explain their positions in layman’s language?
In a combox, not without oversimplifying. If you want an overview sketch, read Plato’s Euthyphro, the Gorgias, and the Republic. And then read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Michael,
This only because it is the conventional norm for dogness or horseness to be such.
Where did this conventional norm come from? Why isn’t it the “conventional norm” that dogs should be born with five legs, but that 99% of dogs are born missing a leg? Or, why isn’t it the conventional norm that dogs should be born with six legs, but that 99% of dogs are born missing two legs?
Why do people all over the world recognize that dogs should have four legs, and that something is missing when a dog is born with three legs? Was there some secret global convention in which we all agreed that the norm for the number of legs on a dog would be four? Do veterinarians have to consult the latest status of the “conventional norm” in order to determine whether to amputate one or more legs of dogs born with four legs?
This is where philosophical skepticism (of the nominalist sort) leads: a denial of teleology. When you deny natures, you lose teleology. You can’t say what the function of legs is. You can’t say what the function of eyes is. You can’t say what the function of the heart is; you can only say what most people expect of hearts. That’s the nominalism that comes out of William of Ockham. It is a form of skepticism, because children don’t initially think that way. They initially recognize functions as intrinsic, not extrinsic. Only after being exposed to nominalism that calls into question their ability to know natures do they translate their former knowledge of function and teleology into the language of “conventional norms”.
no “oughtness” that is attached in a transcendental way
Merely positing something as “transcendental” does not explain oughtness. Oughtness comes from a natural inclination of our nature toward a perfection specified by our nature. If we had no teleology, we would have no oughtness.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Bryan, I don’t quite understand as your comments seem to support what I am saying. I guess I will just leave it at what you have said—conventional norms are not enough to suppose or support “oughtness.” Therefore there is no way to “be good for goodness sake” since goodness does not have a “sake.”
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“In a combox, not without oversimplifying. If you want an overview sketch, read Plato’s Euthyphro, the Gorgias, and the Republic. And then read Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics.”
You will also find Plato and Aristotle at odds on many fundamentals.
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Thanks for the reading advice Bryan. I guess it’s all online now. I probably have some on a CD I bought a while back. 4000 works of literature.
Is it legitimate to question whether humanists can agree on any morality? After all we have Peter Singer who argues for infanticide and bestiality.
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Ah yes… i see now…
Bryan your suggesting that “Oughtness comes from a natural inclination of our nature toward a perfection specified by our nature. ” is tantamount to saying man is the measure of himself.
And that is simply wrong.
In a nutshell …
If we have no God we have no teleology. If we have no God we have no oughtness. If we have no God we have no nature which compells us to do anything or be anything or know anything (right from wrong or any other truth for that matter).
That is the premise of Doug’s argument and in all that you have said (and you have said a lot) you have failed to prove otherwise.
Carrie
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Jason,
Singer goes wrong by falling into scientism. This is why he thinks there is no ontological distinction between humans and other species. (Hence we’re guilty of ‘species-ism’ if we treat our species according to certain ethical principles, but treat other sentient species according to lower norms.)
But Singer isn’t unaware of natural law, even if he wouldn’t use that term. He wouldn’t want to be treated unjustly, for example. He wouldn’t want to be robbed or murdered.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Carrie,
I have never denied that without God, you have nothing else. In fact, I said that very thing in my first comment here.
What I pointed out there was the importance of distinguishing between the order of being and the order of knowing. In the order of being, nothing could exist if God didn’t exist. But in the order of knowing, we don’t have to start with knowledge of God in order to know anything else. The order of knowing is exactly the opposite of the order of being. And so in the order of knowing, we can know morality without knowing that God is the source of all things, morality included. And so the Humanist can (and does) acknowledge morality, even if he cannot explain its ultimate source in the order of being.
As for this:
Bryan your suggesting that “Oughtness comes from a natural inclination of our nature toward a perfection specified by our nature. ” is tantamount to saying man is the measure of himself.
Yes and no. We are not the measure of ourselves insofar as we fall short of our nature, and thus fall short of God’s perfect holiness. But God’s standard for us is the standard He used when creating us. That is human nature. And so human nature is our measure, and at the same time, it is God’s measure of us.
In the peace of Christ,
- Bryan
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Shouldn’t the ontological difference be as obvious as the nose on his face? Still I suppose that as long as we keep people like that away from any decision making power…
I had an interesting discussion with a New Zealand High Court Judge the other night.
I explained my view of a world without prisons, where punishments were meted out in proportion to the crime, fines, flogging or death.
He described the concept of direct proportional punishment as natural justice.
So natural law is that thing children appeal to when they say “it’s not fair”?
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