Yesterday, after outraging you by revealing the pleasure I take in torturing babies, I asked ‘what makes something good?’
One answer is that there is an objective moral law written into the universe that is independent of anyone or anything. It just is. Love is good, hatred is bad, it is right to help someone in need, murder is evil – regardless of what we, or anyone else, think about them.
Christians should find this pretty comfortable – we believe that some things are definitely good regardless of what you think about it. I will, however, pause to point out that the ‘anyone else’ in an objective theory of ethics includes God. This theory of ethics says that right and wrong are absolutes, and God commands what is good because it is already good – not because He decided it to be that way. For the Christian, the question you need to ask is ‘is it good because God wills it, or does God will it because it is good?’ (feel free to throw around ideas in comments, I will discuss this later in the series.)
However, atheists should squirm at this idea. Many people distance themselves from the ‘God part’ of Christianity, but unthinkingly (and inconsistently) retain their system of morality. Nietzsche pulled no punches in his attack on this behaviour:
When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one’s hands. Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental, it possesses truth only if God is truth-it stands or falls with belief in God.
What did Nietzsche see?
The atheist’s universe is ruled by chance. We live in an empty world without reason. We owe our very being to the dictates of that indifferent, purposeless, and arbitrary tyrant, Chance. If there is no reason why we should have evolved, why should there be any reason to behave in a particular manner? There is no more basis for believing in an objective morality than there is for believing in an objective meaning of life.
Essentially, my question is this: ‘the universe does not care that you exist, why would it care what you do?’
In the words of Ravi Zacharias, “when you admit a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver … if there is no moral law giver, there is no moral law…”
So, apart from a moral lawgiver of some sort there can be no morality. Tomorrow I will consider some possible moral lawgivers.
« Slavery: get your facts straight. The most budget blog post I’ve ever writted. Maybe. »
Nietzsche is definitely strong voice for consistent reason and belief.
His madman parable is just as relevant today!
A Melbourne university forum between a Christian ethicist and a secular ethicist:
Part 1 – Do we need God to be good?
Part 2 – Do we need God to be good? Q&A
Haven’t finished listening as yet…
Opps…links are the other way around:
Part 1 – Do we need God to be good?
Part 2 – Do we need God to be good? Q&A
Many people distance themselves from the ‘God part’ of Christianity, but unthinkingly (and inconsistently) retain their system of morality
And even thinkingly, if you consider the thinking of my fellow coffeesnob ‘Grendel’, who freely admits he holds to Christian morality, but does not believe in the Christian God. (You linked to it a while ago and I hate making hyperlinks in the comment-y bit – unless there’s an easy way to do it that I don’t know?)
This is good stuff to think about, as too many, far too many, people just don’t! They say rape is bad, sharing is good, but no, I don’t believe in this God of yours.
Although … there is a sense of morality embedded in us – Romans 1 – because we are created in God’s image, so I guess it’s no surprise that people have some sense of wrong and right, even if they have no idea why.
I edited your comment to include the link. I might install a plugin that makes it easier to do links in comments, but at the moment I just type the html.
This is completely unrelated, but another great lecture is Does Secularism Provoke Religious Extremism?
Wow! Check it out!
That was weird…on my email it showed html tags but on your blog its normal…
test this should be bold
I didn’t find myself squirming at all Hayes.
“is it good because God wills it, or does God will it because it is good?’”
That’s simplifying it a bit, quite obviously not including the atheist option.
The second quote made me squirm though, mainly because it’s bullshit. People don’t suddenly become depraved animals running around committing evil when they reject Christianity. Christians do NOT have a monopoly on morality. And if they did, why aren’t they sharing it among themselves better? Surely if only Christians were good and moral, all Christians should be good and moral? There shouldn’t be so many who do bad things?
It’s offensive and nonsensical to claim that only members of X faith are good, and everyone else loves satan.
Here’s a link from the Richard Dawkins site, I haven’t fully checked it out yet but it’s relevant.
http://richarddawkins.net/article,2533,The-emerging-moral-psychology,Dan-Jones-Prospect-Magazine
People don’t suddenly become depraved animals running around committing evil when they reject Christianity…
Sorry, I missed the bit where someone claimed that??
No one says non-Xians are without morality. Just that they actually have no basis for having morality. And no-one would be foolish enough to claim that Xians always live as they ought. Only one person ever did that.
It’s offensive and nonsensical to claim that only members of X faith are good…
And isn’t it interesting that any Christian would tell you they are NOT good.
HH, I’d encourage you to read up on what Christians <i>do</i> believe, rather than what you <i>think/assume</i> we do.
OK Haysey, what’s going on with the formatting…?
You seem to have taken my comment both too far and too literally.
Look at Hayes post. Look at the following quote he had in there:
When one gives up Christian belief one thereby deprives oneself of the right to Christian morality. Christianity is a system, a consistently thought out and complete view of things. If one breaks out of it a fundamental idea, the belief in God, one thereby breaks the whole thing to pieces: one has nothing of any consequence left in one’s hands. Christian morality is a command: its origin is transcendental, it possesses truth only if God is truth-it stands or falls with belief in God.
There’s the bit where someone claimed that.
“when you admit a moral law, you must posit a moral lawgiver … if there is no moral law giver, there is no moral law…”
There’s the second part. It insinuates that if you don’t believe in a moral law giver you don’t believe in morals and therefore don’t have any.
There are plenty of Christians that think that only the followers of their particular brand of Christianity allows people to be good. Everyone else is either lost or a follower of Satan. I didn’t say that all Christians follow that particular insanity.
It’s even worse in followers of conservative/strict Islam of course, whereby everyone who isn’t a Muslim is an enemy and needs to be killed.
No, HH, I’m sorry but you have quite misunderstood us. Let’s try to clear it up.
No-one is arguing that “People don’t suddenly become depraved animals running around committing evil when they reject Christianity.”
In fact, my point is the fact that they don’t. Nietzsche’s point is that they don’t. Atheists deny the moral law-giver, but don’t deny the law. That is something you need to explain. In fact, that’s the point of this series.
And that’s the bulk of this comment, now I just want to do some house-keeping:
“Surely if only Christians were good and moral, all Christians should be good and moral?”
Firstly, this is a fallacy. Secondly, Christians actually claim that no-one is good and moral.
“is it good because God wills it, or does God will it because it is good?’”
That’s simplifying it a bit, quite obviously not including the atheist option.
Well, um, yeah because the question was addressed to Christians.
Michelle, the tags in the posts don’t work if you type them into this box, because it is a WYSIWYG editor. You can press the buttons above the box to format text, like in Word. Or, if you liked the other way, click the letters ‘HTML’ at the top right and it will open the plain-text editor. If no-one likes the plugin I can kill it.
I agree. HH, the point is that an atheist holding to morality (and most do) is incongruous. They have no basis for the morality they do hold to.
“It insinuates that if you don’t believe in a moral law giver you don’t believe in morals and therefore don’t have any”
No. The point is, as has been stated many times now, that if you don’t believe in a moral law-giver, how can you justify the morals that you do have?
No, the point is that you’re saying that only a supernatural entity could be the source of morals. I’ve already posted a link with an example of where else morality could have come from, and just because you don’t believe it doesn’t mean God did it.
Your link, which as far as I can tell you haven’t read, is interesting but not terribly relevant – it discusses how our moral faculty works, but not where morality comes from (similar to Chomsky’s work on language acquisition, which studies the cognitive basis of language and our acquisition of it without ever proposing a theory of language development.)
I suspect you intended to find an article explaining the emergence of moral beliefs. (correct?) If so, you would likely have had little difficulty in finding one.
Assuming that an article has been provided that explains the emergence of moral beliefs in terms of evolutionary and social factors, could that “be the source of morals”?
No. Such a theory moves from ethical realism (there are ethical truths) into ethical non-realism (we only think there are ethical truths, but there actually aren’t any).
This post, and all surrounding discussion, has assumed ethical realism. Do you hold ethical realism? Are there ethical truths, or have we just developed moral beliefs not based in any real morality? If the former, then you must explain what determines ethical truth. If the later, then you may explain why we behave in certain ways but you may not call any behaviours morally good or morally wrong.
just because you don’t believe it doesn’t mean God did it …
I’m sorry, but this phrase makes no sense to me. If you mean, for example, the somewhat shaky stance that Intelligent Design scientists take, “We can’t explain it, so God must have made it”, then I agree that that is an insufficient and dangerous explanation. I suspect that is what you may have meant, but I disagree that this is the premise that Haysey or I are working with (I don’t want to speak for you Haysey, so correct me if I’m wrong).
It is quite clear that nearly every human being has a sense of right and wrong. Where does it come from? Who determines the rightness or wrongness? And if there is no God, what does it matter whether we do what is right or what is wrong?
btw – i enjoy listening in on this conversation.
Work has been hectic with after hours so I haven’t had time to post.
Keep it coming guys…