Some thoughts on the redefinition of marriage

Several countries are currently discussing (or are already in the process of) redefining marriage. With that in mind, there’s a new paper by Ryan T. Anderson entitled: Marriage: What It Is, Why It Matters, and the Consequences of Redefining It. Although there are obvious religious considerations to this issue, Anderson isn’t actually discussing those issues in any detail in this paper.

The abstract expands:

Marriage is based on the truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the reality that children need a mother and a father. Redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage; it rejects these truths. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. By encouraging the norms of marriage—monogamy, sexual exclusivity, and permanence—the state strengthens civil society and reduces its own role. The future of this country depends on the future of marriage. The future of marriage depends on citizens understanding what it is and why it matters and demanding that government policies support, not undermine, true marriage.

There are a few key points that come up throughout the paper. The first is that redefining marriage does not simply expand the existing understanding of marriage. It would actually contradict the traditional concept of marriage. Raising kids – and thus sustaining society – happens best in a stable home with both parents present. Marriage as an institution is primarily about bringing up the children that are produced by the husband and wife. As Anderson wrote in another paper on the same topic:

In recent decades, marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view that it is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs. This view reduces marriage primarily to intense emotional bonds.

If marriage were just intense emotional regard, marital norms would make no sense as a principled matter. There is no reason of principle that requires an emotional union to be permanent. Or limited to two persons. Or sexual, much less sexually exclusive (as opposed to “open”). Or inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands.

Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers. It would deny, as a matter of policy, the ideal that children need a mother and a father.

Redefining marriage would also diminish the social pressures and incentives for husbands to remain with their wives and their biological children and for men and women to marry before having children. It would be very difficult for the law to send a message that fathers matter once it had redefined marriage to make fathers optional.

The traditional definition of marriage (one man, one woman, monogamous) does not restrict consenting adults from forming whatever other relationships they like.

The paper is presented in three sections. Here’s an outline of the major points:

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I. What Is Marriage?

1. Marriage exists to bring a man and a woman together as husband and wife to be father and mother to any children their union produces.
2. Marriage is based on the anthropological truth that men and women are complementary, the biological fact that reproduction depends on a man and a woman, and the social reality that children need a mother and a father.
3. Marriage as the union of man and woman is true across cultures, religions, and time. The government recognizes but does not create marriage.
4. Marriage has been weakened by a revisionist view of marriage that is more about adults’ desires than children’s needs.

II. Why Marriage Matters for Policy

1. Government recognizes marriage because it is an institution that benefits society in a way that no other relationship does.
2. Marriage is society’s least restrictive means of ensuring the well-being of children. Marital breakdown weakens civil society and limited government.
3. Marital breakdown costs taxpayers.
4. Government can treat people equally—and leave them free to live and love as they choose—without redefining marriage.
5. We reap the civil society benefits of marriage only if policy gets marriage right.

III. The Consequences for Redefining Marriage

1. Redefining marriage would further distance marriage from the needs of children and deny the importance of mothers and fathers.
2. Redefining marriage would put into the law the new principle that marriage is whatever emotional bond the government says it is.
3. Redefining marriage would weaken monogamy, exclusivity, and permanency—the norms through which marriage benefits society.
4. Redefining marriage threatens religious liberty.

Check out the whole paper here.

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Related posts:

A legal defense of marriage

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Thomas Nagel: a heretic amongst heretics?

There’s a fantastic article at The Weekly Standard about Thomas Nagel. Nagel may not be as much of a household name as Dawkins, but he is probably America’s most prominent philosopher and a serious intellectual heavyweight. But his latest book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, was roundly attacked by the self-proclaimed “brights” of atheism. In short, Nagel thinks that the worldview of philosophical materialism is wrong, despite being a very useful presupposition of science. For voicing these thoughts, Nagel has been branded a heretic by his fellow atheists.

The most interesting aspect of this drama is that Nagel is actually just voicing what every one of those critics believes. Or at least, he’s voicing the line of thought that is revealed by their actions. Because nobody actually lives as if materialism were true (unless they are certifiably insane). As the article puts it:

As a philosophy of everything [materialism] is an undeniable drag. As a way of life it would be even worse. Fortunately, materialism is never translated into life as it’s lived. As colleagues and friends, husbands and mothers, wives and fathers, sons and daughters, materialists never put their money where their mouth is. Nobody thinks his daughter is just molecules in motion and nothing but; nobody thinks the Holocaust was evil, but only in a relative, provisional sense. A materialist who lived his life according to his professed convictions—understanding himself to have no moral agency at all, seeing his friends and enemies and family as genetically determined robots—wouldn’t just be a materialist: He’d be a psychopath.

Applied beyond its own usefulness as a scientific methodology, materialism is, as Nagel suggests, self-evidently absurd. Mind and Cosmos can be read as an extended paraphrase of Orwell’s famous insult: “One has to belong to the intelligentsia to believe things like that: no ordinary man could be such a fool.” Materialism can only be taken seriously as a philosophy through a heroic feat of cognitive dissonance; pretending, in our abstract, intellectual life, that values like truth and goodness have no objective content even as, in our private life, we try to learn what’s really true and behave in a way we know to be good. Nagel has sealed his ostracism from the intelligentsia by idly speculating why his fellow intellectuals would undertake such a feat. 

“The priority given to evolutionary naturalism in the face of its implausible conclusions,” he writes, “is due, I think, to the secular consensus that this is the only form of external understanding of ourselves that provides an alternative to theism.”

Apparently, the acceptance by “freethinkers” is contingent on your committment to the idea that thinking freely is impossible.

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P.S. – For anyone wanting a more in-depth review of Nagel’s work and the criticisms it has attracted, check out the posts by Edward Feser on the subject.

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The Heathen Manifesto – a quick review

Over in the Guardian‘s website, prominent atheist Julian Baggini has written a Heathen Manifesto in which he calls for atheists everywhere to stop insisting on a polarised society and try to listen a little more to what he calls the “moderate middle”, those who lack religious belief but are also turned off by the froth and vitriol of Dawkins et al.

As Baggini puts it in his introduction:

“This manifesto is an attempt to point towards the next phase of atheism’s involvement in public discourse. It is not a list of doctrines that people are asked to sign up to but a set of suggestions to provide a focus for debate and discussion. Nor is it an attempt to accurately describe what all atheists have in common. Rather it is an attempt to prescribe what the best form of atheism should be like.”

I rather like Baggini. More than many other atheist writers he is willing to conduct a reasoned dialogue rather than simply engaging in posturing and rhetoric. And I was very interested in his manifesto, so let’s go through it briefly. I’ve kept his headings to give this some sort of structure, and inserted my own comments at various junctures. Baggini’s manifesto is in italics, my own insertions are in normal typeface. Some sections have been trimmed for brevity.

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1 Why we are heathens

It has long been recognised that the term “atheist” has unhelpful connotations. It has too many dark associations and also defines itself negatively, against what it opposes, not what it stands for … “humanists” are a subset of atheists who have a formal organisation and set of beliefs many atheists do not share … “rationalist” and “bright” both suffer from sounding too self-satisfied, too confident, implying that others are irrationalists or dim.

…We need a name that shows that we do not think too highly of ourselves. This is no trivial point: atheism faces the human condition with honesty, and that requires acknowledging our absurdity, weakness and stupidity, not just our capacity for creativity, intelligence, love and compassion. “Heathen” fulfils this ambition. We are heathens because we have not been saved by God and because in the absence of divine revelation, we are in so many ways deeply unenlightened. The main difference between us and the religious is that we know this to be true of all of us, but they believe it is not true of them.

I accept that there are many unhelpful associations that the “New Atheist” publicity has brought to the term, but I’m not sure that it is quite time to ditch it. Baggini writes that heathens lack divine revelation, and deny the existence of any supernatural deity (see point 2), but this would imply that “atheist” is the most accurately descriptive term. Traditionally, “heathen” has denoted someone who holds to beliefs outside of Christianity, and as such is a positive claim. I’m not sure that Baggini quite navigates this distinction, and this is a theme that emerges a few times in the Manifesto.

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2 Heathens are naturalists

Heathens are not merely unbelievers: we believe many things too. Most importantly, we believe in naturalism: the natural world is all there is and there is no purposive, conscious agency that created or guides it. This natural world may contain many mysteries and even unseen dimensions, but we have no reason to believe that they are anything like the heavens, spirit worlds and deities that have characterised supernatural religious beliefs over history. Many religious believers deny the “supernatural” label, but unless they are willing to disavow such beliefs as in the reality of a divine person, miracles, resurrections or life after death, they are not naturalists.

One of the reasons that I like Baggini’s writing is that he is eager to define his terms clearly to avoid confusion. I am also impressed by his willingness to embrace naturalism as a belief, as a positive truth-claim about the world. As a Christian, I completely disagree with his belief but I respect him for stating it clearly and in a way that allows discussion.

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3 Our first commitment is to the truth

Although we believe many things about what does and does not exist, these are the conclusions we come to, not the basis of our worldview. That basis is a commitment to see the world as truthfully as we can, using our rational faculties as best we can, based on the best evidence we have … Hence we are prepared to accept the possibility that we are wrong. It also means that we respect and have much in common with people who come to very different conclusions but have an equal respect for truth, reason and evidence. A heathen has more in common with a sincere, rational, religious truth-seeker than an atheist whose lack of belief is unquestioned, or has become unquestionable.

I embrace this commitment wholeheartedly.

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4 We respect science, not scientism

Heathens place science in high regard, being the most successful means humans have devised to come to a true understanding of the real nature of the world on the basis of reason and evidence. If a belief conflicts with science, then no matter how much we cherish it, science should prevail. That is why the religious beliefs we most oppose are those that defy scientific knowledge, such as young earth creationism.

Nonetheless, this does not make us scientistic. Scientism is the belief that science provides the only means of gaining true knowledge of the world, and that everything has to be understood through the lens of science or not at all. There are scientistic atheists but heathens are not among them. Science is limited in what it can contribute to our understanding of who we are and how we should live because many of the most important facts of human life only emerge at a level of description on which science remains silent. History, for example, may ultimately depend on nothing more than the movements of atoms, but you cannot understand the battle of Hastings by examining interactions of fermions and bosons. Love may depend on nothing more than the physical firing of neurons, but anyone who tries to understand it solely in those terms just does not know what love means.

This one is a little tricky for me. The recognition of science vs scientism is important, and it is very valuable to have this stated clearly. What I’m less clear on is how Baggini can reconcile this with point 2, which very clearly claims that the natural world is all that there is. But if the natural world is all that there is, and science is the best means of discovering truth about the natural world, then surely the true meaning of the battle of Hastings is ultimately a purely scientific pursuit?

I’m glad that he recognises that there is more to the world and human experience than scientific analysis can deduce, but I’m not sure that he’s left any space in his worldview for that “more”.

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5 We value reason as precious but fragile

Heathens have a commitment to reason that fully acknowledges the limits of reason. Reason is itself a multi-faceted thing that cannot be reduced to pure logic. We use reason whenever we try to form true beliefs on the basis of the clearest thinking, using the best evidence. But reason almost always leaves us short of certain knowledge and very often leaves us with a need to make a judgment in order to come to a conclusion. We also need to accept that human beings are very imperfect users of reason, susceptible to biases, distortions and prejudices that lead even the most intelligent astray. In short, if we understand what reason is and how it works, we have very good reason to doubt those who claim rationality solely for those who accept their worldview and who deny the rationality of those who disagree.

Great points, ties in well with his earlier objections to “brights” and “rationalists” as suitable labels. Recognising the limits of our own reason is all too rare in human discourse. I try to maintain the same level of respect for reason and awareness of its limitations.

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6 We are convinced, not dogmatic

The heathen’s modesty about the power of reason and the certainty of her conclusions should not be mistaken for a shoulder-shrugging agnosticism. We have a very high degree of confidence in the truth of our naturalistic worldview. But we do not dogmatically assert it. Being open to being wrong and to changing our minds does not mean we lack conviction that we are right. Strength of belief is not the same as rigidity of dogma.

Again, a useful point. I have similar impatience with rigidly asserted dogma. I don’t share his high degree of confidence in the naturalistic worldview, but that’s a different matter.

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7 We have no illusions about life as a heathen

… Ours is a universe without guarantees of redemption or salvation and sometimes people have terrible lives or do terrible things and thrive. On such occasions, we have no consolation. That is the dark side of accepting the truth, and we are prepared to acknowledge it. We are heathens because we value living in the truth. But that does not mean that we pretend that always makes life easy or us happy. If the evidence were to show that religious people are happier and healthier than us, we would not see that as any reason to give up our convictions.

This is a brave statement to make, and I applaud Baggini for having the courage of his convictions. I respect that he values the truth so highly.

Personally, I feel that he has missed the boat a little; he acknowledges that there is no comfort or consolation in atheism and that religious people may be happier and healthier, due to the hope that they feel. Again speaking as a Christian, I would suggest that the hope, happiness and health are due to the comfort and consolation that follows from a relationship with God. But that’s just my perspective.

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8 We are secularists

We support a state that is neutral as regards people’s fundamental worldviews. It is not neutral when it comes to the shared values necessary for people of different conviction to live and thrive together. But it should not give any special privilege to any particular sect or group, or use their creeds as a basis for policy. Politics requires a coming together of people of different fundamental convictions to formulate and justify policy in terms that all understand, on the basis of principles that as many as possible can share.

This secularism does not require that religion is banished from public life or that people may not be open as to how their faiths, or lack of one, motivate their values. As long as the core of the business of state is neutral as regards to comprehensive worldviews, we can be relaxed about expressions of these commitments in society at large. We want to maintain the state’s neutrality on fundamental worldviews, not purge religion from society.

This is a bold vision, and I have no inherent issues with it, but honestly I don’t believe that humans are capable of actually achieving the society which he describes.

A major issue for me is that justice, morality and ethics are intractably bound up with the value system of the individual, which is overwhelmingly based on their religious convictions and worldview. I don’t see a practical way around this. So far, in the West, we have achieved largely secular states by taking Christian ethics and trying to strip the Christianity out of them to avoid offending anyone else. But the philosophical basis for those ethics is that very same Christianity, so I’m not sure this is a sustainable long-term option.

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9 Heathens can be religious

There are a small minority of forms of religion that are entirely compatible with the heathen position. These are forms of religion that reject the real existence of supernatural entities and divinely authored texts, accept that science trumps dogma, and who see the essential core of religion in its values and practices. We have very little evidence that anything more than a small fraction of actual existent religion is like this, but when it does conform to this description, heathens have no reason to dismiss it as false.

Apart from Scientism (and perhaps secular humanism), I can’t think of a religion that meets these requirements. It’s a nice conciliatory gesture, but I don’t think that this is really a significant point. Baggini is basically saying that, “You can be religious, as long as your religion is ‘heathen’ as defined in this manifesto.”

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10 Religion is often our friend

We believe in not being tone-deaf to religion and to understand it in the most charitable way possible. So we support religions when they work to promote values we share, including those of social justice and compassion. We are respectful and sympathetic to the religious when they arrive at their different conclusions on the basis of the same commitment to sincere, rational, undogmatic inquiry as us, without in any way denying that we believe them to be false and misguided. We are also sympathetic to religion when its effects are more benign than malign. We appreciate that commitment to truth is but one value and that a commitment to compassion and kindness to others is also of supreme importance. We are not prepared to insist that it is indubitably better to live guided by such values allied with false beliefs than it is to live without such values but also without false belief.

This is a more useful conciliatory gesture, but actually raises more issues than it addresses. Baggini acknowledges the value of religious values of social justice and compassion, and claims them as shared values, but doesn’t actually make it clear why those are important values from an atheist worldview. It is great to say that “commitment to truth is but one value and that a commitment to compassion and kindness to others is also of supreme importance”, and I can understand why all those things are important values in Christianity. What I can’t quite see is why compassion and kindness are important social values from a naturalistic atheist worldview.

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11 We are critical of religion when necessary

Our willingness to accept what is good in religion is balanced by an equally honest commitment to be critical of it when necessary. We object when religion invokes mystery to avoid difficult questions or to obfuscate when clarity is needed. We do not like the way in which “people of faith” tend to huddle together in an unprincipled coalition of self-interest, even when that means liberals getting into bed with homophobes and misogynists. We think it is disingenuous for religious people to talk about the reasonableness of their beliefs and the importance of values and practice, while drawing a veil over their embrace of superstitious beliefs. In these and other areas, we assert the right and need to make civil but acute criticisms.

And although our general stance is not one of hostility towards religion, there are some occasions when this is exactly what is called for. When religions promote prejudice, division or discrimination, suppress truth or stand in the way of medical or social progress, a hostile response is an appropriate, principled one, just as it is when atheists are guilty of the same crimes.

I agree with some points here, but the same problems from point 10 are evident. Baggini objects to religions promoting prejudice, division or discrimination, but it may be difficult to rationally explain what’s wrong with those things from a  purely naturalistic worldview.

I think Baggini is mistaken when he talks of “huddling”, at least as regards Christianity. I think that the perception of a huddle collective Christianity is more a theme in secular media than in reality, it’s certainly not something that I have experienced in my three decades of church attendance on five continents. For instance, I’m a Christian but I have little time for Young Earth Creationism (see this earlier post, for instance), and I am similarly impatient with liberal theology.

I also think that his sentence about the dichotomy between reasonable faith and “superstitious beliefs” is off the mark. There is an important distinction between orthodox theology and personal spiritual experience, it is the distinction between Newton’s mathematical equations and the experience of feeling a brick landing on your foot. Christian theology is rational, philosophically robust and intellectually coherent; a personal experience of God may be indescribable. I don’t see anything disingenuous about being able to clearly explain the former but not the latter.

I do appreciate his clear stress on acute but civil criticisms, and I hope that I can do the same when I disagree with those of other faiths.

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12 This manifesto is less concerned with distinguishing heathens from others than forging links between us and others

Our commitment to independent thought and the provisionality of belief means that few heathens are likely to agree completely with this manifesto. It is therefore almost a precondition of supporting it that you do not entirely support it. At the same time, although very few people of faith can be heathens, many will find themselves in agreement with much of what heathens belief. This is what provides the common ground to make fruitful dialogue possible: we need to accept what we share in order to accept with civility and understanding what we most certainly do not. This is what the heathen manifesto is really about.

Again, his stress on civil dialogue and open understanding of differences is laudable. I’m also delighted that Baggini has chosen such a time-honoured enumerated structure for his manifesto; 12 is a divine number…

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Related posts:

Lumpy atheism

Having the wrong conversation

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On the relative efficacy of cathedral demolition strategies

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I do not believe there is an atheist in the world who would bulldoze Mecca – or Chartres, York Minster or Notre Dame.

- Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion

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Cathedrals are too high for bulldozers. In the Soviet Union under Stalin and the German Democratic Republic under Ulbricht they used explosives instead.

        – Richard Schröder, Professor of Philosophy in Berlin

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Revisiting the Law

Recently, I’ve been reading through the Old Testament. I haven’t read the latter books of the Pentateuch for a while, so it was an interesting experience. The Pentateuch makes up the first five books of the Bible: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and also comprises the Jewish Torah. This collection is also referred to as the Books of the Law, which is what Jesus is talking about when he mentions “the Law and the Prophets” (e.g. Matt. 5:17, Matt. 7:12).

Genesis and the first half of Exodus are largely composed of narrative, but from that point on there are indeed large chunks of detailed instruction from God which dominate the books of Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. And when you hear people talking vaguely about “all those crazy rules and stuff in the Bible”, it’s generally the last three books of the Pentateuch that they have in mind. So as I worked my way through these books, I was expecting to find an endless list of obscure and arbitrary prohibitions.

In contrast, I was delighted at just how sensible all the laws are. But there are a few important things to bear in mind as you read them.

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The Laws of Moses were given to a people who had been slaves in a foreign land for 400 years, and were now being moulded into a new nation. The Law is not there to restrict the Israelites’ freedom, it is God’s gift to them to help them live in harmony and build a successful society. Also, as God’s chosen people, they need special instruction on how to worship God. So most of the laws are focussed on teaching the nation how to interact with each other and with God.

But even with that proviso, there are a few laws which seem a little odd. There are two more things that we need to understand about the function of the Law:

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Firstly, as God’s people, chosen to be set apart for Him, it was important that the Israelites did not become corrupted with the religious practices of other nations.

The principal concern in this regard was keeping them separate from the influences of Canaanite religion, which was rife in the country to which God was leading them. Canaanite religious practices centred around worship of Baal, the god of thunder and fertility, and the bringer of rain; and Asherah (also called Athirat), who was the mother – and also consort – of Baal. (Another of the regulars in the Canaanite pantheon was Anat, the virgin goddess of war and strife, who was both wife and sister of Baal). A large part of Canaanite religious practice involved trying to increase fertility by bringing together objects associated with Asherah and those which represented Baal, so that their “sympathetic magic” would simulate Baal having sex with Asherah and thus increase the harvest.

Kinky, I know. But the point of this whole deviant diversion is that the laws which seem most arbitrary to us are ones like “Don’t wear clothes made of wool and linen” (Deut. 22:11), or “Don’t boil a young goat in its mother’s milk” (Ex. 34:26). The modern response to those passages is, respectively, “Why not?”, or “Why on earth would anyone do that in the first place?”. In each case, the principle behind those sort of injunctions is all about avoiding the idolatrous Canaanite religious practices centred on Baal and Asherah.

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Secondly, the laws are not like a modern penal code; they are not meant to be exhaustive. Instead, they function paradigmatically, by giving examples of the kind of behaviour that God wants from His people.

This is why the Israelites are instructed, for instance, to “Build a parapet around the roof of your house” (Deut. 22:8). The custom among the Near Eastern civilisations was for guests to sleep on the roof of the house (which was flat), and the instruction here is to make sure that they may do so safely without worrying about falling off if they roll over in their sleep. It is a paradigmatic example of the kind of concern for others that God wants us to show. Instructions about leaving gleanings in the field (Lev. 19:9-10) are an example of offering welfare and charity to the poor and destitute, but they also illustrate a principle of charity that is equally relevant even if we are not farmers.

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For a more thorough treatment of reading the Law in context, I strongly recommend Chapter 9 of How To Read the Bible For All Its Worth, by Gordon Fee and Douglas Stuart.

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Related posts:

The power of narrative

Matters of interpretation

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Censorship and bad Apples

The media lines are all humming with outrage about an iPhone app. Not the one that lets you avoid police checkpoints if you’re driving drunk, nor the one that gives detailed instructions on abusing illegal drugs – those are still readily available on the App Store.

No, the biggest story at the moment is about a self-help app from Exodus International. It provides information to assist people who want to make a lifestyle change.

That’s about it.

But that’s not how the media are reporting it:

CBS News: Church head: “Gay cure” iPhone app not offensive

ABC News: Apple Pulls ‘Anti-Gay’ App After Pressure

Huffington Post: Apple Pulls Controversial ‘Gay Cure’ App

Washington Post: …Apple complied with increasingly vocal requests to remove the “gay cure” app.

CNET News: Apple pulls ‘gay cure’ app following protests

Forbes.com: Apple Boots ‘Gay Cure’ App

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The most alarming aspect of the coverage, I think, is the scare-quotes with which each media outlet is slavishly describing the app as a “gay cure” or “anti-gay” product. They’re all doing the same spin-job while pretending to report on the story. The Washington Post even admits in its article that the “Gay cure” nickname is inappropriate and nonsensical, but it’s in the headline nonetheless.

Jeff Buchanan, a senior director of Exodus International, said, “It’s being touted as a ‘gay cure’ app, and nothing could be further from the truth.” The organisation’s website clarifies their position further:

“Exodus does not claim to cure anyone.  That is not within our ability and certainly beyond the ability of our iPhone application, which simply provided mobile access to information available on our website. As complex human beings, sexual attractions develop for many known and unknown reasons and no one chooses those, but as sexual beings, we all make decisions about how to express ourselves. For those who consider the Bible to be life-giving truth, homosexual attractions and the desire to act on them are at odds with the desire to live a life that reflects the Christian faith and often results in moral tension.

… Exodus doesn’t believe there is a “cure” for homosexuality, adultery, arrogance, gossip or any other sin. There is, however, Jesus who paid the price for it all when He died on the cross. Then there is the daily, sometimes moment-by-moment, decision to live a life congruent with His teaching.

Our desire was simply to provide information to individuals exploring and looking for answers that are consistent with their own beliefs.  Apple already provides hundreds of apps specific to the GLBT community and has made the Gay Christian Network’s podcasts available on its iTunes store.  Our hope was to see equality represented on the same platform.”

Despite initially releasing the app with a +4 rating (i.e., “containing no objectionable material”), Apple did an abrupt about-turn in response to strong pressure from GLBT-activist group Change.org. An Apple spokesman today said that “[the app] violates our developer guidelines by being offensive to large groups of people.”

Alan Chambers, head of Exodus International, said recently in an interview: “I can understand people having an opinion about something. What I can’t understand is why they would find it offensive. The way it’s been touted and the scare tactics used by the other side – if that’s what it was all about, I would have signed (the petition) too.” Speaking to The Huffington Post, Chambers said, “I would hope in a perfect world that Apple would allow this diversity, that they would respect the diversity of their customers. It’s alarming to see that people who are opposed to free thought and diversity are attacking and causing this type of trouble for organizations like ours.”

For me, the question is one of free speech – will you let other people express their opinions even if you don’t agree with them? The developers of that app weren’t insisting that it come standard on every phone or that everyone in the world be forced to use it. They were expressing their opinion: that homosexuality is a choice, and that they believe it’s a bad choice.

Whether you or I agree with that opinion does not diminish their right to hold it. It’s an issue of free speech and the right to hold and express opinions. Are you so intolerant that you can’t abide anyone who disagrees with you?

The petition from Change.org condemns the app in pretty strong language: “No objectionable content? We beg to differ. Exodus’ message is hateful and bigoted.”

Fortunately for Change.org, they can “beg to differ” because they are allowed to express their opinions freely. It is very sad that they cannot seem to extend this courtesy to those who hold differing points of view.

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Related posts:

The relativist creed

Religion, sex and truth claims

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It’s not the “what”, it’s the “why”

I’m currently reading “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay” by Michael Chabon. The book is set in New York during the late 1930s and ’40s – the Golden Age of comic books – and the titular heroes of the novel are budding comic book creators.

In an early scene they are discussing a potential hero for their own story: Should he fly? Should he be super-strong? Should he be invisible? (A little hard to draw that one, perhaps, but anyway…) Various combinations of superpowers are discussed, until Clay, the writer, has a sudden moment of revelation:

It’s not the what, it’s the why.

The character will not be interesting because of what crazy super-power that they give him, or even because of how he uses that remarkable talent. Readers will be far more interested in why he chooses to act in that way. Why does Batman not just lounge about in his luxurious mansion, but instead go out at night and battle against the criminal underworld? Those are the questions that drive the story and the readers’ interest in the character.

As with art, so too with life.

All people have the capacity for selfishness and for self-sacrifice, for nobility and for malice, for good and for evil. But why do we choose to act in one way or another?

I believe that all people are created in God’s image, and I therefore strive to love them as children of God. I often fail, but that’s the why. If I take care of someone who’s sick, if I feed someone who’s hungry, if I donate my time and energy to trying to show others some of God’s love in action, that’s why I do it. Because I want to be obedient to the God who created me and gave me life.

What’s your “why”?

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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

The timidity of New Atheists

A theoretical faith

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Non-moral nature

I’m visiting some colleagues in Hobart at the moment, so I have a new route that I walk to work each day. It’s a tranquil and tree-lined avenue with some lovely gardens, especially now when all the spring flowers are in bloom.

Running alongside the path is a stream, and this morning, in that stream, were some ducks. Mostly they were doing normal duckish things – paddling about, quacking and nibbling the odd bit of water vegetation. But it’s spring, so they were also pretty frisky. In particular, there were two drakes which both seemed very keen on a female duck, which in turn was doing her best to paddle away from them. But the drakes were not to be discouraged. They held her head under the water and had their way with her despite all her struggling and flapping.

Just another day on the river. A light breeze, the delicate scent of flowers in the air and avian gang-rape in the water.

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We often see grand claims to the effect that morality is just a by-product of evolution, but the reasoning is usually circular and the arguments poor. Dawkins, for example, while claiming that everything to do with anything can be explained by evolution, is predictably all over the place when he ventures into ethics. While he has said: “I don’t believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil”, he also claims that our morality is seen when we rise above the selfishness of our genes:

“I am not advocating a morality based on evolution. I am saying how things have evolved. I am not saying how we humans morally ought to behave… Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have a chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.” (The Selfish Gene)

But this is just ridiculous: Evolution produced everything, including our sense of morality, but it is objectively “good” to act in a way that counteracts evolution. But the concept of “good” doesn’t actually exist objectively, it’s just an evolutionary product…

We can identify certain patterns of behaviour in the animal kingdom, and infer an evolved tendency towards particular behaviours. But we cannot ascribe moral value to actions based on evolutionary criteria. Stephen Jay Gould, in his 1982 essay “Nonmoral nature” (from which I shamelessly borrowed this title), wrote:

“Our failure to discern a universal good does not record any lack of insight or ingenuity, but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms. Morality is a subject for philosophers, theologians, students of the humanities, indeed for all thinking people. The answers will not be read passively from nature; they do not, and cannot, arise from the data of science.”

Some animals mate for life, others are wildly promiscuous and indiscriminating in their sexual behaviour. In Bonobo apes about 75% of sexual activity is non-reproductive, and often involves infants. Sexual cannibalism is common in insects. In several species of mammals, including stoats and hyaena, sexual activity between adults and infant cubs has been observed (with the mother of the infants declining to interfere). Male bottlenose dolphins regularly engage in what appears to be forced intercourse, both within their species and towards other species. Female penguins exchange sexual favours for nest-building materials. Killing and eating infants (within a species, even within family groups) is common in many mammals.

But it is a very human peculiarity to look unfavourably on this sort of behaviour. Human child molesters are not tolerated: in fact they are generally perceived as the most abhorrent of people. We are outraged by such behaviour in our own society because we recognise an objective morality by which we can judge different actions.

This idea of “evolved ethics” is not new, of course, and the difficulties of trying to extrapolate morality from evolution have long been recognised. T. H. Huxley wrote in 1893:

“The propounders of [the evolution of ethics] adduce a number of more or less interesting facts and more or less sound arguments, in favour of the origin of the moral sentiments, in the same way as other natural phenomena, by a process of evolution. I have little doubt, for my part, that they are on the right track; but as the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is, so far, as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist. Cosmic evolution may teach us how the good and the evil tendencies of man may have come about; but, in itself, it is incompetent to furnish any better reason why what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.” (Evolution and Ethics)

Huxley makes a vital point here. Our understanding of morality and our application of moral principles to society (in our systems of justice, for instance) are far removed from the evolutionary perspective. All societies believe in the existence of objective morality, and we all live our lives accordingly. This leads us to the possibility that absolute moral standards, like the laws of mathematics, are written into the universe and await discovery. In his excellent pair of articles on evolving morality over at the blog Engineering Ethics (see here for part 1 and part 2), Karl Stephan notes five principles which psychological research has found to be widely accepted throughout different societies:

(1) Harm—don’t hurt other people and help them if you can.

(2) Fairness—people in comparable situations should be treated comparably.

(3) Group loyalty—other things being equal, take care of your own (family, friends, city, nation) first.

(4) Authority—there are rules, rulers, and rulemakers who should be respected and deferred to.

(5) Purity—Saintliness, cleanliness, and being without spot or blemish are good things, and grubbiness, filth, and disorder are bad ones.

Stephan also observes that the concept of morality as a Natural Law was also espoused by Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century, so the while the psychological research is new, the idea has a long pedigree.

Looking even further back,  St. Paul wrote a letter to the newly-established church in Rome in the first century AD. In it, he described how people who had not been instructed in Christian morality nonetheless acted in accordance with that morality, because God has written His law on the hearts of all people:

“Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the law.  They show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts sometimes accusing them and at other times even defending them.” (Rom 2:14-15, NIV)

All of our human experience declares that objective morality exists, but an objective morality cannot possibly be ascribed to evolution. Are there laws of  morality written into the fabric of the universe? Do they await discovery?

Or can they be discovered more readily from looking within?

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Related posts:

Secular (in)Humanism

Chesterton on Nature

Two evolutionists walk into a bar…

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The relativist creed

An atheist worldview encourages relativism, with its insistence on removal of moral absolutes and rejection of truth claims. One of the finest expressions of self-defeating nature of relativism is the poem Creed, written in 1993 by English poet and music journalist Steve Turner. (The postscript, called Chance, was added later).

Personally, I prefer the Nicene.

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Creed by Steve Turner

We believe in Marxfreudanddarwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don’t hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.
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We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.
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We believe that everything’s getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.
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We believe there’s something in horoscopes
UFO’s and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.
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We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.
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We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then it’s compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn
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We believe in Masters and Johnson
What’s selected is average.
What’s average is normal.
What’s normal is good.
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We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors
and the Russians would be sure to follow.
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We believe that man is essentially good.
It’s only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.
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We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.
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We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.
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Postscript:
If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear:
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State of Emergency!
Sniper Kills Ten!
Troops on Rampage!
Whites go Looting!
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It is but the sound of man
worshipping his maker.
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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

Children of God

Secular (in)Humanism

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The innocence of children…

The doctrine of Original Sin is very challenging to our sensibilities. The idea that every human is “born sinful” seems so judgmental and negative that we shy away from it. Sure, we can agree that “Everyone makes mistakes”, or perhaps that “We’ve all done things that we’re not proud of”. But this is not the same as Original Sin, for Christianity maintains that every human being is inherently sinful and separated from God.

Probably the most frequent point of departure from the doctrine of Original Sin is the supposed “innocence of children” – particularly babies. Surely someone who has spent their life crying, sleeping and occasionally soiling the odd nappy (ok, more than occasionally) cannot be considered sinful? What can they possibly have done to merit such a charge?

There are a few responses to this, including a line of thinking involving inherited sin from Adam and Eve. Adherence to this doctrine usually requires an acceptance of a literal Adam and Eve – not just as real people but also as parents of every subsequent generation of humans. Whether this is  reasonable and/or theologically sound is not the issue I’m addressing now: I’m more interested in whether such an interpretation is even required for us to accept that every human is inherently sinful.

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Augustine of Hippo wrote his Confessions when he was in his 40s, and in it he reflected on the entirety of his life thus far – including his very earliest years. Of course, like any of us, he didn’t remember his time spent as a mewling babe, but he did use keen observation of other infants to draw some general assumptions about his own behaviour. He considers the actions of a baby through the understanding of an adult, and in doing so, he raises some profound challenges to the innocence of children.

Nor was it good, even in that time, to strive to get by crying what, if it had been given me, would have been hurtful; or to be bitterly indignant at those who, because they were older… and wiser than I, would not indulge my capricious desires. Was it a good thing for me to try, by struggling as hard as I could, to harm them for not obeying me, even when it would have done me harm to have been obeyed?

Augustine notes that it is not the actions of the child that are in themself sinful. But God is not concerned purely with our actions, but also with our intents, and the desires of our heart.

The desires of an infant’s heart are selfish and often self-destructive, and is this entirely absolved by its lack of power to act? Watching a baby flailing his arms petulantly – but ineffectually – against his mother, Augustine wryly notes:

…the infant’s innocence lies in the weakness of his body and not in the infant mind.

Of course, I’m not trying to suggest that infants are particularly selfish or are in any way “worse” than adults. But they are human, too. Satirist and social critic P. J. O’Rourke, reflecting on his own experiences as a father, wrote thus:

“When Saint Augustine was formulating his doctrine of Original Sin, all he had to do was look at people as they are originally. Originally, they’re children. Saint Augustine may have had a previous job – unmentioned in his Confessions – as a preschool day-dare provider. But it’s wrong to use infantile as a pejorative. It’s the other way around. What children display is adultishness. Children are, for example, perfectly adultish in their self-absorption. Tiny tots look so wise, staring at their stuffed animals. You wonder what they’re thinking. Then they learn to talk. What they’re thinking is, My Beanie Baby!”

Don’t get me wrong – of course we should treat children differently and make allowances for behaviour that we would find unbearable in an adult. Augustine makes exactly this point, in fact:

In what ways, in that time, did I sin? Was it that I cried for the breast? If I should now so cry – not indeed for the breast, but for food suitable to my condition – I should be most justly laughed at and rebuked. What I did then deserved rebuke but, since I could not understand those who rebuked me, neither custom nor common sense permitted me to be rebuked. As we grow we root out and cast away from us such childish habits.

…Yet we look leniently on such things, not because they are not faults, or even small faults, but because they will vanish as the years pass. For, although we allow for such things in an infant, the same things could not be tolerated patiently in an adult.

But children aren’t actually little angels – they’re human.

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Related posts:

Asked and answered

Children of God?

Forgive us our sins

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Note: A modified version of this post was published at Christian Diversity, as part of a broader discussion on Original Sin.

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The timidity of New Atheists

I’m disappointed by New Atheist writers.

Not specifically with their conclusions, although I think their investigative methods to reach said conclusions are remarkable sloppy. No, I’m more disappointed with their timidity. Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris et al. are very happy to make grand and sweeping claims, but they seem to lack the intellectual courage to follow their arguments through. In the midst of their tireless self-promotion as evangelists of the bright atheist future, there is a marked unwillingess to be honest about the details of where exactly their ideals would lead humanity.

Morality is an interesting case in point here. Dawkins is happy to propose secular humanism as an alternative moral compass, despite its unfortunate tendency to promote eugenics and infanticide. This philosophy maintains that ethics and morality can be derived from human rationality (“ethical values and principles may be discovered, in the course of ethical deliberation”, as the humanist articles of faith put it), despite the dearth of evidence for such rationality in human affairs.

The biggest problem with the humanist approach is that it requires staunch adherence to beliefs which are insupportable in the absence of God. “All people are created equal” is a wonderful basis for a just society, but without the Creator it makes no sense. People are not equal. They have unequal distribution of intellect, of athletic ability, of attractiveness. Unless there is independent justification for such a concept, an intellectually honest atheist should scrap it.

So let’s see where this level of honesty might lead. Friedrich Nietzsche – perhaps best known for his statement “God is dead” – believed that human behaviour was ultimately based on individual people’s “will to power”. Nietzsche claimed that the “death of God” would eventually lead to the loss of any universal perspective and any coherent sense of objective truth. Power is the whole of the law. His philosophy is startlingly echoed in Mao Tse-Tung’s description of his own ethics:

“I do not agree with the view that to be moral, the motive of one’s actions has to be benefiting others. Morality does not have to be defined in relation to others. . . . [People like me want to] satisfy our hearts to the full and in doing so we automatically have the most valuable moral codes. Of course there are people and objects in the world, but they are all there only for me. . . . I have my desire and act on it. I am responsible to no one.”

Writing in The Irrational Atheist, Vox Day comments on this worldview:

“This philosophy is rational, but it is literally psychopathic in the sense described by Dr. Robert Hare, developer of the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised, a clinical scale used to diagnose psychopathy. He describes psychopaths as predators who use intimidation and violence to satisfy their own selfish needs. ‘Lacking in conscience and in feelings for others, they take what they want and do as they please, violating social norms and expectations without guilt or remorse.’

“While it is not possible to diagnose the mental health of a dead man, the tens of millions of Chinese murdered by the Mao regime tend to indicate that the close correspondence between the words of the twenty-four-year-old philosophy student and Dr. Hare’s description of psychopathy is not entirely coincidental.”

I don’t for a minute claim that this worldview is shared by all atheists, but I question what basis there is for an atheist to hold any different view. Why should the happiness of others be any kind of moral imperative?

Dawkins seems particularly content to close his eyes and ignore implications of his own arguments. Hence we see such foolishness as this:

“I do not believe there is an atheist in the world who would bulldoze Mecca – or Chartres, York Minster or Notre Dame, the Shwe Dagon, the temples of Kyoto or, of course, the Buddhas of Bamiyan.” (The God Delusion)

The well-documented destruction of 41 000 of Russia’s 48 000 churches by Soviet atheists between 1917 and 1969 would seem to be a glaring rebuttal to this belief. And we needn’t limit ourselves to a single example – the atheist regime in North Korea has destroyed 440 of country’s 500 Buddhist temples, and atheists in China have destroyed some 7000 temples and monasteries in Tibet.

The question, though, is why Dawkins would object to such destruction. If religion is abusive and freeing the religious masses from their delusions is his avowed aim, why not bulldoze all the places of worship? Unweave that rainbow, burn those books and start fresh! Show some guts and take your beliefs all the way!

Sam Harris, despite his overwhelming tendency towards illogical idiocy, comes closer to displaying the courage of his convictions. In The End of Faith he states that:

“Some propositions are so dangerous that it may even be ethical to kill people for believing them.”

He seems to be willing to accept that his vision of a global atheist utopia will require a lot of genocide to attain – although he’s not quite honest enough to phrase it that baldly. In his Afterword, he attempts to dispute the connection between atheism and the widespread atrocities which seem to be so characteristic of atheist governments:

“This is one of the most common criticisms I encounter… While some of the most despicable political movements in human history have been explicitly irreligious, they were not especially rational.”

Again – why should it matter? I’d love to hear Harris (or any other public advocate of atheism) say, “The tendency of atheist regimes to slaughter their own citizens is irrelevant – the truth is more important than the lives of other people.”

Because if you don’t believe that, why do you keep trying to bring about the New Enlightenment?

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Related posts:

Secular (in)Humanism

Living a good and/or Christian life

Lumpy atheism

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Living a good and/or Christian life

C. S. Lewis, in his classic essay Man or Rabbit?, reflects on the frequent secular refrain:

“It’s possible to be a very moral person without being a Christian.”

I wrote recently about problems that come from viewing Christianity as a self-improvement program; this question looks from the other end of the issue. Can’t you be a moral atheist?

The first issue with this question concerns the value we place on truth. When a worldview makes major claims about ultimate reality, the central issue should not be whether it is useful, but whether it is actually true. In contrast, if we make a simplifying assumption of materialism to answer a scientific question, it is enough that the assumption is merely useful. But if we are basing our lives on a belief, then we must (if we have any intellectual integrity) seek what is true.

And when we are dealing with morality, our very basis for assessing the moral import of an action is determined by our worldview. If we think of individuals as mere packages of genetic material winding down the hours between conception and oblivion, then we may want to emphasise whatever fleeting happiness that we can get. Such a perspective will incline us to prioritise “society” over the individual, since “society” will last longer and contains more collective “happiness” potential at any one instant. We seen previously how secular humanism, the dominant atheist moral philosophy, leads logically to the devaluation of individual human life.

But from a Christian perspective, we cannot ignore the good of the individual. If we believe that true and complete joy can only come from an intimate and eternal relationship with God, then any nebulous increase in societal “happiness” is trifling in comparison with reconciling the soul of one individual person to God.

Clearly, the two worldviews have major differences in moral reasoning. There may well be areas of overlap in the implementation, but the motivations behind moral behaviour will be different in these two scenarios.

There is also the question of what morality actually means in a purely materialist worldview. Without an objective standard, morality becomes a fairly meaningless concept. “According to my personal standards of morality, I’m very moral!” – that’s great, Jeffrey Dahmer and Idi Amin could probably have said the same thing. (And no, “the general consensus amongst the people” is not an objective standard).

Perhaps more important is the hidden question that lurks beneath the surface. The proposition: “A person can be moral without being a Christian” is misleading. Lewis explains:

The question before each of us is not “Can someone lead a good life without Christianity?” The question is, “Can I?” We all know there have been good men who were not Christians; men like Socrates and Confucius who had never heard of it, or men like J. S. Mill who quite honestly couldn’t believe it. Supposing Christianity to be true, these men were in a state of honest ignorance or honest error … But the man who asks me, “Can’t I lead a good life without believing in Christianity?” is clearly not in the same position. If he hadn’t heard of Christianity he would not be asking this question. If, having heard of it, and having seriously considered it, he had decided that it was untrue, then once more he would not be asking the question. The man who asks this question has heard of Christianity and is by no means certain that it may not be true. He is really asking, “Need I bother about it?” Mayn’t I just evade the issue, just let sleeping dogs lie, and get on with being ‘good’? Aren’t good intentions enough to keep me safe and blameless without knocking at that dreadful door and making sure whether there is, or isn’t someone inside?”

We cannot accept Christ as a wise and moral teacher without also accepting him as Lord.

We cannot turn to Christianity for moral guidance unless it is true. But if it is true, then it must totally transform our understanding of goodness.

Christianity is not a recipe for improvement on an individual or a societal level. It is a personal relationship with God. That relationship is the root, the blessings and improvements to our character are the flower. Cut off from the root, all our lovely “morality” and “goodness” will wither and fade.

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Related posts:

Serious, not fanatical

Secular (in)Humanism

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Serious, not fanatical

I’m reading Timothy Keller’s The Reason for God. In a section on Pharasaism – and its modern analogue, the overbearingly judgmental and self-righteous Christian – he writes:

“Many people try to understand Christians along a spectrum from “nominalism”at one end to “fanaticism” at the other. A nominal Christian is someone who …does not practice it and perhaps barely believes it. A fanatic is someone who is thought to over-believe and over-practice Christianity … The problem with this approach is that it assumes that the Christian faith is basically a form of moral improvement.”

This is profoundly important, because it underlies much of the misunderstanding that crops up whenever we talk about “morality” in a Christian context. It is often pointed out that non-Christians can live in accordance with high moral standards, and I agree with that completely. (For some related thoughts on relative moral standards inside and outside the church, see my recent post).

Keller goes on to point out that the judgmental and self-righteous attitude observed in Pharisaic (or fanatical) believers is ultimately rooted in an idea of justification through right-living, or (if you’ll pardon the Christian jargon), a doctrine of “salvation by works”. But this is not the essence of Christianity. The fundamental message of the gospel is that we are saved through grace, not through our own efforts, and because of that we have no reason to be proud of our own moral standards.

This is a deeply humbling message. We understand by the doctrine of Grace that our personal moral behaviour will always fall short of God’s perfect standards. Therefore we have no right to judge others by comparing their behaviour to our own lives.

Keller continues:

“The people who are fanatics, then, are so not because they are too committed to the gospel but because they’re not committed enough.

“Think of people you consider fanatical.They’re overbearing, self-righteous, opinionated, insensitive and harsh. Why? It’s not because they are too Christian but because they are not Christian enough. They are fanatically zealous and courageous, but they are not fanatically humble, sensitive, loving, empathetic, forgiving or understanding – as Christ was. Because they think of Christianity as a self-improvement programme they emulate the Jesus of the whips in the temple, but not the Jesus who said “Let him who is without sin cast the first stone” (John 8:7). What strikes us as overly fanatical is actually a failure to be fully committed to Christ and his gospel.” (emphasis added)

Commitment to Christ is not a set of options between which we can pick and choose. We need to go all the way and let him rule our lives completely – we can’t just observe from the outside and try to emulate the bits that we like. True transformation can only come from indwelling of the Spirit, not from self-motivated imitation.

Secular (in)Humanism

From Wikipedia: “Secular Humanism is a humanist philosophy that espouses reason, ethics, and justice…”

Sounds great, doesn’t it? Here’s the problem:

Secular humanism is an example of what has been called “cut-flower” morality. That is to say that it has grown out of a Western culture rooted in Christian principles and ethics, and it assumes that it can cut off and keep those attractive aspects while discarding all that bothersome baggage of Christianity itself.

If we look a little further into – oh, let’s call them the “articles of faith”, for convenience – of the Council for Secular Humanism, we see that:

“… religious experience … redirects and gives meaning to the lives of human beings. We deny, however, that such experiences have anything to do with the supernatural … We consider the universe to be … most effectively understood by scientific inquiry. We are always open to the discovery of new possibilities and phenomena in nature. However, we find that traditional views of the existence of God … are meaningless”

“Secular humanists may be agnostics, atheists, rationalists, or skeptics, but they find insufficient evidence for the claim that some divine purpose exists for the universe.”

So let’s break that down for what it’s really saying:

• Religious experience gives meaning to our lives, but is not related to any spiritual reality and is in fact a meaningless illusion.
• Furthermore, we accept any evidence and are open to any new possibility as long as it has no theological implications, because those are a priori defined as rubbish.

We’ll leave this hit-and-miss adherence to scientific rigour for another discussion. But it’s the morality that I really want to examine in this essay:

“… secularists deny that morality needs to be deduced from religious belief … we believe in the central importance of the value of human happiness here and now. We are opposed to absolutist morality, yet we maintain that objective standards emerge, and ethical values and principles may be discovered, in the course of ethical deliberation”

So, maximising human happiness is the ultimate goal, and while there is no “absolutist morality”, there are “objective standards”. It has been an ongoing (and notably unsuccessful) pet project of atheist philosophers for centuries to deduce a basis for objective morality apart from a theistic worldview, but let’s look at some specific examples. (Lest I be accused of cherry-picking particularly offensive statements made on an off day, I have included references to the relevant works if you would like to research them further).

Julian Huxley was the founding president of the International Humanist and Ethical Union in 1952, a broad umbrella organisation covering secular humanism, atheism, rationalism and the like. As well as being an extremely prominent secular humanist (and the first president of the British Humanist Association), he was a ground-breaking biologist in the field of evolutionary synthesis and the grandson of T. H. Huxley.

He was also a prominent member of the British Eugenics Society – indeed, was President of that institution from 1959-62. His view was that:

“The lowest strata are reproducing too fast. Therefore … they must not have too easy access to relief or hospital treatment lest the removal of the last check on natural selection should make it too easy for children to be produced or to survive; long unemployment should be a ground for sterilisation.” (Man in the modern world, 1947)

Another prominent voice among the secular humanists is Peter Singer, who is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, and has held positions at the University of Melbourne, Monash University and the University of Oxford. In 2004 he was recognised as the Australian Humanist of the Year by the Council of Australian Humanist Societies. As well as supporting bestiality “as long as it’s not abusive to the animal”, Singer believes that early-term abortion is morally acceptable, not because of any usual pro-choice arguments, but because killing a human being is not necessarily wrong:

“[The argument that a fetus is not alive] is a resort to a convenient fiction that turns an evidently living being into one that legally is not alive. Instead of accepting such fictions, we should recognise that the fact that a being is human, and alive, does not in itself tell us whether it is wrong to take that being’s life.” (Rethinking Life and Death: The Collapse of Our Traditional Ethics, 1994)

He extends this line of thought further, arguing that killing an infant which the parents do not want is morally acceptable, as it would result in more happiness overall than allowing the child to live. (For the full discussion, see Practical Ethics, 1993 – it’s too depressing to quote extended passages).

I have chosen these passages for this essay, not because they are morally repulsive and I wish to score an emotional point, but because they are the logical outworkings of a secular humanist worldview when applied consistently to the field of morality by the leaders in the movement.

What I am even more concerned with is why we find these concepts repulsive. It is not our rationality which objects – I suggest rather that it is specifically our humanity that is repulsed by infanticide and eugenics.  And I assert that the logical product of secular “humanism” is a coldly rationalist shell with all traces of humanity removed.

Can the flower of our morality survive without the nourishing root of a Christian worldview? Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, perhaps the finest commentator on the great Soviet experiment with institutional atheism in the 20th century, summarised his views thus:

“…if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.”

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Related posts:

Living a good and/or Christian life

Lumpy atheism

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Two evolutionists walk into a bar…

In a recent post I suggested an alternative take on Stephen Jay Gould’s NOMA framework, in which religion and science occupy “nonoverlapping magisteria”. Richard Dawkins also has an alternative to the NOMA framework. It goes:

“Science tells us everything and what it doesn’t tell us isn’t important anyway la-la-la-I-can’t-hear-you-so-stop-talking.”

I’m paraphrasing his words slightly, but I believe I have captured the thrust of his argument accurately. Let’s look in a little more detail at the perspectives of these two evolutionary biologists.

A common criticism of NOMA is that religion and science insist on interfering with one another, so we can’t really regard them as being non-overlapping. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that scientists and religious people keep commenting on each other’s fields. (Of course, when you have a scientist who is also religious, this issue becomes even muddier: my point is that we end up with a person making a religious comment based on a scientific perspective, and making scientific claims based on religious beliefs).

Note that Gould doesn’t simply say that the two fields are independent: he specifically says that they “bump right up against each other, interdigitating in wondrously complex ways along their joint border.” Of course, such a complex border would appear to be merely fuzzy from a distance, but it is exactly this interdigitation that we must explore. What Gould claims is that within every issue, whether moral or scientific, there are complex details which will fall into the domain of one or other field.

In our (very human) quest for meaning, even when operating as scientists, we have an inevitable tendency to add a moral and philosophical dimension to everything we see. It is an article of faith amongst materialist atheists that there is no deeper meaning to anything, but that is a religious statement masquerading as science. T. H. Huxley warned against this trend in his 1889 essay Agnosticism (in which he also first defined the title term):

“In matters of the intellect, follow your reason as far as it will take you, without regard to any other consideration. And negatively: In matters of the intellect, do not pretend that conclusions are certain which are not demonstrated or demonstrable.”

If we look into areas of conflict between religion and science, I believe we generally see something like:

1. Science announces a theory (which may or may not be true).
2. A philosophical and/or moral dimension is added by either or both sides of the debate.
3. Argument ensues about the philosophical/moral dimension, and is extrapolated back to the validity of the scientific claim.

It is precisely this combination of scientific conjecture and philosophical implication that Gould was referring to with his complex border. He did not believe that religious perspective would illuminate a specifically scientific question, but he also believed that it is irresponsible for a scientist to add a philosophical aspect to any thesis in his capacity as a scientist. When Dawkins claims that the universe has “no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”, he is most assuredly not making a scientific claim, and thus even under a NOMA framework, it is entirely appropriate to respond to him from a religious perspective.

This temptation to proclaim on topics far beyond his field of expertise seems to be irresistible to Dawkins. He further claims that: “A universe with a God would look quite different from a universe without one. A physics, a biology where there is a God is bound to look different. So the most basic claims of religion are scientific.” But different from what? We live in and experience and can observe precisely one universe. How can that possibly be a scientific statement? It is akin to saying, “The Big Bang was very different from all the other Big Bangs which have happened”; or, “Life based on complex organic molecules is very different from all the other life we observe”. It is ridiculous. Gould was more honest about the limitations of science, saying: “Science simply cannot (by its legitimate methods) adjudicate the issue of God’s possible superintendence of nature. We neither affirm nor deny it; we simply can’t comment on it as scientists.” (Scientific American, 1992)

Let us examine another pair of quotes from Dawkins:

• “What has ‘theology’ ever said that is of the smallest use to anybody? When has ‘theology’ ever said anything that is demonstrably true and is not obvious? What makes you think that ‘theology’ is a subject at all?” (Letter to The Independent, 20 March 1993)
• “If you want to do evil, science provides the most powerful weapons to do evil; but equally, if you want to do good, science puts into your hands the most powerful tools to do so.” (The Richard Dimbleby Lecture, 12 Nov 1996)

Thus according to Dawkins, science is morally silent, and yet theology is completely useless. But if science is all that there is, what morality could possibly guide our actions? Can science seriously hold the weight of ethical decisions? In light of these opinions, it becomes easier to understand how Dawkins reaches the conclusion that “[his] belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we’ve evolved five fingers rather than six.” (Interview with Justin Brierley, 21st October 2008)

This is, tragically, the despairing depth in which we find ourselves in the absence of a theologically-guided moral imperative. Far wiser was Gould, who wrote in his essay “Nonmoral Nature” (Natural History, February 1982):

“Our failure to discern a universal good does not record any lack of insight or ingenuity, but merely demonstrates that nature contains no moral messages framed in human terms. Morality is a subject for philosophers, theologians … indeed for all thinking people. The answers will not be read passively from nature; they do not, and cannot, arise from the data of science. The factual state of the world does not teach us how we, with our powers for good and evil, should alter or preserve it in the most ethical manner.”

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Related posts:

Believing and understanding

On reading both books

Overlap in the Magisterium?

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