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Atheism, Christianity, law, meta-ethics., metaethics, morality, philosophy, politics, religion, rights, Shapiro
In the last few blogs I have posted about some economic data that I think is relevant to political discussions in the US. I have also commented on Eric’s blog trying to explain why some Christians may vote republican and why Jesus was not a socialist. We quickly got in the weeds about data and why we think our data is more important and why we think the facts we mention are more important etc. I think all of those arguments are important in political debate. But neither Eric nor I are really trying to run a political blog. I want my blog to be more philosophical with an aim to show why being a theist is more intellectually fulfilling and coherent than being an atheist.
That topic will necessarily cover a wide variety of subtopics from meta-ethics, morality, to free will, to science, history, scripture, and yes politics. I think Eric and I would both agree that certain political views are anti-christian. But my disagreement with him was that we shouldn’t consider people who vote for one party or the other as Christians. Each party has a wide range of policies that they adopt and rarely are you going to find a party that perfectly matches our christian views. To the extent we are going to say political views on certain policies are christian or anti-christian those policies need to be considered individually. That is why I think Christians can be Democrats or Republicans or even Socialists.
The Catholic Church I believe has done a decent job (although far from perfect) of navigating these debates in this way. It has taken specific stances on issues that it believes are anti-christian but by and large has not emphasized certain political parties as being “Christ’s party” or the “anti-christ’s party”. It should be obvious to anyone reading the Gospels that Christ was not a politician and he was not preaching a political agenda. This is a difference between Islam and Christianity.
But part of the debate between theists and atheists is more centered around which view leads to better government. This is a much more philosophical question. So you might ask if Jesus was not a politician why would we say a theistic outlook is could lead to a better government? And the answer is because the theist has a fundamentally different view of what they are and how they get rights than the atheist. And this fundamentally different view has led to various issues over the past couple of centuries.
All laws are intended to promote certain goods. So questions of about whether morals exist, what they are, and how we know them, will be foundational for any government that is enforcing laws. Most of my blog explains why I believe an atheistic worldview completely fails to establish a coherent view of morality. Without real morality debating laws is essentially the same as debating whether red or white wine is preferable (subjectivism) or whether batman would beat the silver surfer in a fight (fictionalism).
The foundational belief that all humans are made in the image of God is the great equalizer and has provided a basis to reject slavery, racism and killing humans deemed undesirable. Rejecting the idea all humans are made in the Image of God removes a massive barrier to these practices. Efforts to create any similarly sized barrier have not yet materialized.
Theism supports the belief that our rights come from God and therefore the state can violate them. Atheists will often argue that rights are a creation of the state. This is a very different view and has had catastrophic consequences throughout history.
I am not saying Atheists can not run a government or have a moral society. But since they reject the notion that we are all made in the image of God that can be a severe foundational problem. We see this foundational crack play out in many different policies from racism, life issues, free speech, animal rights versus human rights, the relationship between the government and the individual, the relationship between church and state, and many more.
I have drafted a few blogs about some of these issues and hope to post about them in the future.
But for now I would recommend a pretty interesting interview that touches on some of these concerns. Ben Shapiro is a Jewish political commentator that worked his political views back to philosophy. (Yes many of the philosophical arguments I make would also support the Jewish theism.) Whereas I think I worked out philosophy to its political implications. So I think we sort of came at it from different directions but ended up meeting on some common philosophical ground. Now my goal is not to say people should adopt Ben Shapiro’s political views. I do think he does a good job representing conservative positions but I also think people should make sure they understand the positions of democrats and socialists.
Rather I recommend this video for the more philosophical aspects of his discussion. This is mostly covered in 20:00 to about 47:20 so if you are not interested in his personal life you may want to skip there.
True and Reasonable 
Is it possible theism is purely a political angle? Claiming authority from a book is a neat trick, while people today don’t apply reason but by reading more books and footnotes on books. Libraries grow through mitosis.
I remember a time in my life where common sense was developed by experience. Now it is developed by opinion and experts, that simply get their expertise from opinions and experts that have no practical value at all. Look at the state of lawmakers and religious leadership. It’s totally run amuck and no one can any longer see the unintended consequence of each and every law, when in fact, most steer are better off un-roped, if you catch my drift.
Hi Jim
Thanks for the comments.
Yes it is logically possible theism is purely a political angle. Its possible god doesn’t exist and we are all just making this morality stuff up. In that case I find it hard to think I should care much about this fiction we call morality since there is no right or wrong. So being wrong about God and morality is not a big deal.
But here is another point “reason” involves giving an explanation or justification for why some view is correct. But there can be a fundamental disagreement that we can’t get past by reason alone.
So maybe I disagree that your reason A justifies action X. Then you might give me another reason why you think reason A justifies X or you might give me reason B. But I might disagree with those etc. Or I might say your reason is “not true.” So you might say we shouldn’t eat chicken because chickens have all the rights people have. I might agree that would be a reason not to eat chickens, but I would say “it is not true” that chickens have all the rights people have.
We need some starting points and usually we start with assumption that there is an objective reality to resolve our differences. And we agree that certain things are the ways we learn about it etc. For example science assumes our senses give us some information about an objective reality. We all agree on that so science can get off the ground.
For certain things we might all agree on certain basic premises. So the reason I think I have seen a phone is because I have a memory and I think those memories correlate with reality such that it my belief is true etc. And we all agree on many of these premises. We might also agree about on how our 5 basic senses – reveal reality to us.
The problem is morality is not directly seen. Person A and B can both see me eating a chicken sandwich and one will think that my action is immoral and the other won’t. Its not an issue of their eyes not functioning correctly. Rather it is a difference in fundamental moral beliefs.
Shapiro makes this point when he talks about the interplay between Jerusalem and Athens. In the West we got these fundamental values from religion and then used reason to better achieve the values. But reason alone won’t create the fundamental premises.
“I remember a time in my life where common sense was developed by experience. ”
Sure but keep in mind that throughout history things like slavery were “common sense.” Aristotle gave “reasons” why Greeks were better than others and so it was more fitting for others to be slaves.
It required moral foundations to argue these practices should change. Even people who had been slaves themselves in the past didn’t think there was anything wrong with slavery on the whole.
But for centuries there was the notion that since all humans are made in the image of God slavery was morally unjustifiable. That idea was a thorn in the side of slavery that eventually killed it. And Imago Dei is a reason I can use with Christians and Jews as a reason slavery is wrong.
So now we all grew up in a culture that has said slavery is wrong. But we remove one of the key reasons for believing it is wrong. Indeed we remove a key reason to think we shouldn’t treat people “like animals.” Hmmm. So now I think atheists are trying to reconstruct some sort of foundation that can yield the same sorts of moral conclusions we find comforting. But that is what we call rationalizing our conclusions. Atheists *want* to say Stalin was really worse than Colonel Sanders but without access to the idea that humans are made in the image of God (or even that God may have given us certain insights about moral truth,) this becomes impossible through reason alone.
Really nice you see you about, Joe.
Thoughtful comment. What puzzles me is this; isn’t everything you say here equally as true through natural selection? Our instinctive side has a tremendous amount of good in it, likely about 70%, and “evil” as well (lets not start semantics here) but much more “good” for survival sake proves that, than evil or we wouldn’t be here in either case. What continues I believe, to haunt us is we delay instinctive behavior by thinking. Ask any hero who charged into help in any dangerous event—that is what people do without thinking. The hero then says, “I just did what anyone would do in the circumstance, I’m no hero”. It is when we take the time to reason and think about all the angles that we fail in law and religion. We all know the “will of god” without thinking. When we start to wonder aloud and contemplate these things is when it gets messy, the a lot of waiting steps in. Thinking has supplanted natural instinct (mostly through the churches) yet opinion is the muddiest of waters.
Hi Jim thanks for the compliment.
I do think we are instinctively good because God made that happen. But if there is no god then I think it is a hard case to make.
You say:
“Our instinctive side has a tremendous amount of good in it, likely about 70%, and “evil” as well (lets not start semantics here) but much more “good” for survival sake proves that, than evil or we wouldn’t be here in either case. What continues I believe, to haunt us is we delay instinctive behavior by thinking.”
So do you think a lion’s instincts are good since it is here? I mean mosquitoes and strep bacteria have also survived does that mean their instincts are mostly good?
If you define acting good as whatever helps us survive then ok. But I don’t see it that way.
Whether you mean survival means passing down our genes or just individually living longer I do not think that defines goodness.
A hero might give his life for another and that action would be good. But it may also mean he dies and he will not pass down his genes.
I don’t think it is morally good to have as many children as possible even if that would mean your genes will be more likely to be passed down.
I do agree we know the will of God even if you think there is no God. He still instilled some moral sense in you. But if there is no God then I don’t see why we shouldn’t treat our instincts like those of other animals. Why would we think our instincts track morality more than the lion that kills the cubs of lioness so he can have cubs with her?
Wild animals will out survive humanity. Who am I to judge the value of even a beetle, who will outperform human endurance through many ebbs and flows of human existence?
It is very unlikely you would have concluded a monotheistic deity as god, let alone the instiller of a moral compass when all behaviors are purely molded by parental influences and customs.
Yet the search, propagated by the all powerful question remains.
“Had I simply understood earlier that life had no meaning I could have borne it quietly, knowing that that was my lot. But I could not satisfy myself with that. Had I been like a man living in a wood from which he knows there is no exit, I could have lived; but I was like one lost in a wood who, horrified at having lost his way, rushes about wishing to find the road. He knows that each step he takes confuses him more and more, but still he cannot help rushing about. It was indeed terrible.”—Leo Tolstoy
“Wild animals will out survive humanity. Who am I to judge the value of even a beetle, who will outperform human endurance through many ebbs and flows of human existence?”
Animals may out survive humans. But unless you think that somehow makes them morally superior then that fact seems irrelevant about judging whether we should act like them based on instincts.
That is an interesting Leo Tolstoy quote. The problem I think is that we do not “know” there is no meaning.
Our life may in fact have meaning and there may in fact really be a moral way to live. We can make rational decisions about how we might know the right way to live. We don’t need to go rushing around. We can just calmly think about it. What does it mean to say an action is immoral? And how could we possibly know something is immoral or not?
He says he could not satisfy himself with the belief that life had no meaning. And I agree that seems hard and unsatisfying. But I am not sure it is easier if you think life has no meaning earlier in life. Maybe if you never even considered life might have a meaning.
Jim:
“It is very unlikely you would have concluded a monotheistic deity as god, let alone the instiller of a moral compass when all behaviors are purely molded by parental influences and customs.
Yet the search, propagated by the all powerful question remains.”
I’m not sure what you are saying here.
We are compelled by our nature to answer questions, even regarding things we have never even heard of. Does life have meaning? Of course not. If it did we’d all know it. If it did, it wouldn’t demand an ounce of faith.
“We are compelled by our nature to answer questions, even regarding things we have never even heard of. Does life have meaning? Of course not. If it did we’d all know it.”
Why would you think that if life had meaning we would all know it? Lots of things in reality are true even though we don’t all “know” them. It was true that Jupiter had moons even though we didn’t all know that for centuries.
1) There are an even number of stars in the universe.
2) It is not the case that there are an even number of stars in the universe.
One of those statements is true even though we don’t know it.
There is no absolute truth. Everything is naturally existing in a state of polarity. As a biblical example will do here, who stands at the right hand of god? And who (never mentioned) stands at the left hand? There is no good without evil for you cant know one without the other. That satan (the prosecutor) and jesus (the defense attorney) are all part of the same court. Job is a good example of the court model that is christianity.
I generally don’t get embroiled in arguments about absolute versus relative truth. I do think there is objective truth in the sense of it being true regardless of whether we believe it is true or not.
So, you would say that there are moral facts which are discoverable in the way that the moons of Jupiter are discoverable?
Keith I have been thinking about this. And yes I think it is a good analogy. I think moral facts are objective facts that are true regardless of our beliefs, just like the moons of Jupiter exist regardless of our beliefs. But I don’t think we discover moral facts in exactly the same we we discover the moons of jupiter – through empirical senses.
May I offer my view? I think there are moral facts and I think they are discoverable, but not the way that the moons of Jupiter are discoverable.