11/12/2010 – Regis Nicoll –
Each of us believes that certain things are wrong, not because we believe they are wrong, but because they really are wrong. And that applies to the moral relativist as well.
If you want to see a relativist sink into a sophistic seizure, ask him about the “virtues” of cruelty, rape, cheating, bigotry, or exploitation. Even the most liberally minded among us believe such things are wrong, even if they don’t know why.
Take the University of Maryland professor who recently engaged a member of the Genocide Awareness Project. In a ten-minute exchange on moral ethics, the professor exhibited great difficulty with the concept of morality, including the terms of the debate: human essence, value, and rights. Nevertheless, she had no difficulty calling her interlocutor’s reference to “mankind” offensive and “wrong.”
On the question of abortion the professor was more measured: “I think it is actually morally impermissible to kill fetuses.” She quickly added that she didn’t know why it (or, for that matter, genocide or lynching) was wrong, and went on, at some length, to suggest that neither does anyone else. It is something we need to think more deeply about, was how she left it. This, from a professor of philosophy.
Help on its way
For people like the befuddled prof who haven’t a clue why, for instance, the Holocaust was immoral, Sam Harris aims to help. Make no mistake: Harris is a rationalist and trenchant atheist who is highly critical of religion and religious folk. But he is also a moral realist who believes in objective moral truths — truths, he is confident, that can be grounded in science to form a system of shared moral values.
His argument goes something like this: The natural world operates according to natural laws discoverable through science; morality is a part of the natural world; therefore, morality follows natural laws discoverable through science.
C.S. Lewis once pointed out that the moral law is not about what humans do; it is about what they ought to do.
Logically, his argument is flawless. Practically, it suffers from several serious weaknesses.
Yes, but…
Christians would agree that morality has the features of law, in that it predicts certain outcomes from certain actions. But while the moral law is predictive, it is not deterministic like the laws of gravity or electromagnetism. If it were, mankind would be reduced to automata slavishly following its moral program.
C.S. Lewis once pointed out that the moral law is not about what humans do; it is about what they ought to do. As such, the moral law is not discernible, scientifically or otherwise, from actual human behavior.
Harris would be quick to say that morality is about behaviors that enhance human and animal flourishing, and we know, scientifically, what many of those are: the provision of proper medical care, education, sanitation, clean water.
Indeed, applied science is responsible for doubling human life expectancy over the last 150 years and for cleaner air and water than at any time since the Industrial Revolution. Then again, the early 20th century programs for eugenics, forced sterilization, and selective breeding were morally justified on scientific grounds, as are the arguments today for human cloning and embryo-destructive research.
While science can help us toward a desired outcome, it cannot tell us what outcome we ought to desire.
And that brings up another weakness in Harris’ argument: While science can help us toward a desired outcome, it cannot tell us what outcome we ought to desire. Science has no moral voice; it is only a tool for moral agents who assign values to things.
For example, medical technology enables us to harvest stem cells from an embryo, but it doesn’t tell us whether killing a human being at the earliest stage of life is right or wrong. As to the bigger question, is it right to sacrifice the few for the well-being of the many, science can only shrug.
With no transcendent criteria, the calculus of every moral dilemma is left to the privileged class of beings deemed “persons” and whose only touchstone is the whim of their collective preferences. And that leads to a third problem with Harris’ schema.
Treating our neighbor as we would want to be treated has been recognized as a universal good in nearly every world religion and civilization since the beginning of recorded history.
Who is my neighbor?
You would be hard-pressed to find anyone who would deny the moral probity of the Golden Rule. Treating our neighbor as we would want to be treated has been recognized as a universal good in nearly every world religion and civilization since the beginning of recorded history.
What has not been universally recognized, however, is who constitutes our “neighbor.” Is it those who live on our street, in our community, or country? Is it those who share our faith, skin color, or politics? Is it the people in our social group, therapy group, or identity group?
Or are our “neighbors” simply the members of our species? No, according to Peter Singer and the folks at PETA. They argue that humans have no privileged standing, and to think otherwise is speciesism — a benighted outlook as abominable as racism or sexism.
A while back Singer and a slate of high profile animal activists launched the Great Ape Project to raise the status of non-human primates to “persons.” If internationally accepted, this would confer the rights of life, liberty, and freedom from torture to our simian “neighbors” — rights that are currently denied for humans in utero.
Nor can we assume that the Golden Rule applies only to the animal kingdom. In 2008 Swiss authorities passed a law protecting the dignity — yes, dignity! — of plants. The law makes it illegal to despoil the dignity of a daisy by decapitation, and requires researchers applying for government grants to explain how they will respect that daisy in the field and the lab. We could all enjoy a hearty laugh if this were science fiction, but it is dead serious.
Taking the logic of the Swiss government a step further, a mother treating her child’s impetigo with Bactroban could be charged with mass murder for killing billions of bacterial microbes for the frivolous purpose of sparing her youngster some discomfort.
A product of intelligence
Harris is confident that science-based morality will send religion to the bone yard of discredited ideas. I wouldn’t bet on it. Morality, whether grounded in science or in some other aspect of the natural world, is grounded on quicksand.
For created things, purpose comes from their creator; for everything else, purpose is whatever the user wants it to be.
Morality comes from purpose, and purpose comes not from the laws of physics or selfish genes, but from intelligent agents. For created things, purpose comes from their creator; for everything else, purpose is whatever the user wants it to be.
Consider a river rock and a digital camera.
A river rock has no intended functional purpose. Its shape, size, color, and texture are the random effects of geological, hydrological, and frictional forces. The lack of intentional design means that it could serve as a skipping stone, paperweight, or conversation piece, according to user tastes and desires.
A digital camera, on the other hand, is a precision instrument that has been designed, engineered and constructed for a very specific purpose: capturing and recording images on electronic media. And, as with every high-tech gizmo on the market, it comes with operating instructions to help owners with proper use and care.
An owner is free to use his camera as a skipping stone, paperweight, or conversation piece, but he will miss the benefits of its engineered functionality. In fact, any use contrary to its operating instructions risks product failure and customer dissatisfaction.
The evidence
If we are nothing more than “river rocks,” there is no ultimate purpose to life, nor a right way to live it. Each individual can go about as he sees fit; no one has moral authority over anyone else; and any shared values are left to the vagaries of the 51 percent vote. In short, morality reduces to power, whether of the democratic majority, the autocratic tyrant, or scientific consensus.
But if we are “digital cameras,” our purpose and “operating instructions” derive from our Maker. Of course, we are free to pursue a different purpose, in a manner grounded elsewhere — be it personal preference, popular opinion, or scientific discovery — but we will eventually find ourselves in the place we began: unsatisfied and restless.
The universality of the Golden Rule strongly suggests the latter. Despite disagreement over the thousands of world religions and dozens of political systems and ideologies, there is unanimous agreement on a code of conduct that requires restraint of our natural impulses — impulses, we are told, that helped us win in nature’s evolutionary struggle. And, as mentioned, the code is not revealed by observing our actual conduct.
It is evidence that morality does not reside in the material matrix of the cosmos waiting to be discovered by a white-coated investigator, but is stamped in our humanness by the Creator who gave voice to it in the written record.
Regis Nicoll is a freelance writer and a BreakPoint Centurion. His “All Things Examined” column appears on BreakPoint every other Friday. Serving as a men’s ministry leader and worldview teacher in his community, Regis publishes a free weekly commentary to stimulate thought on current issues from a Christian perspective. To be placed on this free e-mail distribution list, e-mail him at centurion51@aol.com.
HT: Break Point originally posted on 11/5/2010
