The Germanic neologism translates as "moral illness". Does the squawking chicken come before the rotten egg, or vice versa?
"It is commonly held that religion makes people more just, compassionate, and moral, but a new study suggests that the data belie that assumption. In fact, at first glance it would seem, religion has the opposite effect. The extensive study, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies,” published in the Journal of Religion and Society (JRS) examines statistics from eighteen of the most developed democratic nations. It reveals clear correlations between various indicators of social strife and religiosity, showing that whether religion causes social strife or not, it certainly does not prevent it."
"The question is one of causation, and there is no clear answer. Whether religion leads directly to dysfunctionality, or religions merely flourish in dysfunctional societies, neither conclusion from this study flatters religion. The first tells us that religion is a hindrance to the development of moral character, and the second that religion hinders progress by distracting us from our troubles (with imaginary solutions to real problems). This study is complicated enough that I do not think that we can draw definitive negative conclusions about religion. But we can at least conclude, contrary to popular belief in this country, that it is not a given that religious societies are better, healthier, or more moral. What we can be clear about from this study is that highly religious societies can be dysfunctional, whereas by comparison secular societies in which evolution is largely accepted display real social cohesion and societal well-being. "
Like the rest of the animal kingdom, humans don't need a moral edict to ensure that we will reproduce as a species. Biological evolution could not help but select for those individuals that exhibit a biological imperative toward reproduction. We experience the imperative as a sexual urge. The urge kicks in when we experience a developmental surge in hormone production – years before society has decreed that we are ready for marriage.
Most animal parents do not need a moral edict to ensure that they will provide sufficient aid to their offspring. Any species in which the young must learn surival skills could not have continued if instinct had not guaranteed protection, nurturance, and training – usually by females, sometimes supported by assistance from males. We experience the instinct to nurture as love.
If we are fortunate, we find sexual partners, usually of the opposite sex. If we are particularly fortunate, we continue to love those whom we have chosen. Most of us make families. No need for a moral edict – instinct suffices.
Many animal species experience greater safety when they congregate in groups of varying sizes – we experience this as a social urge to join communities. Many animal species exhibit an instinct toward altruism – ants carry this instinct to an extreme, but ants can afford to do this because the colony members who sacrifice themselves are not the reproductive members. Human societies set up rules to ensure beneficial intracommunal interactions and hierarchies to guarantee leadership. Humans invented morality in an attempt to ensure that others would behave in a manner beneficial to the community – in accord with instinct for some and counter to personal urges for others. Most societies invented religion to ensure cooperation. Some societies value human rights, some violate the rights of weaker members.
Individuals in any animal species survive to reproduce by virtue of instincts that ensure individual survival – taking food, killing prey. We don't eat because of moral edicts – we experience hunger. Some of us attempt to satisfy our hunger for material things by taking what is not ours. Humans invented laws and punishments to deal with selfish acts – any act where we disregard a higher right.
Early human societies, just like modern agrarian economies in the developing world, benefited from reproduction. This explains why the Bible emphasizes reproduction and 'not spilling one's seed on barren ground'. However, by the Middle Ages, children without a supportive father were a drain on the community. This explains the shift toward emphasis on marriage and family; whereas marriage was initially a contract to ensure political alliances.
Unfortunately, fundamentalists and many religionists presume to dictate how all of us should live our lives – even those of us who do not find satisfaction through the church-wedding-before-sex, heterosexual, two child formula. I consider it immoral to selfishly insist that other people sacrifice their happiness to religionists' outmoded, neurotic rules. Fundamentalists want us to behave like emotional ants.
We're all familiar with optical illusions and the fact that our brain can be fooled in its attempts to make sense of the world.
Our brains construct an internal, cross-correlated internal representation of external reality through experience. By cross-correlated I mean that if we see a wall within our reach, it is quite reasonable to expect that we could also touch the wall, hear it if we struck it, even smell it if we cared to get up close.
We are perceptually unaware, though, of the neural processes that are involved in constructing perception, let alone consciousness. Equally, we are unaware of the mechanism that leads to release of adrenaline from the adrenal gland upon sensing of danger–though we are certainly aware of the physiological effect of circulating adrenaline.
Similarly, we are unaware of emotional mechanisms, or the neural basis for memory formation. We are unaware of actin-myosin sliding although aware of muscle contraction–or of cellular secretion of hormones, or of mitosis. The examples of disconnection between cellular mechanisms and perception of those mechanisms are as numerous as our cellular activites. The apprehension problem lies partly because of matters of scale–we have evolved to be aware only of the large scale effects of cellular actions and it could not be otherwise.
Out of this divorce between mechanism and experience came mind-body dualism and the conceptualization of a motivating 'soul' beneath physiological mechanisms. Dualism is the 'common sense' idea that some kind of supernatural mechanism is intimately connect to and drives the physical. Dualism is a soul-of-the-perceptual-gap pseudoexplanation.
By extension, out of mind-body dualism came the equally ridiculous notion that some kind of transcendental 'intelligence' can operate in the universe independent of a neural substrate. Regardless of what overly argument-driven philosophers might believe, the evidence indicates that intelligence is an evolved, neural-based phenomenon. Period. End of story. Or, it should be.
(By argument-driven, I refer to the phenomenon of looking only at whether or not the construction of an argument follows the rules of logic, and whether or not the premises conform to Newtonian-level intuition.)
"The philosopher Isaiah Berlin once said that the trouble with academics and commentators is that they care more about whether ideas are interesting than whether they are true." Michael Ignatieff
I think that Berlin's comment also applies to some philosophers and definitely to theologians and apologists.
The potential for mistaken conceptualizations based on 'common sense' or intuitive reasoning ultimately led from philosophy, which sought to answer questions purely by 'thinking' about them, to experimental science that acknowledged, and compensated for, the limitation of pure rationalism. Science evolved philosophically to discard, by expert consensus, old outmoded metaphysical explanations for the physical. Philosophy, divorced as it can be from empirical testing of premises, has not necessarily discarded unsupported theories.
Theists, who must ignore the lack of evidence or counterevidence, have monopolized on this deficiency in philosophy. They call it theology or apologetics. Some of these arguments appear quite logical, but there is an inherent problem with arguments constructed purely on definition or analogy. Any philosophy that seeks to explain the physical, regardless of whether it defines itself as supernatural or ineffable, must cede the field to scientific explanations, where available, because only science can test, confirm, or falsify the physical.
What do such things prove? Certainly nothing about the philosophical truth value of deism, theism, or atheism. Many of these acts do demonstrate something about the moral fiber (or lack thereof) exhibited by intelligent design creationists and theists.
The latest scandal concerns the apparent usurpation of eighty-four year old Anthony Flew's failing faculties and moderately prominent name by a group of alleged scoundrels who have apparently put theistic words into this published atheist's mouth. Even if these men, through their friendship with Flew, have succeeded in changing Flew's opinion on the possibility of a deity, this proves nothing about whether or not a deity exists.
In a strategy reminiscent of gathering vultures, Flew has been contacted by a flock of religious apologists and Christian institutions.
Mark Oppenheimer makes it appear likely in his New York times article, that Christian apologist Roy Abraham Varghese (below left), assisted perhaps by Christian philosopher John Haldane (below center), and by Orthodox Jewish physicist Gerald Schroeder (below right) have taken advantage of the foundering of Flew's once considerable intellect. (Haldane and Schroeder debated Flew in a DVD entitled, “Has Science Discovered God?” The DVD ends with an infomercial for Varghese's book, “The Wonder of the World.”)
Gary Habermas has also hovered in the wings. He is a Christian apologist and professor at Liberty University (which was founded by right-wing conservative televangelist Jerry Falwell). The failing Flew was also courted by Biola University, a conservative Christian school outside Los Angeles, which awarded Flew the Phillip E. Johnson Award for Liberty and Truth. For anyone not familiar with Johnson, he is a lawyer turned proponent of ID creationism.
Publication of "Flew's" supposed turn-around book–with Roy Abraham Varghese cited as coauthor–excited considerable suspicion that Varghese had actually written the entire book. Richard Carrier concludes of Varghese's "Flew" book:
"All this makes this book a grand and shameless lie, a clear violation of God's commandment against bearing false witness."
Varghese admits that the book was his idea, and that Varghese wrote it with the assistance of ghostwriter, Bob Hostetler, an evangelical pastor and author from Ohio. Cynthia DiTiberio, book editor at publisher HarperOne considered a ghostwriter for the project essential. Varghese claims that "Tony" (who is reportedly unaware of much of the content) OKed the book. Says Varghese:
"The only reason why people ask questions about his mental faculties is because he dared to change his mind. But let’s not forget that his new view of the world is one embraced by many of today’s leading philosophers in the Anglo-American world as well as most of the pioneers of modern science. This is the dirty little secret that the “new atheists” and their drum-beaters never talk about. It’s so much easier to shoot the messenger!"
If that is the usual caliber of Varghese's writing, I cannot imagine that the book will attract any readers but theists.
A political theist complains of Oppenheimer's article, "All the strange birds of the materialist faith certainly will flap about madly now and land gratefully on it. "
Undoubtedly! However, regardless of Flew's actual or beguiled beliefs, this proves nothing either way about the possibility of existence or nonexistence of the supernatural entity that theists refuse to relinquish to reason and evidence.
Most atheists seem to be taking a position much like mine–that it is deplorable to take advantage of an ageing man, yet that Flew's apparent 'change of mind' signifies nothing about the philosophical principles underlying the God/NoGod debate. I doubt that the perpetrators of this apparent mental embezzlement are concerned to change atheists' minds on the God question. Instead they probably expected to provide succor to offended theists who are upset at vocal questioning of their belief systems.
Dembski's Uncommon Descent blog links to an "exclusive" interview with Anthony Flew that appears on ToTheSource. I used quotes because I admit to a distrust of the honest of political theists such as the ID crowd.
The Anti-Discovery Institute came up with a misapplied title "The Cuckoo Ones Over Flew’s Nest", which attempts to distance DI from complicity by asserting, "Flew seems to have read a couple of DI-affiliated philosophers. But reading the Nickerson article, you don’t see any direct references by Flew to Discovery scientists." The author of this brief piece complains that the New York Times' editorial policy that "has not covered any news that might damage Darwinism, at least not since a writer on its Science page a few years back acknowledged that some of the standard textbook proofs employed to bolster Darwin’s theory are false. (That reporter is now in Iraq.)" Um, great news on the policy and reporters are moved around, but what does that have to do with the issue at hand? The great title is misapplied because it better describes the rather nefarious activities of the religious apologists in question.
Not surprisingly, RC apologist Denyse O'Leary informs us that anonymous friends consider the Varghese . . er, Flew . . book 'excellent'. Now, there's a deft way of reviewing a book that you haven't read!
Until Stevie Blunderweaseled his way into being elected Canada's PM, I was proud of Canadians, who are polite and quite tolerant.
This post is not about our slimy PM, though. Well, not directly. The Regressive Conservatives partly attained their minority government by fusing the slightly right Conservatives with the far right Reform-Alliance party that relies upon Canada's Bible Belt for power. Part of the Regressive platform relied on pandering to religious bigots who are upset about the fact that several Canadian provinces have OK'd gay marriage.
An earlier, far superior PM, Pierre Elliott Trudeau famously said in 1967, "There's no place for the state in the bedrooms of the nation." The statement caused a tidal wave of controversy that rippled across Canada. "Trudeau’s Omnibus Bill brought issues like abortion, homosexuality and divorce law to the forefront for the first time, changing the political and social landscape in Canada forever."
Forty years later, most Canadians are quite accepting of gays and gay marriage–we have had popular openly gay politicians for years, and two prominent politicians have recently married their long-term partners, with a mostly positive public reception. Most Canadians believe that gay marriage does not affect them personally or Canadian society negatively.
Any damage to the fabric of society that results from 'moral' questions such as gay marriage seems to stem from the negative attitudes of bigots who make a stink about tolerance and progress. I think that the chief point behind any moral guidelines concerns the question of doing harm. Because religious bigotry intends or actually does harm to others, then religious bigotry is immoral.
Some religious bigots are quite open about their hatreds–many of Canada's imported Muslims and Sikhs, for example, openly attempt to drag our nation backwards to fit their rigid beliefs. The Regressive Conservatives woo their votes because both groups prefer narrow, regressive moralities that ignore sociological realities. Canadian Christian bigots mostly try to hide their prejudices and hatreds behind platitudes, scriptural quotes, and fallacies of logic such as slippery slope arguments. American Christian Bigots write books decrying any socially contracted morality that does not adhere to their Absolute Moral Interpretations of the Bible, labeling all non-absolute moral systems as selfish, laissez faire immorality, and warning of supposed danger to society in inviting moral mayhem.
"With all due love and respect and with the risk of being hailed as a religious bigot, I fail to understand why gays should be allowed “to act according to the proclivities with which [they] are born.” It is the nature of fallen sinful man, when he gives into his natural proclivities to try to get whatever he wants in life, not caring who he hurts and treating people like objects. One sick comment that makes my skin crawl is when some sexist jerk says “women are just a like support system for a pu–y.” Another insensitive one would be the bumper sticker that says “No fat chicks.” This is usually on beat up pick-ups with gun-racks driven by inbred people name cyrus or homer whose teeth are green from chewing tobbacco. The point is, we humans often tend to be egoistically self sentered. BUT not everyone gives in to their baser desires. True a bunch of Los Angeles cops were disciplined for having sex with 14 year old girls a while back. True the perverts of NAMBLA feel its okay to have sex with little boys while spouting “sex before eight before its too late.” True that hate mongers like the KKK and the Black Panthers feel free to vent their venomous hatred. Yet it, even though it may result from following their natural proclivities, isn’t right. We have a responsibility to control our behavior. Women are NOT the property of man and Moses, the leader of the Jews who got the law from YHWH married a black woman. Divorce should be using sparingly as a last result. It can hurt children who often blame themselvs for their parents splitting up. Homosexuality has been a negative force, one that nihilistically erodes society. biblically it is wrong and from an evolutionary viewpoint it is not good for the survival of the fittest. I believe in treating gays with dignity and love but I will NEVER say its okay to be gay. Normal heterosexual men don’t freely give into their urges when attracted to young teenage girls. You don’t just steal things when you want them just because you might not get caught. We need moral standards." ¬ comment #2.
"With all due love and respect" is a typical religious-bigot opening that translates as, "with prejudice and lack of respect for the rights of others, but I just don't want to admit to such unchristian sentiments." The problem, of course, is that most Christians are not particularly christian; instead they attempt to try to cloak their prejudices in the disguise of scriptural morality.
We do need moral standards, but whose moral standards? Those of this bigot? The narrow prejudices of ancient tribesmen? The narrow standards of religions based on the supposed existence of supernatural deities?
How to define morality? How about primum non nocere? First do no harm.
Puffing on about not subjugating women or listing harm-to-others acts does not convince me that he is not a religious bigot. Acts such as pedophilia and racist violence have no bearing on the activity of the gay couple down the street who are committed to a loving relationship, or even to those gays who have casual, protected sex. He claims that he "believe[s] in treating gays with dignity and love", but I don't for one moment believe that he would actually do so in view of his vitriolic rant that lumps gays together with the pedophiles and the KKK.
He displays the type of hysteria that seems to be lamentably typical of religious bigots–these people don't think matters through logically, they merely emote out of their desire to control others. I'd sooner live down the street from a gay couple than the likes of this nasty, bigoted man.
Sam Harris' AAIC remarks certainly provoked discussion! (See What's in a Name?)
Reading blogosphere reactions led me to some thoughts on the topic of labels, worldviews, and approaches to message promotion.
Harris said that atheism is not a worldview. I would agree that atheism does not inhere a single worldview, though I do think that statistical clusters of approaches to thinking about the world are implied by the labels.
Conflating two opposing philosophical terms, I'll call the most frequently associated cognitive style 'rational empiricism'. That is, 'rational empiricists' formulate their worldview by emphasizing a combinination of logic and evidence. This is not to say that all agnostics or atheists arrive at doubt about supernatural claims through cognition, but it does seem likely that a greater proportion of those who approach the world this way will also be atheistic. The data on the relationships between lack of religiosity and IQ/education/scientific-attitudes supports this view.
Linguistically speaking, people use labels positively, negatively, or neutrally as simplification tools (jargon), as membership signals, and/or as position indicators. Labels are not only useful but highly likely to be applied by others. A label will be applied with negative connotations whenever we leave the choice solely up to our opponents.
If I say that I am an atheist, you quickly know that I am not a theist and more likely to be a 'rational empiricist' who is also against religious violence, pseudoscientientific mumbo-jumbo, and creationism in science classrooms.
Whenever I have debated such topics with a theist, they usually detect that I am atheistic from my position and I don't need to spell out that I am an atheist, or liberal, or pro-choice, or whatever else is under discussion. Particularly in a written medium where tone is not a clue, we do assess the writer's philosophical position if we are not sure whether they are being serious or satirical.
A religionist might decide that my being an atheist necessarily indicates that I am also guilty of a variety of religionistically-concocted-sins, presenting me with the opportunity to directly address the fallacious thinking beneath those religionist-labels.
I think that much of the reaction to Sam Harris' remarks related to the fact that he suggested that we hide from all labels, particularly the atheist label–"go under the radar"–which seems simultaneously a cop-out, a concession to theistic manipulation, and a loss of the rally to membership.
I really think thatHarris' message at the AAC was superfluous. I think that Harris, and some who are defending his statemenst, are missing the point that atheists always had the right to choose not to join a group of fellow atheists, not to come 'out' as atheists either socially or in debate, and not to emphasize atheism in lieu of rationality and evidence when debating about religion or creationism.
There are some weak arguments out there in blogspace. This was in response to yet another 'atheists can't be moral' fallacy:
Let me be abundantly clear: Behaving morally is not the same thing as having a coherent moral system.
Oh, how so?
Oh, I get it! Fear of punishment.
I contend that those religionists who blindly hold up–against others–or personally uphold the ridiculous notion of Absolute Moral Truths, as laid out in supposedly 'revealed'* religions, lack a coherent moral system because much that they propose actually contradicts other moral edicts.
Much that most of us identify as moral emanates from a shared, evolved moral sense, while many other feelings concerning morality relate to what we were taught as children. 'Coherent moral system' presumably inheres both moral psychology and post hoc moral philosophy founded upon the criteria that we employ for defining morality (more in overextrapolating the boundaries, and Haidt hype).
Historically, the faithful have taken the attitude that a variety of manoevres can get them off the Sin-Damnation hook: † special dispensations for wrongdoing provided by the Pope–go ahead Henry, off with her head, just don't divorce her! † deathbed confessions of sins to a priest † confess to the priest and say the required number of Hail Marys so that you can clear your conscience to repeat activities that should not have been banned in the first place † pay your indulgence, pass through purgatory promptly † a personal fave–join the Mormon church, tithe your income, submit the names of dead relatives to gain them retrospective admission to a Higher Celestial Plane (or some such advertized perquisite of membership)
You get the idea.
More recently, we have the crop of pro-lifers who murdered abortion doctors; adult human life, after all, being clearly of less value to God than embryonic tissue.
We also have all those religious zealots who believe that they will be rewarded with a Ticket to Paradise if they murder other of their god's children who practice a different religion.
Quite recently a woman was sentenced to death by stoning in a Muslim African nation. The sentence was to be carried out as soon as the woman had delivered the child born of an adulterous incident. The man's sentence?–no trial and no punishment.
The list could go on.
Now, regarding the assertion that atheists can't have a real and consistent reason for behaving rationally: I agree that atheists need to spend more time considering the question, because atheistic systems of morality seem to be a pretty slippery subject.
Atheistic systems are typically less slippery and better thought out than rigid theistic moralizations**, so I think that this blogger needs to look around carefully. Most atheists whom I know primarily apply the do-no-harm criterion to moral thinking and rank much higher on the Kohlberg scale than unthinking punishment-reward-focussed theistic moralizers.
I do believe its possible for atheists to have self-consistent belief systems, its just not possible for them to justify preferring one system over another.
This blogger really does need to educate himself, since it is relatively simple for any thinker to justify a coherent system of morality–and to follow it–and to be an atheist at the same time.
* This refers the fatally circular claim that the Bible is true because it is the (revealed) Word of God. ** Moralizations refers to moralistic pronouncement that are motivated by punishment-reward attitudes and stem from unthinking acceptance of religious edicts rather than of actual moral principles.
Haidt's is a “descriptive approach based on anthropological and psychological data” that is pertinent to a description of the various systems employed across the society. The danger of extrapolating from such inclusivity is that the definition of what one is studying becomes subject to dictation by study subjects rather than following a recognized definition. Remember that the best way for an academic to be noticed is for him or her to produce a new idea, even if the newness is merely achieved by expanding definitions to include parameters better included in separate definitions.
Haidt himself states the harm and justice parameters are the classically accepted parameters for defining morality within most studies of moral philosophy. Haidt is actually describing the sort of emotional disgust reaction that PZ Myers addressed in Who's morally pernicious?, and which Haidt himself describes as generating reactions that the emoter cannot justify within a post hoc moral explanation.
Haidt is actually describing the emotional reactions that are emphasized by individuals within his study groups. Haidt himself emphasizes that loyalty/in-group/purity are primarily conservative values.
I am not saying that liberals do not place any value on these things. However, I am saying that emphasizing these values does not necessarily guarantee moral behavior (by the classical definition). Some in-group authority figures who emphasize purity have not emphasized and are not emphasizing moral behavior. No need to mention the obvious examples of misuse of authority to promote personal ambitions by appealing to human emotions.
Liberal thinkers tend to look at the value of what is being promoted rather than paying excessive heed to who is promoting it. Such excessive reverence for in-group hype has been repeatedly demonstrated to be dangerous or potentially dangerous down through history.
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