Thinking Christian

Joseph Bottum Joe Carter, writing at First Things, speaks of atheists’ uncanny powers of belief. Brief, biting, and exactly on the mark.

(See the first comment regarding the correction made here ).

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Jordan has been saying things on the Manhattan Declaration thread like,

Atheism does not entail moral relativism, and theism does not entail moral realism. I’m an atheist, and a moral realist.

…

I (imperfectly) perceive morality with my moral sense. What is the basis of your “alleged moral objectivity”? I imagine it will be long-winded and incoherent. Or maybe you’ll save us both some time with a good old-fashioned, “Goddidit!”

Everyone on that discussion agrees on one thing: that there are unchanging moral absolutes. The dispute is over the content of those eternal moral standards, and especially over whether they could exist without God. I want to lay out more thoroughly the reasons God is necessary for moral realism.

Moral realism is the view that moral duties and values have an objective reality that does not depend on any person’s or group of persons’ opinions or beliefs about them. Morality has an existence independent of human opinion. In fact, Jordan takes it that it is eternal, or at least as old as the Big Bang.

Again, we all agree that moral duties and values really exist and always have, and that their essential principles are eternally unchanging. We also agree (as Jordan said) that we perceive morality with our moral sense, albeit imperfectly. The question I have is whether that makes sense on atheism. Jordan would ask whether it makes sense on theism.

Regarding the latter, I’m not sure how leaving out spaces between words—”Goddidit!”—turns their meaning around and makes them an argument against what they mean with the spaces included. Theism indeed says, in a rough sense, that moral values exist because God did it. That’s only in a rough sense, of course, because God didn’t “do” moral values. He didn’t make them up or invent them. They are an eternal aspect of his own character and nature. God has eternally been the ultimate instantiation and expression of love, justice, holiness, and so on; and since the universe he created is an expression of himself, those moral values apply in all of creation. Although Jordan said “theism does not entail moral realism,” the fact is that the Jewish and Christian versions of theism do entail it (Islamic theism may also; I can’t speak to that). If there is some form of theism that does not entail moral realism, it’s something other than Judaism or Christianity.

I’m also not sure why “good old-fashioned” counts against the theistic view eternal moral realities. If moral values and duties have existed from eternity past, then humans ought to have had some knowledge about them for longer than just the past couple of decades. I would say that “old-fashioned” counts in favor of a view on this topic. Jordan has tried to use negatively-laden language to take a bite out of the theistic view, but in fact it has turned around and taken a nip out of his own nose (metaphorically, of course).

(Now perhaps Jordan instead meant “Goddidit” was “old-fashioned” by its being some kind of non-answer, presented without any thoughtful justification. If that’s what he means, then I will simply say he is wrong. “Goddidit” is his word—if it’s fair to call it a word—not ours. As evidence that we don’t just settle for a mindless “Goddidit,” I would invite him to read the 48 or so posts I’ve written here on ethical theory along with all their attendant discussion; or better yet to visit some nearby seminary, and see how many books its library has on ethical matters.)

So let’s call Jordan’s phrase, “an old fashioned ‘Goddidit!’” what it really is: it’s his ironically failed and illegitimate attempt to marshall emotion rather than reason in support of his position. And let’s recognize that theism has a more than adequate space in it for eternal moral verities.

Now to the other question: can eternal moral realities exist on atheism? The idea presents numerous problems.

• What is a moral value or duty; specifically, to whom or what is it a value, and to whom or what is the duty directed, owed, or pointed?
• To whom or what was it directed, owed, or pointed when there was no person in the universe toward whom it could have been so pointed?
• Who or what held any responsibility for these moral values or duties before there was any intelligent life?
• In what did these values or duties inhere, or in other words, where did they exist?
• Was there such a thing as evil while the stars and planets were forming? What was it?
• Was killing immoral for the first 3 billion or so years of evolution, before humans arrived? Jordan says yes; but animals killing animals certainly wasn’t immoral then, nor is it now. There was no immoral killing until humans came, as far as I know.
• When humans arrived, what was it about us that made it (frequently) immoral for us to kill? Note that we take it that it’s not just about killing each other; we often consider it immoral to kill animals, too.
• Moral standards have changed over time, and in fact have oscillated back and forth on some issues (abortion, infanticide, homosexual relationships, for example). Jordan seems to take it that this moment in history represents the “right” moment on abortion, I think; he definitely takes it that this is the “right” moment on homosexuality. So where we’re heading as a culture on homosexual rights is in the direction of what has been eternally morally true. How can he be sure of this? What is the measuring stick? Is this not possibly chronological/cultural chauvinism?
• And to tie together two of the previous bullets, does Jordan think that seven billion years ago it was morally that same-sex couples should have the right to unite and call it marriage?

I propose that these questions are extremely difficult for the atheist who believes in eternal moral realities.

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BreakPoint has just published my review of Bradley Monton’s new book, with the unexpected but highly intriguing theme expressed in its title: Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design. Monton is a philosopher on the University of Colorado faculty, and he is indeed an atheist who defends Intelligent Design.

He has been the subject of considerable pressure from ID opponents like Robert Pennock, and as I said in the review, readers may decide for themselves which of the two, Pennock or Monton has handled the dispute more professionally. I’ve already had a chance to express my own view on that.

The interesting thing will be to watch and see how this book affects the overall ID controversy, and specifically how ID opponents will respond to Monton’s arguments—and to Monton himself.

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“Atheism is not a belief,” atheists often say, “it’s just a lack of belief in a God.” Today it came up in this form:

And, in addition, I would point out that atheism is not my ideology. It simply refers to my not subscribing to a particular belief (theism). It makes no more sense to treat my being an atheist as my ideology than it does to treat your being a non-Muslim as yours.

What I AM is a humanist.

This is disingenuous at best. To say that atheism is just “not subscribing to a particular belief” is to deny everything that atheism entails (requires as part of its package).

Atheism entails that the universe is impersonal and amoral.

Atheism entails that there is no ultimate good (though some atheists like yourself will allow for contingent, local, or particular goods).

Likewise and with the same kind of condition attached, atheism entails that there is no ultimate meaning, no ultimate morality, no ultimate beauty, no ultimate purpose for anything.

Atheism entails that the end of physical life is the end of existence.

Atheism entails that all human experience is neuronal/electrical/chemical; and though some atheists have proposed ways to rise above that (some kind of epiphenomenalism, for example), they have never been able to explain it.

Atheism entails the same specifically for human consciousness and rationality.

Atheism entails that if any sense of meaning or purpose is to be found in human life, it is found in the contingent and accidental experience of humans—for even the existence of humans is contingent and accidental.

Atheism entails that what I do today will not matter for very long, a few generations at most.

Atheism entails that every religion is wrong.

Atheism entails that the universe will one day be empty.

Atheism entails that humans and animals and plants and bacteria and rats and pigs and dogs and boys (google the last four) are ontologically the same thing.

Atheism entails that if one chooses humanism as one’s form of atheism, that choice is made for entirely contingent reasons, probably related to one’s nation and culture of birth and upbringing, and that there is no better reason than that to choose humanism as one’s ideology, since atheism provides no reason to choose humans as having any particular value.

So to David Ellis who wrote the quote above, I say g ahead and claim your humanism, but please don’t try to tell me your atheism doesn’t carry any ideological freight with it.

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I’ve been having an interesting interaction with The Atheist Ethicist on the nature of faith, here and here. Please feel free to join in.

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In his critical review in The New Republic of two theistic evolutionists, anti-theistic biologist Jerry Coyne speaks about various views of our fine-tuned universe. Contrasting materialist science with theism, he writes,

Also, scientists have other explanations, ones based on reason rather than on faith. Perhaps some day, when we have a “theory of everything” that unifies all the forces of physics, we will see that this theory requires our universe to have the physical constants that we observe. Alternatively, there are intriguing “multiverse” theories that invoke the appearance of many universes, each with different physical laws; and we could have evolved only in one whose laws permit life.

“Perhaps some day,” he writes; or alternatively, perhaps, his hope is in “intriguing ‘multiverse’ theories,” which he fails to point out are unlikely ever to be scientifically demonstrable, as far as we know now. He says “a few predictions” consistent with multiverse theory have been confirmed. As to the rest, well, he’s a man of great faith, isn’t he?

Later he writes,

Contrary to Miller’s claim, the existence of multiverses does not require a leap of faith nearly as large as that of imagining a God.

I wonder how he measured that difference?

In regard to this faith of his, I must grant him this:

It may be wrong, but wait a decade and we will know a lot more about the anthropic principle. In the meantime, it is simply wrong to claim that proposing a provisional and testable scientific hypothesis–not a “belief”–is equivalent to religious faith.

That’s right: it’s not equivalent to religious faith. Religious faith is a certain kind of faith, while belief that science will displace all religious claims is another kind of faith. It’s still highly unproved, and unprovable. Any conviction of that sort deserves to be called a faith.

Recent Related Posts:
Jerry Coyne’s Line In the Sand
Creationism, Intelligent Design, and Whose Rhetorical Maneuvering?

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Last week I started a new series, “What Is Christianity?” I have another shorter series to run parallel with it: “What Is Atheism?”

The emphasis this time is on the question mark. The question I most want to address is whether atheism is a belief system. I have been taken to task for thinking that it is (also here), so I think it’s worth exploring. The author of The Twilight of Atheism, Alister McGrath, certainly considers to be one. Writing in Beyond Opinion: Living the Faith We Defend, he asks,

So how an we engage in a productive dialogue with the belief system of atheism?

That seems like a good question—productive dialogue is always welcome—unless the premise of atheism’s being a belief system is wrongheaded. We could still find some kind of productive dialogue, I’m sure, but if not with a belief system, then with what?

Atheism is not an ism, we are told. Specifically, from About.com,

Atheism Is Not a Belief System

A belief system is a “faith based on a series of beliefs but not formalized into a religion; also, a fixed coherent set of beliefs prevalent in a community or society.” This is simpler than an ideology or philosophy because it’s just a group of beliefs; they don’t have to be interconnected and they don’t have to provide guidance. This still doesn’t describe atheism; even if we narrowed atheism to denying the existence of gods, that’s still just one belief and a single belief is not a set of beliefs. Theism is also a single belief that is not a belief system. Both theism and atheism are part of belief systems, though.

Now in my naivetë I had thought it was a belief system; for a thought a belief system was some kind of system of some kind of beliefs. So I have begun to explore what atheists mean when they say it is not a belief system. I have come across at least three answers:

1. Atheism is not a belief system because it is not a system of belief. As About.com tells us, atheists’ views of life and reality are too varied and diverse to subsume under one system.

2. Atheism is not a belief system because atheism is not a belief. This answer divides further into two:

a. Atheism is not a belief but a lack of belief, in God of course. (That seems to have been the tack Marco was taking here., and it’s explicitly the approach taken here.)

b. Atheism is not a belief because “belief” means something like religious faith; or (to borrow terminology McGrath used just before the above-quoted question) atheism is not “a set of ideas that cannot actually be proved.”

I’ll leave it at that for now and come back to this later.

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