Last post (http://www.progressiveu.org/141649-atheism-and-morality-introduction) I discussed how I felt like I was being led down the primrose path of the “Without God, all things are permitted” (WGATAP) argument. But I never really told you exactly WHAT that argument is. Let’s do that now.
There are many names for the argument. WGATAP is what I call it, but I may well be the only one who does so. Surprisingly (to me at least) some of its proponents have been people with well-know philosophical credentials. To me, it just shows that intelligent people can make silly arguments.
I get its name from a quote attributed to Tolstoy in his book, The Brothers Karamazov. People using the argument very often like to quote the line as though having Tolstoy say it makes it undeniably true. I actually spent some time unsuccessfully trying to find the quote in the book, but it may very well be there.
What the WGATAP argument says is that God is the basis for our morality. It says that without God there is no reason to be good. We live and die. That’s it. Therefore, it would be better to get whatever we can now in any manner we can and not worry about the future. Some, but not all versions of the argument say that without the threat of punishment in the afterlife we have no reason to behave morally in this life.
All versions say that God provides an ABSOLUTE objective morality and if there is no God then all morality is RELATIVE. I think this is why the argument hangs around. Moral absolutism and moral relativism are poorly-defined concepts that have been discussed philosophically for centuries. To my knowledge there is no general agreement as to what it is that makes something morally absolute or morally relative. So far as I am concerned, they are not concepts that aide in understanding. Nor are they needed. But … they are part of the history of the argument so let’s take a look at them anyway.
The arguments go something like this: If there are moral absolutes then some things are immoral no matter what. The two most common examples I have encountered are proscriptions against murder (as my protagonist had suggested) and rape. Moral relativity on the other hand says that what is moral depends upon the context of the situation. Thus, by implication, there must be some situations in which murder and rape are OK.
I am fairly sure that with respect to some things moral relativity exists. For instance, suppose you are with a friend and she asks your opinion about a dress. If you are in a clothing store and you think the dress is hideous, you may save her some money by telling her so. On the other hand, suppose she is severely depressed and you feel like any hint of rejection at the moment risks suicide and the dress she asks you about is the one she is wearing, then it may well be better to lie.
The best I could do in coming up with something that is a moral absolute was a proscription against dipping a baby’s feet into boiling oil for no other reason than to hear it scream. I could not think of any instance where such a behavior could be considered moral.
What about murder and rape? To me, it depends upon exactly what’s your definition of those terms. I can think of no instance in which anything that can reasonably be defined as “rape” is unambiguously moral. The closest I could come was in the case where a person is fooled into having sex with a willing underage person who by all objective appearances is of age. In other words, suppose the girl is 15 but looks 25. She tells the guy she is 25. She has a fake ID that says she’s 25. She is with a close friend who vouches for her that she is 25. And the man truly believes her to be 25. Is it morally OK to have sex then? It is a mistake … that is for sure. The man would have been better off to control his hormones long enough to actually get to know her and discover the ruse. But during my younger single days I probably would have made that mistake if the situation would have arisen.
As for murder, I do not think it immoral to kill another human being in cases of self preservation, to prevent that human being from causing imminent harm to innocent victims, or in some cases of war.
So my take is that at least some morals are relative and perhaps some morals are absolute.
It is generally at this point in the argument that the theist confidently assumes the mantle of moral superiority and says something like, the bible says, “Thou shalt not kill”. That is the word of God so murder is a moral absolute. That’s the difference between theism and atheism … theism says it is immoral to kill someone, atheism says it is OK.
This is, of course, bullshit. The theist has generalized moral relativism’s position that under certain well-proscribed conditions it may be OK to kill someone to its OK to kill people at will.
It is also bullshit because the theist ascribes one line in the bible as God’s absolute position on murder, while at the same time ignoring many biblical instances in which God commands people to kill others.
Finally it is bullshit because there is a convincing argument formulated around 400 BCE that God cannot logically be the basis for morality. This argument was presented in Plato’s Dialogues. I will cover that in my next post.
Regards,
Darwin’s Beagle
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You used to sound so admirably calm, collected, and eloquent, but I'm starting to detect rising temperature in your last two posts here. Perhaps your protagonist is getting the best of you? You need to relax. Angry people make me unhappy. :(
Another excellent post. I like the way you think...
It doesn't surprise me that intelligent and well educated people could agree with the WGATAP argument. History is full of intelligent people who took to irrational ideas; during World War Two, for example, there were a great deal of intelligent doctors, surgeons and philosophers who agreed full-heartedly with the Nazis' genocides and ideas of racial purification.
And convincing a lot of conservative [I'm going to call them Abrahamists because this kind of thinking is much more common in those faiths] Abrahamists to think about things less absolutely is not going to be an easy task, especially when it comes to morality. Thinking about it rationally, there are degrees of severity when it comes to immoral actions. Lies, for example, could hardly be placed at the same level as wanton murder; there is simply no comparison there. With Abrahamists, however, each "sin" is equally terrible and each one worthy of Hell. A serial killer and a child who steals a gumball from the local convenience store are essentially equals in sin. That kind of extreme, absolutist thinking is common in that set of faiths and is even promoted by the Bible, Qu'ran and Torah, so it's not surprising that the idea of what is moral or immoral could itself be held so absolutely.
Not everyone in these faith groups follows that extreme school of thought. There are more modern believers and reformists; they just tend to be quieter on issues like this because they tend to be slower to anger than their zealous counterparts.
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"Our lives begin to end when we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Live one day at a time, emphasizing ethics rather than rules."
-Wayne Dyer
Quick note: The Brothers Karamazov was written by Fyodor Doestoyevsky, not Leo Tolstoy. Thought I would bring that point up. If I remember correctly, Tolstoy was not an Atheist, but a follower of a very orthodox religion (not sure though).
It looks as though you have misconstrued the ideals of Atheism and radical idealism. Just because a person is atheist doesn't require them to be a moral relativist. I believe in set morals that some don't, as I am sure you do. But alluding to all Atheists being immoral in all respects is just wrong. But this is just how I am reading it.
A wise man once said
"An idiot is born every minute"
But an even wiser man said then
"I was born in between. "
Ethereal Manifest,
Thank you for the correction concerning Doestoyevsky. You are correct. Evidently my memory failed me.
I do not EVER use the terms "moral relativism" or "moral absolutism" to refer to any person or group. I do not think the terms have a clearly definable meaning. I discuss it here only because it part of the history of the "Without God, all things are permitted" argument.
I am an atheist. And I do not think I am immoral so I would NEVER allude "to all Atheists being immoral in all respects". I am glad you realize it is wrong too.
Regards,
Darwin's Beagle
So to play devil's advocate....A terrible plague is ripping through you're rural town. It starts as fungus on the feet, but spreads to the rest of the body and causes a horrible painful death. The only thing that has been found to stop it, is to put your feet in boiling oil. Something about the properties of oil (hey it can smother lice!) and the heat kills the organism. Your baby one day shows the signs on its feet. You know if you dip the babys feet in boiling oil its life will be spare...is it immoral?
Or, a gun man comes into your house. The gunman (is gun person more pc?) is a bit crazy, been off his meds and "god" is telling him your baby is the son of satan and the only way to fight the demon is to dip the babies feet in boiling oil just to hear him scream. The gunman tells you if you don't do it he will shoot your entire family and the baby. You know hes serious because the neighbor is lying dead in his backyard. You must dip the babies feet in boiling oil just to hear it scream. If so, you are all saved, if not you are all dead. If you dip and the baby doesn't scream. Same deal. So is it wrong to dip the babies feet just to hear it scream?
Not that you needed that, but I do think that there are no absolutes, even with that one. There are the cases where the circumstances that would make them non-absolute are so extreme and unlikely that we consider them negligible (sp?), we round up and thats the closest we get to absolutes.
Every time I say something I think is an absolute, I find life finds just the right nasty situation to break my hand over it. I feel these are the situations where one must truly know what is morally important to make the best decision possible.
www.worldcantwait.com
I think it was more about the motivation of the person dipping the baby's feet in hot oil. In each of these cases, the person doing the dipping was doing it to save the child's life, not because they got some weird pleasure out of hearing the baby scream.
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"Our lives begin to end when we become silent about things that matter."
-Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Live one day at a time, emphasizing ethics rather than rules."
-Wayne Dyer
yeah i'm having trouble coming up with a reason where it would be moral to dip the baby's feet in oil just to get pleasure out of hearing them scream...but I don't really feel like challenging the universe...so I'll just say maybe somewhere out there in the universe is the one exception, and I don't wish to find out what it is.
www.worldcantwait.com
I think I may offer a humble attempt at making moral absolutism and moral relativism a bit more concrete.
Moral absolutism is the belief that there exist objective moral values, and moral relativism means that morals are relative to each person or society. So what makes something morally correct for a moral relativists is that the person or society approves of it, not a set of universal moral truths. The approval of the individual or culture is more important than the situation.
Moral relativism also makes moral disagreement completely impossible. All you are arguing is opinion, so no evidence can be brought up on either side and in the end people must agree to disagree. Some form of absolutism is necessary to have useful moral discussion.
I was going to say something about god and higher moral power, but you are covering that later.
I do agree with everProg though, this post seemed to be lacking your usual collectedness and careful, eloquent understanding of complex ideas.
Res ipsa loquitur.
memor mori, mahalo.
DG==
I do agree with everProg though, this post seemed to be lacking your usual collectedness and careful, eloquent understanding of complex ideas
DB=
I accept your rebuke and thank you for it. It is undoubtedly true that I have given a stilted view of this argument. But it is an argument that I do not find much merit nor much logic. So I don't think I CAN do a better job.
It would probably had been better to have someone who actually believes it to be true present the argument. I would encourage anyone who would like to use this thread to correct any perceived misrepresentations on my part to present their case.
For now the best I can do is give a link to William Lane Craig's (a noted Christian apologist) article outlining his argument for it: http://www.leaderu.com/offices/billcraig/docs/meta-eth.html
Regards,
Darwin's Beagle