All We Have
So the upshot of all that is (since the implied question was, if I understand it correctly, how do atheists manage to believe in objective moral standards?) that I do think there are objective moral standards, if ‘objective’ means generally applicable, and generally applicable for sound, articulable, sharable reasons; but I don’t think they’re guaranteed by anything external to humans; I think we have to give reasons for them; and I think they are human artifacts, not something in nature or part of the fabric of the cosmos. That’s sad, in a way. It would be nice if animals had a moral sense, but they don’t. (They have affections, or something like affections, which prompts them to treat some conspecifics well within certain limits, but that’s about it, and that’s a pretty rudimentary version of morality.)
But thinking moral standards are human artifacts doesn’t weaken them. On the contrary. Theists have the option of thinking that god will make things come out all right eventually (or after we die), that wickedness doesn’t, finally, flourish like the green bay tree; atheists don’t have that option, so we know damn well that we have to keep the old moral standards in good repair, because they’re all we have.
As for myself, I’ve always found it frustrating that religious people who believe that morality is relative to the will of God claim to have absolute morals, while those of us whose morals are based on absolute priciples like truth and justice are accused of having relative morals. Fortunately for the rest of us, I’ve found that most religious people do follow absolute moral codes in spite of their religious training.
I’ve illustrated the difference by asking a question like, “Do you believe that rape is intrinsically immoral, and would have been so even if God had been silent on the matter, or do you believe that rape is intrinsically morally neutral, and is only wrong because God happened assign it to the ‘immoral’ category?”
Yes, I do mean generally applicable. I am not a cultural or moral relativist and nor, I think from your site, are you. Please set out the sound articulable, sharable reasons. I liked your last paragraph.
Best wishes
A key phrase, to my mind, of OB’s reply is “I think they are human artifacts.” We created them for our own needs and if they are good, good justifications can be brought for them. There are things that religion (at least in some of its forms) has declared taboo (things like incest and bestiality come to mind, not to mention homosexuality), therefore they need never be discussed or thought about at all. The fact that to come to decisions (for example) on those three subjects in a morality that has no reference to a supreme being and his/her pronouncements means they all have to be brought to the table for discussion, even if some are rejected – that they could even get on the agenda at all – seems to make the religious uneasy, putting it mildly. It’s absolutely easier to say god said you can’t sleep with a close relative, an animal or a human of the same sex than to talk about why it might be more or less harmful. A biblical mentality might say all three are sexual deviations and deserve to be treated as such, whereas one of them has changed its status a great deal in the last few decades. One of the things that sets homosexuality apart is that (and I’m not including claims that AIDS is divine retribution in my part of this discussion) is that the question “who gets hurt by it?” is more pertinent than for the other two (does the animal consent?/does the product of an incestuous union have a far greater chance of suffering the genetic consequences of inbreeding?). For those who came up with it originally, it may have had to do with not damaging the fabric of a society held together by more conventional family structures, but what I’m getting at is there is a big difference between a society whose rules include certain things being taboo for no reason other than that god declared them to be sinful and a society that thinks through as many implications of its laws as possible, without that aspect playing a part.
Thanks, Jeffrey. I understood that much (that you’re not a relativist), but there are more than two possibilities. That is, ‘non-relativist’ isn’t the only (or even the best) translation or definition of ‘objective’. I’m often unsure what people do mean by ‘objective’, actually. In fact, that came up at one point during the proof-checking stage of WTM – the editor queried our use of a word (I forget what word) and offered ‘objective’ as a substitute; I said no, and added that we had avoided using that word at all. I don’t think we ever discussed that or agreed on it, we just didn’t use it. It’s a confusing word, and also one with a lot of baggage.
“Please set out the sound articulable, sharable reasons.”
You make it sound like a rule book. They differ with each case. I have (attempted to) set out reasons of that kind in many places here.
I’ve just re-read the Euthyphro, which is where Socrates asks that searching question. It’s a great dialogue. (Last time I cited it I cited the Phaedo instead; G had to remind me that I meant Euthyphro. Buffoon (me, not G).
Like Dennis, I also think that sometimes those hypothetical thought-experiment questions can help illuminate how we reason out our moral ground. Try this one out:
Assume that God exists, but is very very different morally than you expect it to be (perhaps it values vengeance for its own sake, or does not concern itself with harming the weak, or has a nature which reflects the virtue of enjoying the torture of others — whatever.) You find out that you’ve been wrong about what God is really like (just as you probably think others are currently wrong on what God is really like.) Only you are really wrong; it’s not just quibbling or a few issues or facts. God is quite different than you thought.
Now, if this were the situation, would you say that:
1.) Your previous understanding of right and wrong, good and evil, was obviously mistaken. You will readjust your ethics to bring them into line with the True Nature of your Creator. Whatever it is. Not your judgement, but His.
2.) Creator or not, this would be an example of an evil God, and you would feel no (and have no) obligation to follow or imitate something which is so foreign to the way peaceful, loving humans treat each other.
3.) You cannot contemplate or entertain this thought experiment at all — because a God which was like that is a self-contradiction.
Answers #2 and #3 both presuppose a morality based on human standards: only answer #1 assumes that an objective ethics requires adjustment against God.
Dear Sastra
You’re trying to lead the witness. I’m too tired to address your questions in a sensible way. I’m only interested in trying to find out why Microsoft thought a word processing package which automatically updates styles and formats and Headers and Footers was not the work of the Devil. Good night
Dear Jeffrey;
Sorry. You don’t have to answer when you’re tired, of course. In fact, you don’t have to answer at all.
Since you say I’m trying to “lead the witness” I assume that means that you think I’m trying to hedge you in, you can think of other answers than the three I set out:
Yes, I would try to change my basic morals to bring myself in line with God;
No, I would not change;
Neither — I can’t answer the question because there would be a logical contradiction in God being different than I expect.
This seems to me to pretty much exhaust the possibilities. Of course, I can think of variations. Or dress them up. But I don’t think that’s what you mean by saying I’m “leading.”
Since Jeffrey is busy, can anyone else here think of alternative answers? I’m assuming “I’m busy” wasn’t supposed to be one of them. Maybe Ophelia knows what he means.
I don’t think I’ll ever really understand this “how can atheists have objective moral standards?” question. First, theists have held so many different ethical standards over the ages and across cultures, and always claim that their particular ethical systems are divinely ordained. Why haven’t more serious arguments been made that theism results in moral relativism? It seems at least theoretically possible that the act of wrapping your own moral feelings in religious justifications is a much surer recipe for relativism than the secular process of logically discussing moral issues, which often leads to some kind of broad consensus.
Second, what logical connection is there between the concepts of “God” and “good?” It seems like most people no longer think that everything the God of the Bible did was good, which suggests they’re using some kind of external criteria to judge the morality of God’s actions. It’s not enough to just note that God did something or said something…we have moral sentiments guiding our reactions to these things, and some principles of moral reasoning to evaluate them more rigorously. Any way it crumbles, we’re the ones who make the moral judgements.
The objectivity/absolutism issue has always been a red herring, since the terms don’t have to mean the same thing. These arguments too often assume that morals have to be absolute rules to be of any value, but I just don’t see the logic there. If the justification of morality is acting in the ways that are “good” (defined in secular or religious terms), then how can inflexible rules achieve this goal, when life has so much contingency and variability?
Moral standards are objective without being absolute, in that there are guidelines nd logic for discussing morals and reaching plausible conclusions. Moral standards change, but not in every possible direction, and not for arbitrary reasons. And that’s what we need morality to be like….a morality based on absolute, invioable rules would be like following a recipe, which seems to conflict in essential ways with what we mean by the term “morality” in the first place.
Phil
Nope, Sastra, I don’t know what Jeffrey means. I often don’t. His answers are usually somewhat oblique.
“I don’t think I’ll ever really understand this “how can atheists have objective moral standards?” question.”
I think I understand it…but it’s a very rude understanding. Rude in the sense of impolite. But that can’t be helped. I think it’s a product of not thinking things through. I think theists just think religion–>God–>morality, and let it go at that. Like Euthyphro himself, in fact.
This is no contribution whatsoever, just a very cheap laugh: when I was asked a few days ago if I could help schlepp some stuff to the dry-cleaner next to the church “because they do rugs” I claimed finally to have understood the meaning of “cleanliness is next to godliness.”
“””how do atheists manage to believe in objective moral standards”””
How do theists manage it? God could change those standards at any moment. Ask Abraham.
If God gives objective moral standards they are not objective. That is, they are not self-evident or absolute as knowledge, only as -er- will or something. It is worse than the difference between law and justice.
If objective moral standards exist without God limiting their objectivity (or their morality: God may decide that something immoral for Men is moral if it serves God), they may be arrived at experimentally or by thinking for a couple of seconds about how much torture one would like to experience each day. God could declare torture of small children moral. In fact he often does.
What I wrote was ” Many atheists behave as though they too believe in objective truths. I can’t remember how this is described though my daughter had a nice discussion (with me) about it very recently. One of the Philosophy lecturers at Cambridge – Simon Blackburn- is a member of her college where she read philosophy and she commented that he was an atheist and certainly fell into that camp. I don’t go in for snide or deliberately impolite/rude, so my comment should be read as an infelicitously phrased request to OB. It should not be interpreted as some sort of surprise from a Christian that all atheists aren’t immoral or that they all eat babies, etc., etc.
By objective I mean the opposite of subjective/relativist.
Best wishes
Sounds to me like a clear distinction between truth and moral standards, objective or otherwise, needs to be made to avoid everyone talking at cross-purposes here.
Yes, I mentioned the need for a distinction between truth and moral standards in the previous post. Subjective and relativist are also two different things. Just one predicate at a time, JM; those combo-predicates with the slashes are confusion-mongers.
So, what is your answer to the Euthyphro question? It’s not a ‘leading the witness’ question, it’s one that philosophers have been asking ever since Plato.
“If God gives objective moral standards they are not objective”
“If objective moral standards exist without God limiting their objectivity (or their morality: God may decide that something immoral for Men is moral if it serves God), they may be arrived at experimentally”
That’s exactly right, and reinforces my earlier point. It’s not just that religion isn’t necessary for objective moral standards. It’s also that religion cannot possibly provide the central justification for objective moral standards, because religion isn’t objective! The idea that an invisible man in the sky commands us to do something is about as unobjective as it gets. It’s such a simple point, but needs to be said over and over: Non-objective religious claims cannot establish objective morality.
Now, religious ethics can be objective if they’re not based solely on faith. “Do unto others as you’d have them do unto you” is not just sound moral advice because Jesus said it…It’s sound for all kinds of good reasons. And Jesus also gave us plenty of other advice we’d be better off ignoring.
Phil
It’s a while since I read any of the Greek philosophers – so long, that I can’t remember if I read Socrates or only mediated through Plato. But I’ll dig out my old political thought works or raid my daughter’s collection, and then get back to you.
Best wishes
Socrates mediated through Plato (or Xenophon or Aristophanes) is all the Socrates you could have read. The sneaky bastard didn’t write stuff down himself. Remind you of anyone?
It’s funny: apparently there was quite a fashion for writing versions of Socrates, but most of the results were lost. Also reminiscent.
Augustine and Erasmus (among other people) sometimes wondered guiltily if they were more interested in Socrates than in Jesus.
Euthyphro is probably online somewhere. Almost certainly in fact: there is a classics project that has a mass of stuff online, and Euthyphro is very short.
My source book on Socrates (by John Ferguson – it was for a component of my wife’s degree course) didn’t have this dialogue – It’s a Platonic one. I’m not impressed by Euthyphro. He sounds awfully pompous.
But as you’ve recommended it, I shall read it and may reply.
Best wishes
No, being impressed by Euthyphro is not the point.
Project Gutenberg has a copy of Euthyphro.
I know I’m not meant to be impressed by E, but rather by the arguments Plato deploys in Socrates’ mouth, but the argument would be more serious if E was not such a pompous twit.
Best wishes