Epistemic darkness
Something ChrisPer said in comments on the ‘Fundamntal right-get outta my store’ N&C, that I found myself doing a longish comment on, so decided to put it out here.
“Christian disapproval of gay practice is not without reasons – its just without reasons that others find persuasive. For instance, you disown the reason of pleasing God on the grounds that He does not exist.”
No, actually; more grounds than that. I could perfectly well think or believe that god does exist and still be far from thinking ‘the reason of pleasing God’ is a valid reason to say and teach and preach that homosexuality is wrong and to think it should be legal to deny gays service in public facilities. Because even if god exists, there are still further questions, before one can conclude that condemnation of homosexuality pleases this god. What kind of god is it? What does it think is good, and what does it think is bad? What does it want us to do? Has it told us what it wants us to do? Has it told us what it thinks is good, and what is bad? If so, how do we know it has? And if so, why hasn’t it told everyone? And if so, and if it thinks good and bad matter, why hasn’t it told everyone in such a way that there can be no dispute about it?
It seems to me that even if there is a god, no human has the slightest idea what the true answers to those questions are, and that even if any humans do know the true answers, they have no way to know they know, and we have no way to know they know.
It’s basically an epistemic problem. People who claim that homosexuality is displeasing to god really don’t know that and have no way to know it.
Some theists claim that is because god wants us to have free will, and wants us to have a free choice whether to believe in god or not, as well as whether to be good or not. Okay – but then the only way to do that is to keep us in genuine epistemic darkness. Not pretend darkness; real darkness. We really don’t know if there’s a god, or if there is what kind of god it is, or what it thinks is good, or if we would agree with it if we knew, or what it wants us to do, or if it has told us what to do, and if so what it is that it has told us to do; and we don’t know how to know any of this, either way, yes or no. Okay. Real freedom, but bogus knowledge of god. There is no real knowledge of this god, and so far there never has been (or it would have been passed on in an indisputable fashion). So – we’re free to choose to believe it exists. All right – but are we equally free to choose to believe we know what it thinks is good and what it wants us to do? Are we equally free to choose to believe we know it has told us what it thinks is good and what it wants us to do, and that it will blame and punish all who disobey? No. I don’t think so. I don’t think anyone has the right to take that risk. Because the reality is you just have no clue what god wants, you don’t even have any clue what it’s like, so how can you possibly know it doesn’t think children should be tortured? Let alone know it thinks homosexuals should be given unequal treatment because of what they do with their genitalia. Darkness is darkness; we don’t know what we don’t know; and this is something we don’t know. It seems to me it’s only right to admit that.
Let’s not forget that, in Abraham, the Old Testament doesn’t only have a role model who agrees to sacrifice his son. He also argues and tries to bargain with god about the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. That’s on the one hand. On the other, let’s not forget that he was trying to get god to spare the cities explicitly for the minute quantity of righteous men who might be there, which in this case translates into “heterosexuals.”
Oh, well, I tried…
And, again, what will the religious do, when those nasty scientists point out that same-sex ( One can’t call it homo ) couplings are common, though a minority in the animal world, certainly in Mammals and Birds.
GT
Before ChrisPer (or someone else) leaps in to point this out, same-sex couplings in nature are totally irrelevant to the will of God for Mankind. Doubly so, really, since Man is distinctly set above and apart from the beasts (being the only creature to have a soul, for a start).
Your point is only relevant to those arguing that HS is unnatural, not to those arguing that it is sinful. And even then it’s irrelevant, since what is natural for one species need not be so for another.
And Ophelia, I think there’s a problem here: your argument seems to me to rest on an assumption that the Bible is not the communication of God (whether mediated or otherwise). That is, you are arguing that theists cannot claim to second-guess God’s position of homosexuality… but do they? I was under the impression that it is Christians (OK, and Jews and Muslims!) who had the downer on the sin of faggotry – that is, those who believe that we are not floundering in epistemic darkness but are revelling in (or turning away from) the Revealed Light of the Word.
When ChrisPer pointed out that your rejection of the sin hypothesis is on the basis of the non-existence of God he was clearly referring to a Biblical, Christian God. In other words, your questions about what kind of God it is have already been answered…
Yes, I know that you reject the Bible as the Revealed Word and all that, but this was exactly Chris’ point: to one who believes in the Christian faith as usually interpreted, God’s condemnation of homosexuality is clear.
Equally, as Chris also claimed, a Christian’s rejection of homosexuality need not imply visceral disgust for or hatred of gays: even though it may be true that most anti-gay Christians are homophobic, it is certainly possible to conceive of a Christian who feels no revulsion or hatred but who nevertheless spurns homosexuality as evil. In theory, at least:)
In this specific context, a Christian adoption agency might feel justified in rejecting gay adopters on the grounds that they are in the grip of a curse without feeling hatred for them as people, much as a secular agency might (say) reject those with terminal illness as unsuitable adopters while feeling no loathing for them at all.
“Okay – but then the only way to do that is to keep us in genuine epistemic darkness. Not pretend darkness; real darkness.”
Absolutely brilliant. It will become part of my mental furniture.
“… it may be true that most anti-gay Christians are homophobic…”
Actually, the more I listen to the news, the more I tend to expect most anti-gay Christians to be revealed to be homosexuals.
“your argument seems to me to rest on an assumption that the Bible is not the communication of God (whether mediated or otherwise).”
No, it rests on the (defensible, I think) assumption that no one knows that the bible is the communication of god, and the further assumption that if there is a god who really does want us to do what it wants us to do, then it needs to make its communications undeniable and universal. I’m not taking a position on whether or not the bible is the communication of god, I’m just saying no one knows. Of course lots of people claim to know, but they don’t, they merely claim to. What follows from that, it seems to me, is that there is more to the linkage of morality and theism than mere belief in a deity – quite a lot more.
“but this was exactly Chris’ point: to one who believes in the Christian faith as usually interpreted, God’s condemnation of homosexuality is clear.”
Well, the way he phrased it, the mere belief in the existence of the Christian god seemed to be enough. But in any case, of course I realize that to some Christians, the matter seems simple. Actually even on biblical terms it’s not all that simple, but leave that aside. My point is just that they’re wrong to think that, even on their own terms, because non-Christians don’t know what Christians claim to know, and that means that what Christians ‘know’ isn’t really knowledge.
No, that’s too narrow. Even lots of Christians don’t believe what bible-believing Christians believe (and not even bible-believing Christians believe the same things). Not all theists are Christians, not all Christians take the bible literally, not all biblical literalists focus on the same things. There is no basic agreement on what ‘pleases’ god. Therefore the claim that disapproval of gay practice is pleasing to god is not a good reason for disapproval of gay practice, because it’s an extremely feeble, local, vulnerable claim. This is what the argument was about – what is a good reason. I’m saying mere belief in god isn’t enough to make the ‘disapproval of gay practice is pleasing to god’ reason a good reason. I’m saying it’s a bad reason, on the grounds that nobody knows what is pleasing to god.
“… nobody knows what is pleasing to god.”
And even if we were 100% sure, I’m still not sure god should be given only what it finds pleasing. Nobody should be spoiled like that. Those who are end up like the Dawkins description of the OT version, nastiest character in fiction kind of thing. Or was free will conditional? Human beings who treat others like that end up as pariahs.
Oh, definitely not. That was part of the questions in the post. In fact that was the basic point. “Because the reality is you just have no clue what god wants, you don’t even have any clue what it’s like, so how can you possibly know it doesn’t think children should be tortured?”
Clearly all god is in these contexts is an enforcer of whatever morality the god-wielder wants enforced. That’s only as good as the morality in question is. It’s a human affair disguised as a theist one. That’s why I said it’s too risky. Secular morality is risky too, but it’s at least in principle revisable. With the theist kind you get this sorrowful ‘I’m terribly sorry, I’d love to help, if it were up to me gays would be treated like royalty, but it’s the Big Cheese, you see, the Big Cheese won’t have it, the Big Cheese is right down on queers, the Big Cheese thinks they’re an abomination.’
That’s the interesting thing about religious morality regarding homosexuality (as opposed to all the other things it pontificates about). You don’t have to be a genius to see why murder ends up taboo in most societies. On the sexual side, we can see where incest taboos could come from (and thus get religiously encoded). The problem with homosexuality would seem to be linked to the command to multiply being a divine one. What is also fascinating is that maybe homosexuals do replicate their genes more within societies that forbid their orientation, because they are more likely to have formal heterosexual relationships (including children) as a cover, which is unnecessary when they are openly tolerated.
Whatever. Intelligent design it sure as hell ain’t.
“People who claim that homosexuality is displeasing to god really don’t know that and have no way to know it.”
I think I tend to agree that they have only one basis to believe anything at all about god’s will and that’s the bible/koran etc. The problem is that even if you assume that the bible is an accurate representation of god’s will, it still doesn’t change the fact that god happens to be wrong…
Because even if god exists, there are still further questions, before one can conclude that condemnation of homosexuality pleases this god. What kind of god is it? What does it think is good, and what does it think is bad?
Fine. Intellectually, religious arguments against homosexuality are a barn door. Arguing with theologians on this point is basically tic tac toe.
But it may be premature to assume that it is religion that creates homophobia, rather than vice-versa (I don’t really know whether you ARE assuming that, but certainly many secularists do so). According to scientists of religion, such as Pascal Boyer, it’s generally moral intuition that comes first and religion afterwards. In other words, thanks to natural selection, people intuit that certain activities may be ‘wrong’ and (being unable to understand the evolutionary origins of these intuitions), invent supernatural agents as explanations – agents who say things like: don’t steal, don’t kill anybody who belongs to your tribe, waste the bastards if they happen to be Amalekites, don’t rape your neighbour’s wife unless she’s an Amalekite, don’t indulge in unsanitary sexual practices, etc.
So it may not be Leviticus 18:22 that led to homophobia as homophobia that led to Leviticus 18:22. Hence there may be a kind of virtuous or vicious spiral between a biological given (intuition) and a related social construction (religion). One feeds on the other, so to speak: a supernatural agent that ‘says no to sodomy’ has a longer life expectancy in the human imagination than a supernatural agent who says ‘anything goes’. All pretty speculative, I admit, but more satisfactory than singling out religion as the ultimate cause of morality rather than morality as the ultimate cause of religion.
Not that morality is necessarily moral, of course.
No, I’m not at all assuming that religion creates homophobia. On the contrary – I think people use religion to justify and pretty up their unreasoned hatreds. And there’s more than one benefit to that approach: you not only get to put a self-righteous gloss on your nasty little hatreds, you also get to shield them from certain kinds of sharp criticism because they are based on religious beliefs or ‘faith’, which as we keep noticing it is taboo to attack too directly. (I know, I’m attacking directly right now, but I’m not mainstream media.)
“I think I tend to agree that they have only one basis to believe anything at all about god’s will and that’s the bible/koran etc.”
And that shows very nicely why that is not a basis: because there is no such thing as the bible/koran; there is the bible or the koran. Well, if god really did want us to be good in the way that god means good, then god would deliver one book to all humans for all time, and make it unmistakable that that was what the book was and always would be. If god really did want us to be good in the way that god means good, it would be nothing but perverse to give us several competing books, or to give us one valid one and others that are false, but no way to know (really know, not just believe, not just have ‘faith’) which is which. The whole belief structure relies on ignoring certain obvious problems, certain contradictions and improbabilities.
I didn’t think OB meant that either and Cathal’s comment is not at all unreasonable. Dawkins spends some time on that in TGD. It shouldn’t be surprising that a moral code that was developed for a zeitgeist that flourished thousands of years ago seems unreasonable if rigidly adhered to today. However otherwise benighted and superstitious those who came up with those codes may seem to our lights today, they did at least understand that they were doing something either necessary or workable for the society in which they lived, which today’s fundamentalists who want to apply all that ruthlessly now don’t care about, if they’ve even grasped it.
“… it would be nothing but perverse to give us several competing books, or to give us one valid one and others that are false…”
Quite. So when I see Ratzinger standing in triumphant unity in Turkey with rival religious leaders, my reflex captioning mechanism produces the talks bubble: “It’s true we both spout bullshit and it’s true that the bullshit of each calls the other’s bullshit heresy, but at least we agree that we need to unite against those who spout no bullshit at all.”
If you’re Muslim, it’s part of your belief system to know that Christians are wrong and vice versa. Of course, Ratzinger doesn’t hold press conferences at which he can be asked whether he believes (or knows) that the religious leaders with whom he tries to achieve (re)conciliation are going to spend eternity in hell. (The Fred Halliday piece was refreshing.) That’s why they are getting it so damned wrong when they try to lump science with “other” beliefs; science isn’t something you have to believe in. Of course a lot is taken on trust where trust seems to have been earned, but in theory, given enough time and intelligence (ok, yes and money), a would-be debunker of science could personally conduct every experiment and observation that has got us to where we now are.
“It’s true we both spout bullshit and it’s true that the bullshit of each calls the other’s bullshit heresy, but at least we agree that we need to unite against those who spout no bullshit at all.”
Very good.
All this is obvious enough if you think about it, but there’s the taboo on criticism of religion to keep most people from thinking about it. Useful meme for the goddy set, that one.
What is also fascinating is that maybe homosexuals do replicate their genes more within societies that forbid their orientation, because they are more likely to have formal heterosexual relationships (including children) as a cover, which is unnecessary when they are openly tolerated.
That’s the most interesting chain of reasoning I’ve come across for a long time. Thanks.
I think people use religion to justify and pretty up their unreasoned hatreds …
I would opt for a less judgemental formulation:
“I think people sometimes use religion to justify and pretty up their unreasoned aversions.
Aversion isn’t hatred and is often adaptive (such as most people’s aversions to copulation with the obese, the ugly, the disabled, the elderly, children and persons of the same sex). If religion fortifies certain aversions, it is a dose of nurture that is inadvertently helping nature on her way. And aversions, like prejudices, are ‘unreasoned’ by definition. Not everything that is unreasoned is worth reasoning about.
BTW most religious people don’t hate homosexuals – devout Catholics don’t even consider sodomy to be more upsetting to God than indulging in impure thoughts, masturbation or coitus interruptus. AFAIK most Christians consider same-sex attraction to be a misfortune that must be either borne or cured (there’s even a Christian organisation in the US entitled ‘National Association for Research and Treatment of Homosexuality’ – NARTH) and curiously that view is partly shared by many gays – it IS a misfortune to have an orientation that the vast majority of people don’t have and that some people find repugnant. If this aversion is as biologically determined as homosexuality itself there probably isn’t an awful lot one can do about it.
Well, I said ‘I think people use religion to justify and pretty up their unreasoned hatreds’ in reply to another specific attribution about religion, so in context it was clear that I didn’t mean all religion. But I did mean hatreds, not aversions. I don’t particularly claim that most religious people hate homosexuals, but I do claim that some do. Hatred of homosexuals has besmeared itself all over US politics lately. And as for what is called ‘the Muslim world’…
“[M]ost people’s aversions to copulation with the obese, the ugly, the disabled” is adaptive? Really!? You and your amateur ev psych – it’s so annoying.
“That’s the most interesting chain of reasoning I’ve come across for a long time. Thanks.”
Thank you, Cathal. I was simply trying to imagine how things work. I’m hardly the expert on this, but from the lay science I’ve read, I gather that homosexuality has been pretty firmly established as not being a mere product of environment or upbringing. A couple of recent studies come to mind, one about male scents activating the same areas in the male homosexual brain as are activated by them in the heterosexual female brain, and another that claimed that with every male sibling born to the same mother, the chances of him being homosexual increase, something to do with the way the womb’s previous occupant influences the hormones the mother dispenses the next time round. I’m sure I haven’t described this accurately and I’m sure you can find it properly explained elsewhere, but, with this kind of thing playing in the background of my thoughts, I wondered how come those members of the population who do the least breeding still seem to be represented at a fairly consistent level. That second theory would answer some questions, because it isn’t proposing some kind of homosexual gene, which you might figure would long ago have gone extinct, but an effect conditioned by the number of male children who have already passed through the womb. That gives you a non-environmental, but also non-hereditary, mechanism that could account for a lot, if it holds water. I also don’t know where and/or how female homosexuality fits in with that.
On one level, religious laws making homosexuality an abomination are ridiculously easy to understand, of course. Just like with masturbation, any sexual activity that isn’t directly channeled into increasing the size of the group is seen as counter-productive and is therefore outlawed.
Oh I don’t know. Sexual activity that isn’t directly channeled into increasing the size of the group could be viewed as practice, for instance, thus conducive to better stronger offspring because the sexually skilled attract better mates. Or, all the child-bearing-age women in the group could be pregnant, in which case recreational sex could be seen as a way of keeping people busy and out of trouble; thus more offspring survive to maturity because no one has killed them out of irritation or sexual frustration. Homosexuality not an abomination at all but educational or calming or both; highly useful and “adaptive.”
Breezily confident amateur ev psych is easy and fun and safe to try at home.
OB,
You’re on to something here. As I understand, on the classical theistic concept of God as wholly transcendent, God’s will is either known by taking the Bible or some other document literally or not at all. And the first one, in practice, means picking those parts corresponding the most to one’s own morality – but also one’s own prejudices, petty aversions, etc.
But we agree, I think, on some kind of ultimate moral principles as a guide to what’s right and what’s wrong. You, as a non-theist, spoke very aptly about “moral intuitions” in this context, and I think you would regard these moral intuitions as something intersubjectively shared, common to humanity. I am tempted (though by no means certain of my case here) to regard them as objective rather than intersubjective – part of the basic make-up of the universe.
This is just an idea I’m throwing around. And my knowledge of moral philosophy is close to zero. But it seems to me that there is some kind of similarity with reason in that both are normative systems of rules which we just ultimately have to take as they are (I don’t think morality can be quite deduced from reason).
But if I follow my line of thought through, then it would be mistaken to regard morality, and reason, as “created” in any way by God. The kind of God which the theistic arguments from reason (which I think is strong) and arguments from morality (which I am undecided about) point to is one who *is* morality and reason – i.e. they would be aspects of God rather than laws set by him/her/it.
Of course, such a God would be very different than the way the Abrahamic God is usually conceptualized. The “will” of God would be very much available to people as our own most basic moral intuitions would correspond to it. But on this (theistic) line of thought (which I think flows naturally from panentheistic/”immanentist” views on Deity), “humanist” and “theist” morality should be the same, and argued for in the same manner.
There are good reasons to expect that Christian theist positions regarding homosexuality might have valid grounding apart from the articulated reason that it is displeasing to God.
Firstly, it is a voice of conservative and traditional opinion. A case for the status quo should be examined in the public debate, but it is not when only activists and members of the cosmopolitan class get a say.
Such an argument might include the track record. When conservatives argued against divorce and single motherhood in the sixties and seventies, they predicted dire social consequences for families especially among those least able to protect themselves, the poor and disadvantaged. Those predictions have been validated in the way disadvantage has been entrenched in poverty and destructive family life patterns in the underclasses of western societies.
Secondly, the moral bases of Christian life patterns are essentially those of effective and successful family life in all times, as adapted to meet the times. They have changed with the modern world and overwhelmingly incorporate evolving Enlightenment views. (A base case to compare against is that of Wahhabi Islamism.)
Thirdly, we in our several democracies provide a way to include people in law and social change whether or not their opinions have scientific grounding. If the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Scientology had 40% uptake, you would still be stuck with giving them a vote too.
Fourthly, fashionable intellectual opinions are often driven by a moralising imperative that overwhelms caution. Prohibition, eugenics, communism, Nazi genocide… rare cases but clear evidence that the moral sense disconnected from conservative institutions can lead us a long way wrong.
In all this you will please notice that I bring up no yuk factor or homey evolutionary psych or ‘taint-natural stuff. I only point out that you are not approaching this fair-mindedly. That’s your privilege, but rationalism loses if it isn’t persuasively deployed.
This seems so obvious that I must be missing the point, but, no, Christians do not have THE BOOK. Different groups of Christians have different canonical selections of books. On moral precepts, these books frequently contradict each other and sometimes themselves. (For example, is stealing wicked, as Moses claimed YHWH said? Or is owning property wicked, as Jesus is reported to have said?
Moreover, if (which there isn’t) there were THE BOOK which told us what some god had decided was good, it would tell us the god’s arbitrary whim, not what is good. (Euthyphro again; we’ve been there many times before.) OB is right, as usual. A good god, if one exists, ought to leave us in epistemic darkness about morals.
Yes, traditional opinion should be listened to, but only if it has arguments, not merely because it is traditional. And yes, the ‘track record’ of a given moral stance should be examined. The opinion that homosexual love expressed between consenting adults is wicked has led to frequent misery, and should therefore be abandoned. The apparent underlying fear that if the expression of homosexual love is allowed, it is so much more beguiling than heterosexual love that good Christians will stop procreating, has no factual basis whatever. On the other hand, there is anecdotal evidence that some suppressed homosexuals take up hellfire anti-homosexual preaching, possibly in order to keep what they perceive as their own demons in check.
All happy families are alike: they listen to each other and do not assume that father has the last word. There is nothing about that in any of the books of the bible. On the contrary, the essence of the moral precepts that Moses claimed YHWH had given him is, in modern terms, “Men: hang on to your property and make sure it is passed on to children who share half your genes. Women: you are part of your husband’s property.”
Yes, democracies give the vote to individual stupid and ignorant people. That is why democracy is the worst form of government, except all the alternatives. But democracies shouldn’t listen to Christians or scientologists or skeptics as groups.
Prohibition is decreed by the inerrant word of Allah. (Human) eugenics is advocated only by nutters, as far as I know. Communism was advocated by Jesus and Karl Marx, but has never been tried, except in Franciscan monasteries, where, they claim, it works well. Nazi genocide was grounded in sentiments that Martin Luther claimed his god revealed to him. None of these were ever ‘fashionable intellectual opinions’.
ChrisPer:”Firstly, it is a voice of conservative and traditional opinion. A case for the status quo should be examined in the public debate, but it is not when only activists and members of the cosmopolitan class get a say.”
There is public debate from both sides; that’s why we’re discussing it. No one discusses the rights and wrongs of breathing because it isn’t contoversial.
ChrisPer:”Secondly, the moral bases of Christian life patterns are essentially those of effective and successful family life in all times”
What have effective and successful family life patterns got to do with disapproving of homosexuality? The existence of homosexuals hasn’t stopped me having a family. It’s because I think family life is generally good that I think homosexuals should be able to marry and bring up kids if they’re fit parents.
“If the cult of the Flying Spaghetti Monster or Scientology had 40% uptake, you would still be stuck with giving them a vote too.”
If they’re adults over 18 then they do have a vote just like other citizens.
“Fourthly, fashionable intellectual opinions are often driven by a moralising imperative that overwhelms caution. Prohibition, eugenics, communism, Nazi genocide… rare cases but clear evidence that the moral sense disconnected from conservative institutions can lead us a long way wrong.”
It isn’t as simple as that. Nazi genocide was in part an exaggeration of centuries-old anti-semitism and prohibition was promoted by Christians. Eugenics has its roots in the the age-old human tendency to attribute fundamental negative attributes to people from enemy groups. If we listened to conservative institutions, homosexuality would still be illegal. Even if one didn’t approve of homosexuality, one could still see that banning it was unworkable – just like prohibition.
I’m just in one of those moods. Comparing prohibition to banning homosexuality makes me think of homosexuals as a commodity, to be smuggled in from Canada or made in your bathtub. Wasn’t there a famous piece of graffiti that said “my mother made me a homosexual,” to which someone had added “if I gave her some wool, would she make me one, too?”
Pseudo-Cathal writes:
Sexual activity that isn’t directly channeled into increasing the size of the group could be viewed as practice, for instance, thus conducive to better stronger offspring because the sexually skilled attract better mates…
LOL — honest. Well, at least I giggled bashfully.
I know, I know — there really is an awful lot of ‘just-so-ish’ armchair speculation in this area. Evolutionary psychology does sometimes look as though it were specially designed to inspire cartoonists.
Still, EP is a helluva lot better than psychoanalysis, Marxism or old-time religion.
Come up with something better and you can sign me on.
ChrisPer writes:
When conservatives argued against divorce and single motherhood in the sixties and seventies, they predicted dire social consequences for families especially among those least able to protect themselves, the poor and disadvantaged. Those predictions have been validated in the way disadvantage has been entrenched in poverty and destructive family life patterns in the underclasses of western societies.
The conservatives were 100% correct in their predictions but their valid arguments were based on purely secular grounds. For example, single motherhood has been a disaster not because it displeases the gods but because children need fathers as well as mothers and because mothers need husbands as well as children.
Just leave the Holy Book out of the equation and you might begin to convince non-believers that you have something interesting to say.
Pleez. leave. it. out.
Right: “Masturbation and homosexuality are permitted, but only if the aim is practice for heterosexual relations likely to produce offspring.” Sounds just like the Bible we all know and love, doesn’t it?
Gives a new meaning to “practicing homosexual.”
“there really is an awful lot of ‘just-so-ish’ armchair speculation in this area.”
All I’m saying! I’m very partial to it myself – I think it’s interesting, suggestive, productive, etc – as well as highly likely to be broadly right. (In fact, taken broadly enough, it’s hard to see how it could be wrong; it’s hard to see how the species could have escaped selective pressures entirely, or how such pressures could have failed to have any effect at all.) I just think one needs to be more modest about specific claims. Hedge your assertions a bit and I won’t cartoon ya.
ChrisPer,
“I assert that your line of argument is a refusal to grant any recognition to Christian belief systems, pre-emptively denying any grounding for their arguments.”
Of course it is.
Merlijn,
“I think you would regard these moral intuitions as something intersubjectively shared, common to humanity.”
Hmm. No, not really. I’d like to be able to, but not really. People are so good at applying some moral intuitions to themselves (thou shalt not harm me and mine) but also at finding ways to make exceptions of not-selves – even in such a way as to make ‘thou shalt not harm me and mine’ compatible with ‘I however have the right to harm mine in any way I like.’ I think there may be moral intuitions that are potentially universalizable, but only potentially (and I’m not particularly optimistic about the likelihood).
People are so good at applying some moral intuitions to themselves (thou shalt not harm me and mine) but also at finding ways to make exceptions of not-selves …
Yes, and most moral intuitions apply chiefly to one’s own ‘tribe’. The mother of all moral intuitions, namely the ‘Ten Commandments’ in their original version, applied to the chosen people, not to humanity as a whole. As John Hartung pointed out in an essay entitled ‘Love Thy Neighbour’ (published in ‘The Skeptic’ some years ago) it’s a matter of in-group versus out-group morality.
Here’s a long quotation (sorry, but it’s worth the read) from Hartung’s essay:
“In context, neighbor meant “the children of thy people,” “the sons of your own people,” “your countrymen” — in other words, fellow in-group members. Specific laws which follow from the love law can be better understood by keeping the in-group definition of neighbor in mind. Consider the proto-legal portion of The Ten Commandments (Deuteronomy 5:17-21; JPS ’17 & KJV):
Thou shalt not kill.
Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
Neither shalt thou steal.
Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.
Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife; and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.
And add the realization that the scrolls from which these words were translated have no periods, no commas, and no first-word capitalization. Decisions about where sentences and paragraphs begin and end are courtesy of the translator. Accordingly, instead of being written as five separate paragraphs of one sentence each, without changing any of the words, Deuteronomy 5:17-21 could be translated:
Thou shalt not kill, neither shalt thou commit adultery, neither shalt thou steal, neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour. Neither shall you covet your neighbor’s wife, and you shall not desire your neighbor’s house, his field, or his manservant, or his maidservant, his ox, or his ass, or anything that is your neighbor’s.
Here the question, “Thou shalt not kill who?” is answered “Thou shalt not kill thy neighbor – the children of thy people, your countrymen, your fellow in-group member.”
The full text of Hartung’s article is to be found here:
http://hometown.aol.com/toexist/ltnhome.html
Sadly, it’s possible that ingroup versus outgroup is the only really universal intersubjective moral intuition that humans have – and it’s a terrible one.
“I’m not at all assuming that religion creates homophobia. On the contrary – I think people use religion to justify and pretty up their unreasoned hatreds”
Errm, hang on, surely that way silly statements about anything nasty about religion being a perversion of it lie. Nastiness from religion = ‘in the name of.’ Nastines from anything else = caused by whatever the else in question might happen to be. They don’t need to ‘use’ religion – it does justify prejudices as well as inculcating them in the first place.
“And that shows very nicely why that is not a basis: because there is no such thing as the bible/koran; there is the bible or the koran.”
I take the point, but the problem does seem to me to be that it would only occur to someone who isn’t a believer. Doubting the supremacy of holy writ is not a noteworthy features of many religions.
“They don’t need to ‘use’ religion – it does justify prejudices as well as inculcating them in the first place.”
Yeah. I spoke too broadly, didn’t I. (Who, me? Oh surely not.) I just meant I don’t think religion is the only source, and didn’t want to seem to claim that.
I’ve just been reading more Maddy Bunting, and my allergy to wool is kicking up something fierce.
Cathal – it should be noted, though your point about in-group vs. out-group morality is correct, that the Old Testament nevertheless generally tends to stress that strangers are generally subject to the same laws and rights as the people of the Covenant.
On the other hand, the idea that people are people, regardless where they are from is a terribly recent one. I recall, OB, that we discussed some time ago whether the Enlightenment could have happened earlier if not for the advent of Christianity. I argued that it couldn’t – as the whole idea of universal human rights was based on the full spectrum of human diversity (through colonialism etc.) becoming known. There are many tribes and ethnic groups who name themselves as “people” (as opposed to the neighbouring tribe, whom they’re not exactly sure about). Traces of this can still be seen in the stem of Deutsch, Teut-onic, which originally meant the same (Lithuanian “tauta” – people).
Anyway, I agree about the loopholes people use. But I think this rather proves my point. I think a lot of the misogyny displayed in Iran, Afghanistan, etc. has a lot to do with simple male sadism (I’ve nothing against sadism, mind you, if applied to consenting partners). But the thing is, it is never justified as such. Justification is attained through dubiously interpreted holy scripture. And the same goes for so much of the evil wrought by people. They are not as much justified by a (differing morality) as by some kind of extraneous concern (including religious ones) overriding moral intuitions.
“the Old Testament nevertheless generally tends to stress that strangers are generally subject to the same laws and rights as the people of the Covenant.”
Uh…there’s a hell of a lot of the OT that’s all about dashing out the brains of strangers. Sometimes it’s god cheering on the brain-dashing.
“They are not as much justified by a (differing morality) as by some kind of extraneous concern (including religious ones) overriding moral intuitions.”
Why? Why are they not just different (mistaken) moral intuitions? Moral intuitions can be dead wrong; they’re still moral intuitions. People ‘just know’ what’s right all the time. They’re often quite wrong, but they ‘just know’ all the same.
I do tend to think they are “something else” dressed up as moral intuitions, rather than moral intuitions themselves. People don’t need to read from the Bible to learn they should not kill each other and preferably be nice to one another – though some parts of the Bible do sum it up nicely. But homophobia and the like are justified (if at all) by taking recourse to religion, rather than by secular reasoning.
I don’t think we disagree here on essence, as you mention that moral intuitions can be quite wrong. I’m not sure if moral intuitions can be wrong and remain moral intuitions.
It isn’t by any chance possible that religious believers are convinced that they have access to a kind of superior knowledge denied to those lacking belief?
“But homophobia and the like are justified (if at all) by taking recourse to religion, rather than by secular reasoning.”
But homophobia mostly isn’t justified at all, it just is. (That’s what the ‘phobia’ part means, I think – it points to the irrational aspect.
“I’m not sure if moral intuitions can be wrong and remain moral intuitions.”
Yeah they can. ‘Moral’ there doesn’t mean moral in the normative sense, it’s just descriptive. A moral intuition is an intuition about morality, so it can be wrong, and often is. (The word is ambiguous that way. If one says ‘she’s a moral person’ it means ‘moral in a good way’; but moral intuition is different. Tricky.)
The non-goddy lines of argument I proposed for paying attention to Christian views are grounded on traditional authority and experience. They do not in any way address the issues of law regarding homosexuality, but whether OB and others would allow those views to be put at all.
As has been pointed out, Christians have in fact had the opportunity to put a case and if there is much substance to them, I agree with you that their argument has not shown it.
Separate issues.
‘When conservatives argued against divorce and single motherhood in the sixties and seventies, they predicted dire social consequences for families especially among those least able to protect themselves, the poor and disadvantaged. Those predictions have been validated in the way disadvantage has been entrenched in poverty and destructive family life patterns in the underclasses of western societies.’
I find this an absolutely baffling statement for several reasons.
1. Allowing people to divorce has helped many, many individuals. The social impact has not been as dire as many have been led to believe as 90+ % of all who divorce marry again within 3 years. It’s not like divorce sends one to the soup line in America and those who struggle post divorce where usially doing so prior. Poverty is poverty.
2. There have always been single mothers. Always. Society has not fallen apart. All large societies have to deal with poverty. It is this segment that has the most single parents, they are not poor because they are single parents. There are poor previously. Address the poverty.
3. Despite all of this bluster all social indicators show the US becoming a healthier society then 50+ years prior when the ‘family’ was in it’s heyday. SO it is easier to make an argument that divorce and single mothers improve society than hurt it. But that would be no more valid than saying such life events cause the problem in the first place.
ChrisPer, your supposed nongoddy but Christian reasons are secular reasons, there’s nothing particularly Christian about them. Your original claim was that I ‘disown the reason of pleasing God on the grounds that He does not exist’; that’s what I was talking about in this post. Secular reasons are a completely different subject. Are you shifting your ground on purpose or by accident?
No, I’m trying to say I think you are mostly right. If you disagree go right ahead and say so.
I advanced secular reasons why Christians should get a respectful turn to be heard, indirectly challenging your secular reasons why they should STFU. You agreed that you were pre-emptively denying any grounding for their arguments, which is a lot better reasoning for telling them to STFU than ‘poisoning the well’ by calling them bigots and homophobes.
Not that you would mind that either, I think. You have a very emotional tone in this ‘get outta my store’ stuff, so I imagine it must be personal to some you care about.
The nonsense always converges in the end. If your concern is understanding the universe, you’re getting further away, not nearer, by postulating a supernatural agent whose nature we can’t investigate. And, in the same way, if your concern is to be good and moral, you’re going to miss that aim if you try do so by blindly following what’s in an ancient text of uncertain provenance. If being good and moral is important to you, try putting those points at the top of your agenda, not below allegiance to words attributed to a mythical creature. We’ll always be able to argue about what that will mean, but it’s dealing with the important issues directly, not shunting them off to a siding while irrelevancies take over.
I would say that anyone who wants to be horrible to someone else (the childish language is deliberate and appropriate) – whether they’re gay, black, Jewish, female, whatever – on the strength of a religious text, had better have iron-clad proof of the religious text’s divinity before they even open their mouth.
Thanks, Stewart, that is very helpful and insightful; perhaps you could write a new prayer book and whiz it through the consultative process to acceptance by the various churches.
Meanwhile perhaps you could fill me in on why people on the internet are so ready to assume others act hatefully and have hateful motives on no particular evidence except that they say something not approved by the elect.
No prayer books for me, thanks. I just think that it’s a problem if you’re going to do something that affects other people negatively and as a reason, give something which is not self-evident and agreed-upon as existing by all. That’s an awkward way of putting it. Part of what I’m saying (if you were even fishing for my two cents worth) is similar to what Merlijn said in the earlier thread. Firstly, there is a difference between a reason and a good reason. I’m sure OB agrees, but maybe you don’t think she was clear enough on that distinction. I don’t doubt many Christians hold their beliefs with absolute sincerity. But, don’t you see how you are actually undermining your case by pointing out changes the church has made? People may not actually have a choice about whether they believe something (you do or you don’t; you can’t make yourself or stop yourself), but they can’t escape their responsibility for deciding to follow a certain “path.” Ask a believer how she/he came to believe in the divinity of a certain text. What are the possibilities? You’ll get something specific from them, from which you can then examine what that something was, or they’ll say they always believed, which amounts to never having had an option, or they don’t actually believe. The point is, we all choose, including those who claim to be following someone else’s lead. If you point to cases where the church softened a stand by not following something that’s written, you’re not strengthening the case for following what’s written at all; you’re confirming that we decide, not god and not a sacred text. God having authority at all depends on it being perfect and infallible etc. You can’t simultaneously assert that as a basis for authority while being soft on following him to the letter.
I also think we’ve been too Christian-focused in this discussion. Any kind of god is an enormous assumption; to argue about just one specific version is presuming an awful lot.
Chris, okay, thanks for clarification. (I really wasn’t clear about what you meant.)
“You agreed that you were pre-emptively denying any grounding for their arguments, which is a lot better reasoning for telling them to STFU than ‘poisoning the well’ by calling them bigots and homophobes.”
Hmmm. I’m not so sure – I think at bottom it is the same reasoning. I call them bigots and homophobes because they fail (in my experience) to offer real (secular, universalizable, etc) reasons for advocating punitive and discriminatory (in the narrow sense) rules for homosexuals. So I don’t see myself as poisoning the well but as labeling, but labeling accurately.
“Not that you would mind that either, I think. You have a very emotional tone in this ‘get outta my store’ stuff, so I imagine it must be personal to some you care about.”
Not especially personal. I have gay friends, certainly, but who doesn’t? I agree about the emotionality, but I don’t think it’s personal in that sense. It’s a moral intuition. (Moral in the neutral descriptive sense, not the ‘good’ sense.) I just do find it repellent that Christians (who do tend to claim the moral high ground for themselves as religionists – not necessarily personally but as a group, if you see what I mean) are so eager to mete out unequal treatment to a despised group for no good reason. That’s where the tone comes from. The gap between putative Christian forgiveness, other cheek turning, mercy, generosity, egalitarianism, etc, and the desire to withold equality from gays.
So, your secular arguments of 8 Dec for ‘Christian theist positions regarding homosexuality’ – tradition, the case for the status quo, social consequences for families, successful family life, including people in social change, a moralizing imperative that overwhelms caution –
I don’t see how any of those reasons provide grounding for refusing to serve homosexuals in hotels and restaurants, which is what’s at issue. You seem to be arguing some sort of case for disapproving of homosexuality, but that does not equate to grounding for giving them unequal treatment in public accommodations. There’s a big gap there. It’s not a usual social practice for restaurant managers or hotel clerks to interview prospective customers before letting them in. Approval and disapproval seems to be rather profoundly beside the point. Things just aren’t (and shouldn’t be) set up so that people who run public accomodations work out which people they like and which they don’t and serve only the latter. Clubs, yes, but accommodations, no. We don’t have to take a test in order to shop at Waitrose, either.
“Meanwhile perhaps you could fill me in on why people on the internet are so ready to assume others act hatefully and have hateful motives on no particular evidence except that they say something not approved by the elect.”
I’ll try. Really, I will, because I think it’s an important point.
It’s because this whole thing has a history. Barring people from public facilities and accommodations has a history. It’s not a very nice history. Blacks, Jews, Chinese, Mexicans – furriners and outgroups in general; they’ve all been barred from many places in the past, for no reason except the obvious: mere distaste, mere dislike, mere ‘we don’t want you around’.
So that’s why. We (those of us who do) (and I think you were addressing ‘you’ as a group, so answer that way, not to sound bullying, as in ‘we all think you’re wrong’) tend to think that activity is hateful by definition. The evidence is the history of the practice. If you can give me examples of that kind of barring that is not hateful, not of the ‘no dogs or Chinese’ variety, I’ll be deeply interested.
Well, thanks OB. I think because I live in a very comfortable slice of the world where gays are subject to very little to no discrimination, I don’t have a lot of investment in it.
It seems I haven’t made myself clear, so once again… I am not arguing for approving general exclusion or discrimination of GLBT people.
I am ONLY arguing for admitting those who ARE to the debate, with respect for what about them deserves respect.
Then hear and test their case, which you have done but at a derisive level only.
OB, you asked for an exclusion that is not hateful? I propose the exclusion of openly gay Scoutmasters. This exclusion is based on the track record of scraping up the human remains of letting the wrong people into positions of trust, but with a fig leaf to religion as well because Scouting has a christian root so they use that as cover too.
Certainly most gay people can keep their hands in their pockets but most people who have been around know at least one case personally of a teacher, church leader or similar who cracked and abused young boys in their trust.
Now this is a contentious thing because gay activists correctly say individuals should not be judged on the actions of others who may be of the same category; but the motivation is not about hating gays but protecting children in the organisation’s care. The risk-benefit balance is too skewed.
This is not a direct contribution to the debate, but ChrisPer’s last remark reminded me of something that was in a comment to one of the Dawkins Irish TV appearances on the RDF site. Paraphrasing the remark, it was something like if several cases became known of McDonalds managers abusing children, people would stop eating there and they’d go out of business. The church gets away with it.
“I am ONLY arguing for admitting those who ARE to the debate, with respect for what about them deserves respect.”
Sure – if they will debate in secular terms. It’s a secular law, it’s a secular subject, it has to be debated in secular terms. (I’m not saying anyone should be banned or censored, just talking about rules of debate.)
“OB, you asked for an exclusion that is not hateful? I propose the exclusion of openly gay Scoutmasters.”
No, I was more specific than that. For good reason: that’s not what this particular debate is about. It’s the public accommodations regulation that the archbishops are objecting to; that’s not about Scoutmasters. I said “Barring people from public facilities and accommodations” – that’s the kind of exclusion I was asking for a non-hateful example of.
I’m not sure you’re fully taking in what it is that the archbishops are saying. Maybe if you did you’d be less indignant with me.
I think what their reasoning is, is: they think homosexuality is sinful, morally wrong; they want to be able to act on that belief in real life. That’s understandable in a way. If we know for certain that someone is cruel and unjust, we may want to act on that awareness in some fashion. But in fact cruel unjust people aren’t normally banned from hotels and restaurants – so even if the archbishops were right about the sinfulness of homosexuality, the wish to bar gays from public accommodations doesn’t really fly. And of course they’re not right.
You are probably right. I will read the links more carefully after I dash off some letters to the editors over some activist reserach that just hit the news.
See, if you don’t mind feral speech, what I think of some activists at http://www.class.org.au/ideas_kill.htm …
Did you write that? It’s good stuff. And interesting. I think that kind of thing is highly relevant to activities like flying planes into tall buildings and blowing up tube trains.