Short answers
I mentioned that believers can resort to a quick and easy way with difficult questions that secular thinkers and atheists can’t, and that this lack is perhaps one reason students are always moral relativists. We can offer reasons for thinking X is better than Y, or for thinking Z is entirely unacceptable in any moral universe we can think of (executing gays for being gay, genocide, murdering women for talking to an unrelated man), but we can’t hand out anything as brisk and simple and conversation-stopping as ‘God said so.’ Believers* have a short cut which unbelievers don’t have. Believers have an answer that is both quick and easy, while unbelievers have to spend time and effort if they want to explain to skeptics why executing gays for being gay is unacceptable.
Believers have an answer that is both quick and easy, and that’s why it’s such a crap answer. Quick and easy answers are worthless for such disagreements. They’re worthless because they have no content. They’re empty. Saying ‘God said so’ is exactly the same thing as saying nothing. It’s like holding up a street sign rather than saying anything. Why shouldn’t we execute gays for being gays? Why shouldn’t we kill women for talking to an unrelated man? Because Galer Street. That tells you just as much as ‘God said so.’ Just saying a name doesn’t tell us anything. All ‘God said so’ really means is ‘it’s what I think and “God” is like an official stamp on what I think’ – which leaves us exactly where we started. ‘God’ is just the label people put on what they already think is good. They don’t put that label on what they already think is bad. They don’t punch ‘God’ into a good-bad computer they have so that they know which goes with what. They just take God to endorse what they think is right, and that absolves them from the work of testing what they think is right.
This is one of the great appeals of theism, of course, but it’s a snare and a delusion. The shortcut is a shortcut because it leaves out so much, and that’s not a good thing. It may be needed in an emergency, as ‘because I said so’ is sometimes with children, but for the long haul, it’s necessary to do better than that. The answer from authority is impoverished, and morality is not a subject that thrives on impoverished answers.
*Believers here means dogmatic believers. Not all believers are dogmatic – though even many liberal believers betray an odd certainty about certain attributes and views of God. They’re very sure God is good and benevolent and compassionate, for one thing. But they don’t use the ‘God said’ shortcut. Mostly.
OB, True enough & please let us resist the temptation of shortcutting because in fact the situation is more complex.
It is not for instance straightforward to say that ‘in any moral universe’ a killing of a gay because he is gay is morally indefensible. It’s also not a very straightforward thing to accept a moral argument in the form of ‘because it is immoral in any moral universe’. In the end the complex moral-logic type arguments can easily become elaborate expensive sounding ways of invoking an external final authority which just so happens not to be labeled ‘God’.
Moral action is always action, it isn’t to be sterilized into contextless logic and it should certainly not be codified in a set of absolute everlasting don’t-‘s. Moral argument starts concretely in specific cases by wondering how one can do better. Not killing – let alone gays because they are gays – as a don’t is a handy summary over conceivable cases in this specific universe. But handy as it is it cannot take the place of specific inspection of specific cases at hand.
Don’t forget “having it both ways”!
A couple weeks ago Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris debated faith on the internets, and I was astonished by how Sullivan wanted to be both illogical and reasonable. When Harris wrote that faith conflicts with reason, Sullivan replied with:
“As the Pope said last year, I believe that God is truth and truth is, by definition, reasonable. Science cannot disprove true faith; because true faith rests on the truth; and science cannot be in ultimate conflict with the truth.”
-so many simple answers piled up on top of each other that you hardly know where to start.
(I started by giving up on the ‘debate.’)
Ah but JoB, I didn’t say ‘in any moral universe a killing of a gay because he is gay is morally indefensible’ – I said we can offer reasons for thinking Z is entirely unacceptable in any moral universe we can think of (executing gays for being gay, genocide, murdering women for talking to an unrelated man). That’s quite different. You radically simplified what I said in order to dispute your version of what I said.
Ian, actually the debate was longer ago than a couple of weeks. Several months ago, though I don’t remember how many. But anyway, quite: Sullivan wanted to have it both ways throughout. I found it extremely annoying. (It’s discussed here somewhere, I think.)
Oh jeez. Where have I been? Only saw that deal the other week – still, it burns my onions.
Last week we had our own little warm speech about faith by Senator Obama. Like Blair, he’d like us to focus on what he considers the good coming from religion, and not the divisiveness. What the hell are any of us going to do when our pols have this warm and fuzzy security blanket that most people pretend is there?
Wouldn’t it be nice if US pols could be secular? But they can’t. Phooey.
Phooey indeed.
I’ve been thinking more about your post today, and maybe the theists easy-answers problem is a confusion between simplicity and elegance. Any idiot can declare something to be true, but you need some more patience and precision to prove it (think Euclid’s proof of the Pythagorean Theorem.)
That’s what always bothered me about going to church as a kid – the music and paintings had refinement and beauty, but the lessons left me feeling empty.
Interesting. Reminiscent of Shaker furniture. It looks as if anyone could do it, but it’s not as simple as it looks.
OB,
Wouldn’t it be nice if US pols could be secular?
Quite. Unfortunately, true “separation of church and state” is only implied in the US Constitution, rather than written. As far as I’m concerned, if Christians want the government to stay out of their churches, they should stay out of the government.
JamesW and OB, Democracy is a funny thing isn’t it…
OB I am somewhat confused by this ‘in any moral universe I can think of’ discussion.
I think you mean it only to illustrate that a-theists can ground a moral precept in ‘reasons’ whereas a theist has a convenient ‘absolute’ grounding.
However, this seems to me a vast oversimplification. I know theists that argue (for instance) against ordaining gay bishops, that have to defend that ‘absolute’ grounding against law, custom and current public opinions which are advanced by other theists.
And its no trouble to find examples of people gassed, shot, tortured or starved to death by atheists with ‘just because’ grounding – such as the Stalinist-Leninist version of political correctness.
Doesn’t it seem, on closer inspection, to be a subject of ‘rational ignorance’? Do both Johnny Sea-Shepherd and Rebecca Creationist say “I know all I need to know to vote, now shut up and let me get on with it!”??
OB, I wasn’t attempting to be polemic – I rephrased not to attack you but to attack a certain point of view which I deemed relevant in the context.
It is not the case that trying to make a point is to be interpreted as making a point ‘against’ somebody.
The point was & is that reasoning from what’s unacceptable in any conceivable moral universe isn’t, in my view, good reasoning. If so this adds to what you claim in your post instead of – as you apparently took it – attempting (albeit unsuccessfully in your opinion) to get polemic about it.
JoB, I didn’t say you were being polemic, or that you were “making a point ‘against’ somebody” – both of which are fine anyway. I just said you had oversimplified what I said in order to dispute that oversimplification rather than what I had said, that’s all. And that’s perfectly true – you changed the wording, and in doing so changed the meaning.
Chris – sure – but I didn’t say theists, I said believers. Johnny Sea-Shepherd can be a believer.
Ophelia,
Not to worry, although I am quite sure you will say that you weren’t worrying anyway and that will be perfectly true as well if & when you would say it for sure ;-)
Well, JoB…I take your point about reasoning from what’s unacceptable in any conceivable moral universe, but I’m sorry, I still say offering reasons for thinking something is unacceptable in any conceivable moral universe is not the same as reasoning from what’s unacceptable in any conceivable moral universe. That ‘offering reasons for thinking’ isn’t just decoration – it’s an important level away from what you describe. I didn’t put it in there at random; I meant something by it. I think you’re overlooking it.
Going back to the ‘simple, easy answers’ (sorry), ‘believers’ are never going to give them up (even the most ‘god of the gaps’ cherry-picker still relies on ’em),
because they work incredibly well when offered to children.
I’m currently having to combat a steady stream of critical-thought-free cr@p from my older mini-primate’s school, pointing out all the faulty reasoning, etc…and it’s bloody hard having to take it apart line-by-line, when they can offer him a nice simple ‘just so’ story.
Maybe we forget that the bulk of religious teaching and ‘thought’ isn’t actually aimed at us – it’s specifically targeted at the under-10’s.
They used to have to ‘other’ ways of addressing the heretical & blasphemous..!
:-)
I do not dispute that ‘offering reasons for thinking’ is an important qualifier in your statement. I am convinced it is a qualifier in the right direction – at least in my view of ‘right’. The use of moral logic in moral argument is, well, undoubtedly useful.
I just wanted to point out that there’s a limit to the strength of moral logic, & a risk of getting to simple ‘said so’ situations in stretching moral logic. I won’t repeat what I said above on this.
The thing is that moral action does not allow to be codified, in my opinion, in generally applicable propositions. This (if true) adds to the woes you describe in your post (which is why I thought it would be worth mentioning).
I have seen elaborate arguments (& what church fathers have done throughout the medieval times are good examples) which cosmetically used logic to defend this, that or the other absolute dogma. Maybe much modern religious mischief (it’s no coincidence that a ‘modern’ church took the name ‘scientology’) is done under a guise of absolute ‘logical’ consequence to embellish modern day dogma.
Agreed, JoB. (Mind you, the harm principle has some utility as a generally applicable proposition. It would rule out a lot of bad stuff if heeded.)
Andy, I know, I was thinking about exactly that earlier today. Humans spend their first few years learning a lot of stuff without skepticism, and then the next few years, if they’re lucky, reversing the process. It seems a wasteful allocation of time.
Ophelia,
Ouf! (I don’t know how to say ‘Ouf!’ in English so I tried French).
True, doing no harm is a good principle as is the principle of charity in cases where somebody tries to make a point ;-)
But JoB, with all due respect (and charity and so on) your points aren’t always crystal clear. If I misunderstand one it could be because you haven’t stated it as clearly as you might have. I don’t intentionally misread you, I just do my best to read what is on the screen.
Ophelia, right back at ya: some things I said were too complex to put in some short easily understood answers.
(just teasing)
(& joyfully anticipating your normally very enjoyable reply)
;-)
Ouf!