There are such things as Moral Absolutes

My main problem with religion is the lack of respect for reality. More importantly the lack of respect, and even derision shown towards the only successful method of discovering the Universe.

Most things in religion are so dangerously arbitrary. They do not follow the logical rules of falsifiability, repeatable testing and empiricism.

How can one trust the moral judgments of someone who backs them up with superstitious motivation? Especially in situations with numerous variables, where right and wrong are hard to discover, except through rational discourse.

The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action. - Einstein

I recently stumbled across this post which argued that there were no moral absolutes. I would fully agree that evolution is the source of morals and whether a particular action is ethical or not is dependent on context.

But that should never imply that morals are subjective. For anyone who believes in an external reality, for anyone who is a methodological naturalist, there are right answers and wrong answers to every moral situation. It doesn't matter how complex and grey those situations are. The complexity of the situation only determines for how long we disagree on the exact right answer and for how often we change our minds. It doesn't change the fundamentals of the situation.

If morality is proscribed by evolution, and evolution is a result of natural physical laws, then morality is an apex manifestation of the fundamental laws of nature.

As one of our great righteous heroes pleaded just a few decades ago, 'let us realize the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice.'

ED: I'm talking about Moral Universalism not absolutism

When is faith not necessary?

Secularists would agree that we should all endeavour to minimise the influence of faith in our lives. After all, faith is the belief in things unseen, belief without measurable physical evidence.

When a belief is presented for examination, the bar that needs to be cleared is Falsifiability. As Karl Popper originally put it, “it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience”.

Falsifiabitlity has been a ridiculously successful test on the validity of any belief/explanation. The success of which is evident from the usefulness of the scientific process, as opposed to the comparatively negligible amount of knowledge gained from metaphysics and religion.

This criterion humbly acknowledges that none of us are in extraordinary communion with the forces of nature. There is no revelation.

But what if we were to apply the scientific process to every part of our lives? Should we force our friends to go through various tests to certify their loyalty? Should we secretly and repeatedly conduct experiments on our partners’ to measure their fidelity? Should we not wake up from our beds in fear that our senses could be deceiving us on the existence of such a bed to wake from?

Even scientists receive their zeal and hunger for knowledge on the faith that the external world behaves un-arbitrarily, and eventually nature is fully understandable using reason and empirical knowledge alone.

Faith permeates our daily life and reason does not illuminate a great swathe of decisions that we make. Faith is necessary in maintaining relationships, keeping hope, taking courage, and simply getting out of bed.

So to what extent is faith acceptable? Is it really just a matter of degrees? Are we ‘enlightened’ rationalists merely on the same spectrum as the fundamentalist flat-Earthers, albeit slightly less laughable?

Surely there is a quantifiable demarcation as to when we should abandon faith. When is it necessary to act on faith alone, and when is it harmful and against our self-interests?

Atheism or Secular Humanism

Over at the Eye of Polyphemus, the blogger differentiates between straight up Atheism and Secular Humanism:

There is a simple way to decide whether one is an atheist or secular humanist. If you think the world would be a better place without religion, you are a secular humanist. You may call yourself just an atheist, but you are not. You have gone beyond a non belief in deities to a set of arguably cultish beliefs.

Leaving aside his claim of Secular Humanism being a cult, that differentiation is quite interesting.

I am a secular humanist, and I wish everyone else was too. Intellectually I understand the position that someone who believes in the supernatural cannot be trusted to make sound moral decisions in complex situations. The fact that there is even a stem-cell debate is evidence of this.

We are all aware of the ill-effects of religious belief, but there are also benefits. Is society on the whole better off without such superstition? Are we overestimating the rational capacity of humans?

I have personally witnessed someone very close to me seeking solace in religion when her child was seriously ill. Without her belief she would not have had the continual strength and hope to battle on through the great many hardships that were presented to her. Having seen such evidence of the benefits of faith, it is rather difficult for me to indulge myself in the righteous zeal of the Anti-Theists.

Morality and the need for God

According Peter Schwartz, religion is not necessary for a morally stable society. Although hypocritical attacks against the phantom 'left' dominate his article, there is still fading evidence of some logical capability ticking away beneath all that political narrow mindedness:

Morality begins with the individual's life as the primary value and identifies the further values that are demonstrably required to sustain that life. It observes that man's nature demands that we live not by random urges or by animal instincts, but by the faculty that distinguishes us from animals and on which our existence fundamentally depends: rationality.

I’ve said something similar on a previous entry. However the real value of religion is not in the explanation of morality, but rather in the motivation for morality.

Atheists frequently recite the phrase “Good men do good things and bad men do bad things, but it takes religion to make good men do bad things.” Then they go on to cite various religiously motivated atrocities.

It would then be logically inconsistent of them to not follow that argument through to its conclusion; i.e. ‘it takes religion to make bad men do good things.’

Morality may begin with the value given to an individual’s life, but there are many individuals who only care for the welfare of one life; themselves. All this high talk about preserving the rights of the ‘universal individual’ means nothing to them. If they can steal, lie, cheat and get away with it, they would do so. The impact it has on the welfare of the others around them has no bearing on their conscience. They are not hindered by the possibility of everyone acting in this way. These are Nietzche’s 'last men'.

This is where all that fire and brimstone stuff comes in. In childhood (also applicable to the folks in the formative periods of civilisation), individuals initially choose the moral options due to the fear of being deep-fried by a giant thunderbolt. Of course, over time they are mentally conditioned into developing a conscience, and as a result realise feelings of guilt for committing a sin and feelings of joy for committing acts of nobility. Yet, it is that unparalleled motivation arising from self-preservation, which sets them off on that track.

Religion shares much of the responsibility for the progress of civilisation. I am of the opinion that for a much of human history, religions have been a force of overwhelming good.

Secular Law and its enforcement by itself cannot govern a society of people who have no qualms about lying, stealing or killing if they feel that they can get away with it. Thus in a way Justice Scalia is right when he says, “Government derives its authority from God”.

The problem is that at some point civilisation will outgrow the beliefs and traditions that nurtured it and kept it safe for so long. With our knowledge of the universe increasing and changing at such an accelerated rate, it seems only natural that more and more people will begin questioning the existence of long held notions such as Divine Justice, Karma and Final Judgment.

Some believe that this point has already been breached. They feel that the counterproductive influences of religion are slowly catching up to it's positive aspects.

Should we react in fear and choose the option of the fundamentalists? Should we try and turn the clock back? The danger in that is similar to the danger faced by an overly protective parent. The child might rebel not only against the unreasonable restrictions, but also, in it’s eagerness for independence, the good teachings of the parent.

So if 'God is Dead' or is in his death throes, what is his replacement? How do we engender a love for the Human Ideal and respect for it's consequential moral codes? What will now ensure the rights of the individual in a global society?

Personally, I think we are all doomed. Conclusive evidence? Click here.

Is Religion a Force for Good in History?

First a few qualifications:

• I am a Weak Agnostic and my sympathies lie towards Atheism.
• I do suspect that religion might be, for better or for worse, approaching its use-by-date.
• Religion has played a constant role in human history and I can only take specific examples that illustrate its persistent and fundamental quality as a supreme organisational tool. If this was a contest of how many examples each side can bring to the table, then we will be here for quite a long time.
• It may be true that if we were to only look at history since the Age of Enlightenment, religion’s counter productive influences have become increasingly prevalent and steadily negating the impact of the positive role it had played till then.
• This has become all the more evident with the changes of the 19th and 20th centuries (I can find no adjective to sufficiently describe the vastness and sheer speed at which these changes occurred).

But if we take a look at history from the beginnings of civilisation, then yes, I do think religion has been, on balance, a positive force and overwhelmingly so.

Allow me to focus on the development of society in pre-Islamic Middle East and Arabia to illustrate, chiefly because I am not completely ignorant about this particular region. Secondly because I have Lapidus’s definitive textbook: “History of Islamic Societies” on my bookshelf and I can quote it liberally. Thirdly, I felt that some of the events provide interesting parallels to the situation we are in now.

Beginning at the era of hunting and gathering communities, we know that they were organised around small familial units. With the advent of agriculture and domestication of animals they start living in tribes of nomadic pastoralists or in agricultural communities.

As these communities grew, the interactions between them became more frequent, especially with the nomads travelling from one agrarian village to another. Customs and beliefs were shared along with the goods and more than one community began worshipping the same Gods.

Motivated by their shared commitment to the service of these Gods, pastoral villages grouped into temple communities. For example the Sumerians believed that the lands they inhabited were the property of the Gods and that they were obligated to create temples in appreciation. They couldn’t do this if the villages didn’t co-operate.

Thus the city-state is born. This was revolutionary in terms of cultural progress. Constructing temples required administration and organization of previously unheard-of quantities of labour. Supporting professions such as artisans and sculptors began to ply their trade. Writing and trade customs were developed. Specialisation of skills and integration of labour meant that the cities became centres of economic growth and individuals experienced a jump in their standard of living.

It is no coincidence that the priests of the temples were also the city’s lawmakers and political leaders. In those formative periods, belief in the divine authority was essential to maintain the stability and security within the society.

Then came the empires. The first empire of the world was created in 2400 BC by Sargon of Akkad in Northern Mesopotamia. As Empires rose and fell, and each created its own imprint on the landscape. Over time Kings replaced priests as the primary mediators between heaven and earth. Quoting Lapidus (2002):

In Middle Eastern conceptions, kingship was justified as the expression of the divine plan for the ordering of human societies. Sacralized political power, as well as religious community, became a vehicle for the unification of disparate communities.

Empires became the new black:

For ancient peoples, the empires symbolised the realm of civilisation. The function of empires was to defend the civilised world against the barbarians and to assimilate them into the sphere of higher culture. For their part, the barbarians, mostly nomadic peoples, wanted to conquer empires, share in their wealth and sophistication, and win for themselves the status of civilized men. Empires commanded allegiance because they were a coalition of civilised peoples against the darkness without. They commanded allegiance because kingship was though of as a divine institution and the king was a divinely selected agent, a person who, if not himself a god, shared in the aura, magnificence, sacredness, and mystery of the divine. The ruler was God’s agent, his priest, the channel between this world and the heavens, designated by the divine being to bring justice and right order to men so that they might in turn serve God. The king thus assured the prosperity and well being of his subjects. Magically he upheld the order of the universe against chaos.

Leaving Mesopotamia, let’s travel forward to the beginning of 6th century Arabia and to a city called Mecca:

Mecca was one of the most complex and heterogenous places in Arabia. Here society had grown beyond the limitations of the clan and tribe to afford some complexity of political and economic ties. Mecca was one of the few places in Arabia to have a floating, non-tribal population of individual exiles, refugees, outlaws, and foreign merchants. The very presence of different peoples and clans – people belonging to no clan, foreigners, people with diverse religious convictions, differing views of life’s purposes and values – moved Meccans away from the old tribal religions and moral conceptions. New conceptions of personal worth and social status and new social relationships were fostered in this more complex society. On the positive side, the imperatives of commercial activity, and Arabia-wide contacts and identifications set individuals free from the traditions of their clans and allowed for the flourishing of self-conscious, critical people, who were capable of experimenting with new values… On the negative side, society suffered from economic competition, social conflict, and moral confusion. Commercial activities brought in their wake social stratification on the basis of wealth, and morally inassimilable discrepancies between individuals situations and the imperatives of clan loyalty...

Arabia was in ferment; a society in the midst of constructive political experiments was endangered by anarchy; strong clan and tribal powers threatened to overwhelm the fragile forces of agricultural stability, commercial activity, and political cohesion.

And it was into this that Muhammad was born. His book and his monotheistic God re-establishes the cohesive society, halts the decline of Arabia and Middle East and by the twelfth century, Islam had taken the region to the forefront of civilisation. It is also useful to note that when the Mongols destroyed Saljuq Empire in 1243, religious conviction of the Islamic refugees and their desire to fight the infidels of Byzantine led to the creation of that small frontier principality in the mountainous regions of Anatolia under the rulership of Ertugrul. His son Osman will of course start a series of conquests that will eventually result in the Ottoman Empire.

One could point out that all these wars and death and destruction were all the result of religious dogmatism. I would counter that by saying without religions there wouldn’t even be a civilisation to fight these wars with. In fact wars themselves are an evidence of the tremendous organisational capability of religion. There is even a possibility that due to this benefit, spirituality is an adaptive biological trait in humans. If it has the power to get someone to go out there and sacrifice his own life, then one cannot underestimate its power in convincing a person to live a moral life.

Is God in Our Genes?

A summary of an interesting Time (Nov 8, 2004 Aus. ed.) article:

A molecular biologist called Dean Hamer believes that human spirituality is an adaptive trait and claims to have located a gene that is partly responsible. The way the Time article put it is that “Our most profound feeling of spirituality…may be due to little more than an occasional shot of intoxicating brain chemicals governed by our DNA”

He is quoted as saying, “I’m a believer that every thought we think and every feeling we feel is the result of activity in the brain. I think we follow the basic laws of nature which is that we’re a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag.”

Another guy they quoted, Michael Persinger, professor of behavioural neuroscience at Laurentian Uni, says “anticipation of out own demise is the price we pay for a highly developed frontal lobe. In many ways, [a God experience is] a brilliant adaptation. It’s a built-in pacifier.”

According to Paul Davies, a professor of Natural Philosophy from Macquarie University in Sydney, “religions represent an attempt to harness innate spirituality for organisational purposes” i.e. a social mortar bringing groups together and enforcing social order.

Some theologians were ‘rankled’ by the implication that faith in God is nothing but a product of natural selection, but as Harmer says “[the] findings are agnostic on the existence of God. If there’s a God, there’s a God. Just knowing what brain chemicals are involved in acknowledging that is not going to change that fact.”

Then the article asks why, if spirituality is an adaptive trait, it is being used to organise ‘armed camps’. Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist from University of Washington says that “while spiritual contemplation is intuitive religion is dogmatic; dogma in the wrong hands has always been a risky thing.”

It ends with a discussion on why some people are more religiously motivated than others and a discussion of environmental factors

Utilitarianism and Religion's Annexation of Morality

Let us construct a society from scratch. We will begin with a single individual. When one is alone with no potential of interaction with other humans, there is no great need for moral codes. No need for rules that tell you not to lie, cheat or covet another man's wife. However the individual would develop pragmatic rules that prevent him from wasting food, eating poisonous berries, or placing his head into the mouth of a crocodile.

This individual then meets up with another bunch of people. He finds that his life becomes a lot easier if he can get their help to search and hunt for food, make cloths, build shelter, and fight with him against predatory animals. He realises that with specialisation of skills, the talent and economies of scale can be exploited to greater benefit. Thus with the interest of self-preservation he joins a community.

One day this person murders another man, steals the victim's food, takes over the victim's cave and lies with his woman. The others in the community realise that if these kinds of acts are encouraged people will stop doing their own hunting and their own work. The society will crumble. They see the danger that is inherent in allowing such acts to continue and will enact laws to prevent it. The act of killing and stealing becomes immoral as it is so conditioned by punishment. This punishment is not just physical but also psychological (seclusion, derision, enmity). Soon people instinctually realise that it is bad to kill and steal. They feel guilty. They have added that to their social and individual conscience.

As the society becomes more advanced they tried to explain what is going on around them. They envisaged great powerful beings striking down with lightning, crying down the rain, roaring out thunder, asking plants to grow, flowers to bloom and fruits to ripen. They began to explain away in similar fashion, the phenomenon of birth and death, dark and light, of the sky, stars, earth, rivers and the seas. Some societies had gods for every natural occurrence they couldn’t explain.

Leaders of these small societies gradually realised the advantage in imprinting the moral codes in religions, the advantage of having these great unseen yet immensely powerful beings in charge of what is right and wrong. They realised that the community will more readily accept their rules if they believed them to be inspired by the Divine.

A few thousand years forward the community has developed into a civilisation. The religion has changed to meet the needs of this society. As our scientific knowledge increases and we continue to learn about the nature of the Universe, many of these gods become redundant.

But the moral codes that were tied to the religion at its birth are still there. Many people still believe in Divine justice, and many feel that they would be judged in their afterlives for sins they commit.

A significant detail of the way in which morals have evolved is that specific standards change from society to society and time to time. For example merely a century or so ago nationalism was a virtue. Pride in your race and the desire to protect it was a virtue. This attitude was necessary for society to flourish in the face of external threats.

With technological improvements in areas of communication and transport, and the benefits of global trade, most of us have come to believe that nationalism is in fact the cause of wasteful wars and that it is destructive to the welfare of the community. In most advanced nations, nationalism is now considered a vice.

No less than three centuries ago, it was sin to question the Divine Authority of our Kings. It was sin to rebel against the noble blooded aristocracy. This was only natural in societies where strong rulers are needed to govern a nation surrounded by enemies. This loyalty and unquestioning obedience is still encouraged in our armed forces. However in much of the rest of society, where we conduct commerce instead of war, we have begun to recognise equality as a virtue.

The most immediate inference we can make from these observations is that moral codes are linked with welfare and as such morals fit with Jeremy Benthem's theoretical framework of utilitarianism.

Yet it would be a mistake to arrive at the conclusion of all morals are strictly relativistic. It could very well be that moral codes throughout human history are derivative of some fundamental source, whether it be Theistic, Pantheistic, Deistic or any of a multitude of possibilities.