ON GODLESS MORALITY
15th April 2004
One morning (March 23 04) BBC Radio4 Thought For The Day at included a truly memorable remark by the Anglican Bishop, Tom Butler :
"Good people do good things
Bad people do bad things
It takes religion to make good people do bad things".
One of the main causes that make good people do bad things is the perception of certainty that such people often have. The paradigm for this is religion - but political creeds can do it such as Stalinism, Pol Pottery and topdown globalisation etc. etc. Also some religions are less certainty-orientated than others
GODLESS MORALITY IS NOT AN OXYMORON
The rationale of God-based morality is simple. A morally right thought or act is one that is in accord with God's will and, conversely, immorality is that which is contrary His will.
Let us admit - as many philosophers including many believers acknowledge - that there are problems in this scenario. Does God really exist? If He does exist, do we, can we, know His Will? Can we interpret His Will dependably? Have we the integrity to act on an interpretation that we do not deny but which we don't like? This article is not an attempt to follow up any of these huge questions. It is simply an attempt to identify a godless morality
Fact number one : the human species is a social species. Not just incidentally, not just because of some supposed contract, some supposed trade-off between freedom and security but being part of the way we are.
A deceased contemporary friend (A Lay Reader in the Church of Scotland), often said, "A text without a context is a pretext." I have this precept in mind when I recall Luke 19 v 22 - "Out of thine own mouth will I judge thee ...." The context is very much broader than these few words but the good sense that they offer remains good sense even in any contex. But I have to digress at this point with :
THOUGHTS ON BABEL
Let us begin with a direct quotation of Genesis 11 Chapters 1-9. (KJ Version). This is not a quotation 'out of context' ; it is a direct transcript of the whole story as told in the best-loved version of the Bible in the English language.
1. And the whole earth was of one language and of one speech.
2. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shi-nar; and they dwelt there.
3. And they said, one to another, Go to, and let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for morter.
4. And they said, Go to, let build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven ; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.
5. And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.
6. And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language ; and this they begin to do : and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.
7. Go to, and let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.
8. So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth : and they left off to build the city.
9. Therefore is the name of it called Babel ; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the earth : and from thence did the Lord scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth.
What can draw from this story?
As is so often the case, extracts from the Bible can be viewed literally as authentic history, or figuratively, as conveying truth by imaginative inference. (In modern parlance, it is claimed that the Bible is 'interactive' - requiring the active involvement of the mind of the reader). Very often these two approaches are thought of as incompatible but modern believers tend to be as literal as they must but as imaginative as they dare. They all adopt their own, or others', compromises.
In this case however, the meaning is clear whichever way you look at it - namely that God has created a sure means of mutual misunderstanding, if not downright mutual incomprehension, among human beings the world over.
This difficulty is real enough - be it inflicted upon us by God or by other, perhaps secular, routes - it is indeed an obstacle in the path of human amity. But that is not the main point of this essay. That point is that, however you may interpret the Babel story, it invalidates the cherished belief that the Bible we actually have and read is divinely inspired.
Perhaps the Babel story is simply false at every level of interpretation. In that case the Bible, of which it is a part, cannot be trusted as to absolute inerrancy. One pinprick is enough.
Perhaps the Babel story is in some sense true then it seems to me to follow that even if we suppose that the original writings - in now dead languages - were divinely inspired then we would still have the difficulty of translating these originals into the various vernaculars - precisely because the story says, in verse 7, "Go to, and let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech".
This statement clearly rules out the possibility of accurate translation, even of the supposedly inspired original writings, into languages that people can understand.
The only way out of this corner into which the Christians have painted themselves is to come clean and deny
that the Bible is divinely inspired - and hence is not inerrant - and that includes that it is not inerrant on matters of morality. The Bible is one of the great human achievements. It is, on internal evidence in the Babel Story,, an incoherent superstition to suppose that it is a divinely inspired guide to morality.
Fact number two : we humans have instincts or drives that, left to themselves, would injure society, perhaps fatally. We therefore labour under a discipline deficit and I contend that we generate moral values in an ongoing attempt to lessen that deficit.
Society would simply collapse if there were not broad general acceptance that the following are required moral values : adherence to truth : the practice of kindliness : respect for the autonomy and dignity of others and care of the environment that sustains us.
Fact number three is that technologic Øal advance happens and, in my opinion, can generate new moral issues.
My contention is that, even if the universe is a self-sufficing material entity, we have 'what it takes' to recognise these values. and that we ought always to be making our ever-imperfect attempts to live by them.
Of course there are questions arising from what I have just written. When can we properly evade the truth? When can we properly tell a white lie? When ought we actually 'take over' someone else's life? When is short-term kindliness actually unkind in outcome? When can short term environmental degradation be justified by reference to its probable long term enhancement?
The religious believer could, accepting what I have written, retort "Yes we do 'have what it takes' and it is God who has given us this priceless possession.
There is, I think, insufficient hard evidence for this latter assertion as to the involvement of a god. I have to concede that I may be mistaken, that I may have to concede that we might indeed be recipients of a god's gifts. Some people simply cannot see how things can be without postulating a creator : others of us see the god-idea as redundant and, historically, often destructive of human amity. I agree with many believersÕ castigation of bigotry and I can confirm that it is a sickness to be found in the minds of both believers and secularists. I would label myself as a default atheist - albeit one who is often trying to think of a secular way of saying, "God save us from our friends".
Whatever its roots, morality is surely neither of two things that it is often held to be. Morality is not bland relativism : the done thing does not define the right thing (although the two would tend to coincide in the acts of rightly living people in a rightly-ordered world). Morality is a live issue precisely because the right thing and the done thing are categorically distinct notions. But, equally, morality surely is not a wall-to wall system of absolute rules that should never be broken. Life is, I find after nearly eighty years of it, more complex than any absolute rules that lie within our honest comprehension.
The "exception proves the rule" is only true when we use 'prove' in the archaic connotation of 'test'. In modern parlance 'to prove' connotes 'to authenticate'. In modern parlance it is the exception that disproves the absolute rule.
The done thing is no true guide and the rule-book is often crudely simplistic. What are we to do? I think that experience is the best teacher (but not an infallible one).
May I refer to a parable by Bertrand Russell about a chicken.
"A man came every day to feed the bird and this practice went on for a long time. It was always the same man and always at the same time and the same kind of food.
The chicken had thought that "experience is the best teacher" and this was confirmed daily - same man, same tim ße, same sort of food.
One day the same man came as usual and wrung the chicken's neck.
The chicken recognised, too late, that while experience may be the best teacher it is not an infallible teacher".
We cannot reasonably expect experience to be more than a good teacher but experience is all that we know we have so we have to live with doubt. Absolute certainty is hugely elusive.
I know a man who had been taught that adultery is absolutely wrong. He entered, in the early 1950's, into a problematic marriage (against advice from trusted friends). This marriage soon failed and his wife would divorce him only on grounds of adultery - but on no other. He, some years later, met another woman with whom he entered into a truly loving and respectful adulterous partnership. It took until 1962 for an undefended suit for adultery to release him from his mistake. He married the partner - the woman named' (in the jargon of the time). This second marriage of his was a very happy one “ ending only in his second wife's death. They had had two children who have come to be good adults.
There is good ground for saying that "thou shalt not commit adultery" is a sound guideline. Widespread casual adultery would tear society apart. There is, in this particular case, cause to think that the adultery was good - its outcome was good.
Such a way of looking at things morally - the way that most good people actually subscribe to - might be termed guideline utilitarianism. This means that we should be guided by experience - and sometimes take moral risks - based upon what we actually experience, or see to be experienced, in this life in this world.
Guideline utilitarianism is, of course, much more demanding than bland relativism : more authentically moral than simplistic rules and the hypocritical special pleading that so often accompanies guilt-ridden attempts to circumvent them. Where t there's a law there's a loophole. Where there's conviction there's a cop-out.
An experience-based, and hence evolving, morality allows for, indeed expects, new moral issues to arise from technological advance. "Thou shalt not kill" may have sufficed when our powers over people's lives were mostly negative : we have always been able to inflict death upon people. But now we have the technical knowledge to inflict survival upon the human body. There is, embedded in this technological fact, a moral question - is it right at all times to inflict human survival? This was once a hypothetical question : it is now a real one and the precedents that are the very stuff of experience are accumulating in the form of 'constructive neglect' and the 'double effect'. (I have close second hand experience of both).
Some readers may be thinking that's all very well but what about the spiritual dimension? There is a distinction –nction, an atheistic one, that can be made and I think it is more precise than the material/spiritual dichotomy. The distinction I have in mind is between that which can be bought and sold and that which cannot : that which is tradable and that which is not.
We can buy health care : we cannot buy a sense of well-being. We can buy works of art : we cannot buy artistic appreciation - let alone artistic creativity. We can buy sexual services : we cannot buy affection. We can buy conformity : we cannot buy loyalty. We can buy the sight of an Orkney sunset : we cannot buy the sense of wonder that it evokes.
I claim that all these precepts, as well as effectual morality, are rooted in experience of this life in this world. I know of no other life, no other world, no experience other than that of sharing caring human beings.
E.S..