Belief in God hinders even basic moral discourse

by Michael De Dora

The Center for Inquiry launched a nationwide multimedia campaign earlier this month featuring a simple message: "You don't need God — to hope, to care, to love, to live." This slogan was featured on billboards in Washington D.C., Indianapolis, Houston, and on a viral Internet video. The campaign has been successful, drawing media attention, raising public consciousness, and bringing secular-minded people out of their closets. Yet, it hasn't gone without criticism, some of which is worth considering for a moment.

The goal of the campaign was clearly explained by Ronald Lindsay, President and CEO of the Center for Inquiry:

"With this campaign, we are aiming to dispel some myths about the nonreligious. One common myth is that the nonreligious lead empty, meaningless, selfish, self-centered lives. This is not only false, it's ridiculous. Unfortunately, all too many people accept this myth because that's what they hear about nonbelievers."

And as Lindsay wrote in an accompanying blog post:

"We're not trying to convert anyone by this campaign, if conversion implies persuading people there is no God. We are trying to prompt people to consider and converse about some of the myths surrounding the nonreligious, in particular the myth that life without God means a joyless, meaningless, selfish, self-centered life."

This seems about as uncontroversial and inarguable as possible. It is completely justified since these are existing myths about atheists that have an actual, harmful impact: surveys show that atheists are the least respected segment of the American population. And compared to more "in-your-face" ad campaigns that have criticized the veracity of religious claims and honesty of religious leaders, CFI’s ad merely states that secular people can lead moral, fulfilling lives, just like their religious counterparts. Nevertheless, two disagreements with the substance of the campaign have emerged. As wrong as they might appear, atheists would do well to briefly contemplate them. The fact that they are the most common objections to this sort of effort has important implications.

The first objection is known as the "common grace" argument. Originally made famous by apologist C.S. Lewis, it posits that atheists are only able to lead good lives because God implanted within them such a capacity. This position was illustrated by Chris Coyne, the Auxiliary Bishop of the Archdiocese of Indianapolis. Coyne told an Indianapolis TV station that atheists can be happy and fulfilled, but that “all goodness, all happiness, all creation flows from God whether you believe it or not.” Talk about humility.

The second objection says that while atheists can lead decent lives, the secular lifestyle has inherent limits because of its detachment from God. This stance was explained by Rev. Edward Wheeler, the president of Christian Theological Seminary in Indianapolis. Wheeler told The Indianapolis Star that “he doesn't disagree with the essence of the billboard messages — he, too, has met admirable, responsible people with nonreligious beliefs.” But, Wheeler said, “I believe we are created by a loving, caring God and, because of that, we are not fully complete without a relationship with God.”

In response to these arguments, atheists often cite empirical data that shows that atheists are just as moral as religionists, or bring up the biological basis of morality, the rich history of secular moral reflection, and the human ability to collectively reason toward more objective moral values. But while I believe these responses are both reasonable and correct, they are often an exercise in futility. Why? Because the religionists’ arguments do not hinge on the capacity for secular morality, but on the existence of God. The theist will inevitably respond with: “Well, sure, but God made you moral,” or, “Right, but you can only be so moral without God.” There is simply no getting around the fact that belief in God makes for an enormous stumbling block in discourse about morality.

This ability of the religious to adapt their beliefs to the arguments is not news to atheists (for that matter, nor are the reactions to the campaign). For example, many modern religious believers accept the facts of biology, but argue that evolution was God’s method of design. How can atheists overcome this problem? Perhaps the best move is to recognize that there are two different projects that are inextricably related and have equal importance. One project is illustrated by the CFI advertisements. They seek to present to the public an affirmative secular worldview. This is important because atheists need to make more than just a case against religious belief, they need to make a case for a positive set of alternative values. But atheists must also critically examine religious belief, which is the mission of other projects. This is extremely important because, as plainly seen in this case, religious belief continues to undermine even the most basic and uncontroversial claims about secular morality.

The fundamental point here is that positive secular values cannot move forward without the critical examination of religious claims. As I wrote in a recent blog post here, “The critic of religious faith and dogma is on the same side as the promoter of secular moral values. To squabble about whose interests are more important is to lose sight of the underlying problem: the staggering amount of uncritical thinking that is putting society to ruin.” Once atheists realize this, they can get on with trying to complete both tasks, instead of arguing which is most important. Only when both are accomplished will humans be able to collectively have a rational, constructive conversation about morality.

Lena's Picks

by Lena Groeger

* “If I keep a pig as a pet, I can’t kick it. If I keep a pig I intend to sell for food, I can pretty much torture it.” Mark Bittman explores why some animals are more equal than others.

* A contemplation of idleness.

* Why do we carve up the world into separate disciplines, and what does that mean for interdisciplinarity? Tim Dean has some thoughts.

* The controversy over experimental philosophy is boring, says Tamler Sommers. So why does it persist?

* “Knowing that we are not alone just might be the kick in the pants we need to grow up as a species.” On discovering alien life.

* It’s a whale! It’s a squid! It’s a… visual history of science fiction!

* Metaphors – more than just talk? A new study explores the influence of metaphors on how we reason and attempt to solve real-world problems.

* It’s the emotions, stupid. David Brooks on his new book The Social Animal.

* Predicting the end of religion in nine countries with a mathematical model. Hmmm…

* Why Aristotle is the greatest biologist of all time.

* An illustrated animation of a talk by Steven Pinker, on what language tells us about human relationships.

The problem with atheism, a Buddhist perspective

by Massimo Pigliucci

No, I have not converted to Buddhism. And yes, I am still an atheist. That said, I’ve been reading a book recommended by a friend of mine, Brad Warner’s Sex, Sin and Zen, which has given me the opportunity to run a little informal experiment about which I’ll tell you in a minute.

Warner is a Zen Buddhist monk, and the book is a light-hearted exploration of what Buddhism has to say regarding one of the things we care most about in life: sex. But this post, alas, is not about sex. Instead, it is about the reaction I got on my “official” Facebook page when I posted the following quote from the book (you can find the exact thread here):

Atheism, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for religion. It's like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food.

The quote comes from a context in which Warner was discussing an article by Elisabeth Cornwell entitled “Why women are bound to religion: an evolutionary perspective,” which makes the commonsense argument that “in order for women to abandon religion and its securities, there needs to be something tangible to replace the support it offers.” Warner then goes on to explain that Buddha realized that “religion and spirituality were pretty much fucked up. But he also understood the very important role they play in human society. As Cornwell points out in her article on the evolution of religion, religion serves a need much, much deeper than anything the intellect can ever hope to reach.” And it is this passage that is followed by the quote I posted on Facebook.

I thought this was all obviously true, and in fact reflects a standing debate within both the atheist and secular humanist communities (they overlap, but they are most certainly not identical) to explain why religion — pace Nietzsche — is still very much alive and well in the 21st century. The response I got from my Facebook friends was somewhat surprising. There were more than 20 comments within a matter of minutes (35 as of the time of this writing), with 3,666 “impressions” (a number that Facebook provides to give you an idea of how many people have seen your post on their Wall —- the 666 figure is, I take it, just a coincidence).

If you scroll through the comments, two patterns emerge: first, most people missed what I thought was the obvious point of the quote (granted, I had the advantage of having read the full chapter, but still); second, the overwhelming majority of the posts were defensive to the utmost degree. Here is a sample:

"Avoiding wood alcohol, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for wood alcohol. It's like trying to substitute actual eating with a superbly argued essay on food."

"Whoever said that atheism is supposed to be a substitute for religion? I am an atheist and I do not want a substitute for religion. If I missed religion, I'd get myself some."

"This is a silly analogy. One could just as well say it's trying to substitute injecting yourself with syphilis with a superbly argued essay on not being a jackass."

"And I suppose that not collecting stamps is not a substitute for a hobby either..."

"If you really want baloney, you can still go to the supermarket."

"An aphorism can never be an adequate substitute for more complex writing. It is an argument from authority which uses a specific poetic approach to make the ideas more appealing."

"We're all born atheists. It' religion that's the substitute."

"Atheism does not contain ritual, ceremony, or practice, and so is not like eating."

"Avoiding poison, as rational and sensible as it is, will never be an adequate substitute for eating poison."

"Atheism could never be a substitute for religion, in the same way that not stamp collecting could never be a substitute for stamp collecting."

"This implies an unsubstantiated hunger that is not recognized by fulfilled agnostics."

You get the gist. There were, of course, also some readers who took the quote as an indication of a serious problem:

"Instead of substituting religion, if we start reflecting upon the need to fill the void it may get us some where... and in the process, hopefully, not fill the void with magic and wishful thinking."

"The bare thesis of atheism provides none of the social supports, ethical guidelines, or cosmological-metaphysical closure of religion. Humanism, however, can and does."

"There is a hole that needs filling (physical and metaphysical explanations, justifications for moral codes, social cohesion, sense of community, belonging, purpose, common goals, etc.) and religion just happened to develop in order to fill that hole."

"Atheism isn't in the business of replacing religion. Humanism is. Atheism is the demolition phase. Humanism is the new foundation."

The first set of quotes (and similar others on the thread) reflect an all too common reflexive attitude by several of my fellow atheists, a “(rhetorically) shoot first and understand later” sort of approach which is not exactly conducive to constructive discourse. This reflexive attitude seems to be based on two underlying assumptions: first, that whatever comes from religion must be bad, by definition; second, that atheists don’t need to do much more than point out how silly the other side is, and we are done. Both assumptions are highly questionable.

Without getting into a long history of both Western and Eastern thought — a history in which religions have played a major positive as well as negative role regardless of how much we would like them to play only a negative one — it seems to me undeniable that religions do indeed, as Buddha recognized and Warner re-articulated, fill a fundamental human psychological niche. That niche has to do not just with explanations of how the world works (an area in which science has steadily and inexorably overtaken religion even in the mind of many religious people), but with meaning, emotions, ethics, and the specter of final and total annihilation of the self.

It is these latter dimensions of the niche that most people refer to as “spirituality,” and neither science nor atheism can do a damn thing about them, unfortunately. Science can tell us which parts of the brain are responsible for our emotions, or are used when we engage in moral decision making, but that’s a completely different set of questions that has only a superficial bearing on the real issues.

Before you start furiously hitting your keyboard to pen long and angry responses to the above paragraph, please pause to think that nothing I am writing here can reasonably be construed as a defense of religion. But it is a (partial) explanation of why religion persists despite literally millennia of attempts by the secular-rational community to get rid of it. It is a fact that we better face and analyze, rather than run away from.

Which brings me to the second assumption that seems to underlie many of my readers’ responses: surely once we explain to people that there are no gods, once we break the spell to use my friend Daniel Dennett’s phrase, people will flock to atheism in droves and we’ll be done with religion once and for all. Hence the popularity in certain quarters of the New Atheists’ attacks on religion — as well as their abysmal failure to make a dent in the phenomenon of religion itself. To be fair, one can hardly expect a handful of books to change society (well, except for the Old Testament, or the Christian Gospels, or the Quran, or the Vedas, or the Theravada, or...), but the disheartening fact is that there really isn’t anything new in the New Atheism. As documented by Jennifer Michael Hecht in her super Doubt: A History we have been going at it for millennia, and yet religions persist, largely unperturbed by the barrage of rational arguments against them. Do you see why Warner is right, that we do have a problem?

The quotes from my Facebook responses which struck closest to what I think is a good analysis are those that present atheism as the first of two punches that the secular movement is attempting to deliver to the religious juggernaut, what philosopher Francis Bacon (in the context of how science works) called the pars destruens (the project of destruction). Bacon then argued that one doesn’t get very far by just demolishing things, one has to build something in their stead, what he termed the pars construens (the construction project). Here the pars construens can be played by secular humanism, which — unlike atheism — is a philosophy with positive values.

There are a couple of problems, however. I have already nodded at the most obvious one: not all atheists are secular humanists. This is because it is easier to agree on what we all do not believe than on what we do believe. Secular humanism, at least as presented in the various Humanist Manifestos, adopts a number of positions that are clearly reflective of European style progressive liberalism, which means that our libertarian friends (a sizable minority within the atheism movement), not to mention the comparatively few (in my experience) conservative atheists, immediately (and ill advisedly, in my opinion) jump ship. I know a good number of atheists who proudly distance themselves from secular humanism.

The other thing is, humanist groups and even humanist inspired congregations have been around for quite some time now, but they haven’t made much of a dent. Think of the American Humanist Association, the Council for Secular Humanism, the Society for Ethical Culture, the American Ethical Union, and even — to some extent — the Unitarians. I mean, it’s not like we haven’t been trying. But have you been at any meetings or platforms of any of these groups? They are usually attended by a small number of people, more often than not with a population characterized by an aging demographic. They are simply not going to be the response to religion that we are looking for, no matter how much good they do for the people that support them.

So we do have a problem, and we don’t seem to know what to do about it. Let me leave you with a few more thoughts from Warner — not because I endorse everything he says (I’m certainly not about to enlist as a Buddhist), but because it provides us with much food for thought, if we can manage to stop the damn knee-jerk reaction that is sure to powerfully present itself a few lines into his writings:

"A lot of people consider Buddhism a form of atheism. In a sense it is, in that it does not have a god in the usual sense of the word. We don’t have a deity figure. We don’t have a creation myth. We don’t fear reprisals from cosmic grandpa if we fail to worship him properly. Yet ... the universe in Buddhist terms is not dead matter or a cosmic void. It is a living, intelligent thing we all partake in. ... If God is a big ‘ol white dude in the sky who smites sinners and rewards football players, then I’m an atheist. If God exists outside the universe, I’m an atheist. If God cares more for one religion than another, I’m an atheist. And if God believes that women are inferior to men, I’m an atheist. ... I don’t worship God as an old man on a throne beyond the orbit of Jupiter, but I do worship the universe. The universe is more than dead matter. It’s more than insubstantial spirit."

Well, I don’t think the universe is any such thing, but clearly our message is much harder to successfully deliver. Is there any way around this, or is secularism forever destined to be a minority position among humankind?

Liberalism, conservatism, and tradition

by Michael De Dora

This past weekend, while bored and perusing Wikipedia, I discovered a term I had never heard before: paleoconservative. This, according to author Chilton Williamson Jr., is “the expression of rootedness: a sense of place and of history, a sense of self derived from forebears, kin, and culture — an identity that is both collective and personal.” It reminded me of a similar expression of conservatism I ran across in the comment thread on Susan Jacoby’s recent blog post, which discusses right wing atheists. A commenter wrote that: “Social conservatism is an appreciation of what will happen to society in the face of a collapse of traditional institutions and values.”

These two quotes together broadly describe one pillar of modern conservatism: a desire to maintain traditional structures and ideas, allowing minimal, if any, change. This attitude is contrasted with the one often seen in liberalism, which looks to advance structures and ideas based on progressing scientific knowledge and human reasoning. But I think these two quotes also highlight two misconceptions and miss the real point of contention in the debate over liberalism, conservatism, and tradition.

The first misconception is that conservatism has a rich tradition, while liberalism is a newer concept lacking a foundation. In fact, components of both can be traced back as far as the ancient Greek philosophers and Athenian democracy. However, in their current form both are relatively recent ideas. Modern conservatism is thought to have its roots in the 17^th and 18^th century, with figures like Irish politician Edmund Burke, who served in the British House of Commons. Modern liberalism has its origins in thinkers of the Enlightenment era, including Thomas Paine (and many of the American founders) and John Stuart Mill.

The second misconception is that while liberalism has a history, its adherents do not value it. To the contrary, liberals care about the rich history behind their ideas — but only insofar as it makes sense to do so. This is where we find the real difference between the conservative and liberal attitudes: not in the historical background of their approach, or in the value they place on that history, but in how they treat tradition in relation to contemporary life.

The conservative mindset tends to value traditional institutions and values because they are traditional. If people believe institutions and values are wrong or outdated, conservatives tend to think the problem is not with the institutions and values, but with the people who have gravitated away from them for some unfathomable reason. The liberal approach is that institutions and values are only worth following if they are correct or serve a worthwhile purpose. If they are false or outdated, they deserve to be thrown into the scrap heap and replaced with better and more worthwhile ways of doing things. Liberals, in other words, are not seeking to alter tradition for the mere sake of change. They are doing so because they genuinely believe something needs changing. They find institutions and values significant only if they serve a particular purpose well.

To illustrate the difference between these approaches, consider the war of pamphlets between Edmund Burke and Thomas Paine. In Reflections on the Revolution in France, Burke argued in favor of continuity (of the French Monarchy) and against revolution (led by liberals). This was echoed by conservative thinkers of the time, who defended the importance of keeping established power arrangements in place while slowly granting small changes, if at all. Thomas Paine, in his pamphlet Rights of Man, defended the uprising from Burke’s charges, arguing that the French Monarchy no longer served to protect its citizens and their natural rights. This aligned with liberal thinkers of this period. On the basis of the new and valuable concept of natural rights rejected divine and monarchic authority, they argued that all people have equal rights and liberties, and should have influence over governance. This desire to change conventional political makeup was not a mere whim.

It is important to note that liberalism does not always imply a complete break with the past, but often just an extension, broadening, or synthesis of more current thinking. For example, Enlightenment thinkers did not call for an end to government (anarchy). They called for a change in government. Or, for another example, consider the battle over gay marriage rights. Liberals do not want to create special rights for gay people. They simply wish to extend existing “civil rights” to a group that has been historically denied them.

On the flip side, it is also important to note that conservatism is not always true to its name, and is sometimes a facade that doesn’t hold up to its name. For example, many American conservatives argue that the definition of marriage should remain the same as it has always been, thereby resisting its extension to gays. Yet, there has actually never been one universal definition of marriage. Rather, the concept has evolved and changed over the past few thousand years. As such, the “conservative” position simply reveals itself to be a mask for bigotry — a way for straight people who don’t like gays to display their abhorrence of a different lifestyle in a manner that is politically acceptable.

Of course, liberals can also mask their political goals with generic language such as “we need to adapt to the times," or push for change when it is not needed. But, while liberals ought to be willing and able to defend the need for change on a case by case basis, it is equally unacceptable for conservatives to defend the status quo simply because tradition is important above all else. If the conservative believes in the defense of a particular custom, he or she must have reasons beyond the fact that we have always done things in a certain way. They have an obligation to make their reasons clear or they risk defending tradition for its own sake — a rather sterile position.

Massimo’s Picks

by Massimo Pigliucci

* The NorthEast Conference on Science and Skepticism (NECSS) is coming up, get your tickets now!

* The latest Rationally Speaking podcast: Cordelia Fine on Delusions of Gender.

* The Philosophical Breakfast Club. Wish I were invited, maybe I should start one of my own...

* Is the New Atheism like the Tea Party, only incapable of political action?

* "We can't send a search and rescue team into Plato's cave."

* Happy 172nd birthday, OK!

* So much for the stereotype that aggression is male and conciliation is female...

* Experimental philosophers investigate free will. Interesting stuff, though it ain't philosophy.

* Animals' morality not quite as developed as some suggest.

* Carl Zimmer in the NYT on evolvability, with quotes from yours truly.

* The future of nuclear energy after the Japanese disaster. What do you think?

* Two thirds of Britons declare themselves non religious.

* Did the Bible's god have a wife?

* What you learn when human beings fail the Turing test.

Bombing Libya

by Massimo Pigliucci

As we all know, an international coalition has begun an air campaign against the forces of Muammar el-Qaddafi in Libya. The air strikes are aimed at protecting the rebel civilian population that has been waging an uprising against Qaddafi’s dictatorship. This effort is being led by French and British forces (with heavy American support) and are backed by Arab nations, and authorized by the United Nations. Is this the right thing to do for the international community? Hell yes.

Readers of this blog know that I am no warmonger, I do not support nation building, and I’m generally very suspicious of the motives of any government when it comes to “spreading democracy” and the like. And yes, I am perfectly aware that Libya is a major oil producing country.

That said, it seems to be that in this case — at least so far — the coalition that is attacking Qaddafi is getting it exactly right. First, the goal is to protect civilians from an ongoing slaughter. Second, there is an actual uprising going on within the country, and one that has a decent chance of succeeding with international support. Third, diplomatic approaches have been tried and have failed. Fourth, the coalition is truly broad and truly international (unlike, you know, that other coalition...). Fifth, the United Nations has given a clear imprimatur to military action. Sixth, there is no discussion (at least at the moment) of ground troops or nation building.

While there is nothing ideal in the world of politics, and there certainly isn’t anything clean about any war, the above conditions — it seems to me — make this initiative as clear and close to ideal as possible.

Of course, it is still war. Once European, American and other countries’ planes started bombing Qaddafi’s forces, the world is effectively at war against Libya having fired the first rounds.

It is instructive therefore to look at how the international conflict with Libya stands up to an analysis in terms of just war theory (which is not an oxymoron). The theory has its roots in Roman and early Catholic history, going back to the writings of Cicero, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas. In modern terms, philosophers who have written about just war include Richard Norman (Ethics, Killing, and War, 1995), Brian Orend (War and International Justice: A Kantian Perspective, 2001), and Michael Walzer (On War and Justice, 2001).

Broadly speaking, there are seven criteria that have to be satisfied for a war to be declared just: just cause, right intention, legitimate authority, comparative justice, last resort, probability of success, and proportionality.

Just cause: interestingly, and perhaps a bit counterintuitively, this does not include punishment of past wrongs, but does include imminent danger to innocent life, which clearly applies in this case.

Right intention: which means that the war has to be waged in order to stop suffering and injustice, not for material gains. Since the international coalition is going to pay for the cost of the war, and does not appear to intend to occupy Libya or exploit its resources, this criterion is also satisfied.

Legitimate authority: both the fact that this is an effort by a truly international coalition, and the fact that it is authorized by the world’s broadest community of countries, means that the authority here is as legitimate as it gets.

Comparative justice: the idea is that in war there are going to be injustices on both sides, but that the conflict is justified in cases in which the injustices on one side far outweigh those on the other side. Clearly Qaddafi’s forces have committed by far the largest share of injustices in this case.

Last resort: the war is just if all other non violent forms of intervention have been exhausted, or in case the catastrophe is imminent and there does not seem to be a way to resolve the problem without aggression. It is notable that the allies have repeatedly maintained that if and when Qaddafi agrees to a cease fire against the rebels, the air attacks will stop and diplomatic negotiations will resume.

Probability of success: the cause is supposed to be not futile which, given the players on the two sides, clearly is the case.

Proportionality: the benefits of waging the conflict have to be proportioned to the anticipated harm done by the conflict itself. In this case the goals are both to save civilian lives and to facilitate as much as possible the internal movement toward reforms in Libya, both of which justify the hopefully limited casualties (including civilian) that will inevitably result from the attack.

So yes, the international war on Qaddafi is ethically justified, at least as far as things stand right now. But, the skeptic will say, by the same token shouldn’t we also intervene in other Arab countries currently in turmoil? What about Iran? Syria? Bahrain? And so on and so forth. (Not forgetting other evil dictatorships around the globe, beginning with North Korea.)

There are at least two answers to these issues, one pragmatic, the other principled. The pragmatic one, of course, is that even a broad international coalition has limited resources, so that it makes sense to pick one’s conflicts based on the criteria above, as well as on the urgency of the unfolding situation. The more principled answer, I think, is that international assistance of this type is warranted only when there is 1) a widespread uprising inside a country, 2) that uprising has a reasonable chance of succeeding and 3) when it is truly aimed against a tyrant (or aristocracy of tyrants). The first criterion, for instance, excludes Iran, at least at the moment, since the Iranians are not quite at the point of the Libyans (or, recently, of the Tunisians). The second criterion excludes, for example, China during the Tienanmen revolt. The third criterion excludes interventions like the American support of the Chilean coup d’etat that resulted in the murder of President Allende in the “other” 9/11 (of 1973).

Let us hope that things will turn out well for the Libyan people, and that their example, together with those of the people of Egypt and Tunisia, will truly awaken a much needed Arab Spring.

Michael’s Picks

by Michael De Dora

* Scott Atran pens a very critical review of Sam Harris’ latest book, The Moral Landscape. 

* Roy Speckhardt applauds the Obama administration’s recent decision to reverse a Bush-era rule that allowed health care providers to deny medical services due to religious convictions.

* FOX News anchor Shepard Smith, still the lone voice of reason on that network, remarks that the situation in Wisconsin has nothing to do with balancing a budget and everything to do with busting unions. 

* Alison Gopnik of Slate discusses – and, I think, clarifies – the debate over women, science, and bias. 

* Also on Slate, a review of Seth Mnookins’s new book, The Panic Virus, which addresses the issue of how so many parents fell for the false autism-vaccine link.   

* Ryan Grim details the Republican war on Planned Parenthood. 

* Susan Jacoby writes a blog post critical of right-wing atheists. 

* Albert Pujols, perhaps the best player in baseball, is apparently struggling during contract negotiations between God and greed.

A different kind of moral relativism

by Michael De Dora

Recently I had the fortune of attending an exceptional philosophy discussion hosted by Massimo Pigliucci, with featured guest Jesse Prinz, a philosopher of mind at the CUNY Graduate Center (where Massimo also teaches). The topic was an essay Prinz recently wrote in the magazine Philosophy Now, called “Morality is a Culturally Conditioned Response.” Our conversation included exchanges on Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, Sam Harris, the is-ought gap, the connection between emotion and reason, and even abortion and female genital mutilation. But the central theme was Prinz’s position that moral relativism holds sway more than moral objectivism (well, that and the delicious Thai food that accompanied the discussion).

Prinz’s basic stance is that moral values stem from our cognitive hardware, upbringing, and social environment. These equip us with deep-seated moral emotions, but these emotions express themselves in a contingent way due to circumstances. And while reason can help, it has limited influence. It can only reshape our ethics up to a point, and cannot settle major differences between different value systems. Therefore, it is difficult, if not impossible, to construct an objective morality that transcends emotions and circumstance. As Prinz writes, in part:

“No amount of reasoning can engender a moral value, because all values are, at bottom, emotional attitudes. … Reason cannot tell us which facts are morally good. Reason is evaluatively neutral. At best, reason can tell us which of our values are inconsistent, and which actions will lead to fulfillment of our goals. But, given an inconsistency, reason cannot tell us which of our conflicting values to drop or which goals to follow. If my goals come into conflict with your goals, reason tells me that I must either thwart your goals, or give up caring about mine; but reason cannot tell me to favor one choice over the other. … Moral judgments are based on emotions, and reasoning normally contributes only by helping us extrapolate from our basic values to novel cases. Reasoning can also lead us to discover that our basic values are culturally inculcated, and that might impel us to search for alternative values, but reason alone cannot tell us which values to adopt, nor can it instill new values.”

This moral relativism is not the absolute moral relativism of, supposedly, bands of liberal intellectuals, or of postmodernist philosophers. It presents a more serious challenge to those who argue there can be objective morality. To be sure, there is much Prinz and I agree on. At the least, we agree that morality is largely constructed by our cognition, upbringing, and social environment; and that reason has the power synthesize and clarify our worldviews, and help us plan for and react to life’s situations. But there are some lingering questions I have after the article and conversation.

Suppose I concede to Prinz that reason cannot settle differences in moral values and sentiments. Difference of opinion doesn’t mean that there isn’t a true or rational answer. In fact, there are many reasons why our cognition, emotional reactions or previous values could be wrong or irrational — and why people would not pick up on their deficiencies. In his article, Prinz uses the case of sociopaths, who simply lack certain cognitive abilities. There are many reasons other than sociopathy why human beings can get things wrong, morally speaking, often and badly. It could be that people are unable to adopt a more objective morality because of their circumstances — from brain deficiencies to lack of access to relevant information. But, again, none of this amounts to an argument against the existence of objective morality.

As it turns out, Prinz’s conception of objective morality does not quite reflect the thinking of most people who believe in objective morality. He writes that: “Objectivism holds that there is one true morality binding upon all of us.” This is a particular strand of moral realism, but there are many. For instance, one can judge some moral precepts as better than others, yet remain open to the fact that there are probably many different ways to establish a good society. This is a pluralistic conception of objective morality which doesn’t assume one absolute moral truth. For all that has been said, Sam Harris’ idea of a moral landscape does help illustrate this concept. Thinking in terms of better and worse morality gets us out of relativism and into an objectivist approach. The important thing to note is that one need not go all the way to absolute objectivity to work toward a rational, non-arbitrary morality.

Indeed, even Prinz admits that “Relativism does not entail that we should tolerate murderous tyranny. When someone threatens us or our way of life, we are strongly motivated to protect ourselves.” That is, there are such things as better and worse values: the worse ones kill us, the better ones don’t. This is a very broad criterion, but it is an objective standard. It seems Prinz is arguing for a tighter moral relativism – a sort of stripped down objective morality that is constricted by nature, experience, and our (modest) reasoning abilities.

I proposed at the discussion that a more objective morality could be had with the help of a robust public discourse on the issues at hand. Prinz does not necessarily disagree. He wrote that “Many people have overlapping moral values, and one can settle debates by appeal to moral common ground.” But Prinz pointed out a couple of limitations on public discourse. For example, the agreements we reach on “moral common ground” are often exclusive of some, and abstract in content. Consider the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights, a seemingly good example of global moral agreement. Yet, it was ratified by a small sample of 48 countries, and it is based on suspiciously Western sounding language. Everyone has a right to education and health care, but — as Prinz pointed out during the discussion — what level of education and health care?

Still, the U.N. declaration was passed 48-0 with just 8 abstentions (Belarus, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ukraine, USSR, Yugoslavia, South Africa and Saudi Arabia). It includes 30 articles of ethical standards agreed upon by 48 countries around the world. Such a document does give us more reason to think that public discourse can lead to significant agreement upon moral values, even if debate will inevitably persist.

Reason might not be able to arrive at moral truths, but it can push us to test and question the rationality of our values — a crucial cog in the process that leads to the adoption of new, or modified values. The only way to reduce disputes about morality is to try to get people on the same page about their moral goals. Given the above, this will not be easy, and perhaps we shouldn’t be too optimistic in our ability to employ reason to figure things out. But reason is still the best, and even only, tool we can wield, and while it might not provide us with a truly objective morality, it’s enough to save us from a complete moral relativism.

Political fantasies and the Republican war on Americans

by Massimo Pigliucci

Sometimes I think I’m not paid enough to do this job. Well, actually I’m not paid at all, but that’s beside the point. I ought to be paid more than a large number of pundits on CNN and editorialists at the New York Times. Why? Because I didn’t believe for a minute their bullshit, a mere two years ago or so, about a post-racial America and the permanent relegation of the Republican party to minority and even fringe status within the American political landscape — which many of them were confidently predicting.

As soon as Obama was elected, the media trampled all over each other to declare the end of racism in America. All it took was one (admittedly pivotal, historical) event — the election of a quasi-black man to the Presidency — and voilà, everything from slavery to the Civil War to Jim Crow laws was going to be relegated to ancient history. It will all be an embarrassing memory, but only a memory nonetheless, nothing to do with the new post-racial America.

Except of course that it was bullshit, and of the self-evident type to boot. Sure enough, it took only weeks for the same media to start reporting on large percentages of Republicans believing that Obama is a Muslim (as if that were somehow an indictment of some kind), that he is not American (despite the public availability of documents clearly showing that he is), that he is a socialist (despite his Presidency clearly settling on a pretty moderate course from the get go), and so on. Why? Because a large number of Republicans simply can’t stand the very idea that a (quasi) black is their President. But they can’t say it in so many words (we have made some social progress since the ‘50s), so they express their outrage by embracing political fantasies and conspiracy theories.

And what about that “the Republicans are relegated to permanent minority” idiocy? Well, just look at the midterm elections a mere two years later. They got back control of the House by a large margin, they missed on regaining the Senate only because they overreached by getting in bed too tightly with the silliness of the Tea Party, and they now represent a clear and present danger to a second Obama term. Oh, and they have immediately re-started with much fanfare their war against unions, public education, the poor and the middle class, all the while further fattening their Wall Street masters (who just two years previous caused a global economic catastrophe out of sheer greed, and got compensated with billions of our dollars for doing so). The real question is: how did this happen?

There are, of course, a variety of reasons, but some of them can be understood by examining the parallel between US politics and — of all comparisons — the Italian one, which I still follow from a distance, despite having left the Bel Paese more than twenty years ago.

You see, in the 1990s Italy switched from a proportional (classic European style) electoral system to a “winner take all” one modeled on the American system — Italians have always had a fetish for all things American, from Dallas (the tv show) to Madonna (the singer, not the alleged mother of Jesus), so why not imitate the voting system of the self-professed best democracy in the world?

The result was catastrophic: overnight it turned the multi-party system that had navigated (with ups and downs, for sure) the Italian ship since the end of World War II (and made it one of the world’s seven most industrialized nations) into a de facto two-party (they call them “poles”) system where those in power have an increasingly easier time remaining there. Add to this that the Italian Right (partly through the evil genius of Silvio Berlusconi) controls the majority of newspapers, magazines, radio and television stations; that it has the Catholic church on its side (all in favor of family values except when it comes to pedophiliac priests); that a huge amount of money is continuously funneled to the Right by the ultra-rich (and the Mafia); that the sheer stupidity and gullibility of about half of the Italian citizenry has reached astounding heights not seen since the Mussolini era; and that the opposition is simply inept, and you’ve got a pretty much complete explanation.

Sound familiar? Maintaining the same order so that the parallelism is particularly obvious, Republicans keep coming back and controling the agenda even when they are not in power because: a) There is a two-party system which guarantees that any meaningful alternative doesn’t have a chance from the get go; b) Republicans have a powerful and dedicated party propaganda machine masquerading as news media (Fox) that manages to manipulate and frame the political discourse for the rest of the media, plus a capillary network of “talk radio” stations throughout the country that further amplify the noise (and no, MSNBC doesn’t even begin to balance things out, and if you think so you are absolutely deluded); c) a large portion of American evangelical and fundamentalist churches support the Right’s agenda because they've bought into the peculiar concept of “morality” that suits the Republican party (where sex is a moral issue, unless it is a pastor or Newt Gingrich who commits the deed, while obscene income disparity, raping of the environment, white collar crimes and so forth somehow don’t show up on the morality radar screen); d) Wall Street (particularly, but not only, Goldman Sachs) and other super-rich individuals and corporations now have unlimited political access — thanks to a recent, truly despicable, Supreme Court decision — so that they can buy all the elections they want; e) the American public is certainly no more savvy than the Italian counterpart (creationism, anyone? Or climate change denial? Or vaccine-autism connection?); f) the Democratic party is just as spineless as the Italian center-left coalition has been for the past several decades.

The result is the continued decline — economic, cultural, and ethical — of both countries. And there is no end in sight, I’m afraid. Only three things could possibly reverse the trend, and they are all under fierce (and by no means random) fire by the Republicans: unions (see Wisconsin), public education (see everywhere in the country), and more political participation (see the Republicans’ constant assault on political enfranchisement).

Republicans — like their Italian counterparts — have managed to convince Americans that public employees are overpaid bastards who don’t want to share in the necessary sacrifices that it will take to save America (while at the same time, naturally, we keep pumping billions into the hands of the super-rich). They have also convinced most American workers that unions — certainly not perfect in themselves, but the only organized resistance against the erosion of the middle class — are a communist ploy bent on undermining “the American way” of life (which, let us not forget, despite Glenn Beck's style of historical revisionism, was made possible by an initial double whammy of slavery and genocide).

Americans — like Italians across the pond — have been bamboozled by fear mongering (the communists! the terrorists! the nazi-social-communists!), lulled by endless mindless entertainment (so-called “reality” television and countless completely inane morning and afternoon shows), and when all else fails discouraged and in many cases simply barred from voting (naturally, since in both countries the majority of those having a right to vote lean much further to the left than to the right). Ever wondered why the US elections are held for one day only, in the middle of the week? In Italy at least they take two days, and they are carried out on weekends, to maximize participation. Ever asked yourself why Republicans are so obsessed with solving the non-existent problem of illegal immigrants somehow sneaking into the voting booth, which continuously results in the Republican party passing laws and ordinances that actually end up turning away scores of legitimate voters from the underclasses, the very same ones that, surprise surprise!, tend to overwhelmingly vote Democrat?

All of this has established a de facto plutocracy in both countries — much more so in the US than in Italy — a plutocracy that keeps its power through the expenditure of huge amounts of money to buy politicians and courts, and thanks to continuous devious propaganda to convince Tea Partiers and assorted simpletons that they, the super-rich, are really on the side of Joe the Plumber.

There are only two things that can possibly reverse this state of affairs: a concerted, multi-decade, extremely canny counter-initiative by the Democrats (similar to the one initiated by Reagan more than three decades ago), or a revolution. The former isn’t likely to happen given the recent history of the Democratic party and its inept leaders (some of whom, of course, are almost as bad as their counterparts across the isle). The latter is not going to happen until things get much, much worse for the majority of Americans, as they probably will due to one final fatal overreach by the Plutocracy.

In the meantime, venting in this blog posting has gotten me a bit depressed. Anyone like to join me for a nice dry, dirty martini, while we can still afford one?