I’d add a third observation… Dawkins explains the emergence and present existence of religious belief and practice on the exact same grounds as he explains the emergence and present existence of or sense of morality. It benefited our ancestors.
But obviously, he feels it would be perfectly appropriate to discard religious belief, as it is a “delusion”… I.e., a belief in something that doesn’t truly exist. Sure, it may have proven useful to humanity, and to our ancestors, but it is no less a delusion.
But then our moral beliefs end up in the same category - they are likewise a delusion. however much they may have proven useful to either our ancestors or to us at present, they don’t reflect an objective, external reality. Any beliefs about moral conduct that go beyond them being a mere expedient or advantageous social agreement (I.e., any internal moral sense that one “ought” to either do or refrain from something) is as much a delusion as Dawkins believes religious faith to be.
So to Dawkins, morality “comes from” evolution in the same way religious belief does… they are beneficial and useful, albeit erroneous and delusional beliefs.
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
22
So Dawkins believes that the pursuit of universal social justice, i.e. righteousness, is delusional. He’s probably right in more ways than one. Citing him on that would be useful. Which doesn’t mean it’s not worth being afflicted with, like aesthetics. I love my magical Stendhal’s moments. Nothing anyone has said refutes him, i.e. evolution, in the slightest of course. But the tone is negative. Why is that?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
23
Evolution doesn’t require theism. Theism rationally explains nothing at all. It is simply unnecessary in physicalism which is all that is necessary to explain everything, including theology. There is nothing foolish in that. Can you cite Dawkins’ foolishness with regard to ‘theology’? Fairness, one of the six moral taste receptors, is mammalian at least.
I never said it did require theism but it certainly doesn’t require atheism either and Theology isn’t meant to explain evolution or biology like they aren’t meant to explain God or the bible. Theology is about rationally making sense of God and the bible correct?
Advantageous social agreements or “mere” expedients would or could all remain quite real, just like the rain remains quite real (non-delusional) for the materialistic meteorologist even if they deny any theological significance (or in your case absolute moral basis) to all the same. So I’m not sure I follow why you appear to be so eager to cast all of what Dawkins observes about moral expedients to be delusional contingent on his acceptance of any further (real) theological moral basis. I agree with you that Dawkins is wrong, and that science can never by itself get from “is” to “ought”, but an incomplete view of something may still be a partial view of something real nonetheless. Why waste powder and shot denying the rain itself?
[And on more careful reading of your reply above, I’ll modify what I said above to note that I think I misunderstood your post at first. You aren’t saying that such moral expedients are themselves any less real (contingent upon further acceptance of religious basis), but only that any insistence on their actual reality to us is every bit as religious (and therefore on Dawkins’ views - delusional) as any overt religion would be if he was right. And I agree with you entirely on that - so you can ignore my entire reply above. I’m only multiplying words here - sorry!]
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
27
It’s not a level playing field. It’s not 50:50 If physicalism does not need theism then is certainly doesn’t. And evolution, biology, psychology, anthropology etc certainly explain God and the Bible. If theology rationally makes sense of God and the Bible, then it’s a tool of reason like they are. Unless it makes supernatural assumptions. I’m happy with one posit: we know God because of Jesus as revealed by the Church.
Quite correct. I read “God delusion” and was stunned by how oblivious Dawkins seemed to be to the consequences of his own reasoning.
Consider just the title of his chapter on the topic in The God Delusion: “The Roots of Morality: Why are we Good?”
Insofar as one wants to postulate that morality is an evolved instinct, expedient instincts that benefited our ancestors’ survival, a utilitarian social construct, invented and created by human evolution and our natural process, fine and dandy. That, while I of course disagree, at least remains logically consistent.
But then, what in God’s name does he mean when he talks about us being “good”? What in the world does “good” even mean given his argument??? For all the world, and being as generous to his words as I can, he clearly uses the word “good” (and “evil”) to refer to an absolute, true standard. He is not speaking of “good” as a synonym for “pleasing to me and my culture,” or “tasteful to certain instincts” or anything like it. He clearly means by good the same thing I mean by “good”, and I mean it in an absolute, objective sense.
So sure, I can grant his hypothesis for how “altruism” evolved. But he would need to acknowledge that altruism has essentially the very same cause and basis as how malice, rape, racism, child abuse, and the like evolved. They are all instincts, which conceivably we have because they all benefited our ancestor’s survival… they all evolved out of our evolutionary process, because such behavior benefited our ancestors in passing in their genes. So far, so good.
But as soon as one tries to say we “ought” to be altruistic and not malicious… where in the world does that come from??? Evolution can explain why we have instincts toward being altruistic, just as it can explain why we have instincts towards being malicious.
What it simply cannot do is claim any “moral” obligation to prefer certain instincts to others… the idea that some instincts are inherently “better” or “worse” than another. Evolution gave us the instincts it did, based on its natural processes. As we move forward from this point, one instinct may conceivably prove “more expedient” “more beneficial”, or the like than another toward our future survival and evolution, but one instinct simply cannot be morally “better” than any other.
If evolution alone is the cause of our moral instincts, then there simply is no such thing as “good.” With all respect, Dawkins is remarkably obtuse for missing this, but then again, if my world view is right, then he indeed has “the law of God written on his heart”, and he couldn’t deny it if he wanted to.
Natural selection, in ancestral times when we lived in small and stable bands like baboons, programmed into our brains altruistic urges, alongside sexual urges, hunger urges, xenophobic urges and so on.
So far, so good, and no major objection. But if so, then “altruism” is no more “good” or “evil” than xenophobia. If he wanted to go that route, fine.
But then he spends the next two chapters talking about the “evils” of religion. I suspect he doesn’t yet grasp the obvious consequences of his own beliefs.
Perhaps. I think he would answer that it is now our human project (self-assigned responsibility) to choose from among that panoply of “urges” which ones need to be encouraged and cultivated, which need to be moderated, and perhaps which even to be entirely stymied and left behind if possible. And you would continue to ply him with the challenge: “but with what standard are you judging one urge against any of the other equally evolved ones?” His reply might be something like: “our current society / culture is coming to some consensus about many of those things, and I’m happy to align my values with such consensus culture.”
And for the record, I totally agree with you that Dawkins thus fails to “reattach” the main branch that he fancies he already sawed off. In fact all we see him doing is standing on values that have roots going back into everything he so detests, meaning he’s only pretending to have sawed off that limb. He’s still standing on it - all the way down to its quite religious / philosophical roots. Nietzsche would not have put up with Dawkins’ philosophical nonsense for a moment and would have dismissed him as nothing more than a secret Christian.
I happily make my way through all the cigar smoke to join both you and Lewis at the pub on this one!
The idea that, without appealing to any court higher than the instincts themselves, we can yet find grounds for preferring one instinct above its fellows dies very hard. We grasp at useless words: we call it the ‘basic’, or ‘fundamental’, or ‘primal’, or ‘deepest’ instinct. It is of no avail. Either these words conceal a value judgement passed upon the instinct and therefore not derivable from it, or else they merely record its felt intensity, the frequency of its operation and its wide distribution. If the former, the whole attempt to base value upon instinct has been abandoned: if the latter, these observations about the quantitative aspects of a psychological event lead to no practical conclusion. It is the old dilemma. Either the premisses already concealed an imperative or the conclusion remains merely in the indicative.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
32
In the vacuous anti-evolutionary, anti-rational rhetoric above, what fills that vacuum? Magic? Is there a dialectic here?
But since we’re on the topic, I would be curious your thoughts on how EC intersects with this larger question.
Given his evolutionary assumptions, I do find the first half of Dawkins’ observations to logically flow. If everything that we are… every instinct, every “moral urge”, everything - is a result of and explicable as the outcome of natural processes, how did this natural process ever teach us about real morality?
I can speculate a few ideas, but would appreciate hearing your own thoughts, or anyone else that wanted to chime in? For any who agree there is a transcendent morality, one which we recognize in our own internal conscience, the law of God being written in our hearts… how did his law get there, given that we are the product of a process that could have instilled in us no categorical difference between instincts toward altruism and xenophobia as Dawkins (in this case I think rightly) maintains?
I think I further follow C.S. Lewis’s thoughts which have helped developed my own as well. I think creation is in some ways a shadow, or mirror of higher heavenly realities - at least the many good parts. So if there is a real, objective morality to be had that is grounded in God, then it should not surprise the believer that God’s creation has something of that pattern in it to hint us toward those realities. And I think this is scripturally affirmed, not just with direct references to such things (as in Hebrews 10 where present law is referred to as a shadow or copy of something much better) but even in Paul’s and especially Jesus’ manner of freely using creation to teach higher principles. Parables made free use of current “folk wisdoms” regarding nature in order to help an audience be brought into the presence of a yet higher principle. I see this as a fine “baptism” of the now time-honored method of making use of our knowledge of creation to help reinforce our knowledge of “the higher things”. So, as I see it, it is important to pursue truth in our knowledge of the lower things - because if we can’t or won’t even get that right … why should we be entrusted with yet more important knowledge?
In that way, I’m not threatened by the presence of “seeds” of morality or altruism to be found among things that can be observed by anyone. I still agree that more is needed to bring the good seed to fruition (much less even being able to discriminate the good seed from the bad). That is the “ought” part that science can’t reach - but the “is” part we can see is no less valuable for yielding its truths to us as well. I am fascinated with the observation Paul makes in 1 Corinthians 15 in the discussion of the resurrection body where Paul teaches that it is not the spiritual that comes first but the physical. I can’t help but think this observation has even yet more profundity than only applying to Jesus’ resurrected body - and that it also sheds light on a general principle of creation: that there is a kind of physical substrate God put in place (our human bodies … our world … the development and evolution of it all if you will) that is preparatory as a necessary home for a later in-breathed spirit (which for the purposes of our discussion here might include a fully realized and divinely ratified morality).
I think I pretty well echo and agree with what Lewis says on all this, as I’m sure you can either attest - or provide correction and reference where necessary.
[So those, such as Dawkins, who may provide excellent discourse on the ‘shadows of things’ as it were, should be given credit where credit is due even if they will not yet follow us farther into divine things. That is the credit that I think can safely be assumed to be “Caesar’s due” here without fearing that such acknowledgment in any way lessens what is yet due to God as well.]
Morality has come from the way that God created conscious beings. Where there is love between conscious beings there is a connection. This means that they “feel” for one another. This then means they will have a conscience, their conscience is a guide that points to right and wrong action. This is the foundation of moral law/ ethics.
And the evidence is seen in those people who are inhumane. They have deadened their conscience, which can only happen where they have severed their connection/ connectivity with others and thus can treat others as objects to be exploited, used and/or abused.
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
36
What is unreal morality? Is it the same as transcendent morality? Whatever that is? Or is that real morality and the morality that all non-Christians have is unreal? So what is real morality?
Yeah … whatever it was that Jesus had in mind when he said …" and render unto God the things that are God’s." What do you suppose those things might be?
Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
39
That we love one another. In other words that we bust ourselves pursuing righteousness, in other words universal social justice as in Jesus’ first sermon, from the Prophets, equality of outcome for the neediest on up. The blind, the halt, the lame, the fatherless, the poor, the black, the female, the old, the sick, the hungry, the oppressed. We only get one go after all. How else could we show our appreciation?
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Klax
(The only thing that matters is faith expressed in love.)
40