Take the Golden Rule, for example. It says, “Do onto others what you’d have them do onto you.” Faithless people often point out that one doesn’t need to believe in God to believe in that rule. That’s true. The problem is that without God, there can’t be any objective moral code.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
My reply would be, that’s quite true, and since there is no God, there isn’t any objective moral code, either.\u00a0 However, most atheists, far from being “moral relativists,” are highly moralistic.\u00a0 As a consequence, they are dumbfounded by anything like Trinko’s remark.\u00a0 It pulls the moral rug right out from under their feet.\u00a0 Typically, they try to get around the problem by appealing to moral emotions.\u00a0 For example, they might say something like, “What?\u00a0 Don’t you think it’s really bad to torture puppies to death?”, or, “What?\u00a0 Don’t you believe that Hitler was really evil?”\u00a0 I certainly have a powerful emotional response to Hitler and tortured puppies.\u00a0 However, no matter how powerful those emotions are, I realize that they can’t magically conjure objects into being that exist independently of my subjective mind.\u00a0 Most leftists, and hence, most so-called atheists, actually do believe in the existence of such objects, which they call “good” and “evil,” whether they admit it explicitly or not.\u00a0 Regardless, they speak and act as if the objects were real.<\/p>\n
The kinds of speech and actions I’m talking about are ubiquitous and obvious.\u00a0 For example, many of these “atheists” assume a dictatorial right to demand that others conform to novel versions of “good” and “evil” they may have concocted yesterday or the day before.\u00a0 If those others refuse to conform, they exhibit all the now familiar symptoms of outrage and virtuous indignation.\u00a0 Do rational people imagine that they are gods with the right to demand that others obey whatever their latest whims happen to be?\u00a0 Do they assume that their subjective, emotional whims somehow immediately endow them with a legitimate authority to demand that others behave in certain ways and not in others?\u00a0 I certainly hope that no rational person would act that way.\u00a0 However, that is exactly the way that many so-called atheists act.\u00a0 To the extent that we may consider them rational at all, then, we must assume that they actually believe that whatever versions of “good” or “evil” they happen to favor at the moment are “things” that somehow exist on their own, independently of their subjective minds.\u00a0 In other words, they believe in ghosts.<\/p>\n
Does this make any difference?\u00a0 I suggest that it makes a huge difference.\u00a0 I personally don’t enjoy being constantly subjected to moralistic bullying.\u00a0 I doubt that many people enjoy jumping through hoops to conform to the whims of others.\u00a0 I submit that it may behoove those of us who don’t like being bullied to finally call out this type of irrational, quasi-religious behavior for what it really is.<\/p>\n
It also makes a huge difference because this form of belief in imaginary objects has led us directly into the moral chaos we find ourselves in today.\u00a0 New versions of “absolute morality” are now popping up on an almost daily basis.\u00a0 Obviously, we can’t conform to all of them at once, and must therefore put up with the inconvenience of either keeping our mouths shut or risk being furiously condemned as “evil” by whatever faction we happen to offend.\u00a0 Again, traditional theists are a great deal more clear-sighted than “atheists” about this sort of thing.\u00a0 For example, in an article entitled, “Moral relativism can lead to ethical anarchy<\/a>,” Christian believer Phil Schurrer, a professor at Bowling Green State University, writes,<\/p>\n…the lack of a uniform standard of what constitutes right and wrong based on Natural Law leads to the moral anarchy we see today.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Prof. Schurrer is right about the fact that we live in a world of moral anarchy.\u00a0 I also happen to agree with him that most of us would find it useful and beneficial if we could come up with a “uniform standard of what constitutes right and wrong.”\u00a0 Where I differ with him is on the rationality of attempting to base that standard on “Natural Law,” because there is no such thing.\u00a0 For religious believers, “Natural Law” is law passed down by God, and since there is no God, there can be no “Natural Law,” either.\u00a0 How, then, can we come up with such a uniform moral code?<\/p>\n
I certainly can’t suggest a standard based on what is “really good” or “really bad” because I don’t believe in the existence of such objects.\u00a0 I can only tell you what I would personally consider expedient.\u00a0 It would be a standard that takes into account what I consider to be some essential facts.\u00a0 These are as follows.<\/p>\n
\n- What we refer to as morality is an artifact of “human nature,” or, in other words, innate predispositions that affect our behavior.<\/li>\n
- These predispositions exist because they evolved by natural selection.<\/li>\n
- They evolved by natural selection because they happened to improve the odds that the genes responsible for their existence would survive and reproduce at the time and in the environment in which they evolved.<\/li>\n
- We are now living at a different time, and in a different environment, and it cannot be assumed that blindly responding to the predispositions in question will have the same outcome now as it did when those predispositions evolved.\u00a0 Indeed, it has been repeatedly demonstrated that such behavior can be extremely dangerous.<\/li>\n
- Outcomes of these predispositions include a tendency to judge the behavior of others as “good” or “evil.”\u00a0 These categories are typically deemed to be absolute, and to exist independently of the conscious minds that imagine them.<\/li>\n
- Human morality is dual in nature.\u00a0 Others are perceived in terms of ingroups and outgroups, with different standards applying to what is deemed “good” or “evil” behavior towards those others depending on the category to which they are imagined to belong.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
I could certainly expand on this list, but the above are certainly some of the most salient and essential facts about human morality.\u00a0 If they are true, then it is possible to make at least some preliminary suggestions about how a “uniform standard” might look.\u00a0 It would be as simple as possible.\u00a0 It would be derived to minimize the dangers referred to above, with particular attention to the dangers arising from ingroup\/outgroup behavior.\u00a0 It would be limited in scope to interactions between individuals and small groups in cases where the rational analysis of alternatives is impractical due to time constraints, etc.\u00a0 It would be in harmony with innate human behavioral traits, or “human nature.”\u00a0 It is our nature to perceive good and evil as real objective things, even though they are not.\u00a0 This implies there would be no “moral relativism.”\u00a0 Once in place, the moral code would be treated as an absolute standard, in conformity with the way in which moral standards are usually perceived.\u00a0 One might think of it as a “moral constitution.”\u00a0 As with political constitutions, there would necessarily be some means of amending it if necessary.\u00a0 However, it would not be open to arbitrary innovations spawned by the emotional whims of noisy minorities.<\/p>\n
How would such a system be implemented?\u00a0 It’s certainly unlikely that any state will attempt it any time in the foreseeable future.\u00a0 Perhaps it might happen gradually, just as changes to the “moral landscape” have usually happened in the past.\u00a0 For that to happen, however, it would be necessary for significant numbers of people to finally understand what morality is, and why it exists.\u00a0 And that is where, as an atheist, I must part company with Mr. Trinko, Prof. Schurrer, and the rest of the religious right.\u00a0 Progress towards a uniform morality that most of us would find a great deal more useful and beneficial than the versions currently on tap, regardless of what goals or purposes we happen to be pursuing in life, cannot be based on the illusion that a “natural law” exists that has been handed down by an imaginary God, any more than it can be based on the emotional whims of leftist bullies.\u00a0 It must be based on a realistic understanding of what kind of animals we are, and how we came to be.\u00a0 However, such self knowledge will remain inaccessible until we shed the shackles of religion.\u00a0 Perhaps, as they witness many of the traditional churches increasingly becoming leftist political clubs before their eyes, people on the right of the political spectrum will begin to find it less difficult to free themselves from those shackles.\u00a0 I hope so.\u00a0 I think that an Ansatz<\/em> based on simple, traditional moral rules, such as the Ten Commandments, is more likely to lead to a rational morality than one based on furious rants over who should be allowed to use what bathrooms.\u00a0 In other words, I am more optimistic that a useful reform of morality will come from the right rather than the left of the ideological spectrum, as it now stands.\u00a0 Most leftists today are much too heavily invested in indulging their moral emotions to escape from the world of illusion they live in.\u00a0 To all appearances they seriously believe that blindly responding to these emotions will somehow magically result in “moral progress” and “human flourishing.”\u00a0 Conservatives, on the other hand, are unlikely to accomplish anything useful in terms of a rational morality until they free themselves of the “God delusion.”\u00a0 It would seem, then, that for such a moral “revolution” to happen, it will be necessary for those on both the left and the right to shed their belief in “spirits.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n