However, other factors, such as increased religiosity, strong family ties, and lowered alcohol consumption, decrease crime.I've not had the time to process it all as work and family events have taken me away from the blog, but let me continue the conversation here with two examples and a question.
A long time ago, I was talking to some non-religious (white) high school chums on the phone. One of them had received a used Pontiac Trans Am as a gift from his grandmother. The car was a total lemon and he hated it. Rather than sell it for what it was worth, which was practically nothing, he gave it to some friends and claimed it was stolen to his insurance company. He pocketed the cash from the insurance company and, I presume, his friends parted out the car. The story shocked me. When I objected that this was insurance fraud, he replied, "So what? The insurance company makes lots of money. They can afford it. It's no big deal. I'm just one tiny claim to a huge company." I had no reply that could convince him what he did was wrong. We stopped being friends after that.
My second example is this: The following video is from a popular song. The YouTube page shows more than 815,000 hits. Is its message wrong? If so, how could you convince its fans that it is wrong without referencing God or objective morality? Can you use objective morality without referencing God? If so, from what do you derive your first principles? How do you avoid this?
Why not claim the Trans Am as stolen? Why not gratify yourself on the body of a girl? Why not choose hedonism and selfishness?
We've been trying to answer these questions for quite a while now and have seen nothing but failure. St. Augustine asked the question over 1600 years ago.
(W)hy did those gods (in our secular world, the government fills the role of the Roman gods), from whose worship ungrateful men are now complaining that they are prohibited, issue no laws which might have guided their devotees to a virtuous life?Why the endless failure without God?
* - Note that the wages of sin are colorblind. In England, it is the white family that has been blown to hell and gone and the Pakistani and Indian families that are more intact.
Well, regarding anecdotes, I know people who regard themselves as intensely religious, but who have done the same sort of thing as your former friend's insurance fraud [1] Basically they used the same sort of thinking: While they still agreed that stealing, in the abstract, was wrong, they convinced themselves that what they were doing "wasn't really stealing".
ReplyDeleteI don't think religion can really improve people's morals much unless it can also persuade them not to lie to themselves about what they are doing. And I am not convinced that it is very good at convincing people not to lie to themselves.
[1]In this case, it was hauling a semi-load of empty soda cans from a neighboring state that didn't have a can deposit law (but the cans were still marked as having a deposit, because the bottlers don't want to use different cans for each state), and turning them in to get the Michigan deposit. Ten cents a can doesn't sound like much, but over a few thousand it adds up. I told them that this was stealing by any reasonable definition (not to mention that it was explicitly illegal), but that didn't stop them. They eventually gave it up because it was enough effort that it was too much like work, not because they decided it was wrong.
And, I realize this is a rhetorical question on your part, but:
ReplyDelete"Why not claim the Trans Am as stolen? Why not gratify yourself on the body of a girl? Why not choose hedonism and selfishness?"
Because theft causes a breakdown in the cooperation and trust needed to keep society functioning; Because gratifying yourself promiscuously leads to spread of disease, birth of children that you aren't prepared to raise properly, and a general breakdown in the cooperation and trust needed to keep society functioning; and hedonism and selfishness leads to ill health, and a breakdown in the cooperation and trust needed to keep society functioning.
If one likes the idea of keeping society functioning, then that is a strong incentive for moral behavior. A belief in God may provide added incentive to the people who need it, but it is not the only source of incentive.
Tim, the problem with this statement: "Because theft causes a breakdown in the cooperation and trust needed to keep society functioning" is that it isn't true at the micro level. My friend's insurance fraud did not lead to a breakdown in society and it never would. That was the core of his argument and a point you can't refute. Societal breakdown occurs when you have a thousand such events and he knew he had no influence over the other 999 people contemplating it. It was either going to occur or not and in either case, he was such a tiny drop in the bucket that his decision didn't matter at all.
ReplyDeleteIn short, only a chump wouldn't commit insurance fraud. If everyone but you did it and society collapsed, you missed out on the payoff. If no one else did it, then you doing it wouldn't matter to society at all.
Like me on that phone call, you have no argument that could convince him not to do it because without God, you can't argue at the individual level.
@Tim: "If one likes the idea of keeping society functioning, then that is a strong incentive for moral behavior. A belief in God may provide added incentive to the people who need it, but it is not the only source of incentive."
ReplyDeleteThat's a common argument. In my personal opinion, it has an element of historical arrogance.
By the most archeologically and historically conservative accounts, the list of rules (aka the Ten Commandments) for optimally arranging relationships among people is at least three thousand years old. Very possibly older. So these ideas have been bouncing around for quite a while. And they were quite controversial back in the day when they were published, setting the Jewish tribe very much apart from the rest of the cultures that have a recorded history.
So these ideas are not notions that have sprung spontaneously from the minds of, say, evolutionary biologists. In fact, evolutionary biology and psychology have twisted themselves in knots trying to explain moral behavior within a theory that posits a mindless, amoral molecule driven by one Prime Directive: Reproduce Thyself. The situation is much the same within philosophy.
So, in essence, we are faced with two alternatives. First, we must face the fact that a "primitive" tribal culture several millennia ago was able to invent, out of whole cloth, a demonstrably counterintuitive set of moral principles that would work equally well for nomadic tribal nations and modern technological megastates and that our most advanced science still continues to struggle with.
Or, second, that these truths were revealed, not deduced.
I think you must have much greater faith - and yes, I think that's the right word - in the human species than I do.
And I think the historical arrogance of our contemporary scientistic secular culture is very much like the trust fund dilettante who prides himself on his investment acumen.
KT:
ReplyDeleteIf your argument is that he had something to gain and nothing to lose from his insurance fraud, I argue that he did, in fact, lose something - he lost your friendship, he lost your trust, and he lost your willingness to cooperate with him. He has begun moving himself from the circle of cooperating, trustworthy individuals, to the circle of selfish untrustworthy individuals. And this is not to his benefit. It's not the crime, in isolation, that causes the harm, it's the degradation of his relationships with others as a result of the crime that hurts him.
Secular Apostate:
Be careful about how you throw around accusations of arrogance. When Moses declared "The Lord God Almighty, Creator of All Things, Appointed Me and Me Alone to tell all you poor schmucks how to live your lives", most people would consider that arrogance of the first water.
And as for the history of the Ten Commandments, do you really, seriously think that tribes before Moses didn't have rules, at least within their tribes, against theft, murder, false accusations, and adultery? A key point: the bible writers did not feel the need to *define* theft, murder, false witness, or adultery. Everyone knew what they were already. The innovation of the Ten Commandments was adding the first four to enforce observance of the religion, and extending them to outside of the tribe.
Incidentally, I want to clarify something: I am not opposed to the idea of there being a God. What gives me the screaming heebies is people misusing the idea of God for their own ends. In particular, the people who think that things are Moral because God says they are, and that if God says, for example "torture that person", it is therefore OK to do so. If a concept of God makes it easy for people to declare, "God spoke to me, and he said to do (some reprehensible thing)", then I want no part of that.
If you think that there is some absolute standard of morality, and that God is merely passing it along and not creating it on the spot, that's a different story. But in that case, shouldn't we be able to discover what it is, by observing what does and doesn't work, and at least confirm the things that the "Inspired by God" people are claiming?
Tim, you're absolutely right that he lost me as a friend. However, what happens when no one in his circle of friends has an absolute moral compass? This is the mechanics of societal decay.
ReplyDeleteKT: After thinking about our various conversations on this topic, I think I'm realizing where we are differing: I'm thinking in terms of a person with normal social instincts, who actually does care about what other people think of him, has empathy for others, who actually values the welfare of other people, and who is just looking for a philosophical reason to behave in the way that makes them feel most comfortable in the world anyway[1].
ReplyDeleteYou, I think, are looking for a way to make a convincing argument for morality to a psychopath, which is a much, much, much harder problem. And an important one, seeing as how about 1% of the population is estimated to be psychopaths. I'm not sure this problem can be solved, short of the rest of us non-psychopaths putting a metaphorical gun to the head of the psychopaths and telling them, "Play by the rules, or else". Which is essentially what we do. Whether that metaphorical gun is the threat of fines/jail time, or a threat of an omniscient God sending him to eternal damnation, probably doesn't make much difference to the psychopath, seeing as how he can maybe escape the one by not getting caught, and avoid thinking about the other by just not believing it's true.
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[1] Maybe I have too rosy and optimistic of a view of my fellow man, but I don't think so. The people who I actually deal with are, by and large, decent people who want to do good, and this seems to be at least as much instinctive with them as learned. There are a few bad apples who are certainly memorable, and cause more than their fair share of chaos, but they are a very small minority. I'd go so far as to say only about 1-5% of the population, in fact.
@Tim: Be careful about how you throw around accusations of arrogance.
ReplyDeleteWhy? Historical arrogance has been a problem in every age. You don't need to read much history to find it. And ours is no different. One might say it's "settled science". So if you interpreted that as a personal accusation, forgive me. In my opinion, it's part of the human condition.
Regarding the Moses attribution, in my Bible Moses says: ""Oh, my Lord, I am not eloquent, either heretofore or since thou hast spoken to thy servant; but I am slow of speech and of tongue... Oh, my Lord, send, I pray, some other person."
You speak of the innovation in the Ten Commandments as if you have a culture in mind that had all the other rules except those relating to theological matters. Enlighten me. In fact, "strangers" were not required to obey those laws when passing through or dwelling in Israel. They were simply required not to interfere with the Israelites' doing so.
You are correct that Exodus does not define theft, adultery, etc. Maybe they should have put a glossary in the back, but they didn't. But I don't think the point of the book was to serve as legal code.
And, yes, I do think there is an absolute moral standard, and I completely agree that we can, if inclined, confirm its validity by observing what works and what doesn't. But my point was quite different. Regardless of whether we could or couldn't, I am aware of no evidence whatsoever suggesting that any other culture or person pre-existing the Israelites did such a thing. Maybe Tom the Village Carpenter discovered the principles of gravity a century before Newton, but we have no evidence of that. So I'm happy with picking Newton as the guy who did.
Finally, I also get the "heebies", as you say, from people who use God to their own ends. My personal litmus test for hypocrisy comes from St. Paul (although, I suppose one could, in theory, develop it on one's own). The key elements are: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
Tim - "I'm thinking in terms of a person with normal social instincts, who actually does care about what other people think of him, has empathy for others, who actually values the welfare of other people, and who is just looking for a philosophical reason to behave in the way that makes them feel most comfortable in the world anyway"
ReplyDeleteThere's no indication that that is the normal condition. I'd suggest that the normal condition, in the absence of God, is self-gratification.
"There's no indication that that is the normal condition"
ReplyDeleteHmmm . . .
(considers own condition)
(considers beliefs and behavior of family and friends)
(considers beliefs and behavior of casual acquaintances, as far as practical)
(notes that very few of these people behave as if their only goal is self-gratification, regardless of whether they have faith in God or not, and those few that do are generally considered pathetic losers)
Nope. I don't buy it. I think you are taking the instincts and behavior of the worst couple of percent of humanity (who, admittedly, are the ones who get all the press, making them look a lot more numerous than they actually are), and applying their behavior to everybody.