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Think Outside the Box

COUNTER POINT

On Morality

Sam Harris writes:

You believe that unless the Bible is accepted as the word of God, there can be no universal standard of morality.  But we can easily think of objective sources of moral order that do not require the existence of a lawgiving God.  For there to be objective moral truths worth knowing, there need only be better and worse ways to seek happiness in this world.  If there are psychological laws that govern well-being, knowledge of these laws would provide an enduring basis for an objective morality.  While we do not have anything like a final, scientific understanding of human morality, it seems safe to say that raping and killing our neighbors is not one of its primary constituents.  Everything about human experience suggests that love is more conducive to happiness than hate is.  This is an objective claim about the human mind, about the dynamics of social relations, and about the moral order of our world.  It is clearly possible to say that someone like Hitler was wrong in moral terms without reference to scripture.[1]

 

R.C. Metcalf responds:

How do we account for the sort of evil that defies cultural explanation? Humanity world-wide would decry many of the horrors perpetrated by Josef Mengele under the Nazi regime. Mengele injected chemicals into the eyes of infants in an attempt to change their eye color. This experimentation caused severe pain and often permanent blindness. The Third Reich apparently sanctioned such cruelty. It would seem that what one culture considered acceptable would be considered evil in most other cultures. While atheists have done little to stem the tide of cultural evil, Christian missionaries brave the front lines. The Maori of New Zealand practiced cannibalism until 1840, an evil renounced by the Maori in large part due to the evangelistic efforts of Christian missionaries.

Missionaries, however, from various Christian churches came to evangelize the heathen. They made a direct attack against the Maori form of theology. The golden rule of brotherly love was preached, and war and cannibalism were condemned. The new religion was accepted by the chiefs, and their tribes followed. It was some time, however, before the various tribes would give up the satisfaction of using their newly acquired firearms against their hereditary enemies. Old scores had to be settled as a point of tribal honour. Finally, the new teaching prevailed and inter-tribal wars ended. With the cessation of wars, the supply of slain enemies ended and cannibalism ceased.[2]

            While raping and killing our neighbors seems as though it should be a primary constituent of a final, scientific understanding of human morality, it certainly wasn’t primary in Maori thinking.  In fact, in atheistic evolutionary terms rape provides the perpetrator with a reproductive advantage.  Should the serial rapist be allowed to blame it on his selfish genes and go on his merry way?  Hardly.

            We need to recognize that there actually are evils in the world that every sane person would abhor. We don’t pass laws that specifically say not to put needles into the eyes of little babies. There are evils that we all know, deep down, are truly evil, regardless of one’s cultural setting. Yet from where does this instinctive knowledge arise? Memetic evolution cannot account for it. This innate level of discernment between good and evil Christians would render as necessarily from God.

            Richard Dawkins suggests that morality has a Darwinian origin. While evolution has endowed us all with selfish genes, this does not imply a selfish organism, selfish group or selfish species. (See The God Delusion, pg. 215). He suggests that four types of altruism have evolved via natural selection. Reciprocal altruism is the 'you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours' type. Kin altruism causes related individuals to 'care for their own.' Third, there is the altruism that arises when one individual desires to attain a reputation for kindness and generosity. And fourth, there is the authentic advertising an individual gains from being conspicuously generous. Of course, what Dawkins fails to recognize is that none of these examples of "morality" represent classical selfless altruism. In each case, the altruist has a vested self-interest in the action. There is a self-serving motive. While he and Harris claim that Christians are often only good because they believe God is watching everything they do, the atheist version of morality implies that we only do good when there is something "in it for us." Goodness for mere goodness' sake is a rare commodity in the human species.

            In the final analysis, Christian theism, based on the morality of Jesus Christ, provides the most foundationally coherent grounding for morally upright behavior. The efforts of Christian missionaries in New Zealand, on behalf of the Maori, are completely consistent with the teachings of Jesus. Muslim theism offers no such grounding. The teachings of the Koran encourage fighting and violence, as you so often point out. The atheist also has no grounding for morally upright behavior, since evolution alone cannot account for an innate human awareness of right and wrong. Does this mean that atheists and Muslims cannot live moral lives? Absolutely not. Only that their worldviews offer no intrinsic warrant for such behavior. 

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