Jason Rennie interviewed me for the Sci Phi podcast, and now you can listen to me babble about religion and science. I have got to do something about my office phone, though — the sound quality is terrible, and I’ve gotten the same complaint from others.
Or maybe that’s what I actually sound like, with a staticky hiss and the occasional feedback ringing. That would be kind of cool. It would almost make up for my mild manner.
What you need, PZ, is for a professional phone sanitizer to come over and clean up your handset. No doubt it’s all nastily clogged up.
Either that, or the Homeland Security wiretap is causing the interference.
PZ sounds too mild mannered to live up to his fanatical atheist title. He needs a more evil voice to go along with his devil horns and 666 tattoo.
I could have almost done with more piratical Arrrrrr’s.
Wait a minute,
Wasn’t the Sci-Phi show guy the same person who was trolling around here a few weeks ago?
“Either that, or the Homeland Security wiretap is causing the interference.”
Definitely.
Oh? It was equipment that caused that? I just thought that, naturally, you were speaking the Black Speech of Mordor.
Our phonetap on PZ’s line does not cause any interference!
If you understand probability, it’s quite easy to work out where morality comes from. The Selfish Gene does a really great job of explaining it. I suppose you really have to understand probability and population modeling (which every first year calculus student learns, I believe). It’s really not difficult to fathom though. It’s really quite simple and quite elegant. Unfortunately, you have to assume as a baseline that we’re evolved. And most people won’t even go that far.
Distortion Boy!
Rennie does hint at a problem with your reasons for affirming atheism, but he doesn’t vigorously press the point. It seems from your writings that you don’t believe that God (or a “designer” — benevolent or not) exists because positing the existence of God does not help to explain observed phenomena. More generally, you seem to believe that it is unreasonable to believe that something exists if positing its existence does not help to explain observed phenomena. But if that is right, then, by your own lights, you have no reason to believe that there exist moral truths, because positing the same does not help to explain any observed phenomena.
Moral skepticism is a respectable position, but you held in the Rennie interview that the Virginia Tech gunman was morally opprobrious, which suggests to me that in fact you believe there exist moral truths. If you believe that, then you must deny both that it is unreasonable to believe that something exists if its existence does not help to explain observed phenomena and any other formulation of the verifiability criterion. If you deny the verifiability criterion then you are left with the task of explaining why belief in God is unreasonable (as you obviously believe it is) while belief in the existence of moral truths is reasonable.
Angus, PZ isn’t being inconsistent. Of course moral truths exist.
We evolved to be moral agents. Moral agency, while depending upon a fair bit of relativism, must be anchored in some moral facts. For instance, it is wrong to boil alive human babies, (in normal circumstances).
I think that the moral facts come out of an imperative to propagate our genes, within the context of our being a species of social animal. We commonly have sub-conscious motivations to facilitate this. These will have a genetic component.
Unfortunately, for moral consistency, some of us don’t have the right sub-conscious motivations, but these aberrations may have aided group survival in other ways, such as through inter-group rivalries.
Angus, the idea of moral absolutes defined by a ‘God’ or group of Gods is often alien to the mindset of those of a rationalism based materialistic nature. If we, as a species, are the result of a long process of gradual evolution then it should come as no surprise that many aspects of our nature have strong selective advantages. One of these factors is altruistic behavior towards other people. According to evolutionary theory we have evolved from an ape that was also the ancestor of chimpanzees and gorillas, two species who, like humans, live in large family or communal groups. Examination of the behavior of these, our relatives, can provide empirical evidence of the truth of the hypothesis that altruistic behavior or ‘morals’ if you like, are unique to us, or are common to our relatives.
If its a choice between evolutionary derived altruistic tendencies and God given ‘morals’ I’m afraid I simply have no need for the latter hypothesis.
there was a talk in my university (Bristol, UK) last week that was presented as a discussion on how the scientific community should respond to the rise of creationism in america. the speakers were both american, one baptist and one catholic, and they were essentially arguing for a greater degree of respect for religion amongst scientists. they had this horrendous chart which set up a false continuum between genesis literalists, on the one hand, through more moderate believers, through to hardcore evolutionary atheism at the other extreme. they put up pictures of dawkins and dennett as examples of how not to behave, and seemed to be asking that the evolutionists be willing to give a little ground so that scientists and ‘moderate’ believers could meet each other half way. as a phd student in philosophy of science i was cringing from start to finish, but the message i came away with overall was that most americans dont really understand what science is, and see religion and evolution as competing ideologies, to be chosen between on personal grounds. part of their message was that the conflation between atheism and evolution is helping to solidify this false dichotomy between god and good, on one hand, and science and atheism on the other. what is to be done about this? how is science teaching ever going to improve if people are associating it with evil?!
Uh-oh — you mean Militant Appeasers are proselytizing in the UK now?
Who were these rascals?
I agree… better phone please. Hard… to… edit…
I enjoyed your last remark, about your upcoming book explaining how to integrate science and religion…
Hi all,
Sorry about the quality of the connection. Dr Myers came through quite quiet on the recording and I did the best to boost the level and make it audible.
Unfortunately it is unavoidable that you boost the noise level at the same time.
It was an interesting interview thought and I thank Dr Myers for doing it an mentioning it.
The follow up interview I did with Dr Charles Townes should be out in a day or so as well if anybody is interested in that.
Jason
hi
yeah they are creeping over here. there is a creationist zoo near bristol called Noah’s ark that does a lot of school trips. im gonna go and heckle em. the people who did the talk were a catholic guy (Stephen Brusatte) studying evolutionary biology in bristol and a baptist girl (Jamie Gianoutsos)…not sure where she came from. she was so pretty and well-organised that i was cynically wondering where she’s been wheeled out from. we usually follow america after a time lag so it looks like the fight is coming over here…
MartinC and Richard,
it seems to me that the fact that altruism has been selected for in certain species is not evidence that, for instance, “murder is wrong” is a true proposition. Consider: it may be that those who refrain from committing murder have a greater chance of reproducing successfully. However, one can (admittedly with some difficulty) imagine a circumstance in which those who do not refrain from committing murder have a greater chance of reproducing successfully.
It is my intuition (although the intuition is not universally shared, e.g. it is denied by moral skeptics) that murder is wrong even if those who do not refrain from committing murder have a greater chance of reproducing successfully. However, if this is so then whether we have “evolutionary derived altruistic tendencies” or not is irrelevant to whether we have a moral obligation not to murder. Moreover, if you (or anybody) share my intuition that murder is wrong (and so that it is a fact that, ceteris paribus, one ought not to murder) then it is hypocritical for you to deny the existence of God because there is no scientific evidence that God exists; there is also no scientific evidence that murder is wrong (or, at least, I can’t imagine how one would go about testing the hypothesis that “murder is wrong.” One could come close — propositions like “most people believe that murder is wrong” seem, in principle, falsifiable — but I don’t know what would falsify “murder is wrong”).
As a final note and just to be clear, I am not saying that it is hypocritical to affirm that there are moral truths (e.g., to affirm that murder really is wrong) while denying that God exists — the Euthyphro dilemma exposes, in my opinion, the fallacy inherent in the concept that “God makes morality.” However, it is hypocritical to deny that God exists because there is no scientific evidence that God exists, and not to deny that there are moral truths (because there is also no scientific evidence that there are moral truths).
Best,
Angus
Rather than debate the plausibility of there being specific moral absolutes coded into our genes, perhaps we could approach the genetic basis for morality in the same way theorists do about the genetic basis for human language: our brains have a biological predisposition to acquire language, although ‘language’ itself–as in the abstract collection of physical words and syntax–is obviously variable and prone to shifting. What language you learn isn’t as important as having *some* sort of social construct for communication. While there may be certain cross-cultural trends in the way different groups of people construct their morals(which probably does indicate some degree of genetic influence), there’s obviously also a hell of a lot of variation. I think it’s probably more important just for a group to have some agreed-upon set of rules–even if some of them are completely arbitrary–in order to maintain order and a sense of purpose in their social relations. In other words…we have a predisposition to adopt some sort of morality, however the end result is heavily influenced by culture/environment.
(It’s been several years since I last took a psych class, so if there’s some other, more widely accepted theory about the genetics of language I’d welcome the education)
There are no absolute moral truths. One can imagine a species or even a human culture where murder is considered good. Moral “truths” are rules that human beings have agreed upon. We can’t derive the rules of ice hockey from science, but no one bitches about that.
And “murder is wrong” is not even a particularly universal moral insight, since many of us accept ending human lives in limited circumstances (war, self defense, euthanasia). “Murder is wrong” translates to “Killing a human in the wrong circumstances is wrong” which is more a tautology than a deep moral truth.
Windy, to deny that there are moral truths for human beings is to deny the truth status of, “it is wrong to boil alive human babies, (in normal circumstances)”.
This may not be true for an alien intelligence, but even that seems difficult to imagine or justify. Maybe if they’re not social animals, & boiling doesn’t cause pain to their babies, maybe it could be said that the statement is not a moral truth. But for humans it is.
Angus, “there is also no scientific evidence that there are moral truths”, may be disputed. The evidence is derived from our behaviour as social animals, & as moral agents. We’ve evolved a morality based upon tit-for-tat, & there’s scientific evidence for that. Anything that prevents the flourishing of humans as social animals may be immoral.
Abortion & euthanasia could simplistically be seen as immoral, but, taking a broader view of human society rather than the particular individual, & considering the limited status of the to be aborted or euthanized individual, these acts may be seen to have good moral status. I am not arguing that moral truths exist ‘out there’ as Plato’s forms. Rather, they exist in relation to our flourishing as social animals.
Windy, you write, “There are no absolute moral truths. One can imagine a species or even a human culture where murder is considered good.” Now I write, “There are no empirical truths. One can imagine a species or even a human culture where young earth creationism is considered true.” Plainly, what “a species or even a human culture” believes to be the case has no bearing on what actually is the case.
Perhaps you are right that “moral “truths” are rules that human beings have agreed upon” -and there is no doubt some good scientific explanation for why humans have agreed upon one set of rules as opposed to another (e.g. the agreement adumbrates an evolutionary stable strategy) – but all this does not imply that there are no moral truths, and until you give an argument for moral skepticism, I will continue to affirm that it is a normative fact that, inter alia, rape and murder are wrong.
Richard, you suggest that any behavior that “prevents the flourishing of humans as social animals may be immoral.” My question is why? There is certainly no experiment that can test the proposition “any behavior that prevents the flourishing of humans as social animals may be immoral.” Just like there is no experiment that can test the proposition “God exists.” But you seem to believe (or have adopted, for the purposes of this discussion, the persona of one who believes) that the former proposition is true while the latter is false. But both propositions are not empirically testable, so if you affirm that former is true and deny that the latter is true, you cannot deny the latter because it is non-testable; if it is irrational to affirm any proposition that is non-testable then it is irrational to affirm both of the propositions in question here. Thus, there must be some reason other than that it is non-testable that you deny the proposition “God exists.”
All this talk of naturalistic accounts of moral knowledge and the like. I think G.K. Chesterton summed it up really well.
Man is an exception, whatever else he is. If he is not the image of God, then he is a disease of the dust. If it is not true that a divine being fell, then we can only say that one of the animals went entirely off its head.
– G.K. Chesterton
That was a rather silly thing to write. One can indeed imagine a planet/universe where a young earth is true and empirically verifiable. That doesn’t mean that there are no empirical truths because they are just that- empirical. There is something outside that culture that supports those findings. Where are the absolute moral truths outside our culture?
Point of philosophy: moral realism and extreme relativism/moral skepticism are not the only two possible metaethical positions …
(In fact, in a way I am both a moral realist and a relativist of sorts.)
Windy,
First, my point is that you cited the fact that one can imagine a species or human culture that considers murder to be good as evidence for there being no absolute truths. Clearly, however, that is not evidence for there being no absolute truths, because one can imagine a species or human culture that considers obviously false empirical statements true, but that doesn’t mean that there are no empirical truths. Put another way, just because a whole bunch of people believe that some statement (be it “murder is good” or “the Earth was created 6,000 years ago”) is true doesn’t make it true. In short, the only argument that you have given for the denial of moral absolutes consists in noting that one can imagine a brutal and noxious species or human culture — that isn’t much of an argument.
Second, I find your question — “where are the absolute moral truths outside our culture?” — baffling. You seem to be asking me why I think a moral proposition’s truth is not contingent upon whether a culture generally affirms the moral proposition. I’ll assume that that is your question, and my answer is that if a moral proposition’s truth is contingent upon whether a culture generally affirms the moral proposition then, in pre-1950s South, segregation was morally permissible, and in Nazi Germany genocide was morally permissible. However, because both segregation and genocide are morally impermissible — and would be even if “culture” believed them to be morally permissible — a moral proposition’s truth is not contingent upon whether a culture generally affirms the moral proposition.
OK, if we have two cultures, one where old earth belief is the norm and one where young earth belief is the norm, have they any way of settling their controversy?
What if we have two cultures, one saying “it’s a moral truth that murder is good” (for example, they practice Spartan type murder of the unfit) and one saying that “it’s a moral truth that murder is wrong”, how should they settle their controversy? You seem to be saying that the latter can simply say “neener neener, our moral truth is the correct one”
“One can imagine????” Brutal cultures are not a matter of imagination! Most past cultures, by our standards, were incredibly brutal and even in modern cultures brutality abounds.
Argument from adverse consequences. Look, I don’t like it any more than you do that many societies have done reprehensible things and apparently seen nothing wrong with it. But if we want society to be a certain way then we should take responsibility for it and not hide behind “morality says so”, because that seems fragile.
(In addition, the oppressed and murdered parties probably generally don’t affirm the morality that allows for oppression and murder)
Because you say so?
Angus, you say, “Richard, you suggest that any behavior that “prevents the flourishing of humans as social animals may be immoral.” My question is why? There is certainly no experiment that can test the proposition “any behavior that prevents the flourishing of humans as social animals may be immoral.”
I would suggest that the very definition of what we consider to be moral is to do with our flourishing, within human society. This includes both pursuing personal fulfillment & meeting our obligations to others.
How can this be tested? Since morality comes out of human psychology, then it is humans that must be the measure of it. That is why morality is frequently relative. But it is still the case that some moral facts do obtain, such as it being always wrong to boil human babies alive in normal circumstances. Consider the following scenario: a homicidal maniac invades a maternity ward & holds a number of babies. He then demands that a nurse boils one third of them alive oe else he will sadistically torture & kill the other two-thirds. This clearly does not constitute normal circumstances.
The bottom line is that the definition of the morally good is made by a majority of normal human beings. So, much of morality is relative to their particular social mores, as we observe.
Windy,
Two points:
(1) on the account of morality you are suggesting, somebody living in a society in which enslaving black people is considered morally acceptable who denies that enslaving black people is morally acceptable is doing so mistakenly . If you are willing to embrace that consequence then you at least have a consistent theory of morality (if not one that is correct).
(2) You still failed to answer my question. What makes it the case that those who deny that the earth is more than 6,000 years are wrong (irrespective of whether most others believe that the earth is more than 6,000 years old), while those who deny that murder is immoral are wrong only if the rest of the culture of which they are a member do not deny that murder is immoral?
Angus, it looks like Windy isn’t about to reply, so I’ll do it.
In answer to your question, “What makes it the case that those who deny that the earth is more than 6,000 years are wrong (irrespective of whether most others believe that the earth is more than 6,000 years old), while those who deny that murder is immoral are wrong only if the rest of the culture of which they are a member do not deny that murder is immoral?”
In the case of the age of the Earth, the figure of 6 000 years is at variance with well-established scientific findings. The age of the Earth is derived according to various theories in physics & chemistry. It doesn’t mastter what most people might believe, if they are not informed by science.
In the case of murder (as commonly understood) being judged as immoral, this does depend upon what most people believe, because it’s a ‘fact’ that is derived from human psychological considerations. (Inter-tribal conflict resulting in members of one group killing members of another group may be judged as murder or as war casualties -it’s relative. This sort of thing makes ethical facts much less definite than physical facts.)