Craig has appeared to not find my reasoning (our reasoning, those of us who agree with this common sense measure) to be appealing and he points to the many real flaws with it. Most of these flaws come down to people not fully recognizing/acknowledging when they are doing harm to others. Although, he has yet to offer what he'd prefer to see in the place of the appeal to the GR/Do No Harm approach.
Craig stated, on his blog...
"I do love how you’ve staked your entire moral code on a rule..."
It's a rule with straightforward, understandable reasoning behind it. What is immoral? That which causes harm. That which we wouldn't want someone else to do to us.
What's wrong with the appeal to this reasoned approach to morality?
This is a reasoned position. People can understand it. It's rational and overtly obvious to all people, regardless of background or culture.
Why should I not do that action which causes harm to innocent people? Because it causes harm to innocent people, and we wouldn't want someone to do this to us if we were innocent. It's exceedingly reasonable.
Do you disagree?
The problem with appeals to a particular religion or a particular God is that not everyone agrees that a given God exists or not everyone agrees with a particular tenets of a given religion.
"Because my religion says..." is a very limiting way to try to define morality. That's fine for the 30% of the world that agrees with the particular tenets of your particular version of your particular religion, but it doesn't fit everyone, nor does the appeal have much of a way to unify everyone.
Additionally, you have humans (traditionally throughout most of history, powerful men) deciding, "This is what I think God calls moral..." and humans are famously oftentimes mistaken about what the gods believe.
After all, of the dozens of other gods and religions in the world, most of us no doubt don't place any credence in what these other religions teach to be moral, do we? We can just agree that OUR God's rules/teachings are right... and even then, "we" in "our" group regularly disagree with one another on many rules even within our group.
On what rationed consistent basis would we choose one religious group (or, some subsets of one religious group, since religions often don't agree with each other even within one religion) to be the authorities on what is and isn't moral?
Appeals to one particular subset of one particular religion is very limiting and would perforce exclude many others (as opposed to help us find common ground). Appeals to a Golden Rule/Do No Harm to Innocents rule is able to unite us and, generally speaking, we can agree upon it, even if imperfectly and we can appeal to it in areas where we disagree.
Appealing to "my group's interpretation of our group's understanding of our group's sacred text" holds little hope of pulling us together in common ground.
Where am I mistaken?
What benefit is there to appeals to one particular faith tradition's sacred text as a rulings book (especially when so much of that text might be opposed to using the book as a rulings book, as in the case of the bible)? I'm not seeing it.
One of Craig's apparent gripes about appeals to the GR/Do No Harm is that we won't always agree on some actions... that people won't live it out perfectly, that it's not objectively provable. And it's true. Humans DO have a history of not living out the GR and of finding reasons to, for instance, own slaves or oppress women or gay folk or others. It IS an imperfect measure of how to live morally.
But two things:
1. It's really not that hard to grasp. We humans get that we wouldn't want someone to rape us or our loved ones, to take our stuff from us, to assault us, to abuse or oppress us... these harms are obvious to most people and appeals to the GR/Do No Harm are a way of saying, "Hey, we shouldn't do this!" and most of us understand why on nearly all the huge harmful actions. Yes, Christians in the past and others today have found a way of saying, "...but we CAN own slaves because..." and finding a reason that allows them to justify that sort of oppression/harm. But that's a human falling prey to hypocrisy problem, not a problem with the measure.
After all, Christians in recent history were able to appeal to their religion's sacred text and traditions to justify oppressing slaves and women and others, so it's a problem with either method. Christians today in parts of the world (along with Muslims) are using their religious texts and traditions to jail and cause harm to gay folk today.
1a. Harm IS measurable. If someone rapes, assaults, kills, steals from, oppresses another, we can see and quantify the harm being done. Sure, when it gets down to finer details, there's more room for disagreement (are coal companies polluting streams - a toxic negative - to generate power that we rely upon - a reasonable positive - a net moral positive or net harm? ...for instance.), but in broad strokes, it's something most of humanity can generally agree upon, even if imperfectly.
2. What's the alternative? One group's particular opinions about what God (or gods) think is moral? Another, more limited, measure that is not objectively provable?
No thanks.
8 comments:
A comment I posted on Craig's place that I'll put here, in case it doesn't make it to his (my comments don't always make it there... it's sort of hit and miss).
Why is it universally immoral to put one’s own safety, pleasure, advancement, and descendants before anyone else?
I don't believe that it's universally immoral to do this.
Answered your questions. Now: What are you proposing in lieu of the GR/Do No Harm ruling as a test for morality for the world at large/the world beyond the circle of those who agree with you?
you’ve ceded truth to a matter of majority rules (you started with “nearly universal”, then played the 5% card, neither of which you’ve proven correct)
I have not. I've fallen back to common sense and reason. IF a majority of the world supporting killing gay and trans children/young adults, then the majority of the world would have failed to live up to the GR/Do No Harm principle, objectively so. They may have offered reasons for the exception, but they still would have literally failed to live up to the reasonable, rational "DO NO HARM" measure, when they've advocated harm. Literally.
Thus, it is not an appeal to the majority, it is an appeal to reason.
I think this is what the founders were doing with their appeal to the "self evident" nature of human rights. We, as humans, evolve morally. Once upon a time it was acceptable and not considered immoral to treat women and children as chattel property. Once upon a time, it was acceptable to enslave people. EVEN THOUGH doing this failed to live up to the GR/Do No Harm rule that societies/philosophies tended to agree upon at the time.
The genius of the Enlightenment thinking was in speaking a more solid truth to what can't be proven objectively but is, no doubt, objectively true: That human rights SHOULD be a guarantee for all people. It is self evident that we should not harm, rape, enslave, oppress, disenfranchise or otherwise harm other human beings. Having no way to objectively prove it, they appealed to the self evident claim because it is and should be self evident to most of us, most of the time.
That we have historically failed to fully recognize it, does not mean that we have failed to recognize it... just that we've imperfectly recognized it.
Am I mistaken?
Do you recognize that the large swaths of the Christian church has historically failed to recognize human rights/the GR/Do No Harm as it relates to slavery, to women's rights, to the oppression of gay folk and immigrants at various times and places? This, in spite of both affirming the GR AND affirming "God's Word" and the rules supposedly found within, right? But we have progressed, and more rights are being recognized all the time.
I suspect that in your circles, you no longer are willing to condemn gay folks getting married an Evil or Moral Wrong and worthy of criminalization (even though plenty of other conservatives still are) and, if so, I'd suggest it has to do with recognizing the value of the GR/Do No Harm as a criteria for moral decisions. Yes, no?
Another comment that I made at Craig's that I'll place here, as it's applicable...
Craig, you keep saying things like... Under your vague moral code, who knows.
My/Jesus' moral code of the GR/Do No Harm is IMPERFECT that it relies upon infallible human beings to implement it and thus, will be as infallible as we humans are, but do you have a LESS vague moral code you're offering in its place?
I have continually freely acknowledged that any moral code, including the GR one, is imperfect as long as it's implemented by imperfect human beings... All I'm saying is that I think the GR/DNH criteria is the most reasonable, most obvious, most universally applicable and LEAST vague option out there, at least that I'm aware of. I don't think "Do no harm" is that vague.
Do you?
IF you have a less vague, more reasonable and clear option, I'd love to hear it.
If you don't, then all I'm left with is the assumption that you can't think of anything else better than what Jesus said (and reason and others agree with): Do unto others as you'd have them do unto you.
Again, thanks for crediting me for Jesus' words, but I really can't take the credit.
Do you recall the context of Jesus (again, NOT MY) teaching? In Matthew, it's in the SOTM, where Jesus is talking about morality and moral codes and says...
“Which of you, if your son asks for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a snake? If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him! So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
He's saying, "Don't you know NOT to give your children a stone when they need bread? NOT to give them a dangerous snake when they want food? (DO NO HARM). Rather," he says, "Do to others as you would have them do to you" and he concludes with...
"FOR THIS SUMS UP THE LAW."
JESUS said that the GR sums up the notion of morality. HOW do we know how to do good things? THE GR. DO NO HARM. Do what you'd like others to do to you.
If Jesus thinks that this is a good summation/short explanation of morality, why is it not good enough for you? Or is it?
What do you think is a better alternative?
Another relevant comment I made at Craig's, where I'm STILL waiting on his better alternative IF he has one (and it's quite clear that he doesn't)...
Craig... The fact that you are so intent on comparing repentance to capital punishment makes me wonder what it is that makes you so unwilling to be honest about you Islam.
I'm not comparing repentance to capital punishment. I'm comparing the oppression of denying rights to gay folk by Christians (which ranges from wanting to see it re-criminalized - as it used to be here in the US - to not allowing gay folk to marry, to not allowing gay folk to adopt, to not allowing human rights protections or basic civil liberties protections to gay folk) to the oppression found in SOME other nations where the oppression is more overt and harmful (imprisonment, death, etc). BOTH forms of oppression are oppression. That's all I'm saying. And ALL of it is harmful and therefore wrong.
But I'm not willing to guess that Christian conservatives don't really support GR when they support oppressive behavior towards gay folk nor am I saying that Muslims and Christians in other nations who support ever MORE oppressive behavior don't really support GR. Just that they all are failing miserably to support the GR in these areas. What is difficult to understand about that?
Again, have you EVER failed to live up to the GR and, if so, did that mean you rejected it out of hand? Or merely that you failed to live up to it in some cases, while still wanting to affirm the GR?
I will answer this question as soon as you demonstrate what’s wrong with the two rational science based alternative I’ve offered. So, stop asking until you prove your claims.
Perhaps you missed where I said that NONE OF US can objectively prove our opinions about criteria for understanding morality. But I CAN prove that behavior that causes harm CAUSES HARM and reaffirm the widespread human belief that we ought not cause harm. Why? Because NONE OF US want harm to be inflicted upon us or our loved ones. We recognize that when someone assaults a loved one of ours for no reason, that this is a great moral wrong. It is self-evident.
Now, I GET that this is not objective proof, but again, we have NO OBJECTIVE PROOF to authoritatively demonstrate ANY criteria is authoritatively THE RIGHT criteria. But reasonable people around the world throughout history have agreed that we ought not do to others that which we wouldn't want done to us.
Are you arguing for moral anarchy, where, since we can't authoritatively objectively prove a criteria for morality, that we MUST affirm that there IS NO NEED for moral codes?
If not, then present what you think is a better alternative.
You don't have anything, Craig. You don't have a better alternative. We can all see that.
I personally would LOVE to see you come up with a better alternative, because I love moral behavior and would love to see an improvement around matters of oppression and harm to innocents. PLEASE, present your better alternative IF YOU HAVE IT.
If you don't (and you don't), then reasonable people can see that and say, well, yes, the GR/Do No Harm probably IS the best criteria we have for morality because of its self evident nature. We GET that it's imperfect and not universally self evident, but it's the best we have.
Until you have something more weighty than nothing, I think this conversation is complete.
Thanks.
Craig - and Marshal and Stan and... who's the other guy? - and all fundamentalists are unable to enter into a rational conversation about establishing guidelines for moral decision making because they have 1 1/2 feet in a pre-modern, pre Enlightenment mythology.
And the purpose of myths are to close off any chance of disturbance. Myths locate group identity within conceptions of time and space such that all present time is related to primordial time: there can be no understanding of seperate epochs where culture changes or is disrupted by changes of how we think of things; and regarding our space, myths serve to make all space sacred such that there is no real private, individualized experience of location and position relative to the whole of the group.
Myths do not serve to provide context for individual being. They serve the community. Myths operate in non-rational, symbol forming language that resists rupture, change, growth, individuation, modernity.
Therefore, Craig et al cannot enter into a conversation based in Enlightenment reason. They are pre-ratrional. Craig et al cannot enter into a discussion based on progress. They are tied to origins. Craig et al cannot reason out a moral program that is not terminal but instead open ended because they do live in the now.
They are prisoners.
Do No Harm vs Republican Party:
15 Americans died from coronavirus this past week.
Trump signed an emergency bipartisan Congressional bill for $8.3 billion dollars to slow and stop the virus.
250 Americans died this last week from gun violence. No funds were directed to stop the killings.
Voltaire, describing Marshal, Craig, Stan, Glen snd the millions like them... some of whom will probably still be around in another 300 years:
“Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is unjust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world.”
Questions on Miracles (Letter 11), 1765
An expert in religious law tried to test Jesus, by asking him, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus answered him with a parable:
There were two CEOs in a certain country and a great plague had come across the land.
One of them, from Texas Roadhouse, said, “here’s what I’ll do; I shall forego my salary and bonuses so that employees can be paid through the epidemic.”
The other CEO was from Hobby Lobby, and widely advertised his personal faith. He downplayed the severity of the virus, and would not pay his employees who were unable to work. He balked at closing stores, saying his wife had a message from God to stay open.”
Jesus said, “Who do you think was a neighbor to those in need?”
The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy.”
Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”
Evangelical protestants who gather together to worship are participating in irrational death cults.
Much less destroying their theological foundation of sola scriptura.
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