RE: Moral Acts
January 11, 2017 at 1:06 pm
(This post was last modified: January 11, 2017 at 1:06 pm by Neo-Scholastic.)
Darwin’s Doubt refers to a quote at the end of The Origin of Species in which he expresses a lack of confidence in the reliability of human mind if it is only an instinctual adaptation and not in some way teleological, i.e. directed towards fundamental truths and not those that are merely expedient. To paraphrase, how can we trust our convictions any more than we would those of a monkey?
But getting back to my original, and admittedly snarky, comment. The common principles to which proponents of purely secular morality appeal cannot be just a legacy of evolutionary pressures, despite assertions to the contrary. They have been coopted by atheist s from religion – principles such as human dignity, personal autonomy, and equality of value.
Secularists talk about the Golden & Silver Rules. Those only work by privileging empathy over other evolved instincts such as jealousy, xenophobia, and status seeking. Alternatively if we adhere to those “rules” for practical reasons, like being kind so that others return the favor, there will be times when being cruel could be more advantageous.
Personal autonomy? In non-industrial economies slavery can be easily justified. For such a society to thrive, someone has to do the innumerable shit jobs and historically the incentives have been brute force and exploitation. It is not an accident that slavery was abolished first in Christian nations in which some fervent believers came to the realization that slavery was incompatible with the special revelation that all humans were created in the image of God.
If you ground your morality in the survival and flourishing of the human species, then human dignity and equality go by the wayside. By that metric the life of a fertile 14-year old girl is more valuable than 50-year old woman. The life of the king has more value than the serf’s.
For that matter, Nature places no value on human life. The Universe could give a care. Any value people assign to human life is self-serving. What purely secular principle justifies moral obligations to other sentient species?
This is not to say that moral principles cannot be at least partly grounded in observations of Nature, i.e. Natural Law. However, doing so requires recognition of normative qualities based on a transcendent idea of “The Good” tied to an essential human nature. Both concepts are foreign to ontological naturalism.
My point is that today’s secular society now takes beliefs in equality, personal autonomy, and human dignity for granted because men and women of faith worked tirelessly to ingrain them into our culture. Give credit where credit is due, my friends.
But getting back to my original, and admittedly snarky, comment. The common principles to which proponents of purely secular morality appeal cannot be just a legacy of evolutionary pressures, despite assertions to the contrary. They have been coopted by atheist s from religion – principles such as human dignity, personal autonomy, and equality of value.
Secularists talk about the Golden & Silver Rules. Those only work by privileging empathy over other evolved instincts such as jealousy, xenophobia, and status seeking. Alternatively if we adhere to those “rules” for practical reasons, like being kind so that others return the favor, there will be times when being cruel could be more advantageous.
Personal autonomy? In non-industrial economies slavery can be easily justified. For such a society to thrive, someone has to do the innumerable shit jobs and historically the incentives have been brute force and exploitation. It is not an accident that slavery was abolished first in Christian nations in which some fervent believers came to the realization that slavery was incompatible with the special revelation that all humans were created in the image of God.
If you ground your morality in the survival and flourishing of the human species, then human dignity and equality go by the wayside. By that metric the life of a fertile 14-year old girl is more valuable than 50-year old woman. The life of the king has more value than the serf’s.
For that matter, Nature places no value on human life. The Universe could give a care. Any value people assign to human life is self-serving. What purely secular principle justifies moral obligations to other sentient species?
This is not to say that moral principles cannot be at least partly grounded in observations of Nature, i.e. Natural Law. However, doing so requires recognition of normative qualities based on a transcendent idea of “The Good” tied to an essential human nature. Both concepts are foreign to ontological naturalism.
My point is that today’s secular society now takes beliefs in equality, personal autonomy, and human dignity for granted because men and women of faith worked tirelessly to ingrain them into our culture. Give credit where credit is due, my friends.
