“Is God the Source of Morality?”
Is it rational to ground right and wrong in commands issued by God?
Matthew Flannagan (left, affirmative) vs Raymond Bradley (right, negative)
University of Auckland, 2^nd of August 2010

Few subjects in philosophy are more interesting to me than the meta-ethical question of what makes any moral claims true. My particular area of interest is the question of whether or not moral facts can be grounded in a purely naturalistic view of reality. The topic of this debate therefore grabbed my interest as soon as it was announced – and this was in no small part due to the fact that one of the debate participants was my good friend Matthew Flannagan, who blogs at MandM. What follows is my summary and review of that debate. As someone with no duty whatsoever to not take a side in the debate, I’ll comment on the arguments as they unfold throughout the debate rather like one commentating a live boxing match. And now the opening bell rings.
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Recently I read a few comments by Richard Dawkins on the phrase “a Christian child” or “a Muslim child” etc. he writes:

A phrase like “Catholic child” or “Muslim child” should clang furious bells of protest in the mind, just as we flinch when we hear “One man, one vote.” Children are too young to know their religious opinions. Just as you can’t vote until you are eighteen, you should be free to choose your own cosmology and ethics without society’s impertinent presumption that you will automatically inherit those of your parents. We’d be aghast to be told of a Leninist child or a neo-conservative child or a Hayekian monetarist child. So isn’t it a kind of child abuse to speak of a Catholic child or a Protestant child? Especially in Northern Ireland and Glasgow, where such labels, handed down over generations, have divided neighborhoods for centuries and can even amount to a death warrant?

Catholic child? Flinch. Protestant child? Squirm. Muslim child? Shudder. Everybody’s consciousness should be raised to this level. Occasionally a euphemism is needed, and I suggest “Child of Jewish (etc.) parents.” When you come down to it, that’s all we are really talking about anyway. Just as the upside-down (Northern Hemisphere chauvinism again: flinch!) map from New Zealand raises consciousness about a geographical truth, children should hear themselves described not as “Christian children” but as “children of Christian parents.” This in itself would raise their consciousness, empower them to make up their own minds, and choose which religion, if any, they favor, rather than just assume that religion means “same beliefs as parents.” I could well imagine that this linguistically coded freedom to choose might lead children to choose no religion at all.

There’s a certain disanalogy here with political points of view. Being a “Hayekian monetarist” or a “Leninist” is largely (or at least to some extent and in an important way) about cherishing certain values, whereas religious belief has more to do with affirming certain claims as metaphysically true.

But more importantly, Richard Dawkins is on record as treating all factual beliefs as “scientific” beliefs. There’s a factual answer to the question of whether or not the moon orbits the earth, or how many protons there are in an atom of lead. I doubt that Professor Dawkins would look kindly on the parent or teacher who answered a young boy’s question about the moon by saying “I’m sorry Timmy, you’re too young. I can’t possibly impose my view of the moon’s movement upon you. How dare I try to make you share my beliefs.” I’m interested in your thoughts. Do you agree with Richard Dawkins? Should fact claims that most people would consider “religious” be treated as exceptional – unlike all other beliefs – and excluded from the beliefs we share with our children? If so, why?

I do wonder, too, how Richard Dawkins would answer his own child (hypothically) if she asked him: Is there a god?

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The kalam cosmological argument is a version of the argument from first causes. It is part of a philosophical case for the existence of God, and goes like this:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence (This is the major premise)
2. The universe began to exist (This is the minor premise)
3. Therefore the universe has a cause of its existence (This is the conclusion)

A response has been offered to the argument. You won’t find this response in textbooks or peer reviewed journal articles on philosophy of religion, but it’s out there – on movie and video game discussion forums, in YouTube clips (and in the comments section of YouTube clips) and the like.
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James S. Spiegel, The Making of an Atheist: How Immorality Leads to Unbelief (Chicago: Moody, 2010), 141 pages including notes.

One of the most endearing features of James Spiegel’s new book, The Making of an Atheist, is that it is quite short. You might think I’m kidding, or that this is a slight on the quality of the book (which is excellent, actually). It’s not. Dr Spiegel has some points to make, he makes them, and then he’s done. This is how I think all good Christian scholarship should be done (actually this is how all scholarship should be done, whatever the cause in which name it is done). It doesn’t take long to see what he’s getting at, it’s not hard to grasp, and once you’ve appreciated the point, you are allowed to leave, better off for having invested a relatively short amount of precious time.

But brevity is (fortunately) not the only feature of this intellectually compelling and eminently enjoyable read. Spiegel is a Christian writing on atheism, so it’s natural to assume that his goal is to show that atheism is false. However, that atheism is false is not the thesis of this book. Yes, the author reveals that he does think that atheism is false, and yes he also gives some reasons for thinking that it is false (just as those engaged in the science of religion might also offer their own reasons for thinking that this or that religious belief is false), but to fixate on that at the expense of the book’s overall theme would be to miss the point. The subject of the book is the fact that once we get past the idea of people being intellectually compelled to believe atheism on the grounds of rational argumentation (which is actually a rare phenomenon) there are, from a Christian perspective, identifiable causes of atheism that are both biblical and very often readily identifiable in practice. One of those major causes is the sinful desire for moral autonomy from God, and in particular the desire to engage in a sinful lifestyle (that is, a lifestyle marked by a rejection of the ethical mores of commitment to obeying God).
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I spotted Richard Dawkins’ DVD for sale at richarddawkins.net yesterday. I can’t believe they let such a whopping typo make it all the way through the production process.

I fixed it.

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It seems that some online unbelievers have trouble staying up to date with the fields in which they take themselves to be experts. Take Keith Augustine over at the Internet Infidels for example. He believes that he has the divine command theory of ethics (DCT) all sewn up.

For some reason, divine command ethics is a real stumbling block for its detractors. Mr Augustine, for example, trips up right at the outset when he is merely trying to tell his readers what the theory is. “On DCT the only thing that makes an act morally wrong is that God prohibits doing it, and all that it means to say that torture is wrong is that God prohibits torture.” In fact, one of the very first thing that one learns when becoming acquainted with a divine command theory of ethics is that it is not the view that “X is wrong” has the same meaning (i.e. is semantically equivalent to) “God prohibits X.” To boldly describe a theory like this while telling everyone how silly it is would be a bit like a young earth creationist saying something like “evolution is the theory that humans descended from chimps.” You would immediately be laughed out of town, with the expectation that you will never return.
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As I noted recently, Richard Dawkins has been at his fairy tale telling best, claiming that when Pat Robertson blamed Haiti’s poverty and earthquake on a nonexistent pact with Satan, in spite of what Christians say and have said for centuries and in spite of what the Bible actually teaches, it is Robertson who is the true Christian here, representing genuine Christian teaching. You know, the stuff that Christians don’t teach.

Since Dawkins is a fair and even handed person who would never single out a religious crank as representative of Christians and not apply the same standard elsewhere, I now wait with bated breath for him to start claiming that all people of a politically left wing persuasion believe that the United States of America is behind all human suffering. After all, a famous leftist crank said it.

I’m waiting. Sick him, Dawkins.

Hat tip to halfdone for the clip!

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As many readers will know, shortly after the earthquake in Haiti that did so much damage and claimed so many lives, Pat Robertson (a somewhat notorious televangelist involved in what has been dubbed “Word of Faith” theology) said something (I suppose I should say that he said yet another thing) that Christians in general didn’t think much of. His claim is that in history, the Haitians of the time made a pact with the devil to obtain freedom from servitude to the French, and that because of this, they have suffered numerous travesties since then, including this earthquake. Here he is in action:

Unsurprisingly, the response to this from the Christian community has been fairly negative. Christian theology just doesn’t teach this. The idea that whenever something bad happens to a person or to a group it is the result of a wicked thing previously done by that person or group is not one that you can find in the work of any major Christian theologian in history, as far as I am aware (I am setting aside for now the obvious fact that in this case the people who suffered and died were not even the same people who allegedly swore this pact – a pact for which there’s really no evidence anyway). For that matter, it is not taught in the Bible either. In fact there are passages in the Bible that directly deny this view.
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Francis Collins’ reputation is as is the brilliant scientist who cracked the human genome. Because of his outstanding qualifications, not too long ago he was appointed as the National Institutes of Health (NIH). It’s also no secret – because Dr Collins makes it no secret – that he is a Christian. It is the latter fact that has rubbed Stephen Pinker the wrong way.

It’s not, Pinker wants us to rest assured, the mere fact that Dr Collins is a Christian that’s a problem. “But in Collins’s case,” Pinker tells us, “it is not a matter of private belief, but public advocacy.” What Pinker would have preferred is a policy of don’t ask – don’t tell. What we really can’t have, you see, is for people to know that a public advocate of science is a Christian (my comment here is – “too late!”). And why is that?

The major concern for Pinker is here:

Collins, in his book, eggs on fellow evangelical Christians in their anti-scientific beliefs. He tells them that they are “right to hold fast to the truths of the Bible” and to “the certainty that the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted.” Granted, he is not a young-earth or intelligent-design creationist. But he has stated that God interacts with creation, in particular, that he designed the evolutionary process to ensure that human intelligence, morality, and Judaeo-Christian religious belief would evolve. That is far more than just expressing an opinion. That is advocacy, which gives incalculable encouragement the forces that have been hostile to science for the past eight years.

So instead of Collins’ work serving as an obvious counter-example to the stereotypical and clearly false claim that religious people are enemies of science, instead Pinker only welcomes Christians who stay in the closet, so that the myth can be perpetuated! Unfortunately, Pinker’s failure to voice equal condemnation of the public role of the likes of Richard Dawkins puts the lie to any thought that his concern is a genuinely scientific one. Dawkins holds a position as Oxford’s Professor For The Understanding Of Science, and yet he has gained more fame in recent years for his advocacy of atheism than for anything else.

Pinker’s rationale is clear: We want Science to be positioned in opposition to religion, so nobody who advocates religion should be welcomed into the hallowed halls of science. Those who fly off the handle at God, on the other hand, we welcome with open arms. Dr Pinker, if you want to convince people that there are no gatekeepers, trying to “expel” the openly religious due to a desire to push the view that science is atheism, then – as the kids say online, you’re doing it wrong.

Glenn Peoples

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A true Scot if er' there were one!

The “no true Scotsman” fallacy (as it is called) is illustrated like this:

William: No Scotsman wears underwear under his kilt
Angus: Not true! I’m a bonnie Scotsman, and I wear underwear under me kilt!
William: Ach! Then yer nee a true Scotsman! Away with ye!

One who uses this fallacy makes their position beyond critique by just throwing in ad hoc modifications (like “true”) to their criteria when somebody comes up with a counter example, so that their position really can’t be falsified. A really bad example would be:

Ben: No scientist is religious.
David: Woah, um, have you actually checked? Because I have this whole list of scientists right here who say that they are Christians!
Ben: Psh, Christians? Then they can’t be real scientists.

That’s worded a little more blatantly than you’re likely to hear anyone actually make a claim like that, I just used a really obvious example. What prompted me to write this blog entry, however, is a type of argument that comes up from time to time. It’s basically like this:

Richard: Christianity is evil!
Alister: Evil? How so?
Richard: Well just read this account of a man who was tortured by fellow Christians because he didn’t belong to their church! They killed his family, burned down his house, then tortured him!
Alister: Richard, anyone who would kill a family, burn the house down and then torture a man because of his beliefs really isn’t much of a Christian.
Richard: Ah HA! You just used the no true Scotsman fallacy!

Notice that this isn’t a case of Christians excusing horrid actions done in the past. On the contrary, it involves Christians today condemning those actions. But they do excuse Christianity of being the culprit, on the grounds that someone who carries out these actions is “not a true Christian,” or “not much of a Christian,” or something worded along those lines. This, it is alleged, is fallacious, being just as ad hoc as the no true Scotsman argument.

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