Showing posts with label moral absolutes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moral absolutes. Show all posts

Friday, October 17, 2014

Thoughts on a Statement by Cardinal Marx

In the article Amid criticism, Cardinal Marx supports synod's midterm report :: Catholic News Agency (CNA), we get this comment from Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich, on same sex relationships:

“homosexuals who have been faithful, one to the other, for 30-35 years, and they take care the one of the other until the very last moment of life. But they live in irregular situation for the Church… as a Church, can I say that all of this has no value because we are speaking about a homosexual relation?”

“I cannot say: it’s all black, it’s all white,” Cardinal Marx stated. “And we cannot stand behind the logic of ‘everything or nothing.’”

I must say, with all due respect to his office, I am perplexed by Cardinal Marx and his statement. If we recognize that participating in homosexual acts are condemned by God, then we have to say that a same-sex relationship can never go beyond the level of platonic friendship. If a relationship goes beyond this, then the Church cannot accept it, and must seek to guide such a relationship towards a place that is right in the eyes of God.

More clarification would be helpful, but as it stands, this appears to be a fallacy of the middle ground. There is no middle ground between contradictory positions. When one party says “homosexual acts are sinful” and the other says “homosexual acts are not sinful,” there is no middle ground. This is a situation where one position must be true and one must be false.

I think we also have the appeal to pity fallacy. If the hypothetical couple mentioned has been together for 30-35 years and have affection for each other, this is still not a justification for finding some sort of compromise on calling it a sin. There simply are relationships which can never be recognized as valid. For example, consider polygamy and the convert who comes to the Catholic Church from such a culture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us:

2387 The predicament of a man who, desiring to convert to the Gospel, is obliged to repudiate one or more wives with whom he has shared years of conjugal life, is understandable. However polygamy is not in accord with the moral law. “[Conjugal] communion is radically contradicted by polygamy; this, in fact, directly negates the plan of God which was revealed from the beginning, because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women who in matrimony give themselves with a love that is total and therefore unique and exclusive.” The Christian who has previously lived in polygamy has a grave duty in justice to honor the obligations contracted in regard to his former wives and his children.

Despite years of living together polygamy is behavior which cannot be considered compatible with the teaching of the Church. I believe the same obligation follows for same sex couples, cohabiting couples and couples who were divorced and invalidly remarried. As the Catechism points out (#1789):

One may never do evil so that good may result from it.

Now the Church can, and should, develop ways of helping the people who have made decisions which place them in opposition to what God has made known to us. But these ways can never compromise Our Lord’s teaching. They have to be aimed at bringing these people back to follow Christ, and recognizing that He must be first in our lives. This isn’t some bureaucratic rule from the Church. This is what Jesus Christ Himself said in Luke 14:26-27.

26 “If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 

Jesus also said in Matthew 5:29-30,

29 *If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.

Even though it can cause us some pain in this life, we do have to recognize that following Christ obliges us to reject certain behaviors and follow Him (Matthew 16:24).

If Cardinal Marx can find a better way to help people in these situations change their ways, that is good. But at the moment, I just can’t see how his words can be reconciled with Christ’s.

Thoughts on a Statement by Cardinal Marx

In the article Amid criticism, Cardinal Marx supports synod's midterm report :: Catholic News Agency (CNA), we get this comment from Cardinal Marx, Archbishop of Munich, on same sex relationships:

“homosexuals who have been faithful, one to the other, for 30-35 years, and they take care the one of the other until the very last moment of life. But they live in irregular situation for the Church… as a Church, can I say that all of this has no value because we are speaking about a homosexual relation?”

“I cannot say: it’s all black, it’s all white,” Cardinal Marx stated. “And we cannot stand behind the logic of ‘everything or nothing.’”

I must say, with all due respect to his office, I am perplexed by Cardinal Marx and his statement. If we recognize that participating in homosexual acts are condemned by God, then we have to say that a same-sex relationship can never go beyond the level of platonic friendship. If a relationship goes beyond this, then the Church cannot accept it, and must seek to guide such a relationship towards a place that is right in the eyes of God.

More clarification would be helpful, but as it stands, this appears to be a fallacy of the middle ground. There is no middle ground between contradictory positions. When one party says “homosexual acts are sinful” and the other says “homosexual acts are not sinful,” there is no middle ground. This is a situation where one position must be true and one must be false.

I think we also have the appeal to pity fallacy. If the hypothetical couple mentioned has been together for 30-35 years and have affection for each other, this is still not a justification for finding some sort of compromise on calling it a sin. There simply are relationships which can never be recognized as valid. For example, consider polygamy and the convert who comes to the Catholic Church from such a culture. The Catechism of the Catholic Church tells us:

2387 The predicament of a man who, desiring to convert to the Gospel, is obliged to repudiate one or more wives with whom he has shared years of conjugal life, is understandable. However polygamy is not in accord with the moral law. “[Conjugal] communion is radically contradicted by polygamy; this, in fact, directly negates the plan of God which was revealed from the beginning, because it is contrary to the equal personal dignity of men and women who in matrimony give themselves with a love that is total and therefore unique and exclusive.” The Christian who has previously lived in polygamy has a grave duty in justice to honor the obligations contracted in regard to his former wives and his children.

Despite years of living together polygamy is behavior which cannot be considered compatible with the teaching of the Church. I believe the same obligation follows for same sex couples, cohabiting couples and couples who were divorced and invalidly remarried. As the Catechism points out (#1789):

One may never do evil so that good may result from it.

Now the Church can, and should, develop ways of helping the people who have made decisions which place them in opposition to what God has made known to us. But these ways can never compromise Our Lord’s teaching. They have to be aimed at bringing these people back to follow Christ, and recognizing that He must be first in our lives. This isn’t some bureaucratic rule from the Church. This is what Jesus Christ Himself said in Luke 14:26-27.

26 “If any one comes to me without hating his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. 27 Whoever does not carry his own cross and come after me cannot be my disciple. 

Jesus also said in Matthew 5:29-30,

29 *If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body thrown into Gehenna. 30 And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one of your members than to have your whole body go into Gehenna.

Even though it can cause us some pain in this life, we do have to recognize that following Christ obliges us to reject certain behaviors and follow Him (Matthew 16:24).

If Cardinal Marx can find a better way to help people in these situations change their ways, that is good. But at the moment, I just can’t see how his words can be reconciled with Christ’s.

Sunday, September 7, 2014

Unpopular Speech is not Hate Speech

One popular tactic in the American Kulturkampf (yes, it's here—no longer a case of if) is the argument that the freedom of speech and religion only mean you can't be arrested for saying it. People who use this argument claim that a person can't be arrested for saying something is wrong, but they still can be fired, sued, fined or re educated for doing so.

It scares me that people are falling for this spurious reasoning. Effectively, it is saying that if an employer dislikes your morals, he can fire you over them . . . BUT only for certain moral stands: The Christian employee can be forced out because he thinks homosexual acts are wrong, but the secular employee can't be fired by the Christian employer for thinking them right.

What it boils down to is that America is willing to tolerate restrictions on unpopular speech. If the powers that be (political, media, cultural) don't like a position, the person holding it can be ostracized for holding it. But if a business or religious based school or hospital tries to operate according to their beliefs, they can be forced to tolerate behavior they believe is wrong.

Guess which one is accused of forcing their views on others?

Basically, the whole tactic allows the media, government and political elites to decide what speech and belief is legitimate and what is not. That's not free speech. That's censorship worthy of the former Eastern Bloc. Whether or not you remain free after you speak depends on whether the elites approve of what you said.

But legitimate limits on free speech come into play when the speech causes harm. I'm not allowed to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. I'm not free to plan a felony. I'm not free to incite a riot. Nobody disputes that these are legitimate limits on the freedom of speech.

But the fact is, the Christian moral teaching is not hate filled and is not discriminatory—it is unpopular because it tells people that some behaviors are wrong and people don't want to hear that they are doing wrong and have to change.

To Discriminate, properly speaking, is to:

make an unjust distinction in the treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, sex, or age.

But if God exists and He has condemned behavior that is contrary to how people should live, then informing people that this behavior is wrong is not discrimination any more than the Cal Trans worker with a sign saying "Bridge Out" is discriminating against which road you can choose to use. It's informing people of reality before they suffer harm.

The Christian who understands the obligations of the faith knows he or she cannot hate a person who sins. Correction must be given when a person does wrong and endangers his or her soul:

You, son of man—I have appointed you as a sentinel for the house of Israel; when you hear a word from my mouth, you must warn them for me. When I say to the wicked, “You wicked, you must die,” and you do not speak up to warn the wicked about their ways, they shall die in their sins, but I will hold you responsible for their blood. If, however, you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, but they do not, then they shall die in their sins, but you shall save your life. (Ezekiel 33:7–9).

(In this verse, God is speaking to the Prophet Ezekiel on the obligation to warn people endangering their souls).

The problem is, many people assume that opposition to a behavior must be based on the hatred of the person who does the wrong act.

Certainly a Christian can sinfully hate someone who does wrong. A Christian can misuse speech to cause harm if he actively promotes violence. Nobody denies this . . . but the fact is, those Christians who do these things (and that number is much smaller than the rhetoric would have you believe) are opposed by most other Christians who fully understand their faith and are aware of this twisting of the Christian faith. So to use the examples of extremists to attack the Christian belief in general is basically no different than to use the fact that some members of an ethnic group are felons to denounce all members of that ethnic group.

The important thing to remember is that America has lost sight of the fact that there is a major difference between Unpopular Speech and Hate Speech. Unfortunately, people nowadays believe that the use of coercion is a legitimate tactic to silence a person who says something they dislike.

So long as people are willing to accept this tactic, we cannot hope to become a free nation again.

Unpopular Speech is not Hate Speech

One popular tactic in the American Kulturkampf (yes, it's here—no longer a case of if) is the argument that the freedom of speech and religion only mean you can't be arrested for saying it. People who use this argument claim that a person can't be arrested for saying something is wrong, but they still can be fired, sued, fined or re educated for doing so.

It scares me that people are falling for this spurious reasoning. Effectively, it is saying that if an employer dislikes your morals, he can fire you over them . . . BUT only for certain moral stands: The Christian employee can be forced out because he thinks homosexual acts are wrong, but the secular employee can't be fired by the Christian employer for thinking them right.

What it boils down to is that America is willing to tolerate restrictions on unpopular speech. If the powers that be (political, media, cultural) don't like a position, the person holding it can be ostracized for holding it. But if a business or religious based school or hospital tries to operate according to their beliefs, they can be forced to tolerate behavior they believe is wrong.

Guess which one is accused of forcing their views on others?

Basically, the whole tactic allows the media, government and political elites to decide what speech and belief is legitimate and what is not. That's not free speech. That's censorship worthy of the former Eastern Bloc. Whether or not you remain free after you speak depends on whether the elites approve of what you said.

But legitimate limits on free speech come into play when the speech causes harm. I'm not allowed to yell "Fire!" in a crowded theater. I'm not free to plan a felony. I'm not free to incite a riot. Nobody disputes that these are legitimate limits on the freedom of speech.

But the fact is, the Christian moral teaching is not hate filled and is not discriminatory—it is unpopular because it tells people that some behaviors are wrong and people don't want to hear that they are doing wrong and have to change.

To Discriminate, properly speaking, is to:

make an unjust distinction in the treatment of different categories of people, especially on the grounds of race, sex, or age.

But if God exists and He has condemned behavior that is contrary to how people should live, then informing people that this behavior is wrong is not discrimination any more than the Cal Trans worker with a sign saying "Bridge Out" is discriminating against which road you can choose to use. It's informing people of reality before they suffer harm.

The Christian who understands the obligations of the faith knows he or she cannot hate a person who sins. Correction must be given when a person does wrong and endangers his or her soul:

You, son of man—I have appointed you as a sentinel for the house of Israel; when you hear a word from my mouth, you must warn them for me. When I say to the wicked, “You wicked, you must die,” and you do not speak up to warn the wicked about their ways, they shall die in their sins, but I will hold you responsible for their blood. If, however, you warn the wicked to turn from their ways, but they do not, then they shall die in their sins, but you shall save your life. (Ezekiel 33:7–9).

(In this verse, God is speaking to the Prophet Ezekiel on the obligation to warn people endangering their souls).

The problem is, many people assume that opposition to a behavior must be based on the hatred of the person who does the wrong act.

Certainly a Christian can sinfully hate someone who does wrong. A Christian can misuse speech to cause harm if he actively promotes violence. Nobody denies this . . . but the fact is, those Christians who do these things (and that number is much smaller than the rhetoric would have you believe) are opposed by most other Christians who fully understand their faith and are aware of this twisting of the Christian faith. So to use the examples of extremists to attack the Christian belief in general is basically no different than to use the fact that some members of an ethnic group are felons to denounce all members of that ethnic group.

The important thing to remember is that America has lost sight of the fact that there is a major difference between Unpopular Speech and Hate Speech. Unfortunately, people nowadays believe that the use of coercion is a legitimate tactic to silence a person who says something they dislike.

So long as people are willing to accept this tactic, we cannot hope to become a free nation again.

Monday, April 21, 2014

Asking the Wrong Question: A Reflection

The Wrong Question

I came across a headline which asked if Christians were out of step with the mainstream. I found that question to be very saddening. It indicates that for a certain portion of the population and the elites think that going along with the preferred position is more important than determining the truth of a position... because the two are not the same thing.

As I have cited many times in the past in my blog, Aristotle once defined truth as saying of what is, that it is and saying of what is not, that it is not. In other words, we need to explore the nature of a thing before accepting the mainstream view of it.

Why? Because the mainstream of a country can go very far astray in what it favors. The extreme example, of course, is the example of Nazi Germany. The Nazi Party came to power legally and achieved things that were popular -- righting perceived wrongs that came from the Treaty of Versailles. While the party did some things that made people uncomfortable, these tended to be dismissed as being less important than the perceived good. The opponents of the regime tended to be dismissed or attacked.

The point here is not to equate America with Nazi Germany (so spare me the flames). The point is to show that what the mainstream accepts is not necessarily good. Whether it is the acceptance of National Socialism or whether it is the acceptance of modern sexual morality in the West, the acceptance of things by the mainstream of a society is NOT an indication that the thing is good.

The Right Questions

So what are we to do about this? We have to start by asking the right questions. We don't start by asking whether Christians are outside of the mainstream. We start by asking whether the assumptions held by the mainstream are true. Truth must be the criterion for accepting or rejecting values.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what people fail to consider. When the cultural elites assert that those who champion the traditional understanding of marriage are "homophobic," they are making an assertion that needs to be proven and not assumed to be true. Very few Christians who understand the obligations of their faith properly actually hate the people who live in opposition to what God commands.  But instead of investigating what they believe, it's easier to attribute a motivation that makes the opponent look bad.

What Reason Tells Us

The result is a slew of logical fallacies which don't prove the point. It provides spurious reasoning to claim that boils down to, "anyone who doesn't agree with me is a bigot."

I find it ironic that the definition of bigot, "a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others," fits the champions of tolerance much better than it fits the people who believe some behaviors are wrong.

As GK Chesterton pointed out, "It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." In other words, the bigotry doesn't exist in believing right and wrong. The bigotry comes from refusing to question whether you properly understand what you oppose.

The Dilemma

Now, if one believes in the existence of objective good and evil, it is not bigotry to refuse to accept a view deemed evil as valid -- provided that you understand the nature of the issue you reject. Nor are you hypocritical to say that a sin is wrong while still loving the person who sins.

The same cannot be said for the one who takes the position that there is no objective good and evil.  If you insist others must tolerate views they disagree with, then you must also tolerate views you disagree with. If you refuse to accept the views of those you disagree with, you are guilty of what you accuse your opponents of being: bigoted (refusing to accept different views) and hypocritical (denying there are moral absolutes while holding moral absolutes). But if you actually follow what you claim to champion, you have to tolerate people who support views you believe to be wrong. If the persecutors of Brendan Eich were truly tolerant, they would have left him to his own views and not sought to oust him.

But, on the other hand, if one sees the acceptance of abortion or homosexual acts as objectively good and believes others are morally obligated to accept this, then he or she is under the same onus of proof that he or she demands from opponents. After all, if opposing abortion is "imposing values," then so is promoting it!

Conclusion

Asking if someone as being "outside the mainstream" ultimately ignores the more pertinent question: Is it good to be part of the mainstream? History tells us that oftentimes it is not.

Asking the Wrong Question: A Reflection

The Wrong Question

I came across a headline which asked if Christians were out of step with the mainstream. I found that question to be very saddening. It indicates that for a certain portion of the population and the elites think that going along with the preferred position is more important than determining the truth of a position... because the two are not the same thing.

As I have cited many times in the past in my blog, Aristotle once defined truth as saying of what is, that it is and saying of what is not, that it is not. In other words, we need to explore the nature of a thing before accepting the mainstream view of it.

Why? Because the mainstream of a country can go very far astray in what it favors. The extreme example, of course, is the example of Nazi Germany. The Nazi Party came to power legally and achieved things that were popular -- righting perceived wrongs that came from the Treaty of Versailles. While the party did some things that made people uncomfortable, these tended to be dismissed as being less important than the perceived good. The opponents of the regime tended to be dismissed or attacked.

The point here is not to equate America with Nazi Germany (so spare me the flames). The point is to show that what the mainstream accepts is not necessarily good. Whether it is the acceptance of National Socialism or whether it is the acceptance of modern sexual morality in the West, the acceptance of things by the mainstream of a society is NOT an indication that the thing is good.

The Right Questions

So what are we to do about this? We have to start by asking the right questions. We don't start by asking whether Christians are outside of the mainstream. We start by asking whether the assumptions held by the mainstream are true. Truth must be the criterion for accepting or rejecting values.

Unfortunately, this is precisely what people fail to consider. When the cultural elites assert that those who champion the traditional understanding of marriage are "homophobic," they are making an assertion that needs to be proven and not assumed to be true. Very few Christians who understand the obligations of their faith properly actually hate the people who live in opposition to what God commands.  But instead of investigating what they believe, it's easier to attribute a motivation that makes the opponent look bad.

What Reason Tells Us

The result is a slew of logical fallacies which don't prove the point. It provides spurious reasoning to claim that boils down to, "anyone who doesn't agree with me is a bigot."

I find it ironic that the definition of bigot, "a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others," fits the champions of tolerance much better than it fits the people who believe some behaviors are wrong.

As GK Chesterton pointed out, "It is not bigotry to be certain we are right; but it is bigotry to be unable to imagine how we might possibly have gone wrong." In other words, the bigotry doesn't exist in believing right and wrong. The bigotry comes from refusing to question whether you properly understand what you oppose.

The Dilemma

Now, if one believes in the existence of objective good and evil, it is not bigotry to refuse to accept a view deemed evil as valid -- provided that you understand the nature of the issue you reject. Nor are you hypocritical to say that a sin is wrong while still loving the person who sins.

The same cannot be said for the one who takes the position that there is no objective good and evil.  If you insist others must tolerate views they disagree with, then you must also tolerate views you disagree with. If you refuse to accept the views of those you disagree with, you are guilty of what you accuse your opponents of being: bigoted (refusing to accept different views) and hypocritical (denying there are moral absolutes while holding moral absolutes). But if you actually follow what you claim to champion, you have to tolerate people who support views you believe to be wrong. If the persecutors of Brendan Eich were truly tolerant, they would have left him to his own views and not sought to oust him.

But, on the other hand, if one sees the acceptance of abortion or homosexual acts as objectively good and believes others are morally obligated to accept this, then he or she is under the same onus of proof that he or she demands from opponents. After all, if opposing abortion is "imposing values," then so is promoting it!

Conclusion

Asking if someone as being "outside the mainstream" ultimately ignores the more pertinent question: Is it good to be part of the mainstream? History tells us that oftentimes it is not.

Monday, January 7, 2013

Pathetic Little Straw Man

I find it interesting to see what people share on Facebook when it comes to hostility towards Christianity.  It's not just that their arguments against Christianity lack any semblance of reason and logic.  It's also the case that the Christianity they attack has very little to do with what Christianity teaches.  I don't know if it merely reflects their ignorance or whether it indicates a dishonest "quote mining" in order to make Christianity look bad, but either way, one does not refute Christianity through an uninformed misrepresentation of what it teaches.

The current piece of bad reasoning running around Facebook is a quote from a blogger named Amanda Marcotte which a Facebook group has been sharing:

Atheist are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority.

What we see here is a straw man argument.  This is not what Christianity argues.  What Christian philosophers have said is that with no moral absolutes, anything is permissible (I've dealt with the illogic of the claim that there are no moral absolutes in an earlier article).  It then challenges the person who rejects the fact that values come from a source above us to explain how moral norms can be binding.

Morality can come from one of the following:

  1. Something above the human level (such as God and Natural Law)
  2. Something at the human level (such as society)
  3. Something below the human level (such as instinct)

The problem is, if morality does not come from something above us, it really cannot bind.  If morality comes from society, then it is people who follow what values society holds that are good and those who oppose societal values are bad.  This means that in a society which embraces segregation, Bull Connor was a moral person and Martin Luther King Jr. was an immoral person.  If we get our values from society, then to condemn the values of another society merely becomes a case of "pushing your values on others."

But the opposite is true.  We recognize that often it is the moral person who challenges the values of society, and that some societies behave in an immoral manner.  We could not condemn the values of the Third Reich or apartheid era South Africa unless moral values come from outside society.

Likewise that it comes from instinct does not work.  Sometimes morality tells us to do something which goes against the instinct, such as dying rather than to do what one thinks is wrong.  Instinct guides us towards satisfying physical needs, but sometimes we need to suppress instincts for a greater good, for example suppressing one's survival instinct by putting oneself at risk to save another.

So the point that Ms. Marcotte misrepresents is actually the demand to justify the source of morality if one denies the existence of God.  Since neither instinct nor society can explain binding moral values, if one wants to claim binding moral values and deny the existence of God such a person has to give an explanation for something above the human level which can demand we follow these moral values.

Informed Christians don't deny that atheists can have proper moral values.  The existence of an atheist who seeks to do what is right is no challenge to Christian belief.  What the Christian notes is the atheist is being foolish in insisting on those moral norms they personally follow while ignoring those they disagree with instead of investigating why these norms are binding to begin with.

The atheist who refuses to consider a source above humanity in considering moral obligations is being as reasonable as a person who refuses to consider matter as a factor in the study of physics.

Pathetic Little Straw Man

I find it interesting to see what people share on Facebook when it comes to hostility towards Christianity.  It's not just that their arguments against Christianity lack any semblance of reason and logic.  It's also the case that the Christianity they attack has very little to do with what Christianity teaches.  I don't know if it merely reflects their ignorance or whether it indicates a dishonest "quote mining" in order to make Christianity look bad, but either way, one does not refute Christianity through an uninformed misrepresentation of what it teaches.

The current piece of bad reasoning running around Facebook is a quote from a blogger named Amanda Marcotte which a Facebook group has been sharing:

Atheist are routinely asked how people will know not to rape and murder without religion telling them not to do it, especially a religion that backs up the orders with threats of hell. Believers, listen to me carefully when I say this: When you use this argument, you terrify atheists. We hear you saying that the only thing standing between you and Ted Bundy is a flimsy belief in a supernatural being made up by pre-literate people trying to figure out where the rain came from. This is not very reassuring if you’re trying to argue from a position of moral superiority.

What we see here is a straw man argument.  This is not what Christianity argues.  What Christian philosophers have said is that with no moral absolutes, anything is permissible (I've dealt with the illogic of the claim that there are no moral absolutes in an earlier article).  It then challenges the person who rejects the fact that values come from a source above us to explain how moral norms can be binding.

Morality can come from one of the following:

  1. Something above the human level (such as God and Natural Law)
  2. Something at the human level (such as society)
  3. Something below the human level (such as instinct)

The problem is, if morality does not come from something above us, it really cannot bind.  If morality comes from society, then it is people who follow what values society holds that are good and those who oppose societal values are bad.  This means that in a society which embraces segregation, Bull Connor was a moral person and Martin Luther King Jr. was an immoral person.  If we get our values from society, then to condemn the values of another society merely becomes a case of "pushing your values on others."

But the opposite is true.  We recognize that often it is the moral person who challenges the values of society, and that some societies behave in an immoral manner.  We could not condemn the values of the Third Reich or apartheid era South Africa unless moral values come from outside society.

Likewise that it comes from instinct does not work.  Sometimes morality tells us to do something which goes against the instinct, such as dying rather than to do what one thinks is wrong.  Instinct guides us towards satisfying physical needs, but sometimes we need to suppress instincts for a greater good, for example suppressing one's survival instinct by putting oneself at risk to save another.

So the point that Ms. Marcotte misrepresents is actually the demand to justify the source of morality if one denies the existence of God.  Since neither instinct nor society can explain binding moral values, if one wants to claim binding moral values and deny the existence of God such a person has to give an explanation for something above the human level which can demand we follow these moral values.

Informed Christians don't deny that atheists can have proper moral values.  The existence of an atheist who seeks to do what is right is no challenge to Christian belief.  What the Christian notes is the atheist is being foolish in insisting on those moral norms they personally follow while ignoring those they disagree with instead of investigating why these norms are binding to begin with.

The atheist who refuses to consider a source above humanity in considering moral obligations is being as reasonable as a person who refuses to consider matter as a factor in the study of physics.

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Thought for the Day: Inconsistent and Illogical Denial of Absolutes

Ever notice how some people claim there are no moral absolutes, but reject a claim that some things (like racism, genocide, rape or murder) can ever be justified?  The problem is these two positions are absolutely contradictory.  To say that there are no moral absolutes is to say that nothing is wrong all the time.  But to say that some things are always wrong means there is something about an action itself which makes it wrong regardless of the circumstances.

If we can know it is always wrong, it means we can look at understanding what it is about the act that makes it wrong and apply it to understand moral standards on our obligations to other persons.

That means those activists who stand up for a cause against injustice, yet deny morality when it comes to their own behavior are behaving inconsistently.  After all, they are insisting others follow absolutes while they will not follow absolutes in their own lives.

To put it in a syllogism:

  • If [no Moral absolutes exist], then [everything is permissible]. (if A then B)
  • Not [everything is permissible] (Not B)
  • Therefore not [no moral absolutes exist].  (Therefore Not A)

Since "not [no moral absolutes exist]" is another way of saying that moral values DO exist (the negative is required to keep the syllogism consistent) we have a syllogism where the premises are true and the argument is valid.  It means the statement "moral absolutes exist" is proven to be true.

Christianity, in particular Catholicism, offers explanations on why the moral obligations must be drawn where they are.  If a person should happen to reject these explanations, they are obligated to offer their own explanation as to why the line should be drawn differently.

But because they can neither create the justification for a different dividing line, nor refute the Christian arguments of morality, the usual result is to just go ahead with the illogical claim that there are no moral absolutes.

Thought for the Day: Inconsistent and Illogical Denial of Absolutes

Ever notice how some people claim there are no moral absolutes, but reject a claim that some things (like racism, genocide, rape or murder) can ever be justified?  The problem is these two positions are absolutely contradictory.  To say that there are no moral absolutes is to say that nothing is wrong all the time.  But to say that some things are always wrong means there is something about an action itself which makes it wrong regardless of the circumstances.

If we can know it is always wrong, it means we can look at understanding what it is about the act that makes it wrong and apply it to understand moral standards on our obligations to other persons.

That means those activists who stand up for a cause against injustice, yet deny morality when it comes to their own behavior are behaving inconsistently.  After all, they are insisting others follow absolutes while they will not follow absolutes in their own lives.

To put it in a syllogism:

  • If [no Moral absolutes exist], then [everything is permissible]. (if A then B)
  • Not [everything is permissible] (Not B)
  • Therefore not [no moral absolutes exist].  (Therefore Not A)

Since "not [no moral absolutes exist]" is another way of saying that moral values DO exist (the negative is required to keep the syllogism consistent) we have a syllogism where the premises are true and the argument is valid.  It means the statement "moral absolutes exist" is proven to be true.

Christianity, in particular Catholicism, offers explanations on why the moral obligations must be drawn where they are.  If a person should happen to reject these explanations, they are obligated to offer their own explanation as to why the line should be drawn differently.

But because they can neither create the justification for a different dividing line, nor refute the Christian arguments of morality, the usual result is to just go ahead with the illogical claim that there are no moral absolutes.