In the last post, we examined a claim against atheists concerning morality and found that it rested on a confusion between ontology and epistemology.  These terms may not roll off the tongue, but they can help us get where we’re going.

Let us speak a bit more plainly, though.  This claim of the Christian is not only confused, but dismissive.  Lacking any intellectual gravity, it seems to be more of a social compulsion (“Believer good, atheist bad.”) than a true challenge.*

Not to be outdone, our third atheist from a few posts back suffers the same kind of confusion.  Here is one who thinks that science answers all questions about morality, and who stands rather self-satisfied while his interlocutor waits for an answer.

Let’s first formulate a claim which captures this confusion.  It goes something like this:

Science, specifically evolution, perfectly explains human morality.  We know what is good because evolution has selected for behaviors which promote the good.  

And, if pushed:  The good is whatever promotes human well-being and causes the least amount of harm.

Now, like we did with our Christian’s rookie mistake, let us trim the fat and examine what remains.  Bear in mind the difference between ontology and epistemology.

The question is, what is the Good?  We are asking this atheist, “What is the ground of human morality, the basis for moral ontology?”

The closest we get to a direct answer is a description of what is good:  That which promotes human well-being and causes least harm.  This sounds eminently reasonable…but that’s it.

Look again:  What makes this a ground for morality?  It is clearly not – it is more an observation, a summary, rather than a reality upon which all of our morality is based.**

Moreover, the atheist usually pitches this as a reasonable idea, one which we could expect him to come up with.  And if he can do that while lacking a belief in God, well then there’s no reason we need God after all!

Obviously something is askance here, even if one cannot immediately put her finger on it.  But here it is:  He is still dealing in epistemology.  This is not an ontological statement at all, and we can demonstrate this straight away.

We may ask, “Why is that good?”

After all, why is human well-being objectively good?  Perhaps it only seems good to us, since we are driven to survive and perpetuate the species.  It is an effective mode of behavior if we want to achieve survival – but now we are only talking about wants, not objective realities.

Why not prefer the good of ants, and work toward the elimination of human beings for their benefit?  Why not prefer lifelessness, and work toward the destruction of our planet for that end?

No, we have not reached the ground yet, even after we have dealt with Science and evolution.  But you will know you have landed when you ask why a thing is good, and the thing you are asking about is the Good.

*As in other posts, I’ll suggest again that the more modest claim would be stronger.  Rather than saying, “Atheists cannot be moral people,” one might say, “Atheism tends to confuse a person’s moral epistemology” or, the claim we’ll be examining, “Atheism provides no ground for objective morality.”

**Not only that, but this stance suffers some absurd results.  A classic example is that such a stance justifies the killing of an innocent little girl, if somehow, by her death, millions of people are made a little bit happier.

Here’s a world-class philosopher who makes the “wise” look foolish, and the “foolish” look wise.  Very interesting ideas, even in a vanilla task like summing up the three main lines of thought in the Western world.

He also proposes the idea* that science (featuring evolution) is actually not in conflict with religion (featuring Christianity) as so many suppose, but is in deep conflict with naturalism (featuring the absence of God).  Here he easily exposes such voices as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett; they are no more than schoolyard bullies stating claims that are in wild excess of the facts.  They are, in fact, religious about their naturalism, and theirs is the religion incompatible with evolution.

Back to the “Existence of God” series presently…

*If you haven’t followed it yet, this link is to a review of Plantinga’s book, Where the Conflict Really Lies, by philosopher Thomas Nagel.  Nagel is an atheist, and is an atheist I can readily respect.  He has declared, for example, that materialism is almost certainly false.  If Plantinga and Nagel are leading the way, I count myself hopeful for future discourse on life’s big questions.

Bring yourself back to the early days of humanity.

For all of us, even the experts, this is going to be a guess.  There is a saying that the least educated person in a historical period is more an expert of his time than the best scholar today.  This seems obviously true, and more true the more one thinks about it.

As little as we know about a culture within history, so much less do we know about a culture prior to history.  The densest and most surely communicated channel just doesn’t exist – that of language.

The first human population had to be focused on survival (what else was there?) and build from there.  Build what?

It appears that they built a system of the division of labor – hunters and gatherers – as well as migratory patterns in response to environmental stressors (eg. availability of food and weather patterns).  All of these practices are very much aligned with the natural order – as far to the right as humans get, if you will.  In fact, taken as pure concepts – which they surely weren’t in practice – you have virtually no subjugation of nature happening here.  Rather, you have nature leading the dance, and human beings following her lead.

I say they surely weren’t pure concepts, because toolmaking in human predecessors dates back a couple million years.  This would certainly be an imposition of human design on nature, the first small step in subduing the earth.  Such artifacts are the earliest signs of leftism (if you will).

One might persist that innovations like knifes and spears simply brought humans onto a level playing field with their would-be predators.  Indeed, other animals also demonstrate rudimentary toolmaking.  Moreover, a spear is surely not a gun, which seems to give greater advantages to the human over the animal.

All such debate ends, then, with the dawn of agriculture.  Somewhere between 13,000-11,000 BC, we find evidence of cultivation, even seedless figs!  Farm animal domestication occurred around the same time, all of which enabled the development of permanent settlements.

This imposition of human design upon plants and animals, I maintain, is a leftist impulse.  I am just a guy thinking, of course, you may call it whatever you wish.  But I think you will begin to see some phenomena explained the longer you entertain this idea.

Now these are the first great leaps of humanity.  Writing developed +/- 10,000 years later, and this enabled the communication across space and the transmission across time of incredible amounts of information.  This accelerated learning and innovation, as there was a steady and growing foundation of information to build from.

Skip ahead +/- 3,600 years, and you have the printing press (notice the diminishing time between major advancements).  Gutenberg’s invention is credited with all manner of advances, including a higher literacy rate, the faster spread of more information, and the wider spread of that information.

The more disparate innovations are shared, the more they accelerate innovation.  One mind makes a leap forward; another observes it and has some mental door unlocked for him.  He enters the next room and makes another leap forward.

Along the way, and directly related to these innovations, are advancements in science and technology.  And these too, according to our earlier big idea, are leftist moves in human activity.  Simple knowing – as in science – is arguably neutral, but you see how easily “and technology” follows.

And technology is certainly an imposition of human will on nature.  Look around you!  Subdue the earth, indeed.

These innovations occur in other areas of human endeavor, as well.  We have not plumbed deeply at all, and I will scarcely mention such others – law, politics, economics, culture.  They read like the headings of an old newspaper, things which might change over time, which people like to know about.

The sum total of these is what we call civilization.  The impulse to impose our will on the existing order is a leftist impulse, while the impulse to accept and preserve the existing order is a rightist impulse.  The leftist impulse drives toward utopia, which is always receding in the distance; the rightist impulse drives toward the natural order, which took us tens or hundreds of thousands of years to escape from.

We all know, in our basic instincts, that we prefer civilization, the imposition of human order, upon the natural order.  But the natural order just is the ruling order – if you do not resist it, or build against it, you are pulled back into it.

Does any bridge or dam last forever, unattended?  Have you ever seen a building which was abandoned 100 – even 20 – years ago?  The natural order is always pressing on us, always driving on.

So, Cthulhu is ever watchful of that looming eventuality, and ever swimming left against the current to escape it.  That just is what civilization is.  As long as Cthulhu – the collective human population – desires this protection from the pure natural order, it must swim left.

But Cthulhu is not intelligent enough, being a great beast acting on drives and impulses, to know when it has swum too far to the left.  Without some respect for the natural order – which is all we have, there is no other natural order – without some understanding of it, we do not understand how to order our civilization at all.

Remember, a constant and pure drive in only one direction is the road to destruction.  You only have to choose your destroyer – nature to the right, humans to the left.

To avoid this, we need some corresponding power which holds civilization in tension, which honors the rightist impulse and respects the leftist impulse, and appropriately restrains them both.  This we call religion.

“Wherever an altar is found, there civilization exists.”  – Joseph de Maistre

We come to explore why the series is called Politics..and Catholicism.  (Sure, go for a James Lipton voice there).

Earlier I made reference to properly ordered religion.  We will admit, for the sake of discussion, that a plurality of religions might qualify as properly ordered, even though they cannot all be 100% true.

We saw last time that the building and development of civilization just is a move to the left of the natural order.  It is an attempt by a population of humans to buffer themselves against the unrelenting current of the natural order (such forces as entropy and predation, which is entropy at 4x speed).  In so doing, a population can succeed so well that they are capable of swimming beyond stasis, further left, upstream.

This Cthulhu will do, unless there is some compelling reason (or force, or impulse) not to.  Some restraint, some dissonance with the population’s experience and expectations against reality, perhaps.  Or else some overwhelming incentive, worthy of abandoning the promises of swimming further left.*

Before stating the expected thesis…what is so bad about swimming ever to the left, anyway?  Didn’t we say that way lies Utopia?  Even if it is ever receding, doesn’t this indicate the desired and everlasting march of human progress?

(Perhaps you see a river in your mind, and a far-off horizon.  The Utopia is exactly like the horizon, but it is so haunting and alluring – not almost spiritual, but actually so – that the emptiness of the horizon reflects a world where natural dangers are erased, and life is lived tranquilly, with perfect understanding of everything.  Even the present feverish pitch of sexual fixation and exposure is suffocated and vanished, only a means to this godlike end.  Yes, I have tasted and seen…)

The problem is two-fold, and unfolds like proofs for the existence of God.  On the one hand, you have the historical account – every time we’ve tried Utopia, it ends in absolute disaster.  Look to any revolution and the events that follow.  It is easy to point to Stalin’s Soviet Union, but consider the “enlightened” French Revolution, when so many rationalists found themselves enraptured in a murderous frenzy.

On the other, it is a practical impossibility, which is why it so often ends in bloodshed.  People cannot be depended on to act with perfect virtue, no matter what traits are called virtuous.  You can call stealing good, or murder innocent – and people will violate them.  In order to silence the signal of human discord and rebellion, those humans must be exiled…or exterminated.

It is not only discord, but it is also the human inability to completely comprehend everything, which is necessary for controlling all variables in an environment (including an artificial one).  Ask a film director how difficult it is to make a movie exactly according to his vision – and then he has no control at all over the theater, or your living room.

Such a paradise cannot be achieved on this side of Glory.  It is utterly opposed to Glory, moving ever to the left, where men are made into gods, and all the natural order is destroyed, terminating in the abyss.

In other words, that way lies irreversible damnation.  Once walk through the gates – leave all hope behind.**

What shall it be, then?  The primal, fearsome end of the natural order, which is death?  Or the everlasting oppression of one man, or some men, dominating all the others, destroying that which conflicts with their designs?

Enter religion.  And you thought they invented “Hell” just to scare you.

*Here we have an understanding why suffering typically provokes a move further to the left – over time a population will inevitably lose members.  The reflex – not the reason, mind you – is to swim further away from the danger, not to live in harmony with it.  Therefore, a wealthy country experiencing relative peace will come to find smaller and smaller losses as intolerable as the great losses it once suffered.  If we have swum this far upstream, the rhetorical question goes, we can surely swim further and provide comfort/security/wealth to even more of our population.

**Yes, Hell is real.

This is a cheap trick of the charlatan, but it is used because it works:  Forget everything you think you know about “mysticism.”  Let’s refresh our understanding.

A mystic is a person – you or I could be a mystic.  You might also call someone a winner, or a loser.  You might call them blessed or cursed.  You might call them a mystic, or a muggle.

Now, these pairs have been chosen because they relate to experiences a person has had.  No one is a “winner” until he wins; no one is a “loser” until he fails.  A person must experience blessings before we call her blessed, and must endure afflictions before we call her cursed.

One might now object:  “Muggle” sounds more like an innate property of a person, rather than an experience that person has had.  This would miss the point!

Alas, one may not speak anymore without a preponderance of intellectual speed bumps and stumbling blocks!  Say this about modernity – it is awfully tedious.

No, muggle, I was only being colorful.  I will now be technical:  You have your mystic, and you have your naturalist.

What, then, is the experience which the mystic has had, which the naturalist (at least according to his philosophy) has not?

For the Christian, it is really quite simple:  It is an encounter with the living God, directly or indirectly.

In the details, the curious naturalist can get confused, skeptical, even dismissive.  Rightly so, given his intellectual commitments.  But it really isn’t so confusing, and while skepticism is often a virtue, it is careless to be completely dismissive of mystical experiences.

On at least one front, I tend to line up with the naturalist.  I do not buy as mystical any kind of experience which is reliably induced, which fits neatly into a preconceived system of belief, or else which is described by terms meant to be profound, which have no clear meaning (e.g. “thoughts of light”).

Behold – my earlier complete dismissal of contemporary Christian music!

Now let the speed bump appear:  Ah, but it was not good to be completely dismissive.  Very well – I have learned.

While I do not necessarily endorse every song or effort from such bands, I have come to appreciate Jars of Clay.  I would commend to you certain songs from Third Day and Hillsong United.  And I would commend David Crowder Band.

Please note, I do not hereby commend the videos or comments to you.  Probably best just to listen.  Nor do I commend them as musically exceptional.  They are not, as far as I can tell, especially innovative or challenging.

What I see in them I recently noticed while listening to “How He Loves” from David Crowder Band (linked above).  I said to myself, “He’s had a mystical experience.”

What one notices in “How He Loves” is a concerted, desperate effort – like a man trying to paint a picture of his deceased wife – to express and thus, to share, his encounter with God.

The true naturalist can hardly guess at this.  It may seem to him that, because the mystic uses words which are intelligible to him, such an experience must not be so extraordinary.  Indeed, consider:

He is jealous for me

Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree

Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy

When all of the sudden

I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory

And I see just how beautiful You are

And how great Your affections are for me

To the naturalist – let us presume a humble naturalist – this is perhaps a little strange, as it suggests a powerful encounter with a non-existent entity.  The lyrics themselves, from the mouth of David Crowder, seem to be authentic and are perhaps charming in their style, though not what we might expect from a master of the English language.  The humble naturalist might back up my claim – contemporary Christian music is not all terrible.

Such a review is (quite precisely) condescending, but who can fault the reviewer?  Such a person imagines himself above the song because he can’t imagine himself in it.  After all, he has not had a mystical experience.

A fellow mystic, however, might find herself weeping at these humble lyrics.  For her, they are not merely charming, but evocative.  They call out, from the fogginess of memory and doubt, her own encounter with the Everlasting, with Love Himself.

She is not especially caught up in the literary value of the words.  She knows their authenticity is better gauged by their insufficiency, though they strive for all of the beauty and grandeur they can convey.  She knows that words will never be enough; one evokes the oceans because there is nothing else which is so vast and yet so immanent.  The sky is likewise vast, but out of reach; the ocean can touch every inch of her body, and swallow her whole.  (Says David Crowder:  “If His grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking“).

The mystic understands how God is like an ocean.  More importantly, she understands how God surpasses the ocean, and this is why she weeps.

Allow me one more note:  What about the one who is not a naturalist, nor a mystic?  Let’s take an “ordinary” believer, who simply thinks Christianity is true, but has not experienced the presence of God in any direct or astonishing way.  (This could be extended, in a way, to people of other faiths, but there is not space for that here).

Though I have asked the question, I reject the premise – there are only mystics.  It is the true naturalist who is illusory, established on a false view of reality.  No one is really a pure naturalist.

Perhaps not, you might say, but they would deny any encounter with God.

True enough, and now we venture close to that deeply troubled position of reading others’ minds.  I have no interest in that.

Rather, with respect to their minds, I invite them to consider these things.  Only consider the parts of your experience which defy physical explanation:  Why do you think anything is good?  (Is love good?)  Why is truth so valuable that you respect people who will sacrifice for it?  Why do you trust logic to sort out truth from falsehood?  (Does it matter whether a thing is true or not?)

Why do you wish to pour yourself out into the water when you gaze out over the ocean at night?  Why do you wish you could walk on water, or run without growing tired, or live forever?  Why is it that you can imagine sharing something better than sex with a person, but you can’t say what it is?

Loosen your restraint – follow for a moment, and see where the questions lead.

The longing is sincere, and ubiquitous.  A direct encounter with God is not required, only an answer:  Is there anything which satisfies these longings, or not?

The mystics answer in the affirmative; some have even tasted and seen.

If you’re not already a fan of www.houzz.com, I highly recommend it.  The pictures are often gorgeous, and the things people do with architecture and decor really are amazing.  (It can sometimes be approached as a challenge by the DIY types).

Well, Houzz led me to this site by way of an article on kitchen upgrades, and so I took in what information could find.  I’m not keen on granite, so the idea that its favor is fading intrigues me.  (Nanotech countertops?!  The future is now).

And good heavens, don’t forget the comments.  A debate broke out over the existence of God!

Granted:  It takes a little over 30 comments to get to God, and up until then, the comments were largely relevant to the article.  I was enjoying the back and forth, as I know nothing about geology.  There are even some fun electron jokes thrown in for good measure.

Now, it would seem “Faith Priest” said something worthy of being censored; though the content is lost, we get an idea from “guru dogg” that it was incendiary, possibly explosive.

“When you see a warhead missile detonating above your city, how will your state of mind react to the state of burning flesh? When your eyes melt in your sockets, how loud will you call out to God?”

Huh?  I, for one, really want to know what Faith Priest said.  No matter, there’s still some fine material ahead.  “Bubbawubba Gump” says,

“Holy bat sh*t crazy, Batman! @guru, you have spent way too much time in a dark room dreaming of what god will do to everyone and you should see a psychiatrist. If the bombs drop they will definitely be sent by some psycho who believes God wants him to destroy the world, not by someone who doesn’t believe in an afterlife.”

So, Gump starts off in the land of humor and proportional response, then takes a sharp turn toward Dawkinsville, where any instance of evil is “definitely” the the fault of religion.  Because only religious people perpetrate evil.

“Geri” tries to bring the conversation to the abstract:

“Without God, I am the sole authority and measure of my own good. There is no objective measure of good unless it is in comparison it to the infinite goodness, God Himself.”

Geri is actually getting ahead of me in the series on objective morality, but you can guess I agree with his/her point.  Not that the combox following an article on countertop surfaces is the best place to plant one’s flag.

Not one to let a reasonable point be made, “jfahle3” retorts:

“See, caveperson, I don’t believe in an invisible sky giant. Fortunately for you, I don’t need an invisible sky giant to tell me not to steal from you, I just know it’s not right to steal from you.”

Let’s see – presuming superiority by name-calling, grossly misrepresenting what is meant by God, and failing to comprehend the point he/she is criticizing.  Here is the New Atheist trifecta!*

Something is missing, though.  “SwoodTN” goes for the knock-out with a left hook nobody saw coming…

“Interesting article about granite. You know what is really interesting about granite? It can be found on every continent on earth and has the distinction of being carbon dated as earth’s oldest rock. Scientists say it formed over millions of years as the earth’s surface cooled. But if you look at granite under a spectron microscope, you will see radio halos trapped inside.”

Unless you’ve read Internet comboxes before, then you totally saw it coming.  Here is the “But how do you explain this?” angle, which takes a narrow set of facts and interprets them in an apparently straightforward way, with the conclusion that God did it.  Frankly, the jargon is beyond me, but the rhetoric is par for the course.

“Prism” replies with the obligatory, jargon-for-jargon rebuttal:

“(2) Granites that have been appropriately age-dated (using K-Ar, U-Pb, Rb-Sr isotope dating, e.g.) range from billions to less than a million years old. Felsic magma may be cooling deep in the earth (forming new granite) even as we speak (basic earth processes continue to operate as always), but younger intrusive rocks are not yet exposed at the surface for study.
And (3) re: radio halos in granite – not even close to true. See http://paleo.cc/ce/halos.htm”

When you’re numbering your points 40 comments deep in an article about kitchen upgrades, you might be wasting your time.  It might be easier to say, “That’s interesting,” and point out that a mysterious occurrence in geology – if it is actually mysterious – does not tell us much about the existence of God, the ground of all reality.

Only two more, because they are more down to earth (or, up to the surface?).  “Stevo” says:

“So called scientific TRUTHS are only theories that are constantly amended as more facts are discovered. Christianity is belief in proven facts about Jesus that only requires faith.”

I think I get what Stevo is saying, but his intellectual opponents on dishwashers.reviewed.com are not even going to try.  Remember, Christian brothers and sisters – when in doubt, be modest in your claims.  If you have no doubt, be even more modest.

We finish with “PlacidAir,” who replies,

“There are no “proven facts” about Jesus — that’s why it’s called ‘faith’.“

I strain myself here to understand what PlacidAir is saying, though as a disposition, I do endorse modesty (see above).  Is PlacidAir saying that we have not proven that Jesus existed, for instance?  The simple existence of Jesus of Nazareth is as close to certain as it can be – doubting it gets you the label of “Myther,” which is about the same level as the “FlatEarther“.

There probably is some grand take-away here, but I’ve relayed this combox debate simply because I found it amusing.  I hope it lightens your day.

*As always, the New Atheist is to be contrasted with the serious, non-militant atheist.  They may be distinguished by the following measure:  The latter can be reasoned with.