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.

So far, we have argued that:

1.  There is such a thing as objective morality.

Objective morality is a matter of ontology, though it is often revealed by epistemology.

2.  Humans have a moral sense which delivers knowledge about objective morality.

In this way, the good may be likened to light; we know that light exists because we can see it.  Just so, we know the good exists because we can detect it.

3.  One cannot deny objective morality then insist that we take his moral judgments seriously.

Anyone who does this is like a person who has declared there is no such thing as light, then complains that the sun is too bright.

4.  The denial of objective morality requires us to accept propositions which are almost universally rejected.

Eg. That there is no difference between genocide and mowing the lawn.

It is worth saying something at this point, before we continue.  While this series has been on my mind for some time, the impetus is a particular situation in which one person (she) wishes to persuade another (he) of a point about morality and God.  Speaking to that situation:

Our man, so far as I know, agrees with us so far.  We have not had to persuade him of anything yet.

In fact, it was our lady’s confusion on God and morality which prompted me to start!

I discovered from he that she insisted on the following:  Atheists cannot be moral without God.  Now, this is a (rookie) mistake, and one we can correct with the terms we have been establishing.

First, what is her claim?

She seems to be claiming that, without God, a person either cannot know or cannot do what is good (perhaps both).  Now, whether a person will do the right thing is a consequence of knowing what the right thing is, and it is further dependent on the will.  It is obvious that even Christians often will to do what is wrong, rather than what is right (or we wouldn’t require the forgiveness of sins).

If we leave the will out of it, then the claim truly has to do with knowing – that is, moral epistemology.  Properly framed, the claim is that somehow, as a result of a lack of belief in God*, the atheist cannot know the good.

This is important, because this atheist is not denying moral objectivity.  He is not denying that there is some ontology which grounds our moral knowledge.  He is simply denying that moral ontology concludes with God.

Nor have we, yet, concluded with God.  But we have come far enough to sort out this confusion.

After all, we are saying that there is a moral sense which delivers true moral knowledge to us.  It is by this sense that we establish the existence of moral objectivity, much as we establish the objective reality of light by our sense of vision.

So the real question is – does one’s belief affect his senses?  Does the atheist lose his sense of sight when he loses his faith?  Is there any belief at all which would cause a person to lose any of his senses as a direct consequence of that belief?**

It is true that the atheist could deny objective morality as a result of his atheism, but that does not (directly) mean he loses the moral sense.  That does not render him incapable of making moral decisions, though it does make him liable to hypocrisy.

Our “he” in question, though, is not such a hypocrite.  Objective morality is real for him; things are really right and wrong, in his eyes.  In this discussion, we will not trouble him by questioning his moral epistemology.

Our challenge to him concerns moral ontology.

*Or positive belief that God does not exist.

**I mean the belief itself, and not the things such a belief might lead someone to do.  Remember our illustration from before:  The blind man did not lose his sight when he denied the existence of light.  He blinded himself, to reinforce the belief.

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.

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.

The controversy over the Supreme Court decision on Burwell v. Hobby Lobby has been…well, hysterical, when you think about it. There are, for instance, otherwise intelligent people shuddering for the United States. It is unbecoming for a scientist to be reading tea leaves – principally because they aren’t any good at it – since it causes them to declare that a “theocracy” is afoot.

Of course the word “theocracy” only enters the conversation because it’s scary, like communism, and not because anything like a theocracy is imminently threatening.

Rather than dig into the case as one more bloviating layperson, I’d like to comment on an issue which plays into the discussion, which has plenty of application over and above SCOTUS.

Namely, there is a peculiar fear of religion, and a distinction of religion from…well, I guess the “normal” or “ordinary” way of looking at things. There is also the widespread illusion that science and religion are so different from each other that they are actually opposed.

Here I would like to introduce the notion of worldview. This is simply the way a person believes the world to be.

Is the world knowable, or not?  If so, how can we know it, and what can we know about it? Is there a God, or not? Am I the only one who exists, or do all these other people exist in the same way that I do?

If these questions sound philosophical, that’s because they are. One’s worldview might also be likened to one’s personal philosophy. What do you perceive to be the purpose of life, if anything? What is all of this for? What duties and obligations do you have, if any?

How one answers questions like these, then, determines (or is indicative of) his worldview.

It should be obvious, I think, that while there may be trends in the way people answer these questions (the ancient Chinese might answer differently than the medieval Muslims, who again answer differently than modern Latin Americans), there is not necessarily any neat, “standard” response.

In other words, there is not a neat, “normal” response from which we could say that religion departs. If anything, religion would have to be part of that normal response, given its ubiquity across space and time.

Now, let us usher in an interesting idea: Secularism. This, of course, is a lack of commitment to any particular religion, and a positive commitment toward the common understanding of the common good. This is such an alluring idea, in fact, that it is taken to be the “standard” worldview, from which other worldviews (especially religious worldviews) depart.

I would then argue: Secularism is not meant to be a worldview. It is meant to be a mutual agreement not to impose any particular worldview. In the same way, a recipe is not an ingredient – it is a description of the way the ingredients are meant to come together.

The fascinating thing – to this bloviator, anyway – is that in its refusal to impose a particular religious worldview, secularism has thus seemed very attractive to those who reject all religious worldviews – I mean, atheists.

In fact, many atheists have often been only too happy to wear the mantle of secularism, and many Christians have been too dense to understand the distinction: Atheism is a worldview, but secularism is not. (I do think, lest I hang too many of my brethren in Christ, that plenty of atheists are so fanatical as to miss the distinction, too).

The truth is, both Christians and atheists (and Muslims, and Hindus, and…) should be happy to wear the mantle of secularism – unless they have a better strategy for governing in a pluralistic society.

Or, I suppose, unless they intend to install a theocracy.

Now, critical to secularism, it seems to me, is the free exercise of religion; but let’s amend it, and call it the free exercise of worldview.* We should not leave the atheists out, after all, or they might claim the whole damned system for themselves and install an anti-theist-ocracy. (Don’t laugh…it’s been done).

Let’s ask the question: Is it right to impose on an employer (or anyone), and require her to provide for a product or treatment to which she is morally opposed?

Is it really in line with the idea of secularism that we should require people to act in opposition to their worldviews, so that other people will receive what is considered “good” within their worldview?

Forget for a moment that this was an issue raised mainly by Christians. Think of yourself, and your sincerely held worldview. Think of one particular action which you find morally offensive.

The argument is, can a society really be justified in forcing you to commit (or be complicit in) that action, no matter how “good” other members of that society perceive it to be?

Don’t be hasty. Don’t assume you’re cool with whatever. That is not the meaning of secularism.

The meaning of secularism is to provide a real opportunity for people of multi-various worldviews to live authentically within their own worldviews, while living in common with each other.

Government impositions on sincerely held beliefs are a sin in secularism. They cripple secularism.

And they necessarily favor one worldview over others.

*Whether this bears the spirit of the Framers is a fair and interesting question, but I aim to talk about secularism principally as a concept, and not within any particular historical context.

In our time, Christmas is a lovely thing.  It is universally observed as a time for giving, family, good works.  Only a little more narrowly, it is the great holy day, brought out as something better than any heirloom or treasure, recognized as the arrival of a singular hero, God Himself.

The comfort of family and traditions veils the shock.  Consider the infant!

A baby in the room will elicit warm smiles, soft coos, sure hands to cradle her.  The infant receives and cannot offer, cries but cannot articulate, trusts but cannot protect herself from harm.

At Christmas, we are not often reminded that the world is still enemy territory.  Christmas is the time when it feels as though the world could be otherwise – perhaps there could be peace on Earth.

But that is not the pretense for the Incarnation.  The pretense is that the world is fallen, is in need of redemption.  The pretense, as Christ later says, is that men are wicked, this generation is faithless.  They cannot grapple with the mess they’re in.  It will destroy them.

Now, if you had all power and determined to fight and win this conflict, would you begin by emptying yourself of all that power and appearing as an infant behind enemy lines?  This is the paradox that would destroy all reality:  That God made Himself utterly vulnerable to death.

That baby in the manger is everything.  And he has nothing, can say nothing, can protect nothing.

Why?

We with finite powers may begin to answer this:  If we had all power, we might storm the earth, take the holy innocents trapped behind enemy lines, and speed them to Paradise.  And then, if we had the stomach for it – and we would, being holy – we would destroy whatever remained in water and fire, and begin again.

But who, exactly, would you have rescued?

All are under the grip of sin.  None are innocent.  You would return to Heaven empty-handed, and turn around and destroy all those you meant to save.

Do you see the predicament?  We are willing captives.  We choose this every time we sin.  Meanwhile, God loves us and wishes to redeem us to unimaginable glory.

If He comes in force, we are likely as not to resist!  Our guards go up, and all of the things we value more than we should, all of the priorities we have placed above Him – these things we cling to in defiance of Him.

Not you?  Do it now, then.  Go where He has been calling you.  Give up the sins, give up even the good things which nevertheless stand in your way.  Leave all things behind – do not look back – and follow Him.

See it now?  You are the enemy’s territory.  Your heart is behind enemy lines.  God cannot rescue you by destroying you.

Make no mistake.  There is evil, and it must ultimately be destroyed.  Violently, with a permanence so profound you will not remember it existed.

Yet you are redeemable, and one of the ways you can observe this is by your response to an infant.  Do you offer a smile?  Does your hope awaken?  Would you protect the baby from harm?

It was a master stroke, wasn’t it?  God almighty, appearing as an infant invader?

He had to come claim your heart, first.  Only then could He lead you out.