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.

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.

The faith is a demanding thing, and the way may well be impossible.

You are a creature, in the flesh, and subject to the stresses and demands of physical survival.  You can no more extract yourself from the natural world than you can leap off the Earth and land on the Moon.

We will ever be at odds with the world, and if we are not, that shall be a warning to us.  As it is, the more one is faithful, the more he will be hated.

The darkness is always closing in.

The world then, with its powerful and mighty, its famed and fortunate, has an appeal the faithful can never capture.  There is enmity and it cannot be bridged.  The advantage, so long as we are in the world, belongs to the worldly.

So you may find yourself beaten down.  In a world upside-down – as it will ever be – your virtue is a drag on your success, your kindness is weakness, your modesty is a limit beyond which your competitors race to defeat you.

You may come to think that, despite the echoes of your dreams, dreams from a far-off place, you are destined to a middling life.  Gray and sluggish, commoditized, leaving no impression by which you will ever be remembered.

But you’ve got it all wrong;  You have swallowed the lie.

I am your brother, listen to me:  You have closed yourself off from God.

God – does not – permit mediocrity.  He will spit you out, and perhaps He has.

Here is how you will find the moment of expectoration:  When did you last avoid a good action because of fear?   It is that simple – in your family, in your business, in your spiritual life, when you have found something good to be too much, or too dreadful, you assumed the temperature of the room.  You were no longer pleasing to the taste, giving satisfaction to the thirst.

The lie is that, as a child of God, you are bound to defeat.  No need to begin fighting, it will all end in flames and ashes.

The enemy is no fool.  He knows that if he can demoralize you before you’ve begun to fight back, he’s already won.

The game is rigged against you, he says.  He holds all the cards.  Go ahead, make a run at it – see how easily you are slapped down?  And what are you resisting sin for, after all?  If it is all for God and the ultimate victory, why does God not win right now?  Why does He make it all but impossible for you to succeed?

Now, do you see how you have been poisoned and duped?  Do you see how the world has trampled upon your God-given dignity, and has stifled the mighty works God meant to work through you?  It is time to go in, whips in hand, and throw the tables over.

The truth is, you have not trusted God enough.  You have accepted, from fear or disappointment, that He will not come through for you.

Perhaps you are inadequate (you are).  Perhaps you are imperfect (doubtless).  Yes, you have failed, and you have shamed yourself, and you have given every earthly reason to any worldly power that you are not up to the task.

Do you see the lie?  You will see it when you hear the truth:  You do not answer to a worldly power.  You answer to the Almighty.

Therefore!  It does not matter if you have failed by worldly measures, over and over again.  It does not matter if you have showed yourself inadequate for the task, lacking in perseverance, intelligence, skill.

Fool!  IT. IS. NOT. ABOUT. YOU.

Do you wonder why Adam and Eve ate of the apple?  First, clean your lips of that bitter sweetness… you have sunk your teeth into the lie and devoured it whole.

Let’s put it starkly, written in a flame against the blackness of night:  The Devil has isolated you from God, and proceeded to devour you.  This is why you are demoralized, beaten down, perpetually inadequate, in motion and going nowhere.

The Devil is virtually a god and has convinced you that you must face him under your own power.  Every failure, every weak moment, every grasp at evil is one more victory for him, and one more defeat for you.  And you have no hope of overcoming him…

…alone.

But of course he has lied to you.  He rigged the game, he set you up for destruction.  Now, you know better.

You, as always, must call on the Almighty.  You must call on Him with all of the desperation of a drowning man, because truly you cannot defeat the waves.  You must call on him as though the enemy came fully armed, has you surrounded, and is counting down to your annihilation.  Because you cannot defeat death.

But He can.

And there it is, my brother, my sister.  Look to Him, always.  Pray to Him, at every moment, for every good thing – especially in your need.

Then, simply hold on.  Work and strive and fight with everything you have, reinforced by the power of God.  One day you will barely be able to stand, and the next you will be lifting mountains.  First, you will strain to walk, then you will race with all speed to the ends of the earth.

Many will doubt, and then you will succeed beyond all of their expectations.

Many will forecast doom, and you will deliver victory.