Keith Parsons gives me credit for getting him thinking. Enjoy—
WHY SHOULD AN ATHEIST BE MORAL?
Keith Parsons
Ed's recent post, "Republishing on Religion and Morality," got me to thinking how I would answer the question, "Why should an atheist be moral?" Obviously, of course, the answer cannot be "Because it is the (morally) right thing to do" since to say that you should be moral because it is the moral thing to do is to argue in a very tight circle. Nor does it help to dismiss the question by saying that, by definition, the moral is what you should do. The whole question is what motivates you to do what you should do. The "Why," then, must be asking why it is reasonable to be moral. Why not be utterly selfish, or, like Dostoevsky's Underground Man, just live to spite your enemies? Why is it more reasonable to be unselfish and unspiteful?
Fyodor Dostoevsky’s 1864 Novella, Notes from the Underground
Of course, there are self-serving reasons. Alex Rosenberg, a fine philosopher of biology, went off the deep end when he wrote The Atheist's Guide to Reality, a book so spectacularly awful that when reading it I thought, "If this is what being an atheist entails, I would rather be a Christian." Rosenberg holds that our ethical intuitions are accidental products of evolution—feelings that helped the members of a certain species of primate to get along with each other. Like an upright posture, big brains, and opposable thumbs, ethical intuitions are useful adaptations but nothing more. Rosenberg is a nihilist. Morality is hooey. However, he says that he is a "nice nihilist" because nice nihilists will get along with others better and live a more pleasant life than mean nihilists.
Alexander Rosenberg (1946— )
Plato's bad boy Thrasymachus saw through this nonsense 2400 years ago. As he knew, the best life for a nihilist is to be maximally unjust while fooling everybody into thinking that you are just. That way, you get the benefits of total selfishness as well as the honors and respect paid by people who think you are great. Some have lived that ideal. I understand that in John Gotti's neighborhood everybody talked about what a wonderful man he was. Too bad the FBI did not buy it.
So why, other than CYA, is it reasonable to be moral? I think what the "Why" is really asking for is the meta-ethical question, "Why ought we to do anything?" Where does "ought" come from? What is its basis and force, how does it oblige us to do or refrain from doing? As Hume observed, the logic of "ought" is different from the logic of "is." To say that something, even something horrible, is the case does not, ipso facto, tell us what we should do about it. On the other hand, to say that something ought to be done about something indicates that we have a duty or responsibility to oppose it. Hume therefore famously said that you cannot logically derive an "ought" from an "is."
Alvin Plantinga (1932— )
Distinguished Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga appears to agree with Hume. In an article, "God, Arguments for the Existence Of," in the Routledge Shorter Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward Craig, he argues that theists have a reason for identifying certain things as intrinsically and objectively horrifying—horrifying independently of what anyone happens to think. On the other hand, most atheists are naturalists, that is, they reject any appeal to explanations or causes of a supernatural or transcendent nature. In this case, says Plantinga, all they can say is that we do in fact find certain things horrifying, but cannot say why they are intrinsically and objectively horrifying, or, it appears to follow, why we ought to oppose them. How can naturalists tell us what we ought to do when they have no grounds for identifying anything as intrinsically and objectively good or evil? Plantinga therefore appears to agree with Rosenberg that nihilism is the logical consequence of atheism.
Plantinga continues that those who commit atrocious acts intentionally do wicked things, but what makes this intrinsically horrifying? This is his answer:
A good answer (and one for which it is hard to think of an alternative) is that the evil consists in defying God, the source of all that is good and just, and the first being of the universe. What is horrifying here is not merely going contrary to God's will, but consciously choosing to invert the true scale of values, explicitly aiming at what is abhorrent to God. This is an offense and affront to God; it is defiance of God himself and so is objectively horrifying (p. 326).
But Plantinga admits that the horror lies not in defying God per se, but in inverting "the true scale of values," consciously choosing to do that which is wrong. Defying God is horrifying only if God does will the true values. If, on the other hand, God were not to will in accordance with the true scale of values as, say, in ordering the genocide of the Amalekites (I Samuel, Chapter 15), then defying his will would be a good thing. So, violating the will of God is horrifying purely in a secondary and derivative sense, dependent entirely upon the consonance of his will with the true scale of values.
Ah, say the theists, God is essentially good; his will therefore necessarily perfectly conforms to goodness so everything he wills is good (And so, BTW, some instances of genocide—those ordered by God—must be good.). Yet, even if God is essentially good, what matters is the goodness, not the necessary conformity of God's will to it. Even if God is the source of all that is good and just, as Plantinga says (p. 326), it is the intrinsic goodness and justice of those things that matters, not their source in God.
What is the true scale of values? Everybody (except Alex Rosenberg) knows that. They are things like love over hate, kindness over cruelty, compassion over callousness, generosity over selfishness, and forgiveness over vindictiveness. Why can't the naturalist account for the objective and intrinsic goodness of these things and the badness of their opposites just as well as the theist?
At this point, let me step back and say what I think ethics is all about. For modern philosophers, the primary concept of ethics is moral obligation. Thus, Kant's central concern was to identify the categorical imperative, that is, the command, dictated by pure practical reason, that underlies all our moral directives. Famously, he phrased the supposed categorical imperative as, "Always act only on that maxim that you can at that same time will to become a universal law." In other words, the rule you follow in making moral decisions has to be one that is good for everybody. For it to be OK for you to lie, it has to be OK for everyone to lie. No special pleading allowed. For John Stuart Mill, the fundamental moral injunction is to always act so as to produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Your duty is to maximize happiness.
For Aristotle, on the other hand, ethics was not primarily about moral obligation, but about the actualization of value. Aristotle identified a state, eudaimonia, which is the intrinsic and ultimate good for human beings. Eudaimonia is variously translated as "thriving," "flourishing," or "well-being." As he works it out, it is the condition of self-actualization in which your rational faculties are fully functional and your character manifests the moral virtues that optimize your ability to fruitfully interact with others. Human thriving is just as much an objective fact as the thriving of any other living thing. We can tell when our garden is thriving and when our pets are healthy and happy. Human thriving is more complex but is just as real.
I agree with Aristotle. I think that ethics is about (1) identifying that which is genuinely valuable, and (2) figuring out the best way to achieve such values. How do we identify the genuinely valuable for human beings? In principle we do it in the same way that we can identify the good for other organisms. In the movie Jaws, the marine biologist played by Richard Dreyfuss describes the great white shark to the town's idiot mayor. It is a miracle of evolution, he says, an eating machine. All it does is swim, eat, and make little sharks. So, a shark thrives when it is doing what nature has adapted it to do, swim, eat, and make little sharks.
Humans, of course, are much more complex than sharks, but the principle is the same. What has nature adapted humans to do? Humans are, by nature, rational and social animals, and we are thriving when we are physically and mentally healthy, when we are not suffering a grave misfortune such as dire poverty or grief, when our minds are functioning optimally, and when we are interacting successfully with our fellow humans. This is what is objectively and intrinsically good for human beings.
When I present this idea to my undergraduate students, some object. Isn't happiness subjective? Isn't happiness for one person misery for another? It certainly is true that people enjoy different things. Some people actually voluntarily watch The Bachelorette. You would have to tie me down and prop my eyelids open. After an episode and a half, I would be willing to confess anything. Yet differences in tastes, enjoyments, and preferences do not mean that we fail to share a common set of needs that must be met and aptitudes that must be developed to have a full and enriching life. This is why societies that do not permit women to develop their mental faculties through education thereby stunt and oppress those women.
There are therefore conditions, abilities, and activities of intrinsic and objective worth to human beings. Yet these are natural goods, not moral goods. How does morality enter the picture? Morality primarily has to do with the effort to promote natural goods. Actions are morally good that promote human thriving and morally bad that inhibit human thriving. On this account, and pace Plantinga, anyone, including atheists, can identify certain things as intrinsically and objectively good, and can say that we ought to pursue the good and to eschew and oppose the bad.
But wait! Even if thriving is an objective and intrinsic natural good, why ought I to seek it for myself and others? Kant and many others would find my account radically unsatisfactory. I may have justified a purely pragmatic, prudential "ought" whereby we are told what to do if we want to achieve human thriving, but this is not a truly moral ought. Moral commands are categorical, not hypothetical. A hypothetical imperative tells us what to do if we have certain aims, purposes, or desires. If you want to go to law school, you ought to take an LSAT preparation course. Moral imperatives, on the other hand, are categorical. They tell us "Do this!" Full stop. Our aims, purposes, or desires are irrelevant. Don't murder. Period. I have indicated no basis for a categorical imperative.
Do I have a categorical moral principle, one based solely upon reason, that lies at the basis of all our moral imperatives? I do. Here it is: Value the valuable. The basic moral imperative is to value that which is genuinely valuable—that which, in other words, contributes to human thriving. If we do this, we will desire only the the truly desirable and reject those things that might appear desirable but are really destructive. We will pursue goals that are genuinely worthy, fighting for what is right, and opposing—by any means necessary—those who invert the true scale of values and commit actions that are intrinsically horrifying.
So, for me, ethics is basically Aristotelian with a whiff of Kant. The goal of morality is to maximize the thriving of sentient beings, not just humans, but all sentient beings. My cat has intrinsic value; her well-being matters. The fundamental motivation to pursue that goal is the categorical injunction to value the valuable.
So, why should an atheist be moral? The same reason as everybody else: You should value the valuable. In my experience, theism vs. atheism is not a fundamental division among humans. Two of my best friends are retired ministers and another is a faithful Lutheran. Yet I get along with them so well because we share our basic values and care deeply about them. One, the Rev. Dr. Paris Donehoo coauthored a book with me in which we argued for our basic values in the face of Trumpian barbarism. The claim that atheists have no reason to be moral is a canard, a silly argument that even so capable a philosopher as Alvin Plantinga flubbed. In the current crisis, with approximately half the electorate supporting a violent madman, it is truly the time for ALL good people, theist and atheist, to come to the aid of their country.
Note: Anyone may copy and publish what I or my guests write, provided proper credit is given, that it’s not done for commercial purposes, that I am notified of the copying (you can just leave a comment saying where the copy is being published), and provided that what we write is not quoted out of context or distorted.
Thanks again for reading Letters … . Subscribe for free (always) to receive new posts and support my work.
Very well explained. I will share to the Gulf Coast Freethinkers and Humanists of West Florida.