No One Needs A Moral Philosophy [EvolutionBlog]

Here’s something that happened this week: David Brooks wrote a bad column about secularism. In fairness, it gets off to a decent start:

Over the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who are atheist, agnostic or without religious affiliation. A fifth of all adults and a third of the youngest adults fit into this category.

As secularism becomes more prominent and self-confident, its spokesmen have more insistently argued that secularism should not be seen as an absence — as a lack of faith — but rather as a positive moral creed. Phil Zuckerman, a Pitzer College sociologist, makes this case as fluidly and pleasurably as anybody in his book, “Living the Secular Life.”

Zuckerman argues that secular morality is built around individual reason, individual choice and individual responsibility. Instead of relying on some eye in the sky to tell them what to do, secular people reason their way to proper conduct.

Secular people, he argues, value autonomy over groupthink. They deepen their attachment to this world instead of focusing on a next one. They may not be articulate about why they behave as they do, he argues, but they try their best to follow the Golden Rule, to be considerate and empathetic toward others. “Secular morality hinges upon little else than not harming others and helping those in need,” Zuckerman writes.

Having enjoyed Zuckerman’s previous book Society Without God, I’m looking forward to reading this one as well. If Brooks had stopped here, I would have thought it a pretty good column. The trouble is that from here the column rattles off a series of bullet points that are meant to convince us that it is terribly difficult to live without religion. All of them deserve a vigorous response, but to keep this to a reasonable length I will just focus on one:

Secular individuals have to build their own moral philosophies. Religious people inherit creeds that have evolved over centuries. Autonomous secular people are called upon to settle on their own individual sacred convictions.

If Richard Dawkins had written those first two sentences he would have been accused of indulging in caricatures of religious people. He would be charged with making religious people look like thoughtless zombies, just mindlessly adhering to moral principles other folks had taught them.

Let’s see if we can enumerate everything that’s wrong with Brooks’s argument.

First, religious people no less than secular people have to work out their convictions for themselves. Blindly following the dictates of authority figures is fine for children, but we mostly expect adults to be more thoughtful than that. Deciding that one should follow the teachings of clerics and holy texts is as fateful a decision as anything secularists face.

Second, to the extent that religious folks can be said to inherit moral creeds, those creeds are frequently very poor ones. They are often based on very dubious notions about “natural law” and can often lead to very bad consequences. To go for the low-hanging fruit, do I need to remind you that slavery was routinely defended in explicitly religious terms? Things are scarcely different today, where the most repressive and immoral views about women and homosexuals are promoted by religion. You might retort that many Christians hold far more sensible views on those subjects than do the extremists, but that only supports my argument. They hold those views precisely because they bring their own ideas and values to the discussion, and don’t just rely on the teachings of their religious authorities.

Third, secular people, no less than religious people, can tap into a long tradition of thought and argument. It’s not as though secular morality is some new thing. Many great philosophers have weighed in on the subject, and their thoughts are far more deserving of serious consideration than anything found in the world’s holy texts, or anything shrieked from a pulpit on Sunday morning.

Finally, and most significantly in my view, no one needs a moral philosophy. True moral dilemmas are exceedingly rare, and most people go their whole lives without ever encountering one in their day-to-day experience. Yet most people also manage to go their whole lives without behaving badly, or at least with no more than the trivial sort of badness we all sometimes engage in. Even when we do behave badly, it is almost never because we are confused about the right thing to do.

How many people, though, have really thought seriously about the differences between consequentialism, virtue ethics, deontology, and the divine command theory? Somehow we all manage to know right from wrong without consulting the works of moral philosophers. That is because most people just regard it as obvious, even axiomatic, that you shouldn’t hurt other people without an awfully good reason, or that we should have some empathy for other people. Most moral questions can be resolved with a few basic principles nearly everyone accepts instinctively, or perhaps because we learned them at a very young age. Asked to explain why murder is wrong, most people will just reply with a funny look, as thought it reflects poorly on a person even to raise the question. That reply is entirely appropriate in my opinion.

The sheer ubiquity and cultural force of religion can make it difficult to live the secular life, in some parts of the country more than others. In practice, it can sometimes be difficult to live without religion simply because you might be seriously limiting your social options by doing so. But finding one’s way to right moral thinking is not one of the problems secular people face. The reality is precisely the opposite, in fact. Clear thinking about morality cannot begin until you shake off antiquated and harmful religious notions.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1ztlLLi

Here’s something that happened this week: David Brooks wrote a bad column about secularism. In fairness, it gets off to a decent start:

Over the past few years, there has been a sharp rise in the number of people who are atheist, agnostic or without religious affiliation. A fifth of all adults and a third of the youngest adults fit into this category.

As secularism becomes more prominent and self-confident, its spokesmen have more insistently argued that secularism should not be seen as an absence — as a lack of faith — but rather as a positive moral creed. Phil Zuckerman, a Pitzer College sociologist, makes this case as fluidly and pleasurably as anybody in his book, “Living the Secular Life.”

Zuckerman argues that secular morality is built around individual reason, individual choice and individual responsibility. Instead of relying on some eye in the sky to tell them what to do, secular people reason their way to proper conduct.

Secular people, he argues, value autonomy over groupthink. They deepen their attachment to this world instead of focusing on a next one. They may not be articulate about why they behave as they do, he argues, but they try their best to follow the Golden Rule, to be considerate and empathetic toward others. “Secular morality hinges upon little else than not harming others and helping those in need,” Zuckerman writes.

Having enjoyed Zuckerman’s previous book Society Without God, I’m looking forward to reading this one as well. If Brooks had stopped here, I would have thought it a pretty good column. The trouble is that from here the column rattles off a series of bullet points that are meant to convince us that it is terribly difficult to live without religion. All of them deserve a vigorous response, but to keep this to a reasonable length I will just focus on one:

Secular individuals have to build their own moral philosophies. Religious people inherit creeds that have evolved over centuries. Autonomous secular people are called upon to settle on their own individual sacred convictions.

If Richard Dawkins had written those first two sentences he would have been accused of indulging in caricatures of religious people. He would be charged with making religious people look like thoughtless zombies, just mindlessly adhering to moral principles other folks had taught them.

Let’s see if we can enumerate everything that’s wrong with Brooks’s argument.

First, religious people no less than secular people have to work out their convictions for themselves. Blindly following the dictates of authority figures is fine for children, but we mostly expect adults to be more thoughtful than that. Deciding that one should follow the teachings of clerics and holy texts is as fateful a decision as anything secularists face.

Second, to the extent that religious folks can be said to inherit moral creeds, those creeds are frequently very poor ones. They are often based on very dubious notions about “natural law” and can often lead to very bad consequences. To go for the low-hanging fruit, do I need to remind you that slavery was routinely defended in explicitly religious terms? Things are scarcely different today, where the most repressive and immoral views about women and homosexuals are promoted by religion. You might retort that many Christians hold far more sensible views on those subjects than do the extremists, but that only supports my argument. They hold those views precisely because they bring their own ideas and values to the discussion, and don’t just rely on the teachings of their religious authorities.

Third, secular people, no less than religious people, can tap into a long tradition of thought and argument. It’s not as though secular morality is some new thing. Many great philosophers have weighed in on the subject, and their thoughts are far more deserving of serious consideration than anything found in the world’s holy texts, or anything shrieked from a pulpit on Sunday morning.

Finally, and most significantly in my view, no one needs a moral philosophy. True moral dilemmas are exceedingly rare, and most people go their whole lives without ever encountering one in their day-to-day experience. Yet most people also manage to go their whole lives without behaving badly, or at least with no more than the trivial sort of badness we all sometimes engage in. Even when we do behave badly, it is almost never because we are confused about the right thing to do.

How many people, though, have really thought seriously about the differences between consequentialism, virtue ethics, deontology, and the divine command theory? Somehow we all manage to know right from wrong without consulting the works of moral philosophers. That is because most people just regard it as obvious, even axiomatic, that you shouldn’t hurt other people without an awfully good reason, or that we should have some empathy for other people. Most moral questions can be resolved with a few basic principles nearly everyone accepts instinctively, or perhaps because we learned them at a very young age. Asked to explain why murder is wrong, most people will just reply with a funny look, as thought it reflects poorly on a person even to raise the question. That reply is entirely appropriate in my opinion.

The sheer ubiquity and cultural force of religion can make it difficult to live the secular life, in some parts of the country more than others. In practice, it can sometimes be difficult to live without religion simply because you might be seriously limiting your social options by doing so. But finding one’s way to right moral thinking is not one of the problems secular people face. The reality is precisely the opposite, in fact. Clear thinking about morality cannot begin until you shake off antiquated and harmful religious notions.

from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1ztlLLi