Why Not Ask God for Moral Guidance?
In my previous blogessay I claimed that we can make moral judgments on which religions are really better or worse, and that the source of this moral judgment is transcendent but not supernatural. How can this be? Before I disclose my answer (if you’ve read my book The Science of Good and Evil you already know the answer), what’s wrong with the supernatural answer? That is, why can’t we just ask God? Virtually every believer you know believes that “without God anything goes.” There are three problems with this source of moral judgment: (1) Euthyphro’s dilemma, (2) Silence, (3) No longer applicable.
(1) In his dialog The Euthyphro, the Greek philosopher Plato presented what has come to be known as “Euthyphro’s dilemma,” in which his favorite protagonist—the cantankerous political gadfly Socrates—asks a young man named Euthyphro the following question: “The point which I should first wish to understand is whether the pious or holy is beloved by the gods because it is holy, or holy because it is beloved of the gods?” The underlying assumption for Plato, as it has been ever since for most theologians, is that moral principles are and must be linked to a God or gods in order to be considered absolute, eternal, and meaningful. Socrates is trying to show Euthyphro that there exists a dilemma over whether God embraces moral principles naturally occurring and external to Him because they are sound (“holy”) or that these moral principles are sound because He created them. It cannot be both.
(2) What if the moral issue is not discussed in the sacred writings of one’s religion? Cloning, stem cell research, and genetic engineering, for example, are not discussed in the Bible, so what are believers to believe about these very real moral issues? One must either attempt to infer from ancient biblical writings something that is loosely related to the modern moral issue, or one must think it through independently.
(3) What if the moral issue is discussed in the sacred writings, but is clearly inappropriate or outright wrong in its moral command? Consider, for example, the many Old Testament moral rules that make one blanch with embarrassment. For emancipated modern women thinking of adorning themselves in business attire that may resemble men’s business ware (or for guys who dig cross-dressing), Deuteronomy 22:5 does not look kindly on such behaviors: “A woman shall not wear anything that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” An even worse abomination is a rebellious child. Deuteronomy 21:18-21 offers this parental moral guideline: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.”
Death penalty for disobedient children. All in favor raise your hands.
If that isn’t risibly ridiculous enough, here is the Bible’s recommendation on how to deal with women who may or may not have had sex before marriage. According to Deuteronomy 22:13-21, “If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and then spurns her, and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings an evil name upon her, saying, ‘I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her the tokens of virginity,’ then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the tokens of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate.” (For those not accustomed to reading between the biblical lines, the phrase “goes in to her” should be taken literally, and “the tokens of virginity” means the hymen and the blood on the sheet from a virgin’s first sexual experience.) “But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has wrought folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.”
Death penalty for pre-marital sex. All in favor…oops, there won’t be many left to vote.
When slavery was the social norm, it was simple for pro-slavery defenders to point to passages such as those in Exodus 21, which outlines the rules for the proper handling of slaves, for example, “when you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing,” and “when a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do,” and, finally, slave families should be kept together, unless the master gave the slave a wife, who then bore him children, in which case the master gets to keep the woman and children when the slave is sold.
If you are going to claim the Bible as your primary (or only) code of ethics, and proclaim, say, that homosexuality is sinful and wrong because the Bible says so, then to be consistent you should kill rebellious youth, non-virginal pre-married women, and treat your slaves properly. Since most people today would not endorse that level of moral consistency, why pick on gays and lesbians but cut some slack for disobedient children and promiscuous women? And why aren’t promiscuous men subject to the same punishment as women? Those women are having sex with someone, right?
The answer is that in that culture, at that time, men legislated and women obeyed. Thankfully, we have moved beyond that culture. But what this means is that we need a new set of morals, and an ethical system designed for our time and place, not one scripted for a pastoral/agricultural people who lived 4,000 years ago. The Bible and other sacred texts have much to offer, but we can do better.
(Note: This blogessay is a modified excerpt from Chapter 7 of The Science of Good and Evil, which should be read for a fuller defense of my argument here.)
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Mr. Shermer,
You asked: “Why Not Ask God for Moral Guidance?” In you response to your own question you point out that many of the legislative elements of the Tanakh would unlikely be embraced by modern readers. Your argument appears to be that since many of the 613 commandments of the Tanakh seem to be “out of date” to people of the 21st century, one should not ask God for moral guidance. You have of course selected some passages with specific details for specific situations. However you do ignore other passages with perhaps broader and more applicable directives. For example, in the 82nd Psalm the God of the Tanakh directs his people to “Give fair judgment to the poor and the orphan; uphold the rights of the oppressed and the destitute. Rescue the poor and helpless; deliver them from the grasp of evil people.” Is this morally out of date to modern reader? In Deuteronomy 24 this same God commands “”Never take advantage of poor laborers, whether fellow Israelites or foreigners living in your towns.” I for one see nothing questionable about the moral values expressed here. Zechariah 7 tells us more; “This is what the Lord Almighty says: Judge fairly and honestly, and show mercy and kindness to one another. Do not oppress widows, orphans, foreigners, and poor people. And do not make evil plans to harm each other.” Jesus said, according the Christian Gospels,”“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” which strikes many as sound advice even in this day and age. In the Qu’ran Allah tells his followers the fourth sura (“The Women”)”men shall have the benefit of what they earn and women shall have the benefit of what they earn” and in the 76th sura (“Time”) it says “And they give food out of love for Him to the poor and the orphan and the captive:
We only feed you for Allah’s sake; we desire from you neither reward nor thanks”. Once more, this does not, to my eyes any way, seem to be bad or dated advice.
You have made a crucial logical leap, specifically that “asking God for Moral Guidance” is the same thing as reading specific passages from a holy book and applying them to specific current situations. Might they not be two entirely different things? Is it not possible to listen to God’s moral advice by reading the spirit of a text and not the letter.
There is a Muslim scholar named Chandra Muzaffar who has argued that to read the Qu’ran one has to do so from a “values-based approach” rather than the traditional “fiqh-based approach”. The latter stresses the he letter of the Qu’ran over its spirit and has a heavy focus on the fiqh tradition with its emphasis on rituals, rules, and external observances. An alternative approach of some like Mr. Muzaffar emphasis rather justice, freedom, love, compassion and equality based on the understanding of the broader reading of the text of the Qu’ran. The former gives special attention to what separates Mulsims from non-Muslims and while the latter focuses on what unites them.
You have selected the people who take a “fiqh” approach to their faiths as the model for what “listening to God’s moral advice”. However that is but a one-sided examination of the question. If you wish to serve your readers well, rather than just score cheap points in an ideological game, you would do well to look at more than just one side of it.
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Human beings are pieces of work.If we can find a sacred text to confirm what we want to do,we quote it endlessly. If we find the specific judgments in faith texts odd or cruel we side step it with a dodge and ‘read them in the spirit of the law’. It is cherry picking our texts and it is not playing according to Hoyle. If in a faith text is being used as an authority to be followed as a moral compass then you are saddled with ALL of it.If moral advice is bound in the same binding and dubbed inerrant then it is implied inerrant in it’s entirety.
The reasonable modern alternative is to de-deify the text and utilize the applicable bits that have served the test of time and acknowledge the others as driven by ancient human culture and ditch them as nothing but interesting historical realities we are well rid of…unless marrying off a raped virgin to her rapist after paying her Father fifty shekels sounds like good policy in this day and age. Duet 22 28-29 for anyone taking notes.
I agree with you Dr. Shermer, there is some good stuff in those texts, but we can do better than just follow them unexamined as if we are still entrenched in a patriarchal, agrarian, bronze age society.
Thanks nancywhite, see how simple that is? The bible is a great collection of homilies on moral subjects. We humans can gather all the writings of any brand of theological text and use any number of their writings for guidance and support. Or we can use none of them at all and rely on the fact that we really have to cooperate with each other to survive.
In response to another comment. See in context »It seems to me there’s been 2000+ years of examination of how to apply the principles expressed as rules in the Old Testament, starting with the ministry of Jesus.
The Bible to me describes a natural and predictable progression of rules and principles in just the way one would expect a parent to raise his offspring.
When man was unwise and immature, the rules were of the “don’t cross the road without an adult” variety, and when man had developed the maturity, contextual understanding and critical thinking skills required to make decisions based on reason and principles, the ruled were overshadowed by a “look at what’s going on and use your head” approach.
That’s a smart Father by any standard.
So this article starts out by saying “we can make moral judgments on which religions are really better or worse” – a proposition I was looking forward to seeing expounded.
But then the rest of the article talks about the problems of using ancient ethical/moral systems, and merely suggests that we need a modern system that fits the needs of a modern world.
I don’t disagree with any of that, but I think you’ve failed to propose any actual source of moral authority. You do *suggest* that the source is reason, but only defend that by pointing out the flaws in religious morality. I have to say I’m kind of disappointed.
I wish I could take credit for the following subtle yet beautiful point regarding moral philosophy and religion; but it comes from Daniel Dennett. Daniel expounded upon it in an interview with Richard Dawkins as captured in the DVD “The Genius of Charles Darwin: The Uncut Interviews”.
In the interview Dennett points out the almost universal observational fact that human beings use their innate moral sense to filter, choose and interpret religious edicts, even to the point of discarding some strictures while adding others. This is the direct antithesis of the way some people believe moral religiosity works, whereby people supposedly obtain a moral sense FROM religion.
Even more profoundly, it is just those individuals who insist on a strict interpretation (or literal reading) of religious doctrine rather than relying on a more humane and innate sense of morality (such as expounded in Shermer’s “The Science of Good and Evil”), who we view as dangerous religious zealots.
In short, the human moral compass derived from socialization and evolution variously supports, supersedes or quite often contradicts the strictures of religion. Those who fail to apply such a compass are considered some of the most dangerous and immoral people in the world.
The big problem in these studies is identifying whether the participants understand or care about the difference between morals and desires. The problem Dennett points out and you affirm is just as simply explained by a compatition between the will of a divine creator and the will of an individual creature.
Thus, we illustrate a huge problem with neodarwinism, the idea that everything we observe is a result of random variation and natural selection.
If you propose that all behaviors are a result of of chance and fitness for survival, every explanation as to why we behave the way we do is reduced to “it just worked for the given circumstances”. And, as an extension, you cannot make any lasting conclusions about how we should behave, because all behaviors are not just influenced, but controlled by context, which is constantly changing.
In response to another comment. See in context »Chris, thank you for a nice dialogue. You say:
“The big problem in these studies is identifying whether the participants understand or care about the difference between morals and desires.”
I don’t see the “big problem”. We often desire immoral things. The eventual behaviors and choices are what phychologists and ethicists study. Certainly there are some scientists concerned with internal states of the brain, such as the amygdala vs. the cortex, but that’s not what we’re discussing here. Further, I didn’t talk about “studies”, per se. Dennett has a conjecture, which may or may not be supported by evidence, that most religious people make a conscious choice about what to believe and integrate into their own moral and behavioral code, and what not. Although I haven’t done a formal study, I am exceedingly confident that any non-literalist, non-fundamentalist religous believer will agree that there are scriptures and strictures they have decieded are not relevant or reasonable.
You say:
“The problem Dennett points out and you affirm is just as simply explained by a compatition between the will of a divine creator and the will of an individual creature.”
You make an extraordinary claim, bringing a whole new actor (and a super-powerful one at that) into a scenario that can be completely explained by individual moral choice. The burden is on you to show what effect necessitates such an astonishing cause. You might as well say that gravity can be as easilly explained by supposing a god pushes the apple down to the Earth. That’s an intriguing conjecture – but to be shown valid it must be supported with proof. No behavior of the fall of an apple, nor the moral choice of an individual requires an appeal to an external divine agency.
You say:
“Thus, we illustrate a huge problem with neodarwinism, the idea that everything we observe is a result of random variation and natural selection.”
Chris, your conclusion does not follow your premise. In a moment of weakness you’ve fallen prey to a classic error in logic and rhetoric. Nowhere do you talk about neodarwinism, natural selection or variation, yet you lay claim to having shown problems with them.
This logical error notwithstanding, natural selection, sexual selection and random genetic mutation – given billions of years and millions or billions of generations, can give rise to beings well-suited to their environment. Such environments also include other plants and animals, and (this is key), other people working and living in a social context. It does not take a leap of faith to perceive the benefits to the community and individual of in-groups, mutual respect, aversion to murder, altruism etc. arising from the need to cooperate to survive. Read “The Science of Good and Evil” by Dr. Shermer for a more extensive treatment of such topics.
You say:
“If you propose that all behaviors are a result of of chance and fitness for survival, every explanation as to why we behave the way we do is reduced to “it just worked for the given circumstances”. And, as an extension, you cannot make any lasting conclusions about how we should behave, because all behaviors are not just influenced, but controlled by context, which is constantly changing.”
There are many remnants of our hunter-gatherer heritage that have negative consequences on our health and socialization in the contemporary world: In-groups and out-groups can lead to prejudice and racism. An historic scarcity of calories leads to appetites primed for overeating. Sexual appetites for the young and strong lead to frequent disregard for the contents of hearts and minds (read “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors” by Sagan and Druyan), while differences between male and female reproductive investment can help explain infideltity.
The list could go on about how we inherit the predilictions of our ancestors but apply them to an altogether more alien world. Insofar as humanity has created moral strictures to try and keep the primitive brain and ancestral behavioral patterns from negatively impacting our health and the well-being of strangers, it has been a necessary development for civilization.
Our genes have partially “stacked the deck” against us, but our reason and forebearance can overcome much and adapt to an ever-changing world. Religious doctrine, though in practice quite variable and radically recast over time, at any given time purports to have “THE” answer and “THE” moral code. As you so rightly point out, any schema of behavior that is unable to adapt to a changing world, either through unconscious natural selection, or intentional evaluation, is extremely dangerous. Hence the original conclusion Shermer, Dennett and so many others make that inflexible religion is far more dangerous than a more rational, context-aware and compassionate code of ethics.
In response to another comment. See in context »I’m not well versed in Shermer’s and Dennett’s positions, but do you have an understanding of how they’re using the term “religion”?
In response to another comment. See in context »WOW, You have just summed up, and all too well, where I tell people I get my morals from being an atheist. Its always mutually beneficial to not kill, or steal, or just to help out your community. Simple acts by random people can change an entire community if not the entire world, religion has proved that. And like I always say, if you need god to stand between you and murdering others, theft, and rape then I’m more concerned with the religious folks’ morality.
In response to another comment. See in context »[...] friend Rodney Dunning writes: Michael Shermer’s article at True/Slant asks why we can’t just ask God for the answers to moral questions. He gives three reasons why [...]
Regarding the dilemmas that you mentioned, we could simplify all of them by asking, Can God make a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it? If you take this as a paradox that proves that God cannot be omnipotent, then you are putting God in a box, which then of course is not God. We can never know the answer to such a paradox, but the best attempt I ever heard was that yes, God can indeed make a rock so heavy that He cannot lift it, and then, He can lift it. For man, it is impossible to understand this. With God all things are possible. You either believe that or you don’t. As for the archaic rules that you mentioned, they were given under the dispensation of Law, which has passed. We now live under Mercy. Again, this will not make sense to the flesh. But we are of both flesh and spirit.
http://thetenthousandproofsofgod.blogspot.com/
Thank You. I’m a little bit lost but fascinated. I just stumbled on this as a follow on to a debate between you and Deepak Chopra.