Can Humans Run Things, Or Does There Have to be a God
Nothing sets off some religious pundits more than "humanism." Humanism is the belief system that tells us humans can come up with a just society without help from a god.
Somehow, and it baffles me how, Christian pundits come up with the notion that we must have divine moral guidance or there will be no morals. There are so many holes in this thinking a truck could pass through.
To begin with, how do we know humans have always been running things and there has never been a god giving us morals or anything else? If gods are products of human minds than morals have come from those same minds. So far as we know, gods come from human minds. If we learn otherwise some day that will change things. But that is what we know now.
So where did humans get these rules commonly attributed to gods? There is only one place. Their collective experience. Every generation of humans has had to figure out, not only how to get food and shelter, but how to keep from stealing and killing each other. It's obvious some of the earliest humans, 200,000 to 300,000 years ago realized they needed teamwork to collect food and bring down large animals. If there were groups who did not figure this out they are long dead and forgotten.
For at least 95% of the time humans have existed, there was no Jewish or Christian god. IT seems to me we can conclude God is not necessary for humans to do just fine.
If I have followed your line of argument correctly, you seem to have patched together some kind of natural law morality. loosely speaking. In other words, you seem to think that there is some universal "moral law" that humans have somehow "discovered" along the way. Some sense of justice/morality that would mitigate our tendency to murder, steal, lie, etc. In this regard, one of the two big modern political thinkers (Hobbes) postulated an amoral pre-social war of all against all. When that didn't work out too well, early humans decided to enter into a social contract in which they agreed to give up their natural liberty, enter into society and put someone in charge with power to keep them true to the "deal". If you stop to think about it, you can see that this philosophy, generally, is quite prominent in modern jurisprudence. Then there is Locke (who by the way, absorbed quite a bit of Hobbes) who demurred, holding that we had some real sense of the natural moral law before entering into the social contract. In my view both are quite wrong. The social contract is an artificial model superimposed on the reality of early human society which, in fact, was quite different from a bunch of solitary individuals entering into some sort of mutually beneficial "deal" (a model that economists find quite congenial, fitting well with their ideology). In any case, the reality seems to be thus: early human societies were notably sacerdotal, filled with awe, with some sense of transcendence, tradition, and were naturally social (e.g. even the Neanderthals believed in some sort of afterlife). (which not to say that such societies were necessarily peaceful, kind and gentle: old Hobbes does have a point there). All of which is a long winded way of arguing that there was some sense of a transcendent morality from the get go. And that whether or not that there was a Christian or Jewish God from the beginning is irrelevant, adding nothing of significance to your argument, one way or the other.
ReplyDeleteGood essay. I don't know whether there is some universal concept of morality across cultures and time or not. An anthropology professor I had was trying to figure out if there was some kind of art forms that were universal in that way. I can't remember if he ever came up with anything or not. Is seems possible that a society with the highest possible level of morality might be captured and eliminated by ones that did not and they are long since buried in the sands of time.
DeleteWhy do you think that we will come up with a "just" society? In fact, most human societies have been notably unjust in one way or another. What is justice qua justice anyway? Is a sense of justice hardwired into us? If so, who or what did the hardwiring? How about the charge that putting humans in charge of everything, nothing outside of us to which we are accountable, is an invitation to totalitarianism (as in the Great Utopian experiments of the last century). Oh yes, if left to ourselves, we do just fine? The empirical evidence seems to suggest otherwise, does it not?
ReplyDelete"Oh, yes, if left to ourselves, we do just fine? The empirical evidence seems to suggest otherwise, does it not?" I guess it does not if we add up all the murderers, despots and other despicable characters since the beginning of recorded history. On the other hand, we have not destroyed humanity, at least yet. The latter counts. In any event, so far as we know we have been left to ourselves to figure out morality. End of story.
DeleteI think that there is some sense of universal morality. And I think that it is given to us from On High. But others think (like Hobbes) that it arises out of a thinly disguised self-survival "instinct". Or that it arises from our desire to avoid pain and suffering and find pleasure (the utilitarian view, broadly speaking). Or that it arises from our nature as rational beings (the classical view, broadly speaking). And yes, a moral society (at least moral in the Judeo-Christian sense) would long ago have been roasted in the furnace of Real Politick. Good stuff to think about, eh?
ReplyDeleteIf we make up our own morality, then any thing goes, does it not? maybe it's just what the majority thinks it is at any point in time? BTW, I do not wish to denigrate the entire human experience carte blanche. we have our poets, our artists, our scientists, our philosophers, our statesmen, the "ordinary" folks who do their duty and silently serve others. our priests, our physicians. etc. etc. but always remember: the greatest amongst can be, and typically have been, corrupted in one way or another.
ReplyDelete"If we make up our own morality, then anything goes, does it not?" That ridiculous. Don't communities, societies, ethic groups, etc. have norms about morality? Do atheists have moral principle inferior to Christians or Muslims or Hindus? There are Christian groups in Africa advocating killing homosexuals. Think before you write, please.
ReplyDeleteThere are Muslims in Africa and elsewhere that are not very gay friendly. Do you think that they are wrong, objectively wrong in that regard. Cultural relativists would say that treating homosexuals badly is Ok as long as it is part of one's culture. Or you could simply brush it off, saying different strokes for different folks (as they said in the 1960s). Or you could say who are you to impose your morality on someone else. And please note that I did not say that atheists have moral principles that are "inferior" to any one else's. Yet, I do think that you swing back and forth between some kind of absolutist, objective morality and some version of moral relativism, cultural, self-referenced or otherwise. As to thinking: I have studied and thought a lot about ethics or (morality which technically is not synonymous with ethics).
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