Comments on: And where were you educated?

By: Cleve Blakemore

Cleve Blakemore — Mon, 02 Feb 2004 02:15:27 +0000

You poor eggheads are plain evidence of the incredible cognitive wasteland that occupies the IQ range between 110 and 140. Not a single one of you understands yourselves well enough to use biological game theory to comprehend how much of your behaviour is unconscious, instinctive and innate. The inhibition against killing is particularly strong in the amity/enmity balance in people descended from colder climates where human life was too precious to spend frivolously and group cooporation was high in survival value. The inhibition weakens biologically the closer you move to the equator in ancestry. Religion is a convenient codification of the inhibitory potentials present at birth, like language itself is a codification of the verbal potential in the infant brain. It permits gene expression to flow into a nice smooth channel with a tradition and an end goal. I say confidently, none of you has “learned” anything since the day your were born, particularly as to your own nature or the origins of your drives. Your strange crypto marxist drivel is proof only that you have never, ever really understood anything, beginning with yourselves and extending to the entire universe around you in one big goofy primate fog of misunderstandings.

By: Keith M Ellis

Keith M Ellis — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 08:37:31 +0000

You assume so much, msg.

By: msg

msg — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 07:09:50 +0000

Reason knows no depth. Mechanical thinking maybe, heartless logic definitely, but real reason excludes nothing, examines everything, and does not lie. – Moral revulsion in fr’instances: A 27 year-old man wanting to court a fourteen year-old girl. A live dog being held down and pricked with needles, after its skin has been peeled back to expose the muscle, just to see what happens. The illusionary image of a healthy and sexually receptive young woman being used as a mask by a group of relatively unhealthy middle-aged men, to trick other men into voluntarily surrendering the fruits of their labor. A member of a religious cult using access to a classroom to take advantage of the natural credulity of children who have been forced to submit to a program of regimentation and subliminal mind control. An incapacitated cripple using wealth and political power to enslave stronger but more primitive people, disguising that enslavement by first destroying their homelands, thus forcing them to become slaves or starve. A child flying in a magic suit of armor, crashing into a bridge abutment because she was unprepared for flying and had been raised in an environment void of real danger, so that she knew almost nothing about mortality. A kingdom of immeasurable wealth filled with children who fly everywhere like that, in which the greatest cause of death for children is such flight, where that fact has been suppressed and concealed for decades, because the truth of it threatens the power of the men who run that kingdom. – The first example was commonplace a hundred years ago, and even more so further back in time. The rest are happening right now and right here, though some of the participants might describe them a little differently. – I’ll ask you to admit that there are people, a substantial number in the US today, who “know” that homosexuality is a revolting practice. That they know this because of the nauseated feeling they get when they have to think about it. And I’ll ask you to admit further that for most of them it’s unquestionably “innate”; they weren’t taught this, they were born knowing it. That same illusion/delusion is operating in all seemingly intrinsic moral constructs. It’s naive to think otherwise. The racist outrage at integration in the 1960’s South was fueled by that same nauseated sense of violated moral rightness. I’ve seen kids from homes that were savage and brutal places, ruled solely by power. Their “morality” is right out of that early template. That they themselves will be labeled and branded as evil or unfit just compounds the tragedy of their lives. We learn more than we know, far more than what we’re taught.

By: Sam

Sam — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 04:57:06 +0000

MSG, I’m with Ophelia—it’s not meant to be a private conversation at all. A couple of responses: I’m not claiming to speak for God; I’m just trying to offer an explanation for why I believe in God with reference to a reflection on moral systems and our learning of them. I’m also with you on the meaning of “innate”, and was using it deliberately. I meant it in the sense of “unlearned”. I’m well aware that that’s a hard assertion to prove; the counterposition that such revulsion is learned is equally hard to prove. (cf all the posts above about the sense of fairness—an innate moral sense as evidence of conscience which was designed by a Creator is among the classic arguments for the Christian world view, with one of the most famous versions being C.S. Lewis’ in Mere Christianity.) I have concluded, based on my experience and reflection, that a moral sense rooted in a divinely-designed conscience (thus innate) is, on balance, the more complete and compelling explanation. (Of course, the presence of an innate conscience does not preclude the learned development and evolution of it.) Others obviously disagree. If you’d like to take your examples in greater detail, I’d be happy to continue to talk about it, either here or in email (delete the ~~dot~~ in my address which is there for spam-armoring). Ophelia, I agree with you on intellectual grounds about the nature of the questions. Reason alone can never justify religious faith. I’d offer that the questions that don’t have (reasoned) answers sometimes elicit a response from us that is deeper than reason.

By: ophelia benson

ophelia benson — Thu, 29 Jan 2004 00:30:38 +0000

MSG, it’s not a private conversation at all. I just use names when I’m answering a specific post (when I remember) to avoid confusion, that’s all. (So, Sam) Sure, why questions may well lead back to a deity. But 1. then one can still ask why the deity, and 2. why questions may just not have an answer. The fact that a question can be asked doesn’t mean it has an answer.

By: msg

msg — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 23:22:56 +0000

Sam- At the risk of intruding on what seems to have become a private comversation, “innate” has a very specific meaning. It does not mean, as you seem to think by your use of it, “irrefutable” or foundational. It means there from birth. From nativity. Born with it. Unlearned. Proving the existence of moral revulsion as “innate”, rather than learned pre-verbally, might be just a little harder than simply saying it. – To a woman whose child has just been eaten by one, the tiger is evil; to the tiger mother feeding her cubs, the human child was no more than food. Our human view of nature “red in tooth and claw” is partisan. We have, as a species, under the banner of “dominion”, driven every other major predator on earth to its knees, or to extinction. Your “Creator” was created to justify that partisan view. That creation has necessitated a steadily more schizoid relationship with the natural world, leading to a desperate antagonism that now bids well to become fatal, to horrifying numbers of other species as well as to our own. Those of us who do not subscribe to a tale of divine afterlife mourn that dying. Anyone who speaks for God must answer for that as well as for the presence of cancer and fleas. This would be my main, not innate, but deeply felt, point.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:41:03 +0000

Ophelia, Second piece first: I agree (generally) that if moral conclusions can be reached without appeal to a deity then said deity becomes superfluous—with regard to providing a grounding for morality, at least. Of course, I also maintain that there are examples (such as the two I gave above) that demonstrate moral reasoning which of necessity can’t have the deity left out; and that “to provide a grounding for morality” isn’t the primary reason most believers believe in God anyway. And in any system, you always have the problem of agreeing on axioms—whether the axioms call upon a deity or not. Back to the first part—the Christian account always starts from being situated in a broken world (the brokenness, of course, originating in sin). So the repulsion occasioned by cancer, sickle cell anemia, etc. is not evidence that the Creator is not good, but rather evidence that we still apprehend the Creator’s primal good present behind the evil or brokenness. Otherwise you have to explain why we feel such innate revulsion at so many things that are common in the world.

By: msg

msg — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:07:41 +0000

Morality is goal-directed. Things are wrong or not because of their relation to some other thing, external to the action that’s being judged. Nothing is just wrong. It’s wrong because. Because it harms or threatens to harm. Because it’s counter to the good of society, individual liberty, the salvation of all our souls, the continued existence of mammalian life, etc. The goal of religious morality is placed in the hands of a deity or, in a more selfish version, the personal benefit of the individual after death. The goal of secular morality is a muddle of conflicting definitions, much like democracy and other human institutions. But every single moral system we know has that timeline. The weakness of secular morality is that extending the timeline eventually leads to the infinite, limitless by definition, and thus to vague and hard-to-define places. The strength of religious, or metaphysical, morality is that by extension it leads directly to the unprovable presence of God, a kind of limited infinite. That current religious teaching is solely for the benefit of its institutions, that the goal of present religious morality is no more than the physical survival of religionists, doesn’t change the logical structure of their arguments. A game we were taught in early religion classes was to keep asking why something is the way it is, starting from any point. It leads to God, they said. Morality is the same. Why is it wrong to steal? Why should we be decent to each other? And what if I don’t care whether that makes it nicer for all of us? There is no secular argument against the sociopath, just force and cunning and good luck, the enforcement of public morality. Whereas the religious argument against the sociopath is that he’s evil, and therefore outside the bounds of decency and reciprocity, and therefore subject to force and cunning, and the bestowal on the enforcers of good luck, or grace, by a partisan deity. Cops know this better than priests. The scale is great enough there’s an overlap between the secular and the metaphysical, up to a point. We’re at that point. Religious morality and secular morality are at a fork in the road, where at one time they ran parallel. The conflicting impulses, toward one goal or the other, won’t be reconciled by discussion or by persuasion. Like all biological conflicts, they’ll be decided by a competition in which anything goes. In other words, by a completely a-moral, or more accurately non-moral, contest, in which the tautology of the ‘best man’ having won will again play out. Because the winner gets to say who’s best.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 22:01:08 +0000

Thanks for the answer, Sam. Well of course one issue is obvious right away, as I’m sure you’re aware. A system that depends for internal coherence on believing that the creator that designed the world we live in is good – has some terrible moral problems. “nor that having God in the system means that you’re reduced to a command morality with no deeper structure.” Fair enough, but if one can get to the same conclusions with secular reasoning, then the deity becomes superfluous to the morality. People who are morally repelled by a deity who would design and create cancer, parasitic worms, sickle cell anemia, predators – evolution in general, in fact – tend to prefer a secular morality.

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 19:20:37 +0000

Ophelia, Good question. I’m going to answer from a Catholic perspective, since that’s the one I have, and I can’t pretend to understand some other system well enough to speak from it. And from a Catholic perspective, the deity is necessary to make the moral system we have internally coherent. Some of what I’m calling the “sophisticated elements” wouldn’t survive without a deity and, moreover, the particular deity believed in by Catholics. Two examples: (1) Moral precepts derived from natural law require for their consistency that there be a creator, that the creator be intelligent (because the creator must have designed the creation), and that the creator be good (so that we can trust the moral precepts revealed in the design). (2) Moral imperatives to virtue—basically anything that exceeds “Golden Rule” morality, and, for Catholics (and most if not all Christians), including the obligation to charity, the command to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, and exercise particular care for the poor and oppressed are sourced in a God who loves each and every human being unconditionally and calls us to aspire to that same love. And the moral attitude associated with the manner of practicing virtue is sourced explicitly in Christ. As to the second part of the question: Would the “sophisticated elements” remain valid and persuasive absent the deity? As is evident from above, no—they wouldn’t. But that’s not a particularly damning indictment, as far as I’m concerned, because I’m not aware of any interesting arguments which are persuasive once one has falsified the axioms relied on by the reasoning. And to bring all this back down to earth: – You don’t need God/religion to judge that killing [murder] is wrong. – You do need God/religion to believe that killing [murder] is wrong in certain meanings of the word wrong. – But even if you do have God/religion in your moral system, that doesn’t mean that you’ve eliminated, or judged unpersuasive, all the secular reasons for reaching equivalent judgment, nor that having God in the system means that you’re reduced to a command morality with no deeper structure.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 18:42:19 +0000

Sam, Sure, I can easily accept that religious views of morality can be highly sophisticated. But does the sophistication rely on the religion? Or are the two independent. If one removed the deity from the moral reasoning in question, would the sophisticated elements go with it, or would they remain valid or persuasive?

By: Sam

Sam — Wed, 28 Jan 2004 04:47:20 +0000

Well, it may be foolhardy to wander into a discussion already so involved, but I'll offer this up: I think this all turns on what exactly you mean by wrong. I think I probably appreciated that killing is wrong in the sense that I'd rather not have it done to me as soon as I could form the requisite thoughts. I think I had an innate sense of killing's wrongness as a matter of equitable treatment equally innately, based on the kind of built-in fair-play rules discussed above. But I think I learned through church, or through religious instruction (formally or at home), or through reading the Bible, that killing is wrong in the sense that it violates the moral order and offends God. (Of course, believing this presupposes believing in a God who can and will take offense at certain human acts and a moral order which undergirds created reality.) Now, I don't think I've exhuasted the potential meanings of wrong, but I think the ones I've listed are enough to demonstrate that those of us responding to this question are already working from several different perspectives. Wrong is an innately moral concept, and in that sense I think we learn that a thing is wrong when we learn the moral system which defines what wrong is, even if a prior or parallel moral system contains what is, formally, the same proposition of wrongness. I also have to say, coming from the perspective of a religious morality, that some of what's been said above discounting religiously grounded moral systems is rather reductive and limited. I certainly can't claim to understand fully the asserted coherence of an atheistic system of morality, but that doesn't lead me to conclude that it's arbitrary. I'd invite those posters who don't personally believe in a religious (specifically a Christian) grounding of morality, to consider that there's a lot more sophistication in the internals of the system than may have been apparent in your encounters with it.

By: msg

msg — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 22:43:29 +0000

I’m Hansel,with nothing to lose,sticking my bony finger out of the cage of forced education. How many deaths were there a week on TV? I heard men die on the radio, watched them fallen from their horses to the dirt, bloodless and still, at the matinee every Saturday. Old enough war and murder mystery were constant themes in the entertainment cycle, and mortal danger a necessary component of play at home at school in movies and TV, and there was death in the more accurate world of Grimm’s and Andersen’s. But death needs to be learned doesn’t it? Before you can learn what killing is? To then learn that killing is wrong. Isn’t that the process? Though we get the clues and remonstrations, the bits and pieces of the puzzle don’t come in order. I learned about death, as something real and permanent, at 7 when my grandmother died. But by then I’d seen people die in films and TV dramas, read it, had it read it to me. The fifth commandment had been a memorized part of Sunday school for at least two years. I’m trying to keep this brief, I think most of us take in what we think are verities almost osmotically, especially early simple truths, and believe everybody else does too. Children with a fundamental sex education, that was delivered in a natural progression of curiosity and patient explanation, are shocked to find contemporaries in adolescence who know virtually nothing. I learned, as I said, “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, meaning whatever that was that that came from would hurt you forever if you did what that was, but then I didn’t really learn what death, human death, was, until two years later.

By: zizka

zizka — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 20:52:34 +0000

Killing people is wrong? Damn. I must have been sick that day.

By: Ophelia Benson

Ophelia Benson — Tue, 27 Jan 2004 20:14:15 +0000

Learning about killing, yes. But not explicitly that it’s wrong. That’s part of the background, part of the web, an assumption, but you don’t really learn it. What you learn is more that the protagonist doesn’t want to be killed – at least that’s how it seems to me. Now since we all identify with the protagonist, we all don’t want to be killed, so we’re glad that the killer is foiled and punished (sort of glad, though we don’t all rejoice at the torture aspect, Bettelheim to the contrary notwithstanding). So in that sense we learn that killing is wrong in that sort of primitive, I don’t want them to do it to me, way, which morality probably does boil down to. I’m Gretel, I’m afraid of the witch and her oven, I don’t want to be baked, so baking people is wrong.