Continuing (very slowly!) my discussion of the empirical advantages of moral behavior:
Any accounting of human success or failure must note that a great deal of human behavior is organized around efforts to achieve certain basic goals or goods, including safety, comfort, pleasure and satiation of appetites. Indeed, these goods are basic goals not only for human beings but for animals in general, especially higher animals. Access to these goods is thus at least part of any reasonable measure of human well-being and success.
Among humans, as among other socially organized animals, some individuals enjoy greater social status, authority or power than others, and consequently tend to be privileged beyond their fellows with respect to access to basic goods. Because of the advantages that come with privileged status or authority, there is often competition for these privileges. Those individuals who compete more successfully than others, who acquire or maintain advantages in status and authority, may be said to be, in some meaningful way, more successful than others.
In most human societies, wealth is an important corollary and instrument of status, privilege and the obtaining of basic goals. With money comes greater access to safety, comfort, pleasure and satiation of appetites. In developed societies, wealth offers greater access to education, healthcare and other important resources. Money also correlates with power and status; rich people tend to acquire power and status, and power and status tends to yield wealth.
The aphorism that “Money can’t buy happiness,” like many proverbs, is only half true. It’s true that there are plenty of unhappy rich people and happy poor people. But wealth does correlate with happiness in two ways. First, not having enough money to make ends meet does correlate with unhappiness—and, on average, the poorer people are, the more unhappy they are. Second, people tend to be happier when they enjoy relative wealth—that is, when they are better off than others (i.e., neighbors, peers, the national average, etc.). This suggests, of course, that what people really enjoy is not money itself but success, that is, competing successfully with others, including economic competing.
Finally, successful sexual strategies are almost the definition of Darwinian success. Among both humans and animals, those who attract partners more easily than others, those who attract more desirable partners, those who compete more successfully for partners, and those who succeed with a greater variety of partners can, by a very primal measure, be accounted more successful than others.
It’s true that, in the grand scheme of life on earth, this measure of success is tied to reproductive potential. It’s also true that the measure of succeeding with many partners has been mitigated in human society by monogamy—a high-investment strategy that, from an evolutionary perspective, offers the male a trade-off by limiting the number of his potential offspring but ensuring that the children he does beget are advantaged over those raised without the benefit of an involved father.
But, in the first place, in human society today, contraception and reproductive technologies have gone a long way to decoupling sex from reproduction. Those who wish to reproduce don’t need sex to do it, and those who wish to enjoy the emotional and physiological rewards of sex can do so without bringing reproduction into the picture. I suppose in theory some ardent Darwinian might still insist that reproductive success is a necessary criterion of human success, but in practice nearly everyone today would agree that human success is entirely compatible with childlessness. In fact, in the most irreligious circles childlessness is often viewed as preferable, even morally superior.
In the second place, even for earlier times when the connection between sex and reproduction was more important, it can easily be argued that the rewards of monogamy were always balanced against the rewards of covert promiscuity. Monogamous relationships may have reliably produced many successful offspring, but infidelity and playing the field have always been with us, as well with many supposedly monogamous animal species, as I argued in the combox of Part 2. Darwinian defenders of the value of such behavior, for individuals and for species, are not hard to find.
To sum up: It can credibly be argued that access to money, power and sex is one reasonable rough-and-ready measure of human success.
By this measure, can it be said that life generally rewards the virtuous and punishes the selfish?
To a point, certainly. Sufficiently antisocial or self-destructive behavior will tend to limit or destoy one’s chances for success in these areas.
On the other hand, many who achieve notable success by these measures do so precisely by behavior that is generally regarded as immoral—not necessarily to a stupid or self-destructive degree, but to a greater degree than is socially approved.
Anyone who has been a part of any organization, or who has paid any attention to government at any level, knows that it is often not the most talented or deserving who rise to positions of power and authority, but the biggest jerks, the most egotistical and self-centered. This aren’t mere flukes, or a matter of the law of averages. There’s a real element of cause and effect, though it cuts both ways.
Lord Acton famously noted that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.” The last line I find even more suggestive than the first, since it gets at the tendency of corruption to come to power as well as power to corrupt. The very qualities that make a person arrogant, domineering, self-interested and not above cheating to get ahead are often assets in—getting ahead.
Achieving power is hard. It takes doing. Those that achieve it tend to be the most driven, the most dedicated, the ones who want it the most. What kind of person wants power so badly? If not always, at least very often it’s someone who is eminently corruptible—who wants to exploit his power to his own advantage. Power is addictive, but it’s the potential addict who is likeliest to want it in the first place. Those most driven to achieve power also include those who lack balancing impulses and desires in their lives that tend to produce healthy, moral behavior.
Likewise, if you’ve always secretly suspected that rich people are jerks, don’t feel bad: Science is on your side (crude language caution). Here, again, causality is complex; poor people have extra incentive to be nice because it helps them get ahead, whereas rich people are less nice because they don’t have to be. But it’s also true that lack of principles can help you make more money. For instance, companies willing to exploit third-world labor can enjoy economic advantages over companies that don’t.
Finally, regarding sex, there’s a lot of commentary out there on why bad boys are attractive to women and tend to enjoy more sexual partners than their nicer counterparts. Again, it’s not just a matter of risk-taking behavior, or of otherwise attractive guys getting away with bad-boy behavior. Bad behavior itself can be an asset; ignoring and even insulting women have been shown to be useful strategies in winning over women.
Again, none of this is to deny that altruism and moral behavior are important strategies for individual and social success. Insofar as we limit ourselves to the empirically verifiable, though, I don’t think it can be maintained that a consistent attachment to what is widely considered moral behavior is the most reliable guide to human success. Conversely, if we define moral behavior, as Sam Harris and others have tried to do, in terms of “what works,” I think it becomes hard to maintain that behavior widely regarded as immoral is actually as objectionable as our hearts tells us it is.
More to come.
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“In fact, in the most irreligious circles childlessness is often viewed as preferrable, even morally superior.” *preferable
And the most religious ones as well: Monks, nuns, priests….
Still, you make a good argument against Sam Harris’s ideas, though I don’t think it will turn me into a supernaturalist just yet. Perhaps it’s true that “nice guys finish last” in a Darwinian sense.
Taking the wider view, maybe we should credit the “rich jerks” for acquiring sufficient power and riches to enable them to buy things from “nice guys” and providing them employment, thus improving the lot of the nice (e.g. no one’s ever been hired by a poor man).
Thx for the spellcheck, Clay. I always get that one wrong.
Yes, it’s true that celibacy is honored as a higher or more excellent state than marriage in Catholic tradition (among others), though it wouldn’t be correct to call it “morally superior.” And in marriage, certainly, spouses are called to be open to life, and deliberately chosen childlessness in marriage is not an acceptable option for Catholics.
Thanks for the candid feedback. I appreciate it. I’m not expecting to make anyone a supernaturalist here, just exploring implications of different worldviews.
If it’s true that nice guys finish last, do you think that would be a compelling reason not to be a nice guy?
Perhaps. But then it might be argued that the richest 1% have been expanding their wealth at the expense of the rest.
Hello, all.
Another good article. I think you have built a pretty strong case that people often personally benefit from behavior that is harmful to society. I’ve assumed that for years. I’m looking forward to the “and therefore…”. :-)
A few minor comments.
“In fact, in the most irreligious circles childlessness is often viewed as preferable, even morally superior.”
The correlation is not that strong, in my experience. Certainly there are irreligious people who view childlessness as a good thing, but I’ve also known people who were minor-to-moderately religious, and people who are “spritual”, with the same view. And there is also a subsection of the irreligious far left (I’m thinking of the set in the overlap between “attachment parenting” and “hippie/green parenting”) that are extremely pro-(1 or 2)-child.
“Lord Acton famously noted that “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Great men are almost always bad men.””
It’s a pretty quote, elegantly stated. I’ve learned to take quotes like that with a grain of salt. I’ve been led astray in the past. Just because something is well said doesn’t make it true. My impression (from interviews, history, wikipedia, etc) is that “almost always” is too many. “Quite often” is closer.
“I don’t think it can be maintained that a consistent attachment to what is widely considered moral behavior is not necessarily the most reliable guide to human success.”
I’m pretty sure the 2 negatives here are producing the opposite of what you mean. Probably should drop one of them. :-)
Thanks.
And thanks to Brian for catching that editing glitch. How many more nonbelievers will catch typographical errors in the post above? The pressure is on. :-D
I agree that the sociological observation I made doesn’t amount to a strong correlation (and certainly I didn’t mean to imply anything about the absence of that view among more religiously disposed individuals). And I won’t quarrel with your proposed nuance on Lord Acton.
Are you sure that the behaviors described above are harmful to society, even when they impact large numbers of people? I agree that they are often harmful to specific other individuals.
“Are you sure that the behaviors described above are harmful to society, even when they impact large numbers of people? I agree that they are often harmful to specific other individuals.”
Mmmm… I was using “society” to merely mean those effected non-directly by the bad behaviors. It is often impossible to calculate whether a specific act has an overall positive or negative effect on humanity as a whole. As an example, say executive X sleeps around on his wife. We can list ways that this is likely to become harmful to his family, harming their emotional state and effecting their own behaviors in a negative way. And then their more negative behaviors will affect further people. So on and so forth.
But, as someone could easily point out, that’s all hypothetical. I could also construct a hypothesis where the overall effect is positive. For example, say the executive’s family reacts to his bad behavior by becoming *better* people, in rebellion. Certainly such things happen. Or I could hypothesize that the executive’s drive to succeed (partially the drive to have access to more women) helps produce a successful company. Resulting, in this hypothesis, in a positive increase in the standard of living of a number of people and more than making up for the negative effects of his infidelity. Again, I suspect such things happen sometimes.
But just because I can construct hypothesis A, B, and C, and they all really could happen, doesn’t mean they are all equally likely or equally “right”. I wouldn’t make a very good moral relativist. To some extant ethical rules are a kind of short hand for “The general impression of the wise, or of the culture, is that such-and-such act is more likely to have a negative overall effect, or a positive overall effect.”
If your “are you sure” is asking whether I believe the overall effect of all of one of the listed types of bad behavior is actually negative, I would say “pretty sure”. Even if I can come up with real examples where a specific bad act resulted in overall positive effects, I am generally confident that those cases are overwhelmed by the negative effects of the most of the similar acts.
Ahh… It just occurred to me that you were probably asking a broader question than the one I answered.
Could the cumulative effect of all of the acts of a particular type of bad behavior have a more positive effect on society than if there were fewer of those acts?
... My first inclination is to say “no”, as long as we’re careful about how we define “bad behavior”. Take “aggression”, for example. It could easily be said that much of human achievement has been driven by our aggressive natures. If humans were, on average, significantly less aggressive, we wouldn’t have done as much. So “aggression” is not a good “bad behavior”. However, “excessive aggression”, defined as aggression sufficient to most likely have an overall negative effect on society (not necessarily on the aggressor), would be a good candidate for the bad behavior list.
So the bad behavior definition is self-referential. If the behavior isn’t bad enough to negatively effect society (even in a very minor, diffuse way), it’s not a good “bad”. Of course, the calculation of the exact result of any particular act is beyond us. So society encourages “rounding down” and judging by clearer/local/direct effects.
Then the arguing all becomes the details. What’s good enough? bad enough? what evidence is there? can you convince someone of it? etc…
I just got a chance to scan over this series of articles, and I’m still confused how your arguments about morality or meaningfulness have to do with belief in God(s). If you’re not suffering from depression, you justify your moral behavior and find your own reasons why life is meaningful. These reasons may have nothing to do with belief or non-belief in God. If you have a healthy mind, life is good and you are good to the people around you.
Most of the philosophers in history have discussed morals from a human perspective, with out mention of God as an authority. Where is this series going?
” . . . if we define moral behavior, as Sam Harris and others have tried to do, in terms of “what works,” I think it becomes hard to maintain that behavior widely regarded as immoral is actually as objectionable as our hearts tells us it is.”
Posted by Brian on Friday, Feb 17, 2012 12:38 PM (EST):
“It is often impossible to calculate whether a specific act has an overall positive or negative effect on humanity as a whole.”
Both excellent observations. What if a drunk driver had killed or disabled Lee Harvey Oswald before he could assassinate President Kennedy? You can’t base the calculation on whether a decision to drive drunk will have a positive or negative on humanity as a whole on a particular situation such as that. You have to think of what the norm for a society should be, based on what the majority of citizens want community standards to be.
I think the problem with Sam Harris’s assumption that we can figure out morality based on “what works” is that evolution occurs over tens of thousands of years, versus hundreds of years. The way selfish behavior can work for individuals, as described by Mr. Greydanus, is based on how human society has evolved during the last four thousand years. Evolutionary pressures have barely weighed in on human evolution during this period. Humans are the product of tens of thousands of years of evolution based on humans living in tribes. It wasn’t even possible to accumulate wealth during these centuries. Behavior was immediately assessed by the tribe, and found wanting if it didn’t contribute to the survival of the tribe. Good luck with being selfish if it led to the total extinction of your tribe.
Then humans started forming nation-states, where individuals could amass wealth as individuals, could wield power as individuals.
At this point I’d say it’s unclear “what works” for the survival of humans.
I enjoyed this article. Most criticisms I could make would amount to nitpicking. I would point out that, in the West at least, childlessness or small families is favoured by a growing religious group who have adopted environmentalism as part of their belief system and who believe that seven billion human beings is more than enough.
Just want to point out that while having children is obviously a “good” from a Darwinian point of view, it is the marriage of sex and children that is at issue. Nuns, priests, monks…still understand that both go hand in hand, thus they refrain from one, the consequence of which is a lack of the other. The problem arises when the two are divorced and we attempt to have sex without the children, or children without the sex. It’s more about the Natural Order of sex and children than about the children per se. Celibacy is not immoral, while sex with contraceptives is. It’s the misuse of the act, not the non-use.
Great discussion, everyone. I’m encouraged by the thoughtful comments so far.
Brian: You ask: “Could the cumulative effect of all of the acts of a particular type of bad behavior have a more positive effect on society than if there were fewer of those acts?”
This might be setting the bar higher than necessary. Perhaps we might start out with this question: Could it be that, not infrequently or even often, the general effects of particular instances of these acts are, not necessarily beneficial to society, but at any rate not significantly and clearly negative for society?
From an evolutionary perspective, if we take our bearings from what seem to be the actual effects of evolutionary forces on human behavior, we might possibly find two observations compelling evidence: On the one hand, humans nearly universally extol fairness, generosity, altruism and related behavior as moral norms. On the other hand, actual behavior glaringly at odds with these moral norms is a universal feature in all human societies—and not just as a marginal phenomenon, either.
It might be supposed, then, that while high moral aspirations may somehow benefit individuals and societies, actual behavior significantly at odds with those moral norms is at any rate not enough of a disadvantage to societies to have eliminated the behaviors in question.
Cowalker makes a fair point that some of the specific behaviors in question (accumulation of wealth, etc.) are sufficiently short-term that evolutionary forces have hardly been brought to bear on them. But the basic principles of fairness and altruism are long term, and would presumably go back to our prehuman ancestry (indeed, we can observe comparable issues among higher social animals such as apes). And of course fidelity and cheating have biological roots deep and ancient enough to be observed in birds, cheetahs and other species.
So, while executive X sleeping around may be harmful to his family, etc., the cost-benefit proposition of infidelity in general for populations in general seems to be something that ostensibly monogamous species have lived with for, I don’t know, probably millions of years. It might be argued that this tension between fidelity and infidelity actually is beneficial for species; indeed, this is widely maintained with regard to non-human species, and there are those who argue that it’s just as applicable to humans.
And much the same considerations could be applied to various forms of bad behavior in general.
Given that, limiting ourselves to the empirical evidence, can we really say with confidence, as Brian does, that the overall effect of such behavior is actually negative? I’m not sure that we can.
Edward Arron Cochran: Since I haven’t brought God into the discussion yet, your confusion is entirely understandable. The discussion started with a nonbeliever asking the question “How does a god change a meaningless existence into a meaningful one?” Three posts in, I haven’t yet directly engaged that question. I may not engage it in the next installment.
So far I’ve been exploring the implications of a worldview limited to the empirical. It is, I think, a worldview in which a cogent and satisfying theory of “meaning” as humans have historically understood that term is difficult or impossible to maintain.
You write: “Most of the philosophers in history have discussed morals from a human perspective, with out mention of God as an authority.” I don’t know what you mean by “as an authority,” but I don’t think it’s the case that most moral philosophy has ignored the question of some kind of transcendent foundation, source or standard of moral principles or laws.
Significant figures in the history of philosophy include Plato, Augustine, Anselm, Averroes, Thomas Aquinas, Bonaventure, Erasmus, Descartes, Pascal, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kant, Hume, Kierkegaard, Heidegger, Bertrand Russell, John Hick, Antony Flew and Alvin Plantinga. I’ve deliberately included nonbelievers as well as believers in this list, but I don’t think it would be easy to maintain that “most” philosophers throughout history have been unbelievers, or that moral philosophy specifically has been conducted without reference to some sort of nonempirical standard or principle.
GordonHide: Thanks for your comments. FWIW, it wasn’t my intention to imply a positive correlation of unbelief with approval of childlessness—only to note that approval of childlessness appeared to be quite compatible with unbelief.
I’m finishing Sam Harris’s book Moral Landscape. Have your read it in it’s entirety, including the footnotes? Because Harris’s definition of moral behavior is not “what works.” His approach is a thoughtful, well researched, and nuanced. Of course, in your blog, you can not delve into morality, neurology, and other aspect of human behavior with the same confidence and authority as you could in a book format like Harris. His work does deserve reading before being paraphrased.
I don’t pretend to know a lot about philosophy, but as I understand, Spinoza’s interpretation of God was not the Christian God and was evident in the mechanics of the universe. Spinoza’s God was more of a thing that started the processes that created the universe, and was incapable of emotion or empathy, let alone love. As I understand Kant, he based moral thought on considering what would happen to society if everyone did as you did—for example, if everyone lied to each other there could be no trust between people and loving relationships would be impossible.
There is no space to go over the other philosophers you mention, but these two as examples express that meaning in life is participation in the universe (pantheism?) and participating in human activity and society (humanism?) They don’t involve “revelation” by God as expressed in the Catholic faith.
Am I going ahead of you in this discussion?
Bill Hallinan: To clarify, “what works” as used above is not a paraphrase of Harris particularly, but an allusion to empiricist slogans like “science is what works” and “science works, religion doesn’t.”
I understand Harris’s approach to morality to be a scientific, empirical approach, although without denying its philosophical underpinnings. Harris believes that human well-being and the best ways of achieving it can be determined empirically. Broadly speaking, this can be classified a “what works” approach.
For what it’s worth, Harris’s book may be thoughtful, well researched and nuanced, but it’s been widely criticized on a number of fronts. I don’t doubt that he has valid things to say, and that there would be a meaningful overlap between his work and that of a Catholic moral philosopher like Germain Grisez, not only in conclusions but even in methodology.
Edward Arron Cochran: As I mentioned, my list of philosophers deliberately includes writers with worldviews very different from my own. My main point was to challenge the idea that most philosophers throughout history have discussed morality without reference to God (though I implicitly acknowledged that this may not have been your exact point, as the key term “authority” indicates).
In that connection, experience has taught me that I can’t say too often in these discussions that it is not my position, nor is it presupposed by what is widely called “the moral argument,” that without divine revelation there can be no firm basis for moral beliefs and judgments. I am not saying that apart from the insights afforded by sacred writings, prophecy, visions and so forth, there is simply no way for us human beings to know what o what is the difference between right and wrong.
What I’m exploring is what we mean when we call something right or wrong, what it means that we perceive human life and actions as meaningful, how important and normative these judgments are, what is entailed when human inclinations lead us or others to go against these judgments, and so forth. It is here that I think that the existence of God makes a difference, and that is where I hope to wind up in this series.
Am I wrong to suggest that your position is that the existence of God influences the moral decisions on how to act when emotions are pressuring a person? For instance, how I should act when I’m angry, in grief over the loss of a loved one, or frightened? That if I trust in God, and pray when I’m in such a state of mind instead of acting under emotional influences?
Just to clarify, I don’t mean acting impulsively on sudden emotional upsets—I am referring to long-term emotional influences. I have a friend who, sadly, committed suicide after years of anxiety and depression that his deep faith and frequent medical care did not relieve over time. Life was very painful for him, and he finally made the decision to end it. I don’t like to think he is suffering in the afterlife because he did this. I prefer to think that his depression was a physical problem that could not be cured rather than his fault (sin, if you will) that led him to suicide. This is one reason I joined this conversation.
Edward,
I would say that it is probably never a good idea to base one’s moral choices on how they “feel”. Probably the worst criteria there is in fact.
The very fact that our emotions urge us to do one thing while our intellect urges us to do another is an argument for the objectivity of morality. Sometimes we give in to our emotions, sometimes we override them. The question is, where does the “urge” to override them come from. Perhaps you’ll say that you reason out the outcomes and make a logical choice, but many situations don’t afford that kind of time or contemplation. An opportunity arises, our emotions/desires tell us to act on our impulse, and lo an behold, there is that niggling little voice that says “Wait…let’s not be so hasty. This might be “wrong”“...and when I say “wrong” I mean “wrong”, not a weighing of the benefits and detriments…but morally wrong. This difference, I think, is what Steven is getting at. That we have a sense of what is right and what is wrong and it has nothing to do with what will benefit us personally.
Praying when in a state of agitation is not a moral or immoral action per se. I believe that where God enters in will be the gray areas….those times when we are unsure if an action IS right or wrong. Then we have an authority…authority containing the root word “author”, as in the one who “wrote” the book on right and wrong.
Edward,
As you were writing you second comment, I was writing mine and now I see that you have clarified that you are not talking about acting on impulses.
I’m very sorry about your friend. I have people very, very close to me who suffer from mental illness and suicide is always hanging over our heads. Understand tho, that it is not our job, any of us, to say where a person will end up. Ever. There may actually not be anyone at all in hell, including the Hitlers and Stalins of the world. We can condemn behaviors, but it is not in our job description to condemn persons.
Mental illness is indeed an illness and not a sin. Pray for your friend. I will do likewise. And know that the very definition of God is Love, followed closely by Mercy. No one, not you, not your friends mother…no one loved your friend more than God did. I have the feeling he is in good hands and at peace. (Which is not a condonation of suicide, but simply a “let God do what He does best” statement)
I suppose you can understand why I started questioning. My friend believed in God’s love but nothing changed. That’s why I wondered where this series was going.
I’m losing interest in this thread and subject. Wordle up to this point: http://www.wordle.net/show/wrdl/4872280/PeopleBehavior.
Thank you for the discussion. I think I’ve spent enough time on the Catholic Register site to know what it is and what it is not. I’m moving on now.
Best.
Edward Arron Cochran:
I think all of this is fine as far as it goes—and even better if God a) actually exists, b) hears and cares about our prayers, and, c) at times and places of His choosing, for reasons known to Himself, aids us through grace and providence (all of which I do in fact believe).
But the central question I’m trying to explore here is more fundamental than all of that. In principle, I think even a Deist or a Neoplatonist whose divinity is not the revealing, provident, imminent, judging God of Abrahamic faith, a God whom one cannot expect to hear prayers or offer help, may potentially be in a significantly different position than the atheist relative to what I see as the moral and existential quagmire I’ve been outlining in these posts.
The question, again, has to do with what moral judgments are, what we mean when we call something right or wrong, or what it means to say that existence is meaningful.
I’m sorry to hear about your friend. I don’t like to think that he is suffering in the afterlife either, and it may indeed be that illness rather than (actual) sin was the determining factor in his unhappy end. As Catholics, we always commend all the departed to the mercy and providence of God.
I agree with all of your points in the section specifically responding to me in your 2/18 9:05am post. So good so far. :-)
As for:
“Given that, limiting ourselves to the empirical evidence, can we really say with confidence, as Brian does, that the overall effect of such behavior is actually negative? I’m not sure that we can.”
Confidence… At this “meta” level it is impossible to say whether the assumption that acts which have local negative effects also contribute to an accumulation of subtle and diffuse non-local negative effects is:
A. Based on accumulated personal experience (“empirical evidence”), unconsciously consolidated into simplified dictums. Certainly that wouldn’t count as empirical evidence in the formal sense, but considering the limits of the human mind, that may be as good as you can get. AND/OR
B. Based on accumulated experience of previous people, passed down as dictums. (And with the same limitations as in A) AND/OR
C. Based on a breeding selection benefit, for self or related gene group, of having altruism-like drives that act in opposition to the drives that lead to the bad behaviors. In that case, the drive towards concepts like fairness and fidelity would simply be mental expressions of innate behaviors acting as a balance toward other drives (like resource acquisition and sex).
I default to the assumption that it’s some combination of all three, but simply due to lack of evidence, objectivity, and mental capability sufficient to determine the extent to which each is significant.
So, limiting myself to empirical evidence of a quality and clarity sufficient to do proof-like reasoning about, no I am not confident that the overall effect of such behavior is actually negative. I think the limitation is in mental capabilities, not the data. But then if C is true, I would think that, wouldn’t I?
I think I grasp the direction you’re driving, that using logic on the deeply subjective and limited data that an individual can clearly visualize is not sufficient to yield proof-quality support for good acts.
Agreed. I lament the limitations the mind.
The inability to produce proof-quality support for something doesn’t make it wrong, per se. As a practical matter is just limits how much conceptual weight it is wise to hang from that nail.
If you have an alternate for which you can demonstrate stronger empirical proof, I look forward to the description. Honestly. :-)
Without God there would be no atheists.
“Without God there would be no atheists.”
And without condescension there would be fewer of them. :-) We should all take care that our words to not help create enemies where there are no need of them.
Peace.
@ Brian,
Are you saying that believers and non-believers can’t respectfully disagree and must tolerate each other or else be enemies?
That seems to be a violation of individual thought, which is endowed to each human by our Creator. It also implies contempt for people who have the misfortune of not receiving the experience of transcendence that I think Mr. Greydanus suggests gives life meaning. If God is love, is this an appropriate attitude?
@Edward,
Are you sure you are meaning to reply to me, and not Arthur, above me?
My (Feb 19 2:51pm) post was in reply to Arthur’s and meant to point out that we should try to maintain polite, respectful interaction. A “Truth often suffers more by the heat of it defenders” comment. Certainly I think believers and non-believers can (and should!) respectfully disagree. And they should kindly tolerate each other. I don’t grasp the rest of your post. I go to considerable lengths not to be contemptful towards others. :-)
@ Brian,
I apologize, I misinterpreted your meaning. I have seen other postings to other bloggers on this site do express contempt for atheists without regard for any struggle they may have experienced. A number of people simply state that being Catholic is the only acceptable set of moral values. Perhaps, because I’m trying to guess some of my friend’s possible reasons for suicide has made me sensitive to criticism of other points of view.
I believe people cannot honestly love unless they have the choice of “not to love”—i.e. free will. There are also “shades of gray” - no person is perfect, and life does sometimes has more troubles than can be borne.
Again, I’m sorry if I mistook your meaning.
@Edward,
No offense was intended or taken, so no apology needed. But apology accepted anyway. Thanks. :-)
I’m very sorry about your friend.
And I’m familiar with the struggle of being an atheist. After all, I long ago came out as one while living in the bible belt. So mistakes are more instructive than others.
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