thus_spake_mr_t's Journal

Inaugurial post!
Responses to a chap on OG, with a little added extra as the thoughts have gestated...

Assuming that an atheist does not address the question of God, or does 'not believe' in God, I'd like to ask a few questions from the atheists here.

1. If there is no God, do you profess or admit any sort of universal standard of moral behaviour, and if so, what is it and how is it logically defensible?

I don’t, partly because it is, as you suggest, logically indefensible, but mostly because it fundamentally misunderstand what “morality” is.

2. If you do not admit a universal standard of "good and evil," then do you believe that ethical judgments emerge from social customs and personal preferences and thus see moral values as applicable only within certain cultural boundaries? In other words, is "right wrong" entirely subjective as a strict moral relativist would see it?

Morality is necessarily subjective in that it is about how human beings interrelate. Morality applied to dogs, cows, rocks or trees is silly, I’m sure you will agree. It is just about us and our choices.

But think about that – it is something peculiar to us. Therefore it isn’t utterly arbitrary – there is something in us that generates it and requires it.

So whilst morality is relative it is relative within a particular context, and so not arbitrary as it does depend upon something. The crux of it all being the identification of that something.

A theist will likely say that this something is god. Augustine certainly so claimed. But when Augustine tells that story of his dissolute youth and the apple scrimping, and how it offended his god, he is telling us more than he thought. He tells us about his joy in transgression that it was the transgression rather than wanting apples (for his father owned an orchard and anyway he and his friends threw away the apples they pinched) which motivated him. Camaraderie with his chums in their wickedness was the whole point of the exercise.

This is important because it is about interrelating human beings and transgression. It is about the Identity of the individual seeking joy in others, about definition and initiation, about Identities forged through collective action in contra-distinction of the larger community’s mores.

You could describe it as tribalism, really. We’d all recognise how the tribal instinct to this day often find expression in our modern societies, usually through the adolescent. We’ve all been there. I, for instance, was a little bit New Romantic (although a little late to be honest) with a little goth thrown in. Yes, what I am talking about here is often grown out of, but I think it’s a pretty uncontentious assertion that it is an expression of tribalism and that most of us have an at least passing association with it.

That tribal instinct is something innate. It is who we are. We die as mewling babes if uncared for, our species requires interdependence to survive, and the first order of such interdependence would be Mother and Child. The next would be the Nuclear Family. The next, the extended family, or Clan. The next, Tribe.

Then you get Nation, I guess, and for some Humanity itself.

These are not illusions but systematic rationalisation of instinctive responses. And you can see how they seem to mirror developmental stages in the individual.

Augustine, in his youth, is delighting in his graduation from Nuclear family to Tribe – and, being young he does what we’ve all done – we make that tribe not out of blood, but out of like minds. It’s the first level at which we graduate beyond mere animal instinct to animal instinct combined with assertion of individual Identity, to find like and commonality not in the blood, but in the mind. It is humanity blossoming in the individual.

Augustine comes to regret such youthful follies. Why? Well, because he continues through the developmental stages, of course. As a mature fellow he is intimating his relationship to humanity. He is intimating something real – something he calls divine. An intimation that the commonality he recognises in all humanity is and interdependence. That he has been made by all of those around him even as he has influenced him. And intimation that indeed – no man is an island. Our Identities are instincts mediated through the choices of our wills. And we are most fully all we can be when this coming together of innate and social influences is guided by an understanding that we will never be fully human in isolation. That if we curb the apatite of the animal so that we are sufficiently maintained but not to the cost of our neighbours, that our neighbours will nourish and, indeed, create through complicit interaction our Identities, our selves, that which we sometimes identify as soul, as distinct and special and unique.

This is morality.

And, I should add, it is perfectly reasonable for Augustine to Identify this medium of interdependence in which we all swim as “other”. It is what we call “the Divine”, and we have usually identified it as other, as “god”. This “god” thing he identifies [i]is [b]real[/b][/i] – but it is not supernatural, it is not other and apart from us – it is simply the extension of our Identities into a complicit interaction with others.

Properly understood it is a secular divine for which the Romantics had a name – the sublime.

3. If so, how would you propose that other human beings be judged for murder, rape, theft, and so on? For example, is female genital mutilation in tribal Africa acceptable because of cultural traditions which define it as "good?" If no, on what basis do you defend your morality as superior to theirs?

You look at the matter in hand and adjudge its consequences and the perpetrators motivations. For instance, let’s take you example of female genital mutilation. What’s that about? It’s about a prejudice given weight through a particular form of theism that winds up being about maintaining women’s status as subhuman, or at least inferior to men. Women need to be controlled by men because men fear women’s freedom. I mean, everyone fears everyone else’s freedom, cos, like, we might kill each other. But at least in the instance of men and women men can band together in common cause against women who tend to be physically smaller and can be beaten and killed until they comply should they find themselves faced with the amassed lumbering cowardice of men. Which they are. And, of course, it should be noted that the intimation of something divine, Identified as “other”, called god, and then pushed into the service of every prejudice men’s cowardice can conjure facilitates this beautifully for women aren’t facing the cowardice of men, but, as it happens, the will of god.

Handy that.

We can take a perspective on this and easily say – “that culture is corrupted by a theistic outlook that perverts human understanding and reality in the service of a particular group’s prejudices and moral cowardice. The women are sold the idea that it is god that requires their mutilation, and their fear of ostrasization and death combine with a moral cowardice that yearns for certainties and constants to have most of them collude in what is an evil practise. Evil understood not as crime or transgression as such, but anything that denies the sanctity of the individual identity and treats a human being like an animal, an object, a commodity, as, what with the arguments outlined above, the nature of everything we are gears us towards developing towards fully formed interdependent Identities. Just bloody stop it, you twats”.

Of course, not all human beings develop Identities, and are therefore pretty apathetic or possibly downright dangerous as they have no interdependent investment. They take the benefits, but put nothing back.

Now that was my initial response. He comes back to this with the stunning reposte - but how can this make your moral decisions certain ones?

Well, as I'd have thought self evident from the above - you can't. You make the best decision you can and you take responsbility for that decision. That's why I keep rabbiting on about the necessary moral cowardice to theism. It attempts to create certainty.

But if it succeeds - why don't we live in a morally clear world? It's mostly theistic, afteral. And, let's face it - it's the theists causing most of the big problems. Not "most thesists are creating the problems" you'll note - but the big buggering problems can usually be demonstrated to have a theist sitting in thier midst.

So why is ambiguity and room to fail any sort of critique of my position when theism can offer no better? He recognises that it dosn't, I'm sure.

But it is the hunger for certainty that is the problem, that undermines all theistic morality. That desire to be sure and certain.

Afterall - if the world were clear cut and certain, what would be the point of morality. Existence would smiply be whatever it was....