The Western world is what it is because of the enormous influence of
Christianity. Without a Christian understanding of human beings as those who
bear the image of God, our society would be a far different place.
However, atheists have been pretty vocal in their contention that a society
based on empirical mortality and not Christian values would be better for
humanity. Neil deGrasse Tyson has recently advocated for such a virtual society
he named "Rationalia." Tyson's proposal
is problematic on many grounds, but he isn't the only one advocating for
such a world.
New Atheist Sam Harris doesn't believe a Christian worldview is necessary to
ground moral principles, either. In his book
The Moral Landscape, Harris tries
to argue for a secularly based moral framework. He believes that values and
morality "translate into facts that can be scientifically understood: regarding
negative social emotions, retributive impulses, the effects of specific laws and
social institutions on human relationships, the neurophysiology of happiness and
suffering, etc. The most important of these facts are bound to transcend
culture—just as facts about physical and mental health do."
1
Viewing People through Empirical Lenses
Is Harris right? What would happen if a thoughtful, advanced culture viewed
individuals through only an empirical framework? Physical and mental health
states, as Harris mentions above, would feed into the value society places upon
those individuals. This isn't speculation; we have a couple of good examples to
show how this happens.
Along with Christianity, ancient Greek thought has significantly shaped western
culture. At its zenith, Greece was one of the most advanced civilizations the
world has ever seen and its philosophers continue to impact how we understand
our world. Aristotle sought to scientifically categorize the various
relationships between people in his On Politics. There, he begins
As in other departments of science, so in politics, the compound should always
be resolved into the simple elements or least parts of the whole. We must
therefore look at the elements of which the state is composed, in order that we
may see in what the different kinds of rule differ from one another, and whether
any scientific result can be attained about each one of them.
2
Aristotle then goes on to systematically build his case. There are different
kinds of communities to which we all belong: households/families, villages,
city-states. He also notes there are also two kinds of necessary relationships
for the human species to survive: the male-female relationship, which is
necessary for the propagation of the species, and the ruler-servant
relationship. Of the second, Aristotle's observations lead him to conclude that
some people are naturally predisposed to be slaves of other, more capable men:
But is there any one thus intended by nature to be a slave, and for whom
such a condition is expedient and right, or rather is not all slavery a
violation of nature?
There is no difficulty in answering this question, on grounds both of reason
and of fact. For that some should rule and others be ruled is a thing not
only necessary, but expedient; from the hour of their birth, some are marked
out for subjection, others for rule.3
When reading Aristotle's reasoning, one can see how systematically it moves
from empirical observation through reason to its conclusions. Certain
people are not smart, or not capable of leadership, or they don't measure up in
any one of a myriad of ways. To Aristotle, it makes sense that those individuals
are naturally predisposed to be the servants of others—the Gammas and Deltas of
Huxley's Brave New World.
Darwinian Theory Leads down a Similar Road
But many people would dismiss this example as an argument against a
"scientific approach" to morality simply because it's old. They may be tempted
to say something like "We've learned so much in 2500 years, no one would come to
such conclusions today." Yet, the
modern eugenics movement, based on Darwinian evolutionary theory, took the
United States by storm, classifying certain people as less worthy to reproduce.
This even led to a Supreme Court case where the Court upheld the forced
sterilization of Carrie Buck. Justice Oliver Wendell Homes, Jr. famously ordered
Buck's sterilization concluding:
It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate
offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can
prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind. The
principle that sustains compulsory vaccination is broad enough to cover
cutting the Fallopian tubes. Jacobson v. Massachusetts, 197 U.S. 11. Three
generations of imbeciles are enough.4
Adding to this, just two years ago famous atheist Richard Dawkins held that
for a pregnant woman who has discovered her unborn baby has Down's Syndrome,
morality means killing the child:
For what it's worth, my own choice would be to abort the Down fetus and,
assuming you want a baby at all, try again. Given a free choice of having an
early abortion or deliberately bringing a Down child into the world, I think
the moral and sensible choice would be to abort. And, indeed, that is what
the great majority of women, in America and especially in Europe, actually
do. I personally would go further and say that, if your morality is
based, as mine is, on a desire to increase the sum of happiness and reduce
suffering, the decision to deliberately give birth to a Down baby, when you
have the choice to abort it early in the pregnancy, might actually be
immoral from the point of view of the child's own welfare.5
Each of these positions begin with a natural or empirical understanding of
human beings. They measure people based on their output. But Christianity holds
there is more to a person than his or her observable advantages for each one
bears the
image of God, which gives each one transcendent value. What other rational
basis can one offer for holding that all people, even those with mental
disabilities, hold inherent worth? There is no empirical measurement that makes
us otherwise equal and at that point Aristotle and Dawkins may well be right.
What would a society without Christianity look like? It looks pretty scary
indeed.
References
. he
explains how the monumental event of September 11 caused a seismic shift in his
understanding of his faith:
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