Problems with Utilitarianism

One of the most prevalent moral systems adopted by many in higher learning is that of utilitarianism. It is popular because it purports to have a rational basis for morality while not requiring a God to be the originator of such a system. Here we hope to discuss the claims of utilitarianism and see if they accomplish what they assert.

This system of ethics was an answer to conflicting moral dilemmas, such as lying to save a life. Many people argued against moral absolutism by claiming that if lying is always wrong, then it is sinful to lie even when you are lying to prevent a bigger atrocity, such as hiding Jews during World War II, for example. This strikes many people as unreasonable that God would hold one guilty for committing a sin when they were trying to save lives.

The idea of a moral system based on utility was first put forth by Jeremy Bentham in 1789. It quickly became influential but was taken to even greater heights when John Stuart Mill advanced his version. Though there are some deviations between Mill's and Bentham's version, both maintain the basic belief that people should act in such a way as to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.1

Before we go too far, I want to unpack these ideas a little bit. Utilitarians cannot base actions on intrinsic rightness or wrongness, because that would require someone higher than humanity to set those standards. Therefore, there must be a self-supporting reason to do action A instead of action B.

Bentham and Mill say that that no action is good or evil in itself, but the results of those actions are the only things that matter. However, the question then arises how do you judge results of an action for their morality if good and evil don't really exist? The answer for the utilitarian is happiness is really what we mean by good. Whatever makes people happy, whatever brings pleasure is a good thing, and what gives people pain is what we mean by evil. This is why utilitarianism is also known as "social hedonism". You should maximize pleasure for the most people while minimizing pain.

What this means when we put it into practice is that lying in and of itself isn't wrong. If you lie and it makes people feel good with no negative effects, you've done nothing wrong. The actions you choose are only considered good or evil based on the results they produce.

While utilitarianism solves some of the problems of conflicting moral situations, it doesn't follow completely. First off, utilitarianism isn't a true moral framework. I say this because it confuses facts with values. Doing that which gives the most people the most pleasure is a statement of circumstance, not a good prescription of actions.

Let me give an example: imagine a married salesman visiting a distant town. He meets a woman, also married, and they instantly feel a powerful attraction to each other. Knowing that they'll never be found out, they embark on a passionate affair for the three days they're together. According to utilitarian ethics, they have not done anything wrong. On the contrary, it would be morally wrong for them to not sleep together because one would be denying the other pleasure!

Another situation shows the problem of the opposite situation. Imagine a young child pinned down in a burning building. Two firemen see her and know they can free her if they work together, but they will almost certainly die in doing so. In such a situation, we would regard the firemen as heroes, but in a consistent utilitarian outlook their actions would have to be labeled a bad. More pain was inflicted in the two men dying than in the saving of the one child.

Besides some of the strange circumstances one may face in utilitarian philosophy, the bigger problem is with the compulsion of subscribing to the philosophy at all. If everyone was a utilitarian, then all actions might be able to be judged within that framework, but you can't call the system itself  "good" because that implies a separate criterion.

Lastly, utilitarianism cannot work because, like all morally relative beliefs, it is self-defeating. Suppose everyone in the world were utilitarians. Now, suppose they all met and agreed that it was just too difficult always having to worry about what effects their actions would have on other people. The constant analysis was making their lives miserable. The consistent thing to do, according to utilitarian ethics, is to give up utilitarianism. In order to follow utilitarian beliefs you would have to abandon utilitarian beliefs! Can you see how contradictory this is?

Utilitarianism, while a popular way to try to ground moral truths, doesn't really succeed as a moral system. I takes a pragmatic approach to duties and values and fails to make a distinction between what's right and what's going to make most people happy. It smuggles in the idea that happiness is the greatest good, but it doesn't prove that point. It merely assumes it based on our human nature. However, if Christianity is true, then our nature is corrupted by original sin and it cannot be trusted to provide a grounding for good and evil. So, along with everything above, utilitarianism begs the question. Even though it is so that all people have the desire to maximize pleasure and reduce pain, why should we assume that those desires are right?

References

1. While Bentham's view of utility is based solely on the amount of pleasure or pain the actions ultimately produce for the people, Mill felt that some pleasures, such as the pursuit of knowledge, the arts, and music were more weighty than others. Yet, at its core either version of utilitarianism seeks pleasure over pain, happiness over unhappiness. There is nothing more to warrant labeling things good or bad.

Breaking News May Break Your Heart: Tales from the Front Lines in the Culture Wars

This week has been an explosion in news items for those who care about the Christian faith and the culture. The most important religious freedom case in at least a generation (Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby) was argued before the Supreme Court early in the week. Then the evangelical relief organization World Vision announced that they would be revising their employee policy to allow hiring of same sex couples who had a Christian cleric officiate a wedding ceremony. (Yesterday, World Vision reversed that decision.) Finally, a story broke in the UK about how British hospitals were using the remains of aborted and miscarried babies to generate heat for those same hospitals. And that was just through Wednesday.

As someone engaged in apologetics ministry, the clash between worldviews is part of my calling. I hope to communicate a reasoned Christian viewpoint on ethical and cultural issues that have theological implications to an unbelieving world. Most people today assume morality is a relative concept and religion is simply a private belief that shouldn't affect one's public interests.

As you may expect, the news has given me a busy week. But it gave me something else, too. It gave me a very heavy heart, which was a bit unexpected. I feel weary, weary not only in the added engagements but also weary that a moral framework that would have been so clearly understood just a few decades ago are now lost in the fog of this modern age. It scares me that people cannot connect the revulsion they experience when reading about using fetuses as fuel to the marginalization of an unborn child in the rhetoric of pro-abortionists. It scares me because I know that the marginalization of natural marriage will lead to further dangers down the road. Frankly, our slide towards Gomorrah is simply breaking my heart.

But maybe that's the thing. In my morning devotions, I always pray that God would change my heart to be more like the heart of Jesus. I think this is a fairly common prayer among Christians. What I didn't expect is such a change would cause pain. When looking over Jerusalem before His triumphal entry, Jesus wept over the city that would soon turn against Him. He didn't cry for His suffering and He didn't rejoice in the judgment that it would face in the coming years. It didn't cause Him to be angry; it caused Him to grieve. An unexpected consequence of having one's heart be conformed to Christ is to not only feel more love, but to feel more pain. When sin grieves us, we have a more proper understanding of what sin truly is.

I had a prominent apologist friend who was once being slammed by various critics for what he had written. I have been in that position, too. Especially online, there are critics who can get nasty and personal. They may even verbally attack your family, which happened to me in one instance. My friend, clearly anguished, asked "Why can't God give me a thicker skin to do work like this?" But I don't think God wants to do that. A thick-skinned apologist would be a dangerous thing, using arguments as clubs. I think God wants us to be tender-hearted to both the travesty of an evaporating moral standard and to those who would criticize us for taking a moral stand.  Like Jeremiah, we should warn with fervency, but all the while with tears in our eyes. Only then can the Gospel be shown to be what it truly is: the power of Christ to accomplish salvation in the hardened hearts of the unsaved. Jesus wept, then moved forward. Let us do so, too.

Britain Looks to Soylent Green Energy

The headline read like something out of a horror novel. Certainly this wasn't what it seemed, right? It must be satire, a Modest Proposal updated for the 21st century. Yet, there is was in the respected UK Telegraph for all to read: "Aborted babies incinerated to heat UK hospitals."

Image courtesy Bryan Ward

The story tells of how the remains of over 15,000 aborted or miscarried babies were labeled as "clinical waste" and incinerated in hospital "waste-to-energy" facilities while the mothers of those babies that were miscarried were simply told their babies' remains were cremated, with the hospitals never asking the parents how they would like their children's remand to be handled.

The British healthcare system is run through their government under the label of the National Health Service or the NHS. NHS Trusts are the public corporations that run the hospitals on behalf of the NHS and must answer to the UK's Department of Health. 27 NHS Trusts were found to have incinerated aborted babies over the last two years, according to the British television program Dispatches. This was not a rogue hospital making an error in judgment but a systemic approach to desecrating human remains throughout the government healthcare system.

How can such hideousness and callous disregard happen in an advanced society? Part of the problem stems from the rhetoric that has permeated the abortion wars. We're told over and over that fetuses are nothing more than "a clump of cells" or "a mass of tissue." So, even if a young couple was hoping to start a family but suffer the tragic loss of miscarriage, you cannot have a service for a mass of tissue. You simply dispose of it, like a removed appendix.1

This is certainly part of the problem, but it isn't all of it. The emphasis on finding new ways to "go green" reduce waste and carbon emissions plays into the decision as well.  This document published by the NHS's Sustainable Development Unit gives us a better understanding. In part, it reads:

Although domestic waste is by far the largest proportion of NHS total waste, clinical/hazardous waste is the most costly to dispose of: £380-450 per tonne for non-burn alternative technology (i.e. autoclave/microwaves etc) and £800-1,000 per tonne for hazardous/pharmaceutical waste high temperature incineration. As waste created by the NHS continues to rise, both by tonnage and by disposal cost, this is an area where investment in sound management can save money and reduce carbon emissions. The most important principle in waste management is to apply the waste hierarchy of reduce, reuse, recycle, energy recovery – with disposal being the least favourable option (emphasis added).

So the push by the NHS was to save money, especially on clinical waste which is the most costly, and to reduce carbon emissions. The answer is simple: go green by not burning coal, but burning bodies. The UK has pioneered the use of Soylent Green Energy, where we protect the environment at the cost of human dignity.

Western culture is now beginning to suffer from the ramifications of its own teachings. We're told that people don't bear the image of God but are simply another evolutionary accident, simply another kind of animal. We're told that the miracle of bringing new life into the world is only special if the parents to be wanted that child, and only then if it meets factory specification. We're told that the only truly valuable thing in the world is the world itself, so we had better do everything possible to make it as though no humans even live on the planet. Then, when people take those teachings seriously, we become aghast at the horrific results. Ideas matter and I shudder to think of what other repulsions await us when people start believing what they've been teaching.

References

1. I would object to even the burning of amputated organs such as appendixes to heat hospitals. That is simply because these are not like medical sponges, discarded gauze, or other disposables that are byproducts of modern medical care. These organs were a part of a human being, and as such they are unique. We don't need funerals for them, but we do need to recognize that the owner has suffered a loss and thus they should be disposed of with at least some distinctio

Three Problems with the World Vision Decision

"It is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you, and of a kind that is not tolerated even among pagans, for a man has his father's wife."  1 Cor. 5:1

Yesterday's announcement by president Richard Stearns that World Vision will "allow a Christian in a legal same-sex marriage to be employed" at the ministry sent immediate shock waves through the Evangelical community. World Vision has required all of its employees to not only assent to a statement of faith, but also to abide by the ministry's Standards of Conduct Policy, which forbids any employee from participating in actions such as sex outside of marriage. Thus, making such an allowance for united homosexuals confused many supporters as it seemed completely out of step with World Vision policy.

In the official announcement, the company claimed to not be compromising their position. It reads:

Since World Vision is a multi-denominational organization that welcomes employees from more than 50 denominations, and since a number of these denominations in recent years have sanctioned same-sex marriage for Christians, the board—in keeping with our practice of deferring to church authority in the lives of our staff, and desiring to treat all of our employees equally—chose to adjust our policy. Thus, the board has modified our Employee Standards of Conduct to allow a Christian in a legal same-sex marriage to be employed at World Vision.

I want to be clear that we have not endorsed same-sex marriage, but we have chosen to defer to the authority of local churches on this issue. We have chosen not to exclude someone from employment at World Vision U.S. on this issue alone."

The notice also justified the policy change by stating "our board of directors is recognized as one of the leaders among Christian organizations in the U.S. It includes deeply spiritual and wise believers, among them several pastors, a seminary president, and a professor of theology." Interestingly, there is a biblical parallel here in the early church at Corinth. The Corinthian church also struggled with divisive theological battles. They also allowed people who practiced what the Bible clearly labeled as sexual sin within their ranks, and they also claimed themselves as wise. When addressing each of these issues in the epistle of 1 Corinthians, the Apostle Paul took the church to task. "We are fools for Christ's sake, but you are wise in Christ. We are weak, but you are strong. You are held in honor, but we in disrepute… When reviled, we bless; when persecuted, we endure; when slandered, we entreat. We have become, and are still, like the scum of the world, the refuse of all things."

World Vision's Failed Foresight

Of course, World Vision is trying to claim that it is remaining neutral on issues where good Christians disagree. Note the claim, "I want to be clear that we have not endorsed same-sex marriage, but we have chosen to defer to the authority of local churches on this issue." My response is that it is impossible to claim neutrality by implementing such a policy. Here are some reasons why:

First, World Vision, in recognizing same-sex "marriage" while keeping their abstinence provision has made a theological judgment: they have concluded that marriage is not something designed by God, but is something that can be redefined in whatever way some denomination's whims take it. As I've stated before, natural marriage can be easily seen in the fact that men and women's bodies couple in a unique way and the natural result of that coupling is offspring. The Bible says "the two shall become one flesh" and that is exactly what happens if there is nothing to impede nature. Realize, there is no institution other than marriage to properly bring children into this world. None. However, by equating same-sex unions to marriage, World Vision says biology, God's design for family, and the right of a child to have a mother and a father don't really matter. Marriage is what a partner denomination says it is.

Secondly, by maintaining the abstinence component of the Employee Standard of Conduct, World Vision sends a strong message that individuals who violate the Bible's prohibition on premarital sex are committing a greater sin than those practicing homosexual intercourse on a consistent basis. Both acts are condemned in the Bible, but one must assume that same-sex couples who went through a ceremony have the intent to repeatedly engage in sexual immorality. There is no repentance in such instances, and it is clear that World Vision therefore is making a theological claim that there is then no sin.

Lastly, I understand that different denominations hold to different views on a variety of theological topics. However, no Christian denomination teaches that one is in habitual sin by holding to the perseverance of the saints or whether baptism should be full-immersion only. We recognize that Christians will differ on these issues. Habitual sexual sin, though, is clearly taught to be a factor in one's salvation. Paul warns the Corinthians "Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God." So, deferring to denominations on matters of disagreement is fine, but not where the action bears on what it means to be a Christian.

"But you yourselves wrong and defraud—even your own brothers!" 1 Cor. 6:8

Spears states that part of the reason for the policy change is to keep them focused on their mission. "The board and I wanted to prevent this divisive issue from tearing World Vision apart and potentially crippling our ability to accomplish our vital kingdom mission of loving and serving the poorest of the poor in the name of Christ." The Corinthian church was also successful. They were "not lacking in any gift" (1:7) and were even able to contribute to the collection Paul was taking up for the Christians suffering in Jerusalem. But, their ministry and abilities were considered secondary to their obedience. He says by allowing such immorality go unchallenged they Corinthians are harming the body of Christ.

Many Christians today have been taking a live and let live approach to same-sex unions. "I may believe that homosexuality is wrong, but I don't want to judge others." Such a view is wrong. We are called to be stewards of one another first, and our ministry to the outside world is secondary. Homosexuality is physically dangerous, and as Paul has stressed, it is spiritually deadly. World Vision seems to have focused so much on its ministry to the world that it has gone blind to its ministry to the church.

Does Religious Liberty End When Business Begins?

Recently, the Los Angeles Times ran an Op-Ed piece once again denouncing the idea that privately-owned companies such as Hobby Lobby can set policy that reflects their deeply held moral convictions when that conviction is set at odds with some government mandate. Of course, the question wasn't phrased that way. David Gans wrote "Are secular, for-profit corporations free to violate the rights of their employees by claiming that the law violates their corporate religious conscience? That's the big question at the heart of the two blockbuster challenges to a key provision of Obamacare that will be heard by the Supreme Court next week."

As you can see, there's bias even in the way Gans chose to word the question. There is no violation of employees rights if one works for Hobby Lobby. Their employees are completely free to exercise any right they have, including their choice to use abortifacient drugs. They simply have to pay of that right themselves, instead of asking the company to do so.

While I hold a very firm stand on the immorality of elective abortion, that isn't the main idea I am concerned about in this article. My bigger concern is that much of the Western world has bought into the idea that religious beliefs are not anything truly important. Most people think that while individuals may feel passionately about their religious convictions, such beliefs are akin to the passion other people feel for a favorite sports team or music artist. These fan-addicts see themselves through their fandom and any criticism of their object of adoration will lead to hard feelings and harsh words.

Such thinking is ignorant in the extreme. No matter what one's religious persuasion is, one's understanding of truth and morality are shaped by one's religious views. This includes even those who would say they are "nones, " atheists, or humanists. As I've explained before, in order to make sense of the world, everyone has some kind of worldview. Thus, an atheists lack of belief in God will color his understanding of right and wrong as much as a Christian's understanding of God will color his. No one is immune to this.

The crucial respect for religious beliefs is why the pilgrims left Europe and endured suffering and pain to establish a society that would recognize that respect. It is why when the United States was founded the people demanded that the Constitution contain a statement guaranteeing the free exercise of religion without government intrusion.

The problem becomes when people trivialize those foundations of right and wrong, especially when it comes to business owners. In the article above, Gans claims "Corporations lack the basic human capacities — reason, dignity and conscience — at the core of the free exercise right. Corporations cannot pray, do not express devotion to God and do not have a religious conscience." I think Gans claims too much here. If corporations don't have religious conscience, then they have no conscience at all. There is no distinction between a religious conscience and a secular one, except for the basis of the worldview from which it is based. Therefore, if one were to take Gans' view of corporations as automatons that lack any kind of reason, dignity, and conscience, then Enron is morally equal to Tom's Shoes and we should quit pressuring manufacturers to care about pollution. A corporation is equal to the machines that it employs and nothing more.

Of course, no one would hold to such ridiculous views. We understand that behind corporations there are real people and those people don't become autonomous simply because they own a company. To cheer the principled ecological convictions of a company and then turn around and decry the principled religious convictions of another is contradictory. Both are morality based and both flow from the worldview of the company's owners. By seeking to gut Hobby Lobby's stance against paying for abortifacient drugs, we are in danger of gutting any grounding for holding companies accountable at all.