Can You Be Moral Without Being Answerable to Anyone?

I've spent the last few posts discussing the concept of morality and some of the necessary ideas that must accompany any explanation of where morals come from.  I've said that to judge anything as right or wrong, one must recognize that real moral obligations exists and these must be grounded in a source beyond the created order of the universe. I've also explained that moral agents must be really free to choose to obey moral laws. In each case, we can see that the naturalist understanding of reality fails to account for these aspects of morality. Today, I'd like to look at the third component that must exist for morality to make any sense: the fact that people must not only be free to choose the good, but there must exist some kind of responsibility between the moral laws and the person in question.

Genuine Responsibility of Moral Agents

What does it mean to be responsible for our actions? It is more than simply being free to choose whether or not to follow some obligation. It also means there is some kind of relation between the individual and the law. Imagine if you will a person who witnesses a mugging occurring while walking down the street. The person recognizes the mugging is wrong and there is nothing hindering that person from stepping in and trying to stop the mugger. Is such a person morally obligated to do so?

You may answer "yes" pretty quickly, but the answer may not be that simple. What if this person is only twelve or thirteen years old? Is a child obligated to step in? I would think not. We understand that the risk a pre-teen would take in trying to stop a mugging mitigates the obligation to intercede. However, the witness may have other obligations (such as calling the police or testifying in court). However, if the person is a police officer, then he or she is more obligated than even an adult passerby.

While the mugging is an extreme example, we may look at less egregious violations. In California, which is my home state, one may make a citizen's arrest for "a public offense committed or attempted in his presence."1 This legislation is broad enough to include speeding, parking violations, driving without a seatbelt or even jaywalking. So, are you morally obligated to arrest someone you've witnessed doing any of these things simply because you think he is wrong and the law allows you to do so? No. Moral obligation calls for something more than that.

What Binds Us to Moral Laws?

To say one is morally obligated to act in a certain way is to say that one is bound to the moral law in a specific way. The police officer in the example above is bound by his position and his duty to protect the citizens of his community. To not intervene in a simple mugging would violate the oath he took and the trust that the community has placed upon him. But what is it that binds every person to concepts like "cheating is wrong" or "do not lie"? What makes every person responsible to not be bigoted against another? How can such responsibilities obtain on a naturalist account of the universe?

The answer is that there is nothing on a natural worldview that obligates us to behave in such a way. We may not like it when other people cheat or lie, but there is no reason on a naturalist account as to why we must not do so. Like the citizen's arrest, while you can choose to act in a way that others consider laudable, there is no law of nature that says you must. On naturalism, survival of the fittest is the ultimate code: if you don't survive, nothing else matters. Realize, it isn't humanity that must survive. It is you, individually and your offspring. So, if you can lie and cheat to give your offspring an advantage, it would make sense to do so.

However, if God created us, then we are obligated to Him for our very existence. That means that if God created us and intended us to behave in a certain way, we should behave in that way. If we don't, as creator he has every right to punish us for violating his precepts. It is only on a theistic worldview that the idea of moral responsibility makes sense.

References

1. California Penal Code 837. "CA Codes (pen:833-851.90)." State of California, n.d. Web. 12 Mar. 2015. http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?file=833-851.90&group=00001-01000&section=pen.

Image courtesy Android Wear and licensed via the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

How Can Naturalism Account for Moral Freedom?

Yesterday, I explained that for ideas like good and evil to make sense, one must hold there are real moral duties and obligations that fall upon human beings. These moral laws must be real, not merely preferences or false beliefs, and they must come from a source outside the created order. But the concept of right and wrong depend on more than the existence of transcendent moral laws. Right and wrong only make sense if human beings are moral agents who are free to choose whether to obey these laws.

Morality means we are able to make meaningful decisions

It has been pointed out that certain species in the animal kingdom show some very disturbing mating habits. For example, the female praying mantis may eat the head of her mate after copulation.1 Female wasp spiders, too, are known to consume their counterparts.2 Perhaps even more disturbing (for women at least) is the fact that male chimpanzees will kill and eat babies that are not their own.3

Such behavior is shocking, as those who were visiting the Los Angeles County Zoo and witnessed one such attack discovered.4 Yet, we don't classify chimpanzees as evil creatures simply because they act in a way that would be considered barbaric by human standards. Why? According to primatologist Craig Stanford, the male chimps seem to be able to make a distinction between the offspring of male competitors and his own. Stanford explained that the action is "something that primatologists are accustomed to seeing regularly" in the wild and he labeled it "part of their behavior."5 Thus the zoo chimp was not euthanized but continues to live at the Zoo entertaining visitors.

Why weren't the chimp's actions thought of as evil? Why consider this normal behavior, not meriting punishment? It is because chimpanzees are not capable of distinguishing right from wrong; they are creatures of instinct that will do certain things because it is in their nature to do that. They cannot meaningfully choose to oppose what their biology tells them to do. That's why you can housebreak a dog but not a chimpanzee. Chimps will naturally defecate where they sleep; dogs have a lair instinct where they are averse to doing so. Thus, if the dog sees his "lair" as the house, he may be trained to relieve himself outside. Not so with the chimps.

Human beings have real moral freedom

Because human beings are rational creatures, we have free will to choose whether or not to obey our urges, lusts, desires, and appetites. We would immediately label a man who killed the baby of his wife's adulterous lover as evil and a murderer. The urges produced by our biology or by the emotion of the situation don't matter. The man could have chosen to not act in spite of those. Human beings have the capability to choose the good.

However, on a naturalist account of humanity, how does one account for such freedoms? If all we are amounts to chemical processes and electrical impulses, then how do any of our action differ from those of the chimp I described above? If there is no component of man that can transcend our biology, it strikes me that in all of my actions, I'm simply the slave of the chemicals in my brain, acting in accord with my instinctual nature and whatever stimulus I receive from the outside word. Basically, my actions are nothing more than a very elaborate row of dominoes, where one will fall inevitably after another given a certain set of circumstances.

Without freedom, morality makes no sense

If that description of human action is true, it means that there is no real freedom. Freedom is a word we use because we may not be able to predict which way the dominoes will fall. But you and I are no more culpable for our actions than the chimp at the L.A. Zoo. Yet, we assume that people could have done otherwise. We chide them and jail them for not choosing the good.

How does the naturalist account for this capability of choice? For the Christian, we anchor our choices in the soul. We understand that there is an immaterial aspect to man that rises above his biology and gives him the capability to make meaningful moral choices. This is what being created in the image of God means. We are created with a sensitivity to moral obligations and duties. We don't just march to our biology, but we also recognize there is a right and wrong way to act. The ability to rise above our passions and desires and oppose them is what makes us morally culpable when we violate a moral law.

Some people lose their ability to freely choose how to act in certain situations. Think of the person suffering from Tourette's syndrome who may shout out a term of bigotry or the individual suffering from kleptomania. In those instances, we hold them to be ill, not evil, and we want them to seek help. But they even have the freedom to seek that help to attempt to get their uncontrollable tendencies under control. So, moral accountability appears even there.

Just as I said in my last post, when one claims to account for morality without God, there are some significant problems that arise. One is what is the basis of moral obligations themselves? Just because the universe is a certain way doesn't mean we have to abide by it. The second is where does the ability to recognize the existence of those moral laws and the capability to obey them in spite of our biology come from? If we are only material beings, I don't see how this can be done logically.

For part three, click here.

References

1. "Do Female Praying Mantises Always Eat the Males?" Entomology Today. Entomological Society of America, 22 Dec. 2013. Web. 11 Mar. 2015. http://entomologytoday.org/2013/12/22/do-female-praying-mantises-always-eat-the-males/.
2. "Wasp Spider." The Wildlife Trusts. The Wildlife Trusts, n.d. Web. 11 Mar. 2015. http://www.wildlifetrusts.org/species/wasp-spider.
3. Bardin, Jon. "L.A. Zoo Chimp Killing: A Q&A with Primatologist Craig Stanford." Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles Times, 27 June 2012. Web. 11 Mar. 2015. http://articles.latimes.com/2012/jun/27/science/la-sci-sn-why-did-a-chimp-kill-a-baby-chimp-at-the-la-zoo-20120627.
4."Zoo in Shock after Baby Chimpanzee Killed by Adult Chimp." LA Now Blog. The Los Angeles Times, 27 June 2012. Web. 11 Mar. 2015. http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2012/06/zoo-in-shock-after-baby-chimpanzee-killed-by-adult-chimp.html.
5. Bardin, 2012.

Being Moral Without God: What's Required?

Is being a moral person important? I don't know of anyone who doesn't think so. No one wants to trust a person who is ruthless, untrustworthy, and narcissistic. Even people who believe moral truths are fictional seem to still believe these are necessary fictions that help us survive.1 Vanity and selfishness are never held to be ideals to which one should aspire.

Given that behaving morally is recognized as an important part of being human, it amazes me how little people actually consider what morality is or how it is grounded in reality. Christians ground moral truths in the character of God. Atheists cannot do so, yet atheists like Phil Zuckerman claim to find their morality in "empathetic reciprocity." Others, like philosopher Marc D. Hauser, hold that morality is the outcome of evolutionary forces and thus a physical and chemical outworking of biology and history.2

Can morality be rooted in a physical cause? What gives moral principles their authoritative power? This is where most people falter in that they haven't considered just what is required to consider an action moral or immoral. Why is my choice to cheat on my taxes immoral while cheating on my diet isn't?

When speaking of what makes an act fall into the sphere of actions that may be considered morally significant, we must have some basic ideas of morality itself. This means that any moral system or moral framework must include at least three components. These are the recognition of moral obligations and duties as real, the moral freedom of the agent to choose to obey those moral duties and obligations, and the genuine responsibility of the agent as that duty presents itself. Let's look at the first of the three today and we'll take the other two in subsequent posts.

Understanding Moral Obligations

The first piece in understanding morality is the easiest to understand. There are real obligations, laws, duties that we are required to obey. As a comparison, we can look to the legal system. People are required by law in the United States to drive on the right side of the road if the street allows for two-way traffic. Usually, there is also a maximum speed limit that people must obey. However, there are some areas like portions of the German Autobahn that have no speed limit. In those areas it is not illegal to drive at even 200 miles per hour.

Turning back to morality, moral laws must exist of a person is to be held accountable to them. Just as the Autobahn above, one cannot be said to be morally culpable if there is no moral law that a one is violating. Because human beings recognize that honesty is a moral virtue to which we should all adhere, it becomes binding on the individual who seeks to cheat at a test. While cheating on one's diet may not be good sense, it is not in itself dishonest and doesn't violate a moral law. If you were to lie about your diet-cheating, you could then be morally culpable, but the cheating itself is morally neutral.

Moral obligations exist apart from their acceptance

Moral laws and obligations are things we are required to do and any system that claims to account for moral values must also account for real, binding laws and obligations. This isn't as easy as it may appear. If these values and duties are truly obligatory, it means that their existence is independent of their acceptance. Just because no one obeys the speed limit on California freeways doesn't mean the speed limit doesn't exist nor does it mean that you cannot get a ticket because you were "going as fast as everyone else." They are all wrong and you are, too! Moral obligations may be held by some people, all of the people, or no one, but that doesn't change the fact that they exist.

Moral obligations may conflict with our desires

One unique aspect of moral duties and obligations is that of they are real, it may be the case that they are distasteful to us. In other words, it is sometimes necessary to relinquish personal pleasure for the sake of doing the good. ;As an example, let's use the concept of not cheating on one's taxes. No one likes to pay taxes and being honest may cost people discomfort, especially those who are struggling to get by in the first place. However, because there is a real moral duty to be honest, one should not cheat on one's taxes. To be moral doesn't mean we only accept the moral laws that we like or that don't cause us discomfort. In fact, we applaud those like Mother Teresa who make great sacrifices to their own comfort in order to obey a higher moral principle. Real moral obligations may mean being honest even when it costs you something.

Moral obligations focus on our motivations

One additional aspect of looking at moral obligations is the fact seeking to be moral is a focus on the will as much as it is a focus on specific actions. David Baggett and Jerry Walls make this point in their book Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. They write, "Morality confers obligations and constraints not only on our behaviors but even on our motivations."3 For example, imagine you were t see a man such into a burning building and pull out a trapped child. The local press captures the act and the man is lauded as a hero. However, if it is later found out that the man knew the child would be trapped and he rushed in to gain the accolades of the press, his selfish motivation basically nullifies his actions, even though in both cases the child is saved.

In all, what anchors morality must be able to account for real moral obligations. If one grounds his or her morality in naturalism, then he must come up with a convincing account of what moral obligations are, why they are objective (that is they sit apart from both our acceptance of them or our desires), and ;how they bear upon our motives as well as our actions. That's much easier to do on theism than naturalism, but that isn't the only factor involved. See my next post on why people must be morally free agents and genuinely responsible for their actions are also required.

Read part two here!

References

1. See Michael Ruse's belief that "morality is a function of (subjective) feelings; but it shows also that we have (and must have) the illusion of objectivity" from "The Moral Argument in a Nutshell". Come Reason's Apologetics Notes. 03/14/2015. http://apologetics-notes.comereason.org/2014/03/the-moral-argument-in-nutshell.html
2. Baggett, David, and Jerry L. Walls. Good God: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. New York: Oxford UP, 2011. Print. 22.
3. Baggett, 2011. 16.

Geometry, Morality, and Suffering in the World

What's the definition of a straight line? Anyone who's taken high school geometry should be able to answer that question with ease. A straight line is simply the shortest distance between two points. The definition is descriptive and concise.

Now, what's the definition of a crooked line? That's a little more difficult. If I tell you that a line I've drawn is crooked, you could imagine many possibilities. The line could be comprised of several angles or it could have a soft radius. It could zigzag or simply fall away from the second point, never actually reaching it. We would say the Tower of Pisa is crooked even though the building's sides are perpendicular to each other. It's simply crooked in relation to the state of being vertical.



Because there are many ways lines may be considered crooked, it would be hard for you to tell just what kind of shape my crooked line actually is simply be me describing it to you as crooked. But there is one thing you would know: it is not the shortest distance between the two points I had in mind. A crooked line is not straight.

Morality is Like Geometry

When people talk about things like good and evil, they tend to assume such ideas are understood. Yet, just like the problem with straight lines and crooked lines above, it's important to stop and think about what the concepts of good and evil entail. Evil is, as I've written elsewhere, a privation of good. It is where good is somehow damaged. Just like darkness isn't a think unto itself, but the absence of light and cold isn't a thing unto itself but the absence of heat, evil isn't a thing unto itself, but the absence of good.

In other words, evil is to good as crooked is to straight. The only way someone can identify evil is to first understand what it means to be good and to know that the evil action (or inaction) falls short of that. There are many ways to be evil, but being good is a much narrower path, just as crooked is a broader category than straight.

Of course, this idea is not at all new with me. C.S. Lewis made it famous in his book Mere Christianity. He wrote:

My argument against God was that the universe seemed so cruel and unjust. But how had I got this idea of just and unjust? A man does not call a line crooked unless he has some idea of a straight line. What was I comparing this universe with when I called it unjust? If the whole show was bad and senseless from A to Z, why did I who was supposed to be part of the show, find myself in violent reaction against it?1

Lewis makes some clear points here. Any objection to the "immoral acts" of the Christian God must appeal to some standard, and that standard cannot originate within the world-system the objector is trying to condemn. Any time a person holds up act A and judges it on the basis of good or bad, he or she is implicitly appealing to a standard outside of the system. There must be what we would call a transcendent reference for all actions. Lewis continued in his explanation:

A man feels wet when he falls into the water because man is not a water animal: a fish would not feel wet. Of course I could have given up my idea of justice by saying it was nothing but a private idea of my own. But if I did that, then my argument against God collapsed, too—for the argument depended on saying that the world was really unjust, not simply that it did not happen to please my fancies.2

Here lies the problem with atheists who claim to offer the existence of cruelty or suffering as evidence that God doesn't exist. By appealing to such evils, they assume that an objective standard exists. But that standard must be above the creation that causes the cruelty and suffering being objected to. There must be "a law above the law" to compare the natural processes that lead to disease or death from things like earthquakes and floods.

Seeking to Straighten Crooked Lines

In geometry, it is impossible to draw a completely straight line. Even with a ruler, there are microscopic imperfections that alter your pencil's path. But that doesn't mean we cannot ever grasp the concept of a straight line or continue to try and get our lines as straight as possible. If a child draws a crooked line, we correct her and tell her to try again. The same should be true for good and evil.

Perhaps the world has gone crooked. Recognizing that doesn't mean there is no God, it only means that the world has somehow distanced itself from God's destination. The solution is therefore to find the shortest distance to the endpoint and get there right away. That's how you make the crooked straight again.

References

1. Lewis, C. S. Mere Christianity. New York: MacMillan Pub., 1952. Print. 45.
2. Lewis, 1954. 45

Top Five Apologetics Blog Posts for February

February is the shortest month of the year, but it proved to be the busiest on the blog. Our stats continue to grow with nearly 30,000 pageviews this month. Three posts broke into my top ten most popular of all time.

Myths were the main attraction. My response to President Obama's comments on the Crusades at the National Prayer Breakfast quickly shot to the most viewed blog post I've written. Debunking the Jesus-Horus myth, a common charge of atheists who think Jesus never existed, just as quickly became #2. Other items of note were several posts looking at the evidence for the authors of the Gospels, taking on Stephen Fry's objecting to God on the basis of the suffering he sees in the world, and encouragement from J.P. Moreland on getting Christians to use their minds.

Here are the top five blog posts for February:

1. What Were the Crusades? Busting Some Myths
2. How to Quickly Debunk the Horus-Jesus Myth
3. J.P. Moreland: Why the Church Must Overcome Its Aversion to Intellectual Development
4. How Would Stephen Fry Answer His Own Challenge to God?
5. Was the Bible Changed to Make it Look Like Jesus was Worshiped?