Friday Mentionables: Challenge to Obama Supporters, SC Adopts school choice, Prayer Power...

A Challenge to Young Obama Supporters
Obama to NBA: I'm not done raising your taxes, now help me sell obamacare
South Carolina adopts school choice

IHOP-KC and prayer power

Stephen Meyer - Darwin's doubt: Greg Koukl interviews Stephen Meyer

Michael Ruse on the compatibility of Christianity and Darwinism

From Patheos 

I see nothing in Darwinism that should upset the Christian, although I fully admit that the Christian is going to have to work hard on some issues. Obviously you cannot be a Darwinian and believe in a totally literal interpretation of Genesis. However, at least since the time of St. Augustine around 400 A.D. it has been the Christian position that one can and indeed must interpret the Bible metaphorically at times. So I don’t think that literal readings are necessarily part of traditional Christianity, even though they are certainly part of American evangelical Christianity.

Of course, there are certain issues which come up from Darwinism which seem to give great worries for the Christian. Most obviously, there is the problem of evil. I myself am inclined to think that the problem of evil in itself is a fatal barrier for Christian belief. The question rather is whether or not Darwinism exacerbates the problem. I would argue that it does not. For instance, I am inclined take Leibniz’s position on the problem of natural evil. If God created through law – and I think there are good theological reasons why God would create through law – then probably the only way in which he could have created humans naturally is through the Darwinian process of natural selection brought on by a struggle for existence. The struggle for existence necessarily involves pain and suffering. So my position here would be that pain and suffering are a necessary condition of getting a greater good, namely humankind.

My personal feeling is that probably the biggest problem of all is that of the randomness of Darwinian evolution, and yet of the necessity of the appearance of humans in the Christian schema. My most recent thinking on this issue is to invoke the notion of multiverses. Since humans have evolved, it’s all a question of enough time and space to do this. Of course one might wonder about God having to wait so long for humans to evolve, since planet after planet might prove to be unsuitable. But in the Christian position this is no real problem because, as Saint Augustine argued, God stands outside time. He is not sitting around waiting for things to happen. So I do think that this is a problem that can be solved.

More positively, I would argue that this is a wonderful world brought about by natural law. It is a world of mystery and excitement. This, it seems to me, fits far more with a creator God of Christianity than the god who simply did it all by fiat in an instantaneous miracle. In many respects, therefore, I want to argue that, far from being a difficulty, Christianity finds Darwinism to be a challenge and a triumph. The Christian should welcome Darwinism just as he or she welcomes the Copernican revolution. Science is not the enemy of religion, but its complement.

Some Christians disagree with Michael Ruse, for example Wintery Knight, who says that theistic evolution is "...basically atheistic evolution, with an unnecessary fairy tale riding on top." 

Check out some other links to comments on theistic evolution by conservative Christians (is that the correct label? I'm unsure).
Melinda at STR: The trouble with theistic evolution

Reasonable Faith: Evolutionary Theory and Theism

Quote of the week - James Rachels on human dignity

"The doctrine of human dignity says that humans merit a level of moral concern wholly different from that accorded to mere animals; for this to be true, there would have to be some big, morally significant difference between them. Therefore, any adequate defense of human dignity would require some conception of human beings as radically different from other animals. But that is precisely what evolutionary theory calls into question. It makes us suspicious of any doctrine that sees large gaps of any sort between humans and all other creatures. This being so, a Darwinian may conclude that a successful defense of human dignity is most unlikely"

-James Rachels, Created from Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 171-72. Cf. pp. 93, 97, 171

Radical Corruption and Knowledge of Morality

"Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made."

Immanuel Kant Idea for a General History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), Proposition 6

"For we too were once foolish, disobedient, deceived, captives of various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another."

Paul Titus 3:3, HCSB translation

The Apostle Paul and philosopher Immanuel Kant have a similar view of the morality of mankind, i.e., mankind is like a crooked piece of timber, i.e., mankind's moral inclination is bent toward evil or radically corrupted. Some would say that man is totally depraved and I would agree that, spiritually, mankind is totally depraved, but I prefer to say mankind is radically corrupted. Why? I think we all know even the most heinous person, e.g. Hitler, could have been even more morally depraved than he really was, there is always room to grow, right? So, we can't say that mankind is totally depraved morally speaking, so I will use radical corruption for my description of man's state before regeneration.

Given the warped timber of humanity, it's difficult to imagine how we can even acknowledge morality. If we are indeed radically corrupted people, "...foolish, disobedient, captives of various passions and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, detesting one another," then how do we even know such actions and behaviors are wrong? My dog doesn't know his actions are wrong. When he "steals" my other dog's food, he hasn't a clue that such an action was wrong. Or when a dog attacks a cat for no reason, he doesn't know such an action is "bad." Humans know good from bad. We know morality is selflessness. Why would morality develop in creatures who are obsessed with survival and reproduction? Why would creatures be selfless? There are natural explanations.

Charles Darwin developed the group-selection argument in The Descent of Man: "“although a high standard of morality gives but a slight or no advantage to each individual man and his children over the other men of the same tribe, yet . . . an advancement in the standard of morality will certainly give an immense advantage to one tribe over another." This argument was popular for some time as it seemed to reconcile evolution and morality. However, as we now know, the argument is flawed and has been abandoned due to questions such as, "Why would the tribe be self-sacrificing in the first place?"

Atheist Richard Dawkins stepped up to the plate to answer the question. In Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene, he develops the argument, you guessed it, that our genes are selfish. He says individuals are, "survival machines — robot vehicles blindly programmed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes." The selfish gene argument is not without merit. Think of a mother rushing into a burning building to rescue her children. Is she acting out of motherly instinct to save her children? Is that why she is putting herself in danger for her children? According to the selfish-gene argument, no she is not. Fifty percent of a child's genes come from the mother. What may look like a mother acting selflessly to save her children, is actually a mother's genes acting selfishly to ensure their survival through the offspring. To us, such an action of bravery seems altruistic, but genetically the action is selfish.

Kin-selection is another label for selfish-gene morality. Kin-selection is also observed in nature. Animals of a same kind, e.g. prairie dogs, give warning calls to each other if a predator is nearby. The one giving the warning call is putting its life in danger. Why? Kin-selection tells us the one giving the warning call is not maximizing its individual change of survival, but the survival of its genes living on in the next generation. Helping one's kin is actually, genetically, helping oneself.

At this point, one realizes human beings don't only help their relatives, they also help strangers; what about that? Well, naturalists have an answer for that form of morality too, which is called "reciprocal altruism" and that simply means: you do something nice for me, I'll do something nice for you. This explains that what seems to be sacrifice, is actually selfishness. 

I've talked about the naturalist answers for morality elsewhere on this blog and have attempted to show why those arguments are wrong. You may remember me dubbing such answers as "low-end" morality and I'm sticking with that label because I think it's quite good at describing such moral actions. There is also "high-end" morality, which is morality that cannot be explained by kin-selection or reciprocal altruism. A man gives up his seat on the bus for an 80 year old woman who is not his grandma, she is a complete stranger, why does he do that? A woman gives blood at a blood drive. She does not know the blood is going to; it's a selfless action that has no naturalist answer. Dawkins, again in The Selfish Gene, writes that giving blood is "disinterested altruism." Altruism of this sort occurs on a regular basis, in everyday life all over the world. People volunteer their time to help the impoverished in third-world countries, those that cannot receive anything in return. Others sacrifice their lives to save strangers, such sacrifices cannot be reciprocated. 

Naturalists admit they are at a loss when it comes to high-end morality. James Rachels writes, "...a Darwinian may conclude that a successful defense of human dignity is most unlikely." Ernst Mayr writes, "Altruism toward strangers, is a behavior not supported by natural selection." There are more examples of naturalists stumped by high-end morality here. When at a loss for an answer, naturalists and atheists have explanations like the one given by atheist Michael Ruse in a column he wrote for the Guardian:

"God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good. There is no celestial headmaster who is going to give you six (or six billion, billion, billion) of the best if you are bad. Morality is flimflam.

[...]Morality is just a matter of emotions, like liking ice cream and sex and hating toothache and marking student papers. But it is, and has to be, a funny kind of emotion. It has to pretend that it is not that at all! If we thought that morality was no more than liking or not liking spinach, then pretty quickly it would break down.

[...]So morality has to come across as something that is more than emotion. It has to appear to be objective, even though really it is subjective.

[...]Now you know that morality is an illusion put in place by your genes to make you a social cooperator, what’s to stop you behaving like an ancient Roman? Well, nothing in an objective sense."

When morality cannot be explained naturally, one is left with feeling based morality that appears to be objective and binding by our genes, but it's actually an illusion so there is no objectivity to it. My question is why cooperate with it? What is stopping us from behaving like an ancient Roman? This still doesn't answer our question of how we came to know of high-end morality and how it's binding whether we acknowledge it or not. 

Michael Shermer, an evolutionist, gives his argument for the apparent objectivity of morality and why persons perform high moral actions. Shermer writes, "The best way to convince others that you are a moral person is not to fake being a moral person but actually to be a moral person." We act moral so we can gain reputation points with others, which will give us a higher status in society. Reputation is important for one's place in society, benefiting not only your image, but also there is a possibility for better mating prospects. So, again, the seemingly high-end morality is explained away as a disguise for the selfish gene. 

Dinesh D'Souza in his article for the Natural Review found a flaw in Shermer's argument. He writes:

"Machiavelli argues that “the man who wants to act virtuously in every way necessarily comes to grief among so many who are not virtuous.” A rich man who is habitually generous, Machiavelli remarks, will soon become a poor man. Much better, Machiavelli craftily counsels, to acquire the image of magnanimity while giving away as little as possible. In other words, it is preferable to seem virtuous than to actually be virtuous. “Everyone sees what you appear to be, few experience what you really are.” Machiavelli insists that the people who prosper most in the world are the ruthless people who employ virtue only occasionally and instrumentally for strategic gain. If Machiavelli is right, then under the rules of natural selection it is the moral pretenders, not the truly moral, who will prosper and multiply. And for empirical evidence Machiavelli could surely point to the successful connivers in our society and every other one." 

I agree with D'Souza's point, if I understand him correctly, that the truly moral will not prosper from such generous acts of selflessness. Only ruthless, selfish people who use virtue will gain from moral actions. Once again, high-end moral actions cannot be explained by arguments supported by natural selection. So, we can see that objective moral values and duties cannot be explained by naturalists, which brings me again to the question of how do such morally depraved persons recognize objective morality? 

Kant and Paul would agree with naturalists that man in his state is self-serving, totally void of morality and not likely to help others. Where they differ, however, is in their view of morality. Paul argues that man is made in the image of God, which is where we get our sense of a binding morality in the world. Even the most morally depraved person knows of "good," of "justice," "mercy," etc., the knowledge doesn't of such virtues doesn't change the depraved person, but it doesn't eliminate the oughtness of morality either, which is the key to understanding objective morality. The objectiveness of morality doesn't mean everyone will acknowledge it and follow it. It exists whether we acknowledge it or not. We have morality engraved in our minds. Some call it the "voice within." Adam Smith called morality the "impartial spectator." Paul explained it as being made in the image of God, as I understand it. 

Since man is made in the image of God, we have a moral stamp on our minds/hearts, and we can recognize morality, but we don't always follow it, which explains our condition. We lie, cheat, murder, and a myriad of other unmoral things. Shouldn't our knowledge of morality help us be better human beings? It does for some folks. Objective morality keeps us in check. You can think of it as God being merciful even to those who won't put their faith in his Son for salvation. How is it merciful? Well, think for a moment if morality wasn't objective. Our state of life would be a lot different. What if you didn't have the impartial spectator that made you feel remorseful or regret? Or rather, what if you didn't have compassion? Or even love? The world would be a much darker place. Our moral stamp keeps us in check. It keeps us from being totally depraved, but doesn't keep us from being radically corrupted. 

Our knowledge of morality comes from God. The moral standard given to us by God is expressed in his moral law. It exists and is binding on us whether we acknowledge it or not. This is the best explanation for the objectivity of morality and our knowledge of it. If God does not exist, then moral values and duties wouldn't exist. So far, evolution and other moral arguments have not provided good answers for the objectivity of morality.

Morality goes against the laws of evolution. Our moral stamp tells us to do the opposite of what the laws of evolution have us to do. It goes against our selfish inclination. We are to be selfless when everything in us wants to be selfish. Listening to your impartial spectator usually will not profit you anything at all, but the conscience will be at peace. I'll finish this post with a quote from Dinesh D'Souza, "The whole point of morality is that you are doing what you ought to do, not what you are inclined to do or what is in your interest to do. Morality is described in the language of duty, and duty is something that we are obliged to do whether we want to or not, whether it benefits us or not."

Sources:

1.Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) 

2. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd edition (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1909)

My other posts on morality here.

Why objective morality fails on scientific naturalism

I've written quite a lot of blog posts on objective morality, what it is, where it comes from and such. With each post I write, I'm trying to work the meaning out in my mind, i.e., how does objective morality work in the world and in us, human beings, and how this works with worldviews other than the Christian worldview. Does objective morality only fit perfectly in the Christian worldview? The answer I come up with is yes. Objective morality fits only within the Christian worldview. It fits perfectly within the Christian worldview. Objective morality does not fit at all within the scientific naturalist worldview. It can't. The piece, objective morality, does not fit in the puzzle pieces of scientific naturalism. You can try to shove it in with all of your might, but it just won't fit. You might hear some popular naturalists speak that there is objective purpose in their worldview, that morality is objective; don't buy it for a second. All of that is rhetoric. (In this post I'll be borrowing heavily from J.P. Moreland's essay The Image of God and the Failure of Scientific Atheism).

Evolutionary naturalist Michael Ruse writes

morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says "Love thy neighbor as thyself," they think they are referring above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction...and any deeper meaning is illusory. 1 

From Michael Ruse's statement, it's hard to find intrinsic value and an objective moral order given naturalism. To the naturalist, morality is simply an aid to survival and reproduction, i.e., kin selection and reciprocal altruism. What is kin selection? Self-help by way of natural selection; but natural selection isn't operating at the level of individuals, it operates at the level of the individuals' genes. An example of this is: a mother who dives into a burning car to save her daughter. The mother is not acting out of pure altruism, i.e., our of selfless concern for the well-being of others; rather she is acting out of desperation to make sure her genes, which are shared by her daughter, make it into the next generation. Even if she (the mother) dies, her genes live on through her children. Reciprocal altruism is, "I'll be nice to you, so that you'll be nice to me." On naturalism, human worth and objective morality is, as Michale Ruse said, illusory. 

One would think, since naturalism cannot explain the existence of objective morality, it counts as a nod toward Christian theism. Atheist J.L. Mackie acknowledged: "Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of properties and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events without an all-powerful god to create them."2 The best scientific naturalism can do is explain what I call "low-end" morality, which is explained partly by kin-selection and reciprocal altruism; it cannot explain intrinsic value, objective moral order, or the high equal value and rights of human persons (high-end morality). Naturalists Peter Singer and Helga Kuhse acknowledge that the best justification for the high equal value of human persons is in the grounding of Judeo-Christian doctrine of the image of God.3 This claim by Singer and Kuhse is acknowledged by many thinkers, most notably by Joel Feinberg. 4 

J.P. Moreland writes 

The following skeptical question, Feinberg believes, has never been adequately answered: why would we treat all people equally in any respect in the face of manifest inequalities of merit among them? The simple response "Because we just have such worth" does not answer the skeptic's query. If "human worth" is real and generic, says Feinberg, then it must supervene on some subvenient base that (1) we al lhave equally in common and (2) is nontrivial and of supreme moral worth. Operating within a naturalistic framework, Feinberg considers several attempts to delineate that base, and he judges them all to be a failure because they

• require an entity such as "pricelessness" for which we have no answer as to where it came from and with respect to which one must postulate a problematic, mysterious, intuitive faculty of direct awareness of such an entity;
• are grounded in a degreed property (one that is possessed to a greater or lesser degree) such as rationality (Feinberg takes the potential for rationality to be degreed) which, therefore, cannot do the job of founding equal worth for all; 
• simply name the problem to be solved and do not provide an explanation of the problem itself.

At the end of the day, Feinberg acknowledges that the notion of equal worth and equal rights for all human persons is groundless and may simply express a noncognitivist, unjustifiable pro-attitude of respect to ward the humanity in each person. 5  

Feinberg gives an excellent illustration of the difficulty of grounding equal value and rights (objective morality) on a naturalistic worldview. It cannot be done because given naturalism, it's illusory.

J.P. Moreland then cites David Hull who is the leading philosopher of evolutionary theory in the twentieth century. 

The implications of moving species from the metaphysical category that can appropriately be characterized in terms of "natures" to a category for which such characterizations are inappropriate are extensive and fundamental. If species evolve in anything like the way that Darwin thought they did, then they cannot possibly have the sort of natures that traditional philosophers claimed they did. If species in general lack natures, then so does Homo sapiens as a biological species. If homo sapiens lacks a nature, then no reference to biology can be made to support one's claims about "human nature." Perhaps all people are "persons," share the same "personhood," etc., but such claims must be explicated and defended with no reference to biology. Because so many moral, ethical, and political theories depend on some notion or other of human nature, Darwin's theory brought into question all these theories. The implications are not entailments. One can always dissociate "Homo sapiens" from "human being," but the result is a much less plausible position. 6 

He (Moreland) goes on to cite atheist James Rachels as claiming, "...a Darwinian approach to the origin of human beings, while not entailing the falsity of these notions, nevertheless provides an undercutting defeater for the idea that humans are made in the image of God and that humans have intrinsic dignity and worth as such. Indeed, according to Rachels, Darwinism is the universal solvent that dissolves any attempt to defend the notion of intrinsic human dignity." 7 

Rachels writes: 

The doctrine of human dignity says that humans merit a level of moral concern wholly different from that accorded to mere animals; for this to be true, there would have to be some big, morally significant difference between them. Therefore, any adequate defense of human dignity would require some conception of human beings as radically different from other animals. But that is precisely what evolutionary theory calls into question. It makes us suspicious of any doctrine that sees large gaps of any sort between humans and all other creatures. This being so, a Darwinian may conclude that a successful defense of human dignity is most unlikely. 8 

Rachels is correct. On the naturalistic worldview, "...a successful defense of human dignity is most unlikely." All you have with naturalism is an explanation for low-end morality. Naturalism cannot explain the high-end morality that humans demonstrate, which is behavior that doesn't care about reciprocal or genetic advantages to the action. Why do people give blood? The blood is going to help those who the person does not know. There is no naturalistic rationale for this behavior. Richard Dawkins concedes that that the Darwinian thesis cannot explain why people give blood, a fact that he puts down to "pure disinterested altruism." 9 The Darwinian model cannot account for "love your enemies." Or for the actions of Mother Teresa, or for the good Samaritan model. The Darwinian model is confined to the realm of self-interest and the essence of morality operates outside the realm of self-interest. As Dinesh D'Souza writes, "The whole point of morality is that you are doing what you ought to do, not what you are inclined to do or what is in your interest to do. Morality is described in the language of duty, and duty is something that we are obliged to do whether we want to or not, whether it benefits us or not." 10

J.P. Moreland finishes his essay with 

Naturalists can't appeal to emergence to solve their problems because (1) this is just a label for the problem to be solved and not a real solution and (2) it begs the question against Christian theism in a most egregious way. It would seem, then, that important features that characterize us human persons provide evidence that there is a Creator God who made us. And this is exactly what one would predict if biblical teaching about the image of God is true. 11

Sources

1. Michael Ruse, "Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics," in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262 - 69 

2. J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), p. 115 

3. Helga Kuhse and Peter Singer, Should the Baby Live? (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 118-39. 

4. Joel Finberg, Social Philosophy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1973), pp. 84-97

5. J.P. Moreland, "The Image of God and the Failure of Scientific Atheism," in God is Great, God is Good (USA: Intervarsity Press, 2009), pp. 45-46 

6. David Hull, The Metaphysics of Evolution (Albany: State University of New York, 1989), pp. 74-75

7. Moreland, pp. 46-47

8. James Rachels, Created from Animals (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 171-72. Cf. pp. 93, 97, 171

9. Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989) pp. 230.

10. Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About Christianity (USA: Tyndale House Publishers, 2007) pp. 239-240.

11. Moreland, pp. 47


Check out all of my posts on morality by clicking here.

Wanting objective morals without an objective moral standard

Listening to the Harris vs Craig debate last night on "Is good from God?" I noticed, yet again, a person defending objective moral values in a relativistic fashion. In the opening statement, it appeared that both men agreed on objective morality. What is objective morality? Objective morality, put simply, is a standard of morals that is binding on us whether we acknowledge them or not. I wouldn't want to confuse objective morals with universal morals because universal morals are morals that are recognized universally not necessarily objectively. Right now, universally people acknowledge that murder of an innocent is wrong. What if tomorrow, universally, people acknowledged that murder of an innocent wasn't wrong? That would mean that it's fine to go down the street, gun blazing, killing everyone you see and you could get away with that action. Objective morality means that even if tomorrow, the universal opinion is that killing the innocent is fine, that objectively killing the innocent is not fine, it's bad even if you don't acknowledge that it's bad. That is objective morality. 

Having said that, I think some defenders of objective morality are actually defending universal morality. Why do I think that? Well, for one because such defenders are basing their arguments on either a) evolution or b) utilitarian principles. Objective morals cannot be a product of evolution/herd/culture morality. Why? If objective morality developed by evolution, then I understand that it would have developed by natural selection. If the objective standard was developed by natural selection, then how could that be "objective?" Objective morality is the standard whether we acknowledge it or not; it's true without any help from us. An objective moral value is selflessness. Can selflessness be a product of natural selection? No. In natural selection the self is maximized. Greg Koukl gives a good explanation:

"So, in abbreviated form, the reasoning goes like this: I ought to be unselfish because it is better for the group, which is better for the species, which is better for me. So why ought I be unselfish? Because it is better for me. But looking at what is better for me, is selfishness. So all of this so-called description of where morality comes from, gets reduced to this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish. That is silly. Because we know that morality can't be reduced to selfishness. Why do we know that? Because our moral rules are against selfishness and for altruism. They are against selfishness and for the opposite. When you think about what it is that morality entails, you don't believe that morality is really about being selfish. Morality is about being unselfish, or at least it entails that. Which makes my point that this description, based on evolution, does not do the job. It doesn't explain what it is supposedly meant to explain. It doesn't explain morality. It is simply reduced to a promotion of selfishness which isn't morality at all." 1

We can see from this observation that objective morality cannot have evolved over time. When dealing with evolution, it's all about the self. When dealing with morality, it's all about selflessness. 

What about good deeds? They're really done just so you can get something back right? The old "scratch my back I'll scratch your back." Well, I can think of a few things people do without getting anything back in return. I'm doing a good thing when I help someone that I do not know. So, I'm not trying to preserve my family, my "herd" at all, this person is a complete stranger. I'm in a restaurant waiting for a table, sitting down on an already crowded booth in the waiting area. An old man walks in and I give him my seat. Why do I do this? There's definitely not a reward; I'm not getting money or a free meal for this action, I'm not his grandson, cousin, brother; I'm simply a human being doing a good thing for another human being who is a complete stranger to me. 

Why does a soldier jump in front of enemy fire for an innocent bystander? There's definitely no reward for him in that action. There's no preservation of his species when he does that. He is not looking out for himself. When you see a person stranded with car trouble on the side of the parkway, you stop to help him. You have no connection with him, yet you help him. You don't help in hope of earning money or recognition; you help because you felt like you ought to help him. No one else had stopped to help and you felt it was the right thing to do. Objective morality imposes the ought on us whether you acknowledge it or not. Evolution can't explain morality. 

Can utilitarianism explain morality? First we should define what utilitarianism is. Utilitarianism (also called consequentialism) is a moral theory developed and refined in the modern world by Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) and John Stuart Mill (1806-1873). It can be defined as follows: An action or moral rule is right if and only if it maximizes the amount of nonmoral good produced in the consequences that result from doing that act or following that rule compared with other acts or rules open to the agent. 2 I'm going to be borrowing heavily from J.P. Moreland's critique of utilitarianism because he answers my question quite well. In fact, I'll just post his rebuttals here. 

"Several objections show the inadequacy of utilitarianism as a normative moral theory. First, utilitarianism can be used to justify actions that are clearly immoral. Consider the case of a severely deformed fetus. The child is certain to live a brief, albeit painless life. He or she will make no contribution to society. Society, however, will bear great expense. Doctors and other caregivers will invest time, emotion, and effort in adding mere hours to the baby's life. The parents will know and love the child only long enough to be heartbroken at the inevitable loss. An abortion negates all those "utility" losses. There is no positive utility lost. Many of the same costs are involved in the care of the terminally ill elderly. They too may suffer no pain, but they may offer no benefit to society. In balancing positives and negatives, and excluding from the equation the objective sacredness of all human life, we arrive at morally repugnant decisions. Here deontological and virtue ethics steer us clear of what is easier to what is right.

Second, in a similar way, utilitarianism denies the existence of supererogatory acts. These are acts of moral heroism that are not morally obligatory but are still praiseworthy. Examples would be giving 75 percent of your income to the poor or throwing yourself on a bomb to save a stranger. Consider the bomb example. You have two choices — throwing yourself on the bomb or not doing so. Each choice would have consequences and, according to utilitarianism, you are morally obligated to do one or the other depending on which option maximized utility. Thus, there is no room for acts that go beyond the call of morality.

Third, utilitarianism has an inadequate view of human rights and human dignity. If enslaving a minority of people, say by a lottery, would produce the greatest good for the greatest number, or if conceiving children only to harvest their parts would do the same, then these could he justified in a utilitarian scheme. But enslavement and abortion violate individual rights and treat people as a means to an end, not as creatures with intrinsic dignity as human beings. If acts of abortion, active euthanasia, physician-assisted suicide, and so forth maximize utility, then they are morally obligatory for the utilitarian. But any moral system that makes abortion and suicide morally obligatory is surely flawed.

Finally, utilitarianism has an inadequate view of motives and character. We should praise good motives and seek good character because such motives and character are intrinsically valuable. But utilitarianism implies that the only reason we should praise good motives instead of bad ones, or seek good character instead of bad character, is because such acts would maximize utility. But this has the cart before the horse. We should praise good motives and blame bad ones because they are good or bad, not because such acts of praising and blaming produce good consequences.

In sum, it should be clear that utilitarianism is an inadequate moral theory. Unfortunately, ours is a pragmatic culture and utilitarianism is on the rise. But for those of us who follow Christ, a combination of virtue and deontological ethics is a more adequate view of common sense morality found in natural law and of the moral vision contained in the Bible." 3

Evolution and utilitarianism fail to explain morality, especially objective morality, which more and more people seem to be acknowledging. However, they're "accepting" it, then smuggling in their preferences, which is not adhering to an objective moral standard. Someone may say, "I believe in objective morality," but then he says that women should be beaten if they don't give in to sex. That's relativism. You cannot make objective moral statements when your worldview is relativism. On relativism, anything goes! What's true for you is not true for me goes both ways. On relativism, we wouldn't have women's rights or the abolition of slavery. On relativism, rape, murder, adultery, could not be wrong. Relativism is personal preference and guess what? Personal preferences are very diverse. Relativism if thought through critically is not what any sane person really wants to commit to because of its volatile nature. Relativism, evolution, and utilitarianism cannot explain morality. 

The major thing to realize here is that people want objective morality. People want to acknowledge that some things are objectively good and some things are objectively bad, and that we realize the ought in us pushing us to do the right thing. We all want to acknowledge that. Why do some dislike it though? Why do some people want objective morality in a different way? Because the objective moral standard can only be explained by God. Some people want the objective moral standard without the sufficient grounding for the moral standard, which is God. 

Sources

1. Evolution can't explain morality by Greg Koukl

2 Utilitarianism and the Moral Life by J.P. Moreland

3. ibid. 

Related content

My other posts on morality  

Clicking the above link will lead to more resources for morality.

Wintery Knight's morality posts (more resources here too.)

Do Objective Moral Values and Duties Exist?

I have finally found the time to finish covering William Lane Craig's moral argument for God's existence. The second premise, Objective moral values and duties exist, is something most people will agree upon, those that don't are hard-line relativist, but they take such an extreme position (because you have to) that most are repulsed by it. This second premise, at first seems controversial, however Craig says in his debates with atheist philosophers he finds that nobody denies it. Surveys taken at universities reveal that professors are more apt to believe in objective moral values than students, and that philosophy professors are more apt to believe in objective moral values than professors in general!1

Craig relates the our moral experience to our experience of our five senses. He says, "I believe what my five senses tell me, namely, that there is a world of physical objects out there. My senses are not infallible, but that doesn't lead me to think that there is no external world around me. Similarly, in the absence of some reason to distrust my moral experience, I should accept what it tells me, namely, that some things are objectively good or evil, right or wrong."2 This is a good comparison. Thinking of our moral experience as an experience of our five senses helps to show the objectivity of morality. Everyone shares the five senses experience, just as everyone shares the morale experience. Wait a minute, some people don't have the full functionality of their five senses, so the comparison is flawed, correct? Not so. I'll let Craig explain.

"Most of us recognize that sexual abuse of another person is wrong. Actions like rape, torture, and child abuse aren't just socially unacceptable behavior - they're moral abominations. By the same token, love, generosity, and self-sacrifice are really good. People who fail to see this are just handicapped, the moral equivalent of someone who is physically blind, and there's no reason to let their impairment call into question what we see clearly." 3

So what about relativists? Shouldn't we listen to them? Something may be true for you, but not for me. Isn't that a good rule to live by? Although people give lip service to relativism, many very quickly I might add, agree to objective moral values and duties. A good quote by Richard Dawkins explains relativists quite well, " Show me a relativist at 30,000 feet and I'll show you a hypocrite." 4 Obviously, the relativist knows the Western mathematicians and engineers have got their sums right and that there is truth. I say this because relativist dismiss the fact that there is objective truth. Philosopher Stanley Fish and Richard Rorty assert that science does not describe "the world out there"; rather, it is a Western cultural construction that has no more claim to reality than anyone else's cultural construction. Fish even suggested, in a New York Times article, that the rules of science are just as arbitrary as the rules of baseball.5 In spite of this belief, I'm sure Mr. Fish and Rorty fly in airplanes, which shows that one cannot hold to relativism very long.

Produce a few illustrations to a relativist and let them decide for themselves if there are objective moral values and duties. Craig gives great illustrations:

"Ask what they think of the Hindu practice of suttee (burning widows alive on the funeral pyres of their husbands) or the ancient Chinese custom of crippling women for life by tightly binding their feet from childhood to resemble lotus blossoms...Ask them what they think of the Crusades or the Inquisition. Ask them if they think it's all right for Catholic priests to sexually abuse little boys and for the church to try to cover it up." 6 There are many more illustrations to give in addition to the ones Craig mentioned, e.g., Nazi training camps, cheating on one's spouse, spouse abuse. If you're dealing with a honest person, I'm sure that person will agree that there are objective moral values and duties.

Do we have any reason to distrust our moral experience? Some have claimed that, "the sociobiological account of the origins of morality undermines our moral experience." 7 To put simply, according to that account our moral beliefs are the result of evolution and social conditioning, or self-interest for the preservation of our society. That account does nothing to undermine the truth of our moral experience. Craig says "For the truth of a belief is independent of how you came to hold that belief." 8 In other words, you may have acquired your moral beliefs through your parents, a fortune cookie, or by a book and they could still be true. If God exists, then objective moral values and duties exist, regardless of the vehicle used to learn about them. Craig writes, "The sociobiological account at best proves that our perception of moral values and duties has evolved. But if moral values are gradually discovered, not invented, then our gradual and fallible perception of those values no more undermines their objective reality than our gradual, fallible perception of the physical world undermines its objective reality." 9

OK, maybe the sociobiological account doesn't undermine the truth of moral beliefs, but our justification for holding the moral beliefs. Well, Craig mentions two problems for that objection to premise 2.

"First, it assumes that atheism is true. If there is no God, then our moral beliefs are selected by evolution solely for their survival value, not for their truth." 10 Fine, I agree with that. In fact, Craig pressed this issue in defending premise 1. If God does not exist, then our moral beliefs are illusory, but no one firmly holds to that belief. Our moral experience tells us that rape is wrong, mass murdering is wrong, that punching someone in the face is wrong, and so on. However, if one truly stands on the sociobiological account, then rape is just acting in a socially unfashionable way, like a man belching at the dinner table. That action is not wrong and in fact does not act in a negative way toward our species. Rape actually guarantees that your genes will make it into the next generation. You see, that's no reason to think that the sociobiological account is true. If God exists, it's likely He would want us to have fundamentally correct moral beliefs and so would either guide the evolutionary process to produce such beliefs or else instill them in us. 11

Second, Craig writes that the objection is self-defeating. Given naturalism, all of our beliefs (not just moral beliefs) are the result of evolution and social conditioning. So, following the evolutionary account honestly would lead you to be skeptical about knowledge in general. This is self-defeating, Craig writes, "because then we should be skeptical about the evolutionary account itself, since it, too, is the product of evolution and social conditioning! The objection undermines itself." 12

Craig finishes the argument by saying that we're justified in thinking that objective moral values and duties do exist. From the two premises, the natural conclusion is that God exists. The moral argument compliments the cosmological argument by showing us the moral nature of the Creator and Designer of the universe. It's my belief that the moral argument is the most effective argument for God's existence because it's something we all share. Moral values are not arbitrary, they flow from God's nature and thus have a purpose and direction for our lives.

To answer the question, "Can we be good without God?" no, we can't be good without God. If we can be good in some measure, then it must follow that God exists. 13

Related content

Evolution Can't Explain Morality an article by Greg Koukl

Euthyphro Argument. Reasonable Faith podcast

My posts covering the moral argument

On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision by William Lane Craig is the finest source for further exploring his arguments for God's existence.

Sources:

1. William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), pg. 140

2. ibid, pg. 140

3. ibid, pg. 141

4. Dinesh D'Souza, Letters to a Young Conservative (Basic Books, 2002), pg. 109

5. ibid, pg. 108

6. William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), pg. 141

7. ibid, pg. 142

8. ibid, pg. 143

9. ibid, pg. 143

10. ibid, pg. 143

11. ibid, pg. 143

12. ibid, pg. 144

13. ibid, pg. 144

note: I know I'm covering William Lane Craig's Moral Argument in this post, so why include references from D'Souza? Well, the information from Letters to a Young Conservative complimented the relativist portion of Craig's argument.

Evo-morality-lution

Evolution can't explain morality, a transcript article from Stand to Reason's blog, is a great read for those interested in morality. I read the article and I have to say (unsurprisingly) that I agree with Greg Koukl's position that evolution cannot explain morality. His main point summarized the argument well: If you argue that morality evolved, you may end up saying that one "ought" to be selfish.

Greg argues that since morality is prescriptive, not descriptive, the herd/evolutionary description of morality cannot work because that description does not engage the fundamental element of morality, which is: how we "ought" to behave. What is the herd morality? I've covered it in some detail here. Greg's explanation is obviously the same, but he includes answers to common questions regarding morality "explained" by naturalistic causes:

"My basic point is this: what naturalists explain when they seek to explain morality in naturalistic, evolutionary terms is not morality at all. They are explaining something different. I get to that by asking a series of questions. Instead of looking backward, I look forward, and I ask a question of moral behavior like "Why ought anyone be unselfish in the future?" for example. The question came up yesterday regarding an observation that was done with chimpanzees. There was a group of chimpanzees which had, in a sense, punished one member for being selfish by withholding food from that member and therefore teaching that member moral behavior. Apparently, the moral rule that under-girded the lesson was that the other chimpanzee ought not be selfish. That's a moral statement and the question I'm going to ask is "Why ought the chimp (or human) not be selfish?" I'm looking for a justification there.

The answer is going to be that when we're selfish, it hurts the group. But you see, that answer isn't enough of an answer because that answer itself presumes another moral value that we ought to be concerned about the health of the group. So, I'm going to ask the question, "Why ought we be concerned about the health of the group?" The answer is going to be because if the groups don't survive, then the species doesn't survive. Then you can imagine the next question. "Why ought I care about the health of the species and whether the species survives or not?" You see, the problem with all of these responses that purport to be justifications or explanations for the moral rule, is that all of these things that are meant to explain the moral rule really depend themselves upon a moral rule before they can even be uttered. Therefore, it can't be the explanation of morality. When I ask the question "Why ought I be concerned with the species?", the next answer ends the series. The answer is, "I ought to be concerned with the species because if the species dies out, then I will not survive. If the species is in jeopardy, then my own personal self interests would be in jeopardy."

So, in abbreviated form, the reasoning goes like this: I ought to be unselfish because it is better for the group, which is better for the species, which is better for me. So why ought I be unselfish? Because it is better for me. But looking at what is better for me, is selfishness. So all of this so-called description of where morality comes from, gets reduced to this ludicrous statement: I morally ought to be unselfish so that I can be more thoroughly selfish. That is silly. Because we know that morality can't be reduced to selfishness. Why do we know that? Because our moral rules are against selfishness and for altruism. They are against selfishness and for the opposite. When you think about what it is that morality entails, you don't believe that morality is really about being selfish. Morality is about being unselfish, or at least it entails that. Which makes my point that this description, based on evolution, does not do the job. It doesn't explain what it is supposedly meant to explain. It doesn't explain morality. It is simply reduced to a promotion of selfishness which isn't morality at all"

Morality is selflessness not selfishness, which is something I believe everyone agrees on. Seemingly moral actions can be observed in animals, but ultimately, as Greg has made obvious, the herd morality is for selfish reasons and not for selfless reasons. Further, when an animal makes a seemingly moral action, it's not truly a moral action because animals are not held accountable to a moral lawgiver. Humans are held to a moral standard and that standard is God. When I make a moral action like, getting up out of my seat to let an older person sit down, I have nothing to gain from that action. I do not hope to get anything in return from the older person, nor do I hope to receive an award, it's simply a selfless action I know I ought to perform.

For further study on morality check out these other posts below.

Objective morals and Euthyprho's false dilemma

What is the basis of our values?

Moral argument for God part 3: the conscience

What is the basis of our values?

The focus of my study (other than studying TCP/IP in college) has been on morality. Is it objective? Do we need God for morality? Has morality come from evolution? Do objective moral values and duties prove the existence of God? This could be summed up in a question, "What is the basis of our values?" I found the question in William Lane Craig's book, "On Guard" and I thought that was a good question for this post, therefore, we'll look at Bill Craig's moral argument for God's existence. 
What is the basis of our values? Are they based on social convention? Personal preference? Evolution? God? I would argue that they are based on God. I believe there is good evidence for that, as I've covered the moral arguments for God from Kant, Sorley, Nietzsche; they all come to the conclusion that God is needed for the objectivity of morality. William Lane Craig covers the argument well, I obviously cannot cover it in this single post, but I'll summarize his argument and leave links for further reading. 
Bill Craig's argument is as follows:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist. 
2. Objective moral values and duties do exist.
3. Therefore, God exists. 
A simple argument with a powerful conclusion. As Bill says in his book, "This simple little argument is easy to memorize and is logically ironclad."1 Generally, people believe the first two premises. Bill says that premise 1 seems correct to people because we live in a pluralistic age in which they're scared to death of imposing their beliefs on someone else. However, premise 2 seems correct to those same people because they believe it's objectively wrong to impose your values on someone else! Let's examine the premises more closely. 
Premise 1: If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties do not exist.
Moral value refers to the worth of a person or action, whether it is good or bad. Moral duty refers to our obligation to act in a certain way, whether that action is right or wrong.2 Now, lets define objective. Objective means independent of human opinion. Bill gives the example, "...the laws of nature hold whether we acknowledge them or not, so they are objective."3 Subjective means dependent on human opinion, e.g., matters of which baseball team is better, or taste, whether pizza or good or not; subjective is person-relative. 
Now, on to defending premise one. I've learned in studying the moral arguments for God, traditionally moral values have been based on God because He is the highest Good. If He doesn't exist, what is the basis of moral values? Why think we have moral worth? Naturalism (the most popular form of atheism) holds that the only things that exist are the things that can be tested by scientific theories. Science is morally neutral, so you can't find morality there. What follows then? That moral values are illusory, they don't exist. 
On a naturalistic view, there cannot be objective moral values. Man has developed a "herd morality" in order to survive, just like animals, so there is objectivity to morals on this view. Consider what Darwin wrote in The Descent of Man,
"If...men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering." 4 
So, for the naturalist to think morality is objective, then he is committing speciesism, which is an unjustified bias to one's own species. 
I'll use Bill's own conclusion here:
"So if there is no God, any basis for regarding the herd morality evolved by Homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. Take God out of the picture, and all you're left with is an apelike creature on a speck of solar dust beset with delusions of moral grandeur." 5 
I'll cover more of this premise and the rest in later posts. So, what do you think? Do objective moral values and duties exist? Does Bill's argument convince you? 


Sources:
1. William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), pg. 129
2. ibid, pg. 131
3. ibid, pg. 131
4. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd edition (New York: D. Appleton & Company, 1909), pg. 100
5. William Lane Craig, On Guard: Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), pg. 144


Links: 
Moral facts or moral beliefs?
God and Morality Debate: William Lane Craig vs. Torbjörn Tännsjö MP3 Audio 
Dinesh D'Souza vs. Peter Singer Debate: Can There Be Morality Without God? MP3 Audio 
William Lane Craig's book On Guard 
Paul Copan, Why Science Can't Explain Morality