The Celestial Cop
The rabbi has a point. Or part of one anyway.
…the notion that there is no higher authority than nature is precisely what enables people like Mr. Kuklinski – and the vast majority of the killers, rapists and thieves who populate the nightly news. No, no, of course that is not to say that most atheists engage in amoral or unethical behavior. What it is to say, though, is that atheism qua atheism presents no compelling objection to such behavior – nor, for that matter, any convincing defense of the very concepts of ethics and morality themselves.
Well, first of all, that’s a somewhat tricksy claim, because of course ‘atheism qua atheism’ presents no anything about behavior, since opinions on behavior are not what atheism is. Neither is theism, in and of itself; it’s the superstructure that gets built up on top of it – or, to put it another way, the nature of the deity that people decide to believe in; the way people choose to describe the deity they have decided to believe in, rather than their belief that a deity of some sort does exist, that provide the opinions on behavior and the defense of morality. So it’s no good claiming that theists get to assume that the moral views are inherent in the theism while they are not inherent in atheism; in fact they’re inherent in neither. But just for the sake of argument, let’s let him get away with that. Let’s be generous. And having given him that we might as well let him have the ‘compelling objection’ and the ‘convincing defense’ claims – even though he really chose the wrong adjectives there. He should have chosen something like irrefutable, or decisive, or absolute, or knock-down, because if he meant that atheists are unable to work up a compelling or convincing superstructure of moral ideas, as opposed to an irrefutable one, in the absence of a deity, I think that’s just a silly claim, with mountains of historical evidence (to say nothing of other kinds) to contradict it. But never mind; let him have that too. Let’s look farther.
To a true atheist, there can be no more ultimate meaning to good and bad actions than to good or bad weather; no more import to right and wrong than to right and left. To be sure, rationales might be conceived for establishing societal norms, but social contracts are practical tools, not moral imperatives; they are, in the end, artificial. Only an acknowledgement of the Creator can impart true meaning to human life, placing it on a plane above that of mosquitoes.
Of course. Of course social contracts are in the end artificial – but what the rabbi unaccountably fails to notice is that so is what he is saying. It’s exactly as artificial. He’s arguing that theism is a good thing because it compels us to be good – rather than because it’s true. He’s giving a (very old and very familiar) consequentialist argument for the social utility of religion and theist belief. And there is much truth in what he says, but that certainly doesn’t make the whole set-up any less artificial, does it. In fact what’s funny about what the rabbi says (and about these arguments in general, and the way they keep cropping up) is that it could actually undermine religious belief. People could read it and think a little bit and recognize that the rabbi is making a consequentialist argument, which could imply that he doesn’t actually believe in the moral guarantor in the sky himself – oops. Totter, shake, tremble, fall. Consequentialist arguments for actual belief in the real existence of a deity are a tad self-undermining – that’s why one is not supposed to make them in front of the servants. Cicero and Polybius both pointed that out a longish time ago. Oh well – better luck next time, rabbi.
Update: as Don pointed out, PZ has a great post on the rabbi’s thoughts at Pharyngula.
Even before Cicero and Polybius, this sort of argument is at least as old as Plato’s Laws (Bk. 10), and he undoubtedly stole it from someone else.
Plato’s excuse, I guess, was that his cerebral arteries were starting to harden by the time he wrote the Laws, and he was nowhere near as sharp as he used to be. But religious professionals like the good rabbi are especially fond of this argument, I think, because it gives them an excuse for their profession: if they weren’t servicing the religious foundations of society, standing ever faithfully and too often (sob!) unrecognized by the intellectual elite for their immense contribution, like the boy with his finger in the dike, the social order would collapse completely under the flood of the stinking, rotten mess of human nature without spiritual beliefs, and then where would we be?
I don’t think that we secularists and atheists will ever succeed in eradicating this argument from the popular mind, and the minds of the philosophers and theologians who pander to it. Most people are just too fearful of their own suppressed impulses towards mayhem (the “shadow,” as Jung called it) to trust that people can be moral without gods.
I first had this argument put to me by an earnest mid-western mishie in Borneo twenty odd years ago. I was young at the time and the best I could come up with was, ‘D’you know, that’s rather offensive’.
I still find the idea that, if the coppers weren’t watching, I would turn into a combination of Sawney Bean and Caligula at the drop of a hat offensive.
However, I’m sure Mr. Kuklinski is an embarassment to his local branch of the Secular Society. The rabbi does prove, at some point that Mr. Kuklinski was an atheist, doesn’t he?
Wasn’t that serial killer in Kansas City a church deacon? I know Charles Whitman, the sniper who killed 30 in Austin in 1966, was an eagle scout — I know this from the Kinky Friedman song about Charles Whitman with its final line about “I’ll never trust an Eagle Scout again.”
The rabbi should look into those scouts. Pretty suspicious, the nature badges. Never know what that will lead to.
I now have a new keyboard and the builders have lined the room with lead so as to protect me from Gellers’ special powers, so I am safe for now.
This Rabbi and his ‘true’ atheism and description of the things he mentions as ‘artificial’. My view is (I profess no expertise in these matters whatsoever) that societal norms, social contracts and moral imperatives (none of which exists completely seperately from the other) ultimately develop from behaviours that have evolutionary advantageous. They are a success, which is why they exist. So there is nothing ‘artificial’ about them, they are natural behaviour. According to the Rabbi, that is a figment of my imagination. That, and the rest of what he wrote, is so insulting it makes me angry enough to want to go and shoot him. According to him, there is nothing to stop me, so presumably he would be pleased to have me prove his point.
P.S. I wonder what a ‘fake’ atheist looks like.
Pharyngula also has trenchant remarks on the Rabbi’s inanity.
I agree with what you’ve written here; by making utilitarian arguments for theism, believers undermine the very basis of their own faith. However, I’m sure I remember reading something in this space about the historical disutility of theism so aren’t you just doing the same thing?
Stimulated by Ophelia’s heads-up email I commented on this at Pharyngula (rather than here because there are later comments there) with reference to OB’s post.
(And with any luck I will now resume my retirement from this sort of thing.)