Abolished Man

After watching this excellent lecture on Biblical eschatology by Father Thomas Hopko, in which he declares that The Abolition of Man by C.S. Lewis is the best book of the last century at least, I decided to re-read it. It's a short volume of reflections on the state of modern man and the consequences of an utterly reductionistic dismantling of everything fundamentally human, from values to reason. Lewis' musings are highly relevant in our increasingly postmodern culture, and his decrying of "innovators" and "Conditioners" brings to mind various public figures in academia and politics.

The one that most clearly sprung to mind for me is Sam Harris, and especially his book The Moral Landscape. Harris is a perfectly distilled example of the naivete and folly that Lewis describes. Harris -- as with many modern men -- wants to use reason so as to see through the foundations of reason, and to appeal to some 'value' that is more fundamental than any of those values that we sentimental humans inherit from our forebears. But, as Lewis says:

This thing which I have called for convenience the Tao, and which others may call Natural Law or Traditional Morality or the First Principles of Practical Reason or the First Platitudes, is not one among a series of possible systems of value. It is the sole source of all value judgments. If it is rejected, all value is rejected. If any value is retained, it is retained. The effort to refute it and raise a new system of value in its place is self-contradictory. Therefore never has been, and never will be, a radically new judgment of value in the history of the world. What purport to be new systems or (as they now call them) 'ideologies,' all consist of fragments of the Tao itself, arbitrarily wrenched from their context in the whole and then swollen to madness in their isolation, yet still owing to the Tao and to it alone such validity as they possess. If my duty to my parents is a superstition, then so is my duty to posterity. If justice is a superstition, then so is my duty to my country or my race. If the pursuit of scientific knowledge is a real value, then so is conjugal fidelity. The rebellion of new ideologies against the Tao is a rebellion of the branches against the tree: if the rebels could succeed they would find that they had destroyed themselves. The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of imagining a new primary colour, or, indeed, of creating a new sun and a new sky for it to move in.

Harris does imagine himself -- or at least the scientific community writ large -- to be capable of just such a feat. But his rather large book -- whose basic premise is that it is possible to derive a system of morality from an empirical investigation of nature and application of reason -- all hinges on a single un-reasoned-for, un-empirical assumption. At the root of Harris' system, the ground basis for it, is that the maximal flourishing and well-being of conscious creatures is desirable and should be pursued, and the the worst possible misery for conscious creatures is undesirable and should be avoided. This is somewhat uncontroversial, in itself, and isn't necessarily a problem provided that one is willing to admit that one is appealing to a principle outside of the bounds of reason or empiricism, to what Lewis refers to as the Tao. But it is precisely this that Harris can never admit, given his worldview as a materialist, and given that his entire project purports to be the unsullied deliverance of disinterested reason and empirical investigation.

At any rate, a systematic debunking of the naive positivism of Harris is beyond the realm of this post and superfluous. But the manner that Lewis lays bare the conceits of such men -- effortlessly navigating and giving felicitous expression to philosophical ideas about the nature of man -- is impressive. Harris is a potent example of such a man, but he's far from unique as such men are now everywhere occupying positions of influence and power. Lewis was perspicacious on this count.

It isn't the love of reason (to the extent that it's present), or the value of skepticism that Lewis is putting on trial, as he recognizes the great value of both. But Lewis knows that the achilles heal of the rigorous, thorough, devout skeptic is all too often, ironically, his insufficient skepticism:

Their scepticism about values is on the surface: it is for use on other people's values; about the values current in their own set they are not nearly sceptical enough. And this phenomenon is very usual. A great many of those who 'debunk' traditional or (as they would say) 'sentimental' values have in the background values of their own which they believe to be immune from the debunking process.

Harris and his ilk don't misstep by appealing to certain First Principles. Indeed, if they wish to reason about morality (or anything else) they can hardly do otherwise, as Lewis clearly sees. It is in denying that they are doing so that they err. But does Harris really believe that there is, or can be, such a thing as a neutral, or assumption-less ground for reason or morality? You would not think such a thing possible for an educated person, but I recently read Harris' short e-book Lying, and a passage in it seems to confirm just that:

Like many of Kant’s philosophical views, his position on lying [that it was wrong in all cases] was not so much argued for as presumed, like a religious precept.

Although this is a dubious reading of Kant, the salient point is that the very notion of First Principles appears to scandalize Harris. As if he had reasoned for his moral system at every juncture, all the way down, including at its starting point, rather than presuming that flourishing is desirable and misery is undesirable "like a religious precept." His skepticism is sufficient to question Kant and his First Principles, but apparently such skepticism is inapplicable to Sam Harris and his.

Moral Obligations to Specific Future Persons

In a recent article at First Things Joe Carter argues that single Christians have a moral obligation, not just to God, but to their future spouse to sexual fidelity. This may seem obvious to some Christians, and the reasoning for it should be equally obvious. Our past actions have consequences for our present and our future and actions we take even before meeting someone can be hurtful to future persons.

I was first prompted to think through the issue by the film Chasing Amy by Kevin Smith about a decade ago. It has been a long time since I've seen the film but the central 'moral' to the story is that Ben Affleck's character is just being foolish in harboring feelings of jealousy and resentment about his current girlfriend's sexual past. The logic goes: since she didn't know him then and she loves him now, what relevance can those past actions have? How could it be a slight to him if she didn't even know him when she was doing it? I am with you now, I love you, and that's all that matters.

This moral struck me as simplistic and naive, and the feelings of Affleck's character in the film seemed to be completely natural and even justified, contrary to what the film was claiming--though it is correctly pointed out that he is being a hypocrite as he too had a sexual past. But in this case being a hypocrite means they are both bringing sexual, emotional baggage to the relationship that can cause these problems. That doesn't make his feelings of hurt wrong or unjustified. If anything it brings up the question of why the female character didn't harbor similar feelings about his past. The movie would say that it's because she's more experienced, grown up and enlightened and has gotten over those petty, teenage inclinations and come to the realization that it's who you love and are committed to now that matters. The past is gone and it has no ramifications on the present. But in reality she's morally and spiritually calloused because of her 'experience' whereas he is still more susceptible due to his relative innocence (in the movie she has an extensive, exotic past whereas he has a more 'normal' past of a handful of girlfriends, I believe).

The negative effects of past sexual experiences on future relationships is evidence that we are not built to function in this polygamous way. And secular people who conceive of monogamy as either a good thing, or good for some people, only view it in a temporal sense. You can be monogamous with one person, then with another, then with another. But this is really just atemporal polygamy. Those past relationships don't cease to exist as part of the person that you are the moment that they are terminated. They are still a part of you and they still have the ability to negatively affect your subsequent relationships.

God doesn't hand down his Law arbitrarily. It has a purpose and the purpose is for our benefit. Despite the fact that it was a secular film preaching a secular gospel, Chasing Amy got me to think about these issues and though the film doesn't realize it, it has an important message. The message is that the secular world thinks it's intelligent and healthy to bury, ignore, or write off as foolish feelings of hurt, jealousy, anger and resentment that previous sexual experiences and intimate relationships can evoke in present ones. Whereas God would say that because past relationships do have the capacity to wreak this kind of havoc on the present and the future (which can only be circumvented through callousness) that we should have fidelity to only one person--not one person at a time--for our whole lives. Which makes more sense? Which seems to be the better solution? If it's God's solution that is more healthy and beneficial for humanity then the evidence that Christianity is true and good continues to mount.

'The Moral Landscape' by Sam Harris - Review

Having followed the release of the book and some of the debates surrounding it I felt obliged to dutifully familiarize myself with the material if I wanted to engage in the discussion in good faith, and so I have.

Near the beginning of The Moral Landscape Harris identifies two groups of individuals who he knows will take issue with the argument he intends to present. On the one hand there are religious people who believe that moral values have a transcendent source and orientation and that therefore science can't investigate moral claims. On the other hand there are secular intellectuals, the majority of whom accept David Hume's articulation of the is/ought problem and who therefore also reject the notion that any 'is'--any fact or set of facts--can be prescriptive with regard to human duties or values. Both groups would object to the notion that, as the subtitle of this book claims, 'science can deterimine human values'. But that is what Harris intends to demonstrate--or at least assert.

Harris' argument ends up largely being that once human values are known or given, science can then reveal better and worse ways to go about achieving those ends. Notice that this argument is markedly different from the claim of the subtitle of the book. Using sleight of hand Harris attempts to pass off science's ability to evaluate a given value for its ability to determine a value.

Harris effectively presupposes that human (or creaturely) well-being is the pinnacle of conscious experience and that misery and suffering are the valleys. He acknowledges that these values can't be arrived at empirically or by means of brute reason, and therefore he essentially admits that the subtitle of his book is false.

While the subtitle of the book was particularly irksome to me for this reason, once you get past that issue the book really wasn't too objectionable for me as a Christian reader. I imagine that Harris thinks many of the things he's saying are anathema to religious persons, but most of what he says either accords with orthodox Christian theology just fine, or at least isn't opposed by it. Harris wants to affirm the existence of 'objective' moral values and so do Christians; we just don't believe such a thing could exist if atheism were true.

In his work as a neuroscientist Harris makes what were, for him, some surprising discoveries, but which wouldn't surprise a Christian. For example, he did an experiment where he neuroimaged the human mind while it was shown statements of widely varying content and characteristics. To his surprise the statements "2+4+8=14" and "It is good to treat your children with love" registered as the most similar in the human mind, despite seeming to be the most different in nature. Again, to the Christian who believes that the human mind is a divine product, and that morality is as much a matter of fact as math, this is exactly what we would expect to find. To Harris this signified that the fact/value gap might not exist at the level of the human mind, contrary to what most secularists maintain. Just so.

Harris' argument that science--the study of God's material creation--can reveal moral truths is hardly surprising for the Christian as Christian doctrine has long affirmed just that. The point that religious people and secular philosophers alike often make is that without some transcendent source a fact can't determine a value. Harris is assuming a priori that there is not a transcendent source, observing in his research a mingling of facts and values, and then when confronted with this intractable logical problem he simply brushes it aside. This has the curious effect of rendering Harris' worldview more in sync with reality as it is--with how God made it--but incompatible with atheism; while his nihilistic, atheist philosopher opponents are more logically consistent given atheism as a presupposition, but their worldview doesn't accord as well with the empirical findings of neurobiology. You can have consistent, nihilistic atheism; you can have consistent, moral theism; you can not have consistent moral atheism, and nothing about Harris' project confronts this unavoidable reality.

Which is not to say that he is unaware of the objections, he just finds them trivial and dismisses them, when in reality they are fundamentally problematic for his entire enterprise. The problem is not his claim that science can evaluate or even determine human values, but that it can do so and atheism can be true. Both his religious and secular critics have it right, and the long held philosophical basis for this conclusion is sound and Harris offers no counter to it.

Christians can happily affirm that science reveals some basic moral truths, with the caveat that the Bible reveals the same truths with greater accuracy and precision. The latter is what Harris would object to, I assume, but he offers no argument that Christian morality necessarily contradicts the moral truths that a scientific study of nature reveals. And since he spends so little time attempting to show that this is the case, a Christian should have very little fundamental reason to object to the content of the book--although one can point out that the content is incoherent coming from an atheist.

When he does talk about 'religion', and how it is in moral opposition to science, he talks about it in general and abstract terms rendering his observations either vacuously true, or often simply false. For example:

Because most religions conceive of morality of being obedient to the word of God (generally for the sake of receiving a supernatural reward) their precepts often have nothing to do with the world.

Even if this were true of religion in general (which I don't even believe that it is), it is certainly false with regard to orthodox Christianity specifically. Christian moral law is not arbitrary, but revealed to humanity for human's own sake, and primarily for their own sake in the material, created realm. This renewal and salvation of this material world, of the flesh of the sinner, is what the Gospel is ultimately about. The Gospel of Christ is certainly not about following moral law to earn supernatural rewards, that is merely a simplistic caricature of faith that exists in Harris' mind (and unfortunately in the mind of some fundamentalists as well).

Further he affirms that it is morally encumbent upon humans to avoid certain 'natural' tendencies. Again, this does not make much sense given his presuppositions, but it is entirely consistent with the Christian conception of morality.

Evolution may have selected for territorial violence, rape and other patently unethical behaviors as strategies to propagate one's genes--but our collective well-being clearly depends on our opposing such natural tendencies.

Indeed.

The book goes on to expend much of its energy toward fighting against moral relativism and, again, should be applauded for doing so. Harris aptly points out that moral relativism is a self-contradictory position. He also makes a sound case against the pervasive cultural relativism that says that since morality differs from culture to culture, one culture has no right to denounce another's moral code as inferior. Harris rightly argues that this isn't the case and that since we can identify cultures that are more adept at creating conditions conducive to human flourishing, as well as those with values that are remarkably efficient at ensuring high degrees of misery, we can make objective judgments about the values and practices of various cultures with respect to the goal of maximizing human well-being. I would mostly heartily agree with this. Although I would also point out that merely reading the Bible is a shortcut to arriving at the same conclusions of a 'science of human well-being'.

A very curious feature of the book is the chapter on free will in which Harris asserts a deterministic worldview, which he claims science confirms almost necessarily, in which free will can't exist. His argument is, as should be expected, highly inadequate and unconvincing. And this, I should remind you, comes directly after he has already affirmed the existence of a kind of objective morality. He again admits that this presents a bit of problem for moral accountability, but he doesn't seem to grasp just how enormous the problem. After all, what sense does it make to declare the virtue of a particular science-based morality only to cut your own feet out from under you? If free will does not exist then morality is an illusion.

In this section he asserts that neuroscience leaves little room for a soul in the sense of a 'ghost in the machine'; an immaterial causal 'substance'. Again, apparently oblivious to the fact that very large portions of Christianity reject a 'hard' dualism of this sort, and instead affirm that the soul is not in any real sense 'separate' from the body or mind. As is typical for writers in this genre, he constructs arguments that might be problematic for particular brands of religious fundamentalism, but not for religion in general and certainly not for orthodox Christianity.

It seems to me that few concepts have offered greater scope for human cruelty than the idea of an immortal soul that stands independent of all material influences, ranging from genes to economic systems.

If we grant this somewhat dubious observation to be true--which we aren't obligated to do--it has little relevance to the Christian faith which holds that the soul does not stand independent of all material influences, but instead that the actions we take in this world affects the soul, and the soul in turn has the ability to affect the world. The Straw Man cometh.

While Harris lodges some legitimate arguments against a hard mind-soul, or body-soul dualism, he imagines that he is striking blows at the heart of religion or Christianity themselves, when he is doing no such thing.

As a screed against the pervasive moral relativism or nihilism that exists in academia The Moral Landscape is a compelling book that makes a strong argument. As a screed against religion or orthodox Christianity it's comically irrelevant and inept. As a coherent moral philosophy, consistent with the author's atheism, it fails rather spectacularly.

Can Science Determine Moral Values?

This is a pretty interesting exchange between Russell Blackford and Sam Harris on the topic of Harris' new book 'The Moral Landscape'--in which Harris argues that science can determine human values. Harris recognizes that he is in an extreme minority on this issue. Almost all religious people would disagree, and the vast majority of secular scientific-minded types would also disagree, he acknowledges. But he claims that morality is essentially the 'science of human flourishing' or well-being, and since science can determine certain activities are worse for human flourishing than others (via sociology, economics, neurobiology etc.), it can therefore determine human values. That is the central argument of the book.

Harris wrote a piece responding to critics in general, but focused on Blackford since he felt he was the most thorough and insightful. Harris' response is thorough in that he doesn't really evade Blackford's points, but his responses either completely miss the point, or dismiss a point as insignificant, when it isn't.

For example, in response to the central critique of the argument of the book--that Harris presupposes, rather than demonstrates, that 'human flourishing' or 'well-being' is an ultimate good while human misery is evil--Harris essentially says "well, yeah, I did that, but I'm allowed to do that, and must do that. There's nothing wrong with that presupposition." Yes you're allowed to, but the point of Blackford, and all the critics of the argument, is that it's the philosophical presupposition that is determining the value NOT science. Science can only (in theory, anyway) let us know the best way to achieve our ends, once we have determined our values. Harris seems to completely miss the point, or not understand it. He even says "The fatal flaw that Blackford claims to have found in my view of morality could just as well be located in science as a whole -- or reason generally." -- Which is of course true, and science and reason are subject to the same critique. But science and reason, as abstract entities, didn't falsely claim that they could determine moral values, Sam Harris did. Harris seems oblivious to what his own argument even is, namely that science can determine human values, and the fact that his critic just demonstrated this to be false and Harris just conceded that it was false!

Also, his analogy to health does nothing to advance his case because, similarly, the objective knowledge about how best to be healthy is not the same as saying we must value health primarily, ultimately, or at all. The knowledge of how to be healthy doesn't demand ascent as to the value of our health. Some think it's very important, some think it's pretty important, some think it's mildly important, some don't think it's important. Science can not evaluate these opinions, it can only say "health is important if you want to live a long time" for example, but that isn't 'determining a value', it's evaluating a value that is already given. If I value 5 cheeseburgers a day, video games and a short lifespan over a healthy diet, exercise and a long lifespan, science can say nothing about this health value system of mine.

Anyways, Harris' response is ultimately pretty terrible and Blackford's review is overly positive, if anything, but good. One other interesting aspect of Harris' response to critics is his complaining that many hadn't read the book (either admittedly, or seemingly). Which is kind of silly when you're out giving hour long lectures at TED about the argument of the book, and doing a huge publicity tour where you lay out your argument thoroughly. People can, in good faith, engage your argument without reading the book. Though they shouldn't label their engagement a 'review' of the book as Deepak Chopra did. But when the foundation of your argument can be gleaned from reading the book jacket, or even just the subtitle, and it's blatantly fallacious, critics shouldn't really be expected to delve much further.

Christopher Hitchens and Christian Morality

I recently viewed a clip on youtube that was an extract from a debate with Christopher Hitchens. In the clip Hitchens is arguing against the morality of certain Christian principles. For example he argues that the call to follow and trust in Christ fully, without care for tomorrow, is immoral. He seems to believe that it's an irresponsible notion. Falsely, of course, but never mind. Of course if you don't believe that Christ was the only son of the one true and living God, then giving up everything to follow an eccentric first century Jewish rabbi would surely be folly. The reason that Hitchens' objection is novel and more worthwhile to engage with is that he says that this doctrine is immoral and would be even if he granted the central truth claims of the Christian faith. He lists the virgin birth and Christ's death and resurrection and says that he's "willing to grant all of it", and even then it still wouldn't make these doctrines moral.

One gets the impression Hitchens is trying to grab our attention. If God exists and Christ was his son whom he raised from the dead for our sins, then it seems to logically follow that the creator of the universe and the creator of morality would know a little bit about the subjects. When someone rejects these truth claims then it logically follows that they will also reject the morality that is derived therefrom. But when someone grants the truth claims and still rejects the morality that follows logically therefrom, then you have a novel and interesting claim.

However the reason it's novel is because it's baldly incoherent. If you grant the truth claims then you are necessarily granting that Christ is the creator of the universe. If you are granting that then you also necessarily must grant him all authority. If he has all authority then anything that he claims is moral is actually moral, regardless of how unpalatable Christopher Hitchens happens to find it to be. If the creator of humanity and the creator of morality says that morality is one thing, and one of his creatures says it's another, is there room for debate as to who is correct on the matter?

I have to imagine that Hitchens feels that granting the virgin birth and the death and resurrection of Jesus does not grant the entirety of Christian truth claims. That it doesn't necessarily follow from those facts (as he has graciously granted them to be) that, for example, God exists, is triune and created the universe. However there is hardly any other way to make sense of these facts, if facts they are granted to be. Just imagine a series of if-then statements that get us to our conclusion.

- If Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead then it was God who did it.
- If God rose Jesus from the dead, then God exists.
- If God exists and rose Jesus from the dead then God is the author of morality.

That's a fairly simple, linear, unobjectionable series of necessary postulates to Hitchens singular granted fact.

Hitchens is a self-described contrarian and provocateur, so I imagine he feels as if it's his place to challenge and confront us in unique ways. The Bible tells us there is nothing new under the sun, but granting Christian factual truth claims while rejecting its moral truths seems to be rather novel. Perhaps there's an implicit clause in the verse from Ecclesiastes. "There is nothing new under the sun--save specific examples of nonsense".

More on Atheism, Science and Morality

A few days ago I wrote a short response to Sam Harris' presentation at TED on the topic of how science can determine moral values. Then today David B. Hart's new article at First Things is on essentially the same topic. His is a response to an article on Philosophy Now by Joel Marks in which Marks--a former Kantian ethicist--has come to terms with the obvious: that morals can't exist without God. And since he is thoroughly convinced of the nonexistence of God, he is therefore compelled to reject the existence or morality. Yet he also can't resist the urge (it seems) to continue to make moral judgments, arguments and pronunciations, so he comically tries to justify a kind of amoral morality. Anyways, Hart's response piece is excellent as usual. I think the crux of the matter is brilliantly summarized in this excerpt from Hart's piece:

I am predisposed to think that real and uncompromising atheism, whose intrinsic “metaphysics” is real and uncompromising naturalism, always requires some element of magical thinking in all three of the classical or “critical” philosophical realms: ontology, epistemology, and ethics. But even if that is an unjust assumption, it seems to me hardly debatable that no purely naturalistic approach to ethics has ever succeeded in producing anything resembling a compelling or attractive moral imperative.

Choose whichever you like—standard utilitarianism, Rawls’s theory of justice, attempts to ground moral thinking in evolutionary biology or neurophysiology—you will always find, if you subject your preferred ethical naturalism to sufficiently unflinching scrutiny, that at some primal and irreducible point it must simply presume a movement of good will, an initial moral impulse that, with a kind of ghostly Gödelian elusiveness, can never be contained within the moral system it sustains. All the polyphony of nature falls mute when asked to produce one substantial imperative, unless one believes (explicitly or tacitly) that the voice of nature has its origin and consummation in the voice of God.

Sam Harris, Science and Morality

Sam Harris has been making the rounds promoting his new book on how science can determine morality. I saw him on The Daily Show promoting it and someone also recently linked me to this presentation at TED by him on the same topic. While many atheistic champions of modernity begrudgingly concede the moral argument--that morals can not be made sense of without God--they instead assert that 'morality' is only a human construction. That morals are relative. That we create right and wrong, it doesn't exist out there somewhere waiting to be discovered and defined. Harris wants to attempt to rescue morality on behalf of secular modernity. He makes the argument that morals can be made sense of based on naturalistic causality. By understanding the facts and applying reason to them. And that, given enough time and analysis, with all facts properly understood and accounted for (mostly in the field of neuroscience), morality can be defined precisely and exactingly by science.

While Sam Harris makes many statements that I essentially agree with in this argument--most specifically that moral questions do have right and wrong answers--the manner he goes about arriving at that conclusion is sloppy at best, and a complete non sequitur at worst. Throughout the presentation he uses a fallacious appeal--not to science, which he hardly gets into at all--but to supposed common sense or things that are 'obviously true'. Without ever showing why these supposedly obvious things are actually true. And while in almost every instance I agree with his common sense conclusion, there is groundwork laid in our collective conscious which is largely responsible for what we consider to be 'obviously true'. In many cases the 'obvious' answers that he points to are not deductions from scientific fact and reasoned argument but from a moral mindset inherited from Christianity. Of course post-Enlightenment it has taken various non-Christian forms, but it is the Christian event in history (along with the God-authored conscience) which informs and creates that moral sense. To be fair this doesn't invalidate his argument, my point is only that the argument is imprecise, dishonest and manipulative. The heart of his argument has another problem altogether.

Even if science could determine, for example, the objective answers for how to achieve maximum happiness for the greatest number of people it still won't have solved the problem of morality. It still won't have accounted for or dismissed the Ted Bundys or Islamic fundamentalists and their 'obviously wrong' answers. Harris is implicitly asserting a philosophical presupposition that has not been affirmed by science and couldn't ever be. Namely that the goal of this life is to live for as long as possible and to achieve maximum happiness for the most people while minimizing suffering for the most people. This is not the end of a syllogism, this is not a scientific fact, this is an assumption of Harris'. It's his starting point. And if the Taliban or Ted Bundy or the entire planet reject this presupposition out of hand, which they are entirely within their rights to do given an atheist worldview, then there is nothing compelling them to abide by the 'correct conclusions' of a materialist moral calculus. If they believe that the point of life is to cause death and destruction rather than to facilitate life and happiness then the atheist has no means for telling them that they are wrong, other than their own personal opinion. No amount of scientific data, no matter how comprehensive or conclusive, could ever show them to be necessarily wrong. All that Harris can (theoretically, though probably not actually) do is say 'Here are the guidelines to follow that best assist in humans flourishing and thriving'. Which A) is irrelevant to those who do not find value in humanity flourishing and thriving and B) is not an instance of science answering all moral questions, it is science answering a particular moral question given a presupposition of materialistic, humanistic utilitarianism. A presupposition that science has not and could never validate via empiricism and reason.

Science is the study of what physically is; morality is the question of what should be. What kind of world we want to fashion, how we should treat people, what we ought to do, what we ought not to do etc. Harris mentions in his argument the traditional view of many Western modern thinkers. That they accept that science can not determine morals or values. Harris then simply asserts--rather than demonstrates--that science can in fact answer these questions. When in reality the traditional view is exactly correct and Harris does nothing to refute or even address this traditional understanding. As David Hume put it "You can not get an ought from an is."

Socio-biological "Morality" - On Humanism and Nihilism

There are two main moral camps under which you can classify atheists. Of course there are various shades and degrees within the respective camps, but there is a continuum upon which they all fall. On one end there is 'humanism' which extols various virtues and values such as justice, truth, altruism, love etc., as well as recognizing their opposites as evil. On the other end of the continuum is 'nihilism' which holds that there is no such thing as virtue or value, only arbitrary human preference. The vast majority of atheists in the world fall on the 'humanist' side of the continuum.

The humanist philosophy is internally contradictory and incoherent, while the philosophy of nihilism, which has exponentially fewer adherents, is actually fully coherent. I don't believe that either is true, but nihilism at least fully rejects the notion of values and morals as meaningful outright, while humanism attempts to retain these things, while simultaneously denying their foundation. Without an external authority to define them, values must be arbitrary personal preference, as the nihilist rightly claims. If values are arbitrary preference, then secularists must not recognize any act or belief as good, nor condemn any act or belief as bad. Yet this is exactly what the humanist does.

The scientific-minded modernist will undoubtedly interject at this juncture that morals have a natural, evolutionary, socio-biological origin, and can be understood in such a framework. However, even if you precisely understood the evolutionary origin of morality, that still doesn't get you to a reason to be moral. All it gets you is an explanation of the history of morality. But morality is ultimately the question of how we are to behave going forward, not an explanation of how we have behaved up to this point in time. So this objection is a canard; a socio-biological mutual-benefit understanding of morality does not yield any basis for values going forward, only a means for understanding the facts of how we have behaved in the past. The 'is' does not beget an 'ought'.

Is there any reason that I should be obliged to act in accordance with these innate socio-biological guidelines, rather than defy them? The scientific modernist would now say the reason to do so is that our socio-biological morality has developed in order to preserve order and ensure the survival and propagation of the species. But if I, as an individual, do not highly value any of these things (i.e. survival, the species etc.), then what basis do you have to tell me that my decision to act directly against these socio-biological moral structures is "wrong"? At this point the honest scientific modernist says "Well, you're right, there is no basis to do so, but as a society we can still enforce and uphold these values if we choose to." Which is a tacit submission of defeat; there is in fact no basis for values or morals outside of an external, divine order.

So the humanist necessarily concedes that values are arbitrary preferences, while continuing to assert forcefully that the environment must be protected, that homosexuals must be granted the right to marry, that racism is deplorable etc. Mr. Humanist, don't you actually mean: "racism is deplorable... or not"?

In one sense this refusal to jettison value is to the humanist's credit. In refusing to do so they are responding to a deeper, truer human impulse; the divinely-authored conscience. Their insistence on extolling certain values and virtues is only inconsistent with strict naturalist maxims, not with reality. It's perfectly consistent with reality. But their position is internally inconsistent and incoherent as it can't be reconciled in a world without objective value, which is the world which they claim to occupy. You can't get to "objective" anything without an ultimate authority, therefore they hold two beliefs (one implicit and one explicit) that are necessarily mutually exclusive.

The humanist might respond by saying that he realizes his values are merely subjective ways of thinking about things, but still chooses to hold them, which is of course fine. But if that were true then why would he feel the need to condemn any other way of thinking about something? Why condemn any other act? Why condemn Hitler and laud Gandhi, rather than state that which must be true: "here are two men who had different visions of the world", and nothing else? It's important to note here that in a socio-biological sense, even deviants and sociopaths are themselves hardwired socio-biologically. They simply represent an aberration to particular social norms. An aberration which itself could theoretically serve some socio-biological function, population control for instance. So if your basis for morality is based on evolutionary social mechanisms, then the aberrations can not be said to be any better or worse than the social norms themselves; they simply are what they are.

I think it's important to ask at this point "what is my goal in writing this"? Certainly it isn't to convince humanists to embrace nihilism, but rather to attempt to convey that the fact that you do hold particular values and believe in virtue is itself evidence of a divine creator. Socio-biological morality is at best an explanation of historical moral norms that have happened to arise, not a basis upon which you are to make moral judgments in the future, or decisions about how you should behave. As an atheist if you find some acts so repugnant they must be condemned, or other acts so virtuous they must be praised, then good, you ought to. Just realize that these feelings of yours can only have one of two possible origins: (A) purely naturalistic socio-biological norms, in which case the repugnant can't be said to be worse than the praiseworthy in any real sense other than your singular mind happens to feel that way, but rather must be recognized as an acceptable, natural deviation from the norm or (B) a divinely-authored conscience which allows all men to be able to distinguish good from evil, which in turn necessitates accountability for our words, actions and beliefs.