Posted by
RicFrankel on Saturday, December 27, 2008 11:45:39 AM
Re: Townhall.com – 12/18/2008 – “Why Atheism is Morally Bankrupt” – Ben Shapiro
Shapiro’s “proofs” that without God there is no morality nor free will nor soul are erroneous. Among his many other logical errors he confuses sufficiency with necessity.
Granted, the existence of God is logically sufficient to explain morality, free will, and soul. God’s existence in itself does not insure that these things do exist --- God could as easily have created man without these attributes as he could have created man with these attributes, and it is quite possible that man in fact does not have a soul but only an immense hubris that leads man to believe that man and man alone possesses a soul. But despite God’s sufficiency, God is not a necessary condition of the existence of man’s soul --- the soul can easily be thought of as a natural attribute of man, either existing in a dimension of its own beyond the reach of science or as a yet undiscovered concurrence of physical and chemical phenomena.
The hypothesis that the laws of physics can predict the future from the state of the universe is contrary to the current theories of science in which there is a good deal of uncertainty in the future above and beyond the uncertainty in our knowledge of current state of the universe. But even if the laws of physics could predict the future doesn’t mean that free will is lacking any more than someone who knows you well enough to know how you think can force you into saying something merely by guessing that you will say it. It seems logical that free will is the default state of nature for intelligent beings, and free will should exist unless constrained by an outside force. In my opinion, the only force that could interfere with man’s naturally free will is God --- just the opposite from Shapiro’s claim that God is the only possible source of free will
Despite Shapiro’s claim to the contrary, free will can and does exist in animals that Shapiro considers soulless. Dogs and horses train their young to behave appropriately around others of their species, and young dogs and horses learn that there are consequences for their behavior and that it is best to choose appropriate behavior if they wish to avoid correction. Anyone who has owned and trained dogs knows that dogs do possess the ability to learn right from wrong, learn to anticipate punishment for their transgressions and rewards for doing right. Shapiro may call that training or instinct or whatever, but it is only hubris that makes Shapiro think that man is any different. When I call my dog in from his dog run he does one of two things, he either comes to me immediately to get a back or ear rub or he runs to the other end of his run. This is the behavior I want --- I want him to know that when I call him it’s time to come in but not before he “does his stuff”. But when I really want him to come in NOW, I just say “cookie” and in he comes to get his dog treat. He also responds to my tone, and is much more likely to come to a “COME!” than a simple “come” command --- he seems to understand that there is no correction other than a missed rub for ignoring a “come” but a scolding for failing to respond to a “COME!” Does his understanding of his choices and their consequences in responding to “come”, “COME!”, and “cookie” mean he has a soul? Probably not. Does it mean he has morality? His intelligence is probably too limited to draw the relevant abstract representations of right and wrong necessary to qualify him as a moral being. But is does illustrate a behavioral pattern very, very close if not identical to that expected of a being with free will. I defy anyone to invest a test proving my dog lacks free will.
Our criminal justice system arose from voluntary “contractual” and/or forced transferences of self defense and the rights of punishment to the state. This transference requires humans to have high levels of intelligence including the ability to form abstract general mental models from specific events, but this hardly requires a soul.
What Pyle called the “ghost in the machine” I learned as the “genie in the watch” but neither has anything to do with the existence of soul, morality, or free will. The real point of the “genie in the watch” is that the domain of things by definition unphysical is beyond science, and to argue the scientific existence of those unphysical things is absurd. The question of whether unphysical things exist is a completely unrelated issue --- it may well be true that there is a genie in every watch that makes the watch run, that slow watches have lazy genies, that fast watches have hyperactive genies, and that watches that stop keeping time have lost their genies. But the existence of watch genies is an issue of faith --- you believe in them or you don’t --- and not an issue of science. The absurdity of the “genie in a watch” is not in the belief in the genies existence but in failing to recognize that the existence of genies is an article of faith inappropriate for arguments based on physical observations and in failing to recognize that a genie is not a necessary part (even if he is a part) of a working watch.
Shapiro says “We dont jail … dogs for assaulting cats -- they arent responsible for their actions”, but we do lock up dangerous dogs and even execute them for their transgressions when they are serious enough. Both dogs and their masters are held jointly responsible for the dog’s actions.
Shapiro is really off base on “equality”. The term “equality” has many usages: mathematical equality, equality under the law, biological equality, equality before God, etc, and these usages are different from one another. The “equality” recognized and insured in our democracy is equality under the law since the Constitution is a law of man and that is the only kind of equality that law of man can offer. The State of Indiana once considered regulating mathematical equality with a bill to make pi (the mathematical constant 3.14159…), equal to exactly 3 --- a legislative proposal that mercifully failed and that well illustrates how inappropriate it is for government to concern itself with equality other than equality under the law. As for biological equality, almost any scientists would immediately recognize that the biological differences between Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stephen Hawking are negligible compared to their similarities. Hawking’s and Schwarzenegger’s shared humanity dwarf the differences in their specific human attributes.
Biological and social Darwinism are very different from one another. Biological Darwinism makes no value judgments --- “survival of the fittest” is a definition for the “fittest” genotype in a particular environment or range of environments and has meaning only in sense of a genotype being able to leave descendents of the same genotype and thus persist over time. Social Darwinism is exactly the opposite; value judgments determine what fittest means and then mechanisms are created to ensure that the individuals who fit the “fittest” model survive. Social Darwinists might see Schwarzenegger’s and Hawking’s physique and intelligence as somehow making them “fit” or “unfit” but biologists wouldn’t even look at the two to determine their fitness --- they’d look at the number of Schwarzenegger and Hawking descendents over time.
Shapiro says “Without a soul, freedom too is impossible -- we are all slaves to our biology. According to atheists, human beings are intensely complex machines. Our actions are determined by our genetics and our environment. According to atheists, if we could somehow determine all the constituent material parts of the universe, we would be able to predict all human action, down to the exact moment at which Vice President-elect Joe Biden will pick his nose“. According to the mechanistic model of the universe, our actions are determined by much more than our genetics and environment; one significant factor is our history --- man is a learning “machine” and what man does is in part determined by what he has done and what he has had done to him in the past. As far as being able to exactly predict human or any other physical action, atheists and non-atheist scientists gave up that naïve idea almost 100 years ago with the rise of quantum and statistical uncertainty that implied that the equations of science were multi-valued so no single event can ever be deterministically predicted. And even if quantum and statistical uncertainty were not true, the number of variables necessary to define the universe is for all practical purposes infinite and any equations used to process the infinity of data could not possibly be solved and exact predictions made in finite time --- by the time Biden picked his nose the theoreticians would still be at work solving their predictive equations and their computations would be moot. You would think that quantum and statistical uncertainty would be welcomed by theologians because the indeterminacy of science puts infinite wisdom beyond the power of science, thus increasing the domain that God can explain but science cannot. But for some reason, it was the believers in God who had the most trouble with uncertainty, believing that God would not play games of chance with destiny. Atheists did not seem to be so troubled by indeterminacy.
Shapiro asks “Since when does biology dictate a moral drive?” Let me pose a model by which biology can dictate a moral drive. Self interest is a biological directive, partly derived from genetic makeup giving us intelligence and partly derived from individual experience. Species that do not do a good job leaving descendents will not survive the test of time, while species that do will persist. Intelligence (with or without a soul) and experience allows man to generalize classes of risks that pose a threat to premature death and allows man to design and follow behavioral patterns that reduces these risks. Man can also learn that certain behaviors can produce feelings of pleasure and/or pain and allows man to design and follow behavioral patterns to increase or decrease confronting these feelings. Great intelligence allows man to realize that there are many actions that man can take that threaten the survival or happiness of other men, and that by formulating and abiding to certain rules of conduct and by enforcing these rules on those who refuse to honor them voluntarily, man can protect himself from others. Some of these rules might be considered moral rules (such as the 10 Commandments) and others are considered human laws. Some might be considered conventions, not mandated in law but generally practiced by individuals and enforced by peer pressure. Dangers to humans are common to humans first because humans are human and second because the environment of all humans (the earth) is reasonably similar, so it should surprise nobody that across the world of diverse human cultures, the generally agreed upon rules of behavior are strikingly similar. At any rate, that’s a model of how morality might arise in soulless man without the help of God. This is not a necessary mechanism for morality --- morality could have been created by God. But this is a sufficient model for morality and could/might have produced morality in man without divine intervention.
Shaprio says “as a system of thought, atheism cannot be the basis for any functional state. If we wish to protect freedom and equality, we must understand the value of recognizing God. We must recognize the flame of divinity -- free will -- He implanted within each of us“. Atheism can be the basis of a state and in many ways provides a stronger basis for democracy that does traditional religion. The strength of an atheist based government is that its power is derived from the consensus of its citizens, not the inflexible commandments of God as interpreted by people and/or historical documents the citizens have no control over. If a majority of humans are actually blessed with intelligence and self interest, then that intelligence and self interest should be the ideal foundation for democracy. If, however, majority human intelligence is insufficient to distinguish need from want, short term benefit from long term benefit, etc, then humans are not fit to rule themselves without the imposition of God given rules. In my opinion, both atheism and religion are appropriate foundations for government but atheism is a better basis for democracy while religion is a better basis for a dictatorship over population of intelligence too low to recognize its own self interest.
I have nothing against the belief that morality and society are based on God, a belief which is a reasonable sufficient explanation of how things got to be the way they are and how we should react to things in the present and the future.
I have nothing against the belief that morality and society are based (independent of God) on the scientific laws of nature, a belief which is also a reasonable sufficient explanation of how things got to be the way they are and how we should react to things in the present and the future.
I have nothing against the model of morality and society that has God creating scientific law and then leaving the evolution of the universe to scientific law.
But I do object to claims of uniqueness for their beliefs that are found in those who hold God as the root of all causes and those who hold science as the full explanation of all phenomena. I see both the God and no-God scenarios each as sufficient foundation for morality and society.