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Atheists who believe in moral behavior but have no basis for believing in it
(Note: a long comment by me in this entry about the forces in modern society that seem to lead inevitably to socialized medicine, and about the only way to resist that trend, has been moved into a new entry.)
From Todd White’s latest article, “Atheism: Autopsy of a Failed Faith,” an exchange with an atheist interlocutor:
Todd: In today’s age, an atheist almost certainly has to be a materialist, and a materialist almost certainly has to be a Reductionist. And how do Reductionists see human beings? According to them, we’re just mindless meat puppets manipulated by our selfish genes to survive and reproduce. Does that seem like a positive attitude toward humanity? Is that an ideology that can sustain human dignity? I think not. And once we absorb that attitude toward our fellow man, is there anything beyond fear of the law that can motivate a person to respect the lives of others? No. Once you start peeling the onion a little bit, you see that atheism is intellectually defenseless against the subjection and destruction of humanity…
Grant: While it’s fascinating to hear you explain to me what I almost certainly must be, I think I’ll fall back on the fact that I have known hundreds of atheists and never met a single one who thinks people are “mindless meat puppets.”
Todd: Ah, now we’re coming to the nub of the matter. I’ll try to incorporate your statement into a new observation: While atheists DO think people are “mindless meat puppets” in a scientific sense (sorry, but that is how atheism is articulated by people like Dawkins and Dennett), the atheists DON’T ACT like people are “mindless meat puppets.” They still act like people have inherent dignity. And that’s good! They are resisting the teachings of their leaders. They can’t overcome their desire to live in a teleological, moral order. And again, that’s good! So the question becomes … Why can’t atheists understand that? Why can’t they see the discrepancy between their philosophical atheism and their daily behavior? If they COULD see it, they might question their atheism, and start groping toward a new spirituality.
White continues:
The atheist is a luxury of civilization, not a creator of it. I’m almost tempted to call atheists “free riders” on the Western moral tradition. A harsher person might call them “parasites” (drawing nutrition from their hosts, while weakening them), but I’ll refrain from using such a pejorative term …
There is no intuitive moral sense, and whatever morality we DO possess is TAUGHT to us by a civilization that requires faith, not atheism. The “Sentimental Atheists”—like Larry Arnhart—are free to live their lives and advocate their ideas, but the rest of us have no obligation to take their ideas seriously …
Of course, as Reductionism gains more intellectual power, even the “Sentimental “Atheists” will lose ground. After all, the Western Civilization that nurtures their sentimentalism is dying. And thus, in the coming decades, the nihilists will predominate in the atheist community. “Sentimental atheists” like E.O Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Larry Anhart, Dennis Mangan, and Luke “the Common Sense Atheist” are all products of their time, and “the times, they are a changing.”
White then proceeds to consider Larry Arnhard’s position that human dignity and morality can be derived from a Darwinian, materialist view of man.
LA to Todd White:
Did you coin the category, “sentimental atheists”? It is brilliant. That’s exactly what they are. Having no solid, rational basis for moral truth, they are sentimental and emotional about moral truth. There are these things such as morality or conservatism that they WANT to believe in, though they have no solid grounds for them. This makes them sentimentalists. Consider Mangan’s endlessly mushy positioning of himself between Darwinism/HBD on one side and conservatism on the other. He wants to have both, and becomes angry and hostile when the contadictions between the two positions are pointed out. Consider Dawkins’s and EO Wilson’s extravagant, precious language about the beauties of evolution, which they literally seek to construct into a new religion.
Todd White replies:
Yes, Mangan might be the best example of a “sentimental atheist” because—unlike Wilson and Dawkins who are left-wingers—Mangan is a conservative and seems to have a healthy respect for the uniqueness, fragility, and beauty of Western Civilization. That’s what makes his religious views so perplexing. As you point out, there is a contradiction between his personal lack of faith and his love of a civilization which desperately needs faith to sustain itself. Not to sound like Hegel or anything, but I believe that—over time—major philosophical contradictions are unsustainable. They will inevitably resolve themselves. We see that, for instance, in modern America: Our decades-long mix of socialism with freedom has brought us to a crossroads: Will we have socialism? Or will we have freedom? Because we are rapidly reaching a point where it will be impossible to have both. In the same vein, “sentimental atheism” is a strange mix of something good (love of morality), and something awful (atheism), but the awful part is becoming so big that a choice will have to be made: Morality or Atheism? And if you can’t make a choice, you will become irrelevant.
Todd White continues:
Google has 243 hits on the term “sentimental atheist,” but I’ve never heard of it before.
Gintas writes:
Re the coinage, “sentimental atheist”: I called Dennis Mangan a “sentimental nihilist” in a note to you September 1. I think that captures even better the incongruity of their condition.
It’s in this thread.
LA replies:
Only you could have come up with “sentimental nihilist.”
Paul Nachman writes:
I don’t think you should let writers get away with cheesy statements like this, by Todd White (the part I’ll boldface):
The atheist is a luxury of civilization, not a creator of it. I’m almost tempted to call atheists “free riders” on the Western moral tradition. A harsher person might call them “parasites” (drawing nutrition from their hosts, while weakening them), but I’ll refrain from using such a pejorative term …
Oh, sure, he’ll just introduce these terms to the conversation, but he won’t use them.
I actually agree with his point that we atheists probably couldn’t have created Western civilization and that we’re lucky that it exists.
LA replies:
Fair point. However, I don’t think that Mr. White was aiming his remarks at all atheists, but at those who positively argue that atheism is a sufficient basis for morality and civilization.
Kevin C. writes:
You say: “There are these things such as morality or conservatism that [atheists] WANT to believe in, though they have no solid grounds for them. This makes them sentimentalists.”
You call a belief in a big, magic Santa Claus in the sky who abracadabra-ed the world into existence a belief that has solid grounds? What are “solid grounds” for believing in a religion? Now don’t get me wrong, I am not a religious atheist; I do not want to convert anyone, and I prefer living in a Christian culture, but that is simply because the masses do not, and never will, have the moral fiber to live peaceably without the carrot and the stick. As does any other healthy organism, I want to live and pass on my genes.
LA replies:
Sorry, but according to Darwinian evolution consistently understood, that is, according to Darwinian evolution without sentimental escape hatches, no organism desires to live and pass on its genes. Organisms pass on their genes because those are the behaviors programmed into those organisms by the genes that they happen to possess because those genes happened to survive in past generations and so were were successfully passed on to the current organisms. According to Darwinism, life has NO purpose or direction. Organisms have NO purpose or direction. Organisms are biological machines controlled by the genes they have inherited from their ancestors. And that includes humans. But Darwinians, being human, cannot live with such a reductive, bleak view of life consistently applied, so they add, on top of Darwinism, some notion of desire, value, purpose, such as “I want to live and pass on my genes,” a statement which from a consistent Darwinian view is emotional claptrap totally unjustified by Darwinism itself. And this is what makes you and other Darwinians sentimentalists.
By contrast, the ordinary religious believer is not being a sentimentalist. He looks at the world as it is, and sees the divine manifested in the creation. Unlike the Darwinian sentimentalist, the religious believer does not set up a purposeless, mindless, morality-free universe, and then add on top of this purposeless and morality-free universe a purpose and morality to satisfy his emotional needs.
LA continues:
First you deride religion as “a belief in a big, magic Santa Claus in the sky who abracadabra-ed the world into existence.” Then you turn around and say that you “prefer living in a Christian culture … because the masses do not, and never will, have the moral fiber to live peaceably without the carrot and the stick.”
If you want to live in a Christian culture, if you think Christian belief is necessary for a decent society, why do you mock religious belief?
This is an example of the contradictory, parasitic mindset that Todd White mentioned. You want to tear town and belittle religion, even as you want it to be there to provide a decent society. You live off the very thing that you despise and mock.
Jim C. writes:
I am a so-called “atheist,” and I think of myself as such at least once a decade.
Moral behavior, the Golden Rule, is how civilized people live—whether one believes in God is beside the point.
LA replies:
This is exactly the philosophically parasitic attitude to which Todd White was referring. You take for granted that morality exists and that people ought to behave morally. But you can’t explain morality. You are living off the capital of a moral tradition that your own atheism could not create.
Mark T. writes:
White: “And once we absorb that [materialistic/atheistic] attitude toward our fellow man, is there anything beyond fear of the law that can motivate a person to respect the lives of others?”
And a few statements later:
White: “There is no intuitive moral sense, and whatever morality we DO possess is TAUGHT to us by a civilization that requires faith, not atheism.”
In either case, religious or not, White believes us all to be “mindless meat puppets.” It is the intuitive moral sense which does separate humans from animals. I agree that our civilization should sustain its Judaeo-Christian heritage and principles, but this does not mean that society is the only factor in determining somebody’s morality. Human beings are moral agents. [LA replies: I don’t think Mr. White is saying we are mindless meat puppets; he’s saying that that’s the atheist view. However, I agree with your criticism of his statement that there is no intuitive moral sense. Of course there is, but it needs to be cultivated. Mr. White seems to believe that morality is based on nothing but blind faith, rather than built into the nature of things, while, again, requiring cultivation, discipline, a tradition, etc. I don’t fully understand his position, since he criticizes atheism, yet is himself a non-believer.]
Jeremiah 31:33: “But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD, I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.”
Romans 2:11-15:
For there is no respect of persons with God.
For as many as have sinned without law shall also perish without law: and as many as have sinned in the law shall be judged by the law; …
For when the Gentiles, which have not the law, do by nature the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, are a law unto themselves:
Which shew the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean while accusing or else excusing one another;
Even though he rejected free will, I don’t even think that Calvin went so far to believe that humans have no innate moral sense.
This is not to mention the Greek Natural Law theory which went back to at least Zeno of Citium, founder of the Stoic School. Both Christian and enlightened Greek pagan thinking says that humans are moral agents.
White’s statement that “there is no intuitive moral sense,” is likely a response to a frequent atheist claim that our intuitive moral sense precedes socialization, and is independent of any religious teachings. One expression of this perversion of “intuitive moral sense” is the proposition that whatever one decides to do is acceptable, provided that nobody else is “harmed,” and that facilitating an individual’s ability to do whatever they want to do is the highest aim of society. Our “intuitive moral sense” in this regard is nothing more than catering to our instincts, and it is right to reject that definition of morality. The atheists mis-characterize our intuitive moral sense, but that is no reason to reject the idea of intuitive moral sense. It is a materialistic belief that humans only respond to external influences.
LA replies:
Again, I agree with your comment.
Mark T. replies:
Thanks, Mr. Auster. The free man, the rational moral agent, is the foundation of Western Civilization. It separates us from the subjects of despots and from tribal savages. “Intuitive moral sense” is not merely the fancy of a recent Christian apologist (C. S. Lewis) rambling in isolation, but the attribute which makes a homo sapiens into a human. Ancient Greeks and Jews recognized this, and they passed the idea into Christianity. From the Greeks I think it originated with Heraclitus’ Logos, which found its way into the first sentence of the Gospel of John a few centuries afterwards.
Todd White writes:
I agree that my statement regarding the moral sense was unnecessarily open to confusion. This fact was also brought to my attention by Deuce, a commenter on my website.
Deuce wrote:
I think there’s a third way. Our moral sense is roughly equivalent to our mathematical sense. We have an innate, intuitive sense of the universe of mathematical truth (otherwise we couldn’t do math at all), but we must engage in mathematical reasoning to find specific truths (we aren’t just born knowing that 534+432=966, for instance). In the same way, we have a sense of the moral universe, but don’t just automatically know that murder is wrong. We have to engage in moral reasoning, or be taught, in order to know specific moral truths.
I responded:
That’s interesting, Deuce, and I’m inclined to agree with you. I don’t think we’re a moral blank slate (and if I gave that impression in my essay, I apologize). I just disagree—strenuously—with the assumption made by Arnhart and others—that morality is so easy and effortless it requires no instruction—no moral code such as those found in religion or philosophy.
Having said all that, I like your math analogy. I guess language would fall into that category, as well. However, I wouldn’t call your position a ‘third way.’ I think it’s mostly consistent with the point I was making: Morality must be taught. It’s not ‘inherent.’ It’s not the ‘default position.’ It requires instruction in order to be useful. And to deny the need for instruction will lead to harmful consequences.
LA replies:
Thanks for this. That does clear things up.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at December 20, 2009 03:06 PM | Send
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