|
 Introducing
the philosophy of religion
The
sixth in Roy Jackson's series looking at some of the classic problems
in the philosophy of religion.
No.
7 Does Good Need God?
Roy Jackson
'Without God everything is permitted.'
-Ivan in The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
As you could not fail to notice, Star
Wars is back. Those of us who try to determine the reasons for
its success have noted one significant theme of appeal: good triumphs
over evil. George Lucas once said that the Star Wars films
are rooted firmly on terra firma; by that he meant that the
lives, loves and morals behind them are very human. If science fiction
is the modern fairy tale, then it can tell us much about how we
view the world: Luke Skywalker eventually gets the better of Darth
Vader, the Federation always outsmarts the Klingons. What this tells
us is, ultimately, justice will prevail.
The core of the moral argument that
there is something about morality which should lead us
to believe in God. It is very comforting to know that the universe
is ultimately a good place to live in. Stories tell us again and
again that qualities such as honesty, equality, integrity, fairness,
justice, respect, etc. are 'higher' than, say, greed, dominance,
and violence. What is suggested here is that what we understand
as 'good' is a universal law in the same way that 2+2=4, and that
these universals have their origins in the divine. Yet aren't we
being rather 'human-centric'? Isn't it just as likely that some
race will come along and destroy the Earth to make way for a hyperspace
bypass?
The belief that the Universe is in
some way 'fair' and 'good' can be traced back to Plato and Aristotle,
as well as Thomas Aquinas' fourth of his 'Five Ways'. However, the
moral argument was made famous by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and
was particularly popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, when the Christian writer C.S. Lewis (1898-1963) presented
it in a less philosophical manner.
Kant and the Highest Good
The moral relativist holds that morality
is subjective; an expression of feeling, behaviour, a desire to
survive, or guilt developed over years of environmental pressure.
We are not born with a moral sense, and nor does it exist 'out there'
somewhere. Therefore, when politicians and advocates of human rights
talk of upholding the moral law, the relativist would respond with
'whose moral law'? In terms of ethics, the issue of the objectivity
of morals is vitally important: some, for example, justify the recent
military intervention in Kosovo on the premise that there is an
objective good and, therefore, man has the right to interfere in
the activities of another culture.
This idea of an objective good is what
Kant referred to as the Highest Good:
'The acting rational being in the world
is not at the same time the cause of the world and of nature itself…Therefore
also the existence is postulated of a cause of the whole of nature,
itself distinct from nature, which contains the ground of the exact
coincidence of happiness with morality…As a consequence the possibility
of a highest derived good (the best world) is at the same time the
postulate of the reality of the highest original good, namely the
existence of God…Therefore, it is morally necessary to assume the
existence of God.'
Kant, Critique of Practical
Reason, 1778
As ethics students will be aware, Kant
relies upon the concept of duty for its own sake, not because we
are told by our peers, or for our own happiness. Duty comes before
our inclinations. We might be inclined to do evil, but our knowledge
of what is good requires us to do good. In other words, morality
is a force that demands the Highest Good; this force is God, and
it is the will of 'goodness' that pervades the universe.
This might strike some as rather 'mystical'
and Platonic, which seems to fly in the face of Kant's cold rationalism.
However, for Kant, it is not religion that grounds morality, but
morality that grounds religion. The moral law is rooted, first and
foremost, in rationality and is independent of whether or not you
believe in God.
Kant isn't so much asserting
the existence of God but, using his own words, 'postulating'
his existence. This might seem like a refusal to call a spade a
spade, but we can see what Kant was getting at. It seems, to many,
difficult to truly be a good moral person if we do not believe that
the world is a good place, if it is just an uncaring, indifferent
universe. When we talk of morality moving from the state that it
was when we had slavery and inequality to our present position,
we believe that our morality has progressed. But progressed towards
what exactly? You cannot progress towards something when
there is no 'something' to aim for. When Kant speaks of 'the best
world' he is saying we have an idea, a vision of utopia, and, therefore,
that is what we have a moral duty to progress towards.
However, should this 'aim' be God?
Kant seems to say that as man is not the cause of the universe and,
therefore, not the cause of the goodness that pervades the universe,
then there must be a virtuous 'causer'. Yet Kant rejected all other
proofs for God's existence, and would not be drawn in to the thesis
that God actually exists; only that it seems rational to believe
so, as well as being a positive motivating force. This seems reminiscent
of Plato's 'noble lie' in the Republic: a way of keeping
people in their place by making them believe that their true nature
has been crafted by the gods.
Divine Command Theory
In Plato's book Euthyphro, Socrates
- on his way to the courthouse to fact the accusation of 'corrupting
the young' - meets up with a young man by the name of Euthyphro.
The youngster is about to enter court to prosecute his own father
who, it turns out, tied up a peasant involved in a drunken fight.
Euthyphro's father, however, forgot about the peasant and, as a
result, the man died of exposure and starvation.
The son, in this case, has two options
open to him: does he do as the gods would command and prosecute
his own father for what appears to be an act of manslaughter, or
does he 'follow his conscience' and support his own father in this?
Having been educated to believe that the gods know best, Euthyphro
chooses the former path. Socrates, however, believed that there
is a higher good than that of the gods and that, therefore,
it is wrong to do as the gods command if you feel there is a higher
good to be obeyed. Euthyphro is effectively arguing for a Divine
Command Theory of ethics; that is, morality is based upon
what the gods command.
Now, in the case of the Greek gods,
Socrates could argue quite successfully that the gods could be 'all
too human' when it came to providing an example; frequently contradictory
in their behaviour and engaging in acts of incest, fratricide, patricide,
and so on. If one were to attempt to do as the gods do then there
would seem to be no limits to morality whatsoever.
However, the Divine Command Theory
is an important element of Christian ethics in relation to the commands
of the Christian God and, it is hoped, the example of God is a little
more clear-cut than the pluralistic Greek world view. During the
Enlightenment, however, the Divine Command Theory came under considerable
criticism: one camp arguing that, though there is an objective morality
that can be perceived, God is as much subject to these morals as
we are. Another camp argued that there is no objective morality
at all and that moral standards are human-based. In the second case,
God's will is completely irrelevant to ethical standards.
More severe criticism of the Divine
Command Theory has centred around the notion that, if morality is
purely a dictate of God's will, then could not God choose to reverse
the current state and make presently evil actions moral? For example,
God could make murder or stealing a permissible act. The response
to this from such contemporary philosophers as Robert Adams, is
by saying that what is good corresponds with the commands of a loving
God. However, there is still the problem of defining what is
meant by 'loving'. Is it 'loving', for example, to declare war against
what is perceived as an 'immoral society' or a dictator?
However, remember Kant was an advocate
of moral autonomy: we do not blindly follow God's will, but rather
our moral duty based on our reason. This is why morality comes before
religion: in the case where divine command conflicts with reason,
then we should follow reason.
The Platonic philosopher and novelist
Iris Murdoch saw ample reason to believe in the Idea of the Good
without committing oneself in the belief in a God. Also, many in
contemporary society may well balk at the suggestion that a person
cannot be both morally good and an atheist. If we are prepared to
accept that there is some kind of metaphysical Idea of the Good
and that, therefore, morality does have some objective basis; then
why should we than be obliged to base this in a God?
C.S. Lewis, Mind and Matter
C.S. Lewis supported the moral argument
in his readable Mere Christianity (1952). If we accept that
morality is not the product of the human mind; then either it is
the product of some other mind, or of matter. However, Lewis states
that, 'you can hardly imagine a bit of matter giving instructions'.
How can matter, the stuff of the universe, provide us with moral
laws? Though the physical laws of nature can tell us what is
(if you let go of an object it falls to the ground), it cannot tell
us what ought to be (it is wrong to tell lies). Further,
we are governed by the laws of physics in a way we are not governed
by moral laws: I cannot simply fly out of my chair, yet I am free
to choose which morals I will follow.
Lewis, therefore, says that as moral
law is not part of matter, then it must be part of the immaterial;
of mind. If we regard morality as having a higher authority - otherwise,
we would not feel compelled to obey it - than mere human subjective
mind, then it must be the product of a superior mind. Hence, God!
Of course, as with all the arguments,
this conclusion need not lead to the Biblical conception of God.
As Brain Davies noted: 'We…might ask why the Highest Good cannot
be realised by something more powerful and knowledgeable than human
beings but less powerful and knowledgeable than God. Why cannot
a top-ranking angel do the job? Why not a pantheon of angles? Why
not a pantheon of very clever, Kantian-minded angels?' A belief
in objective law does not necessarily lead to a divine law-giver
(or, for that matter, law-givers) but, at the same time,
there are philosophical problems with the notion of goodness resting
in some kind of Platonic Forms and what these actually consist of.
Conclusion
At the core of the moral argument is
the issue of where are morals come from. After the event of a bus
crash causing the death of a number of Roman Catholic school children,
a priest wrote the following in the Sunday Telegraph: '...the horror
of the crash, to a Christian, confirms the fact that we live in
a world of real values: positive and negative. If the universe was
just electrons, there would be no problem of evil or suffering.'
In River Out of Eden, the neo-Darwinian Richard Dawkins responds
with the following:
'In a universe of blind physical forces
and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other
people are going to get lucky, and you won't find any rhyme or reason
in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the
properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no
purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
As that unhappy poet A.E. Housman put it:
For Nature, heartless, witless Nature
Will neither know nor care.
Although the choice may not be as stark
as either the optimistic believer or the 'unhappy poet', the moral
argument does, I believe, deserve considerably more philosophical
attention than it has received in recent years.
Suggested reading
The Virtue of Faith and
Other Essays in Philosophical Theology, R.M. Adams (Oxford University
Press)
Critique of Practical Reason
(1778), Imanuel Kant (Various editions)
Mere Christianity, C.S.
Lewis (Collins)
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