Why: I don’t believe I’ve ever seen you give a reasoned account of your position. Usually you seem to say things like: everyone agrees killing small children is bad, or something similar. To my mind, the non-existence of a reason for the existence of finite beings deprives existence of all meaning and standards.
OK I’m an Agnostic…
But intellectually I am against capital punishment, and my heart even agrees with the spirit of Christ in the New Testament where the God is of infinit mercy and forgiveness.
But my gut tells me that the victims are my children, my sisters and brothers, or my parents. How would I feel if THEY were brutally murdered? That is when my intellect flies out the window and my passionate and primitive call for an eye for an eye. I am viscerally in the Old Testament where a different God lives, a more primitive, tribal God. The God of revenge and retaliation of an eye for an eye.
So I am at a loss on the subject of capital punishment. I know what the right answer is supposed to be, but I don’t have what it takes to give it because I am still just too primitive to go there. I can forgive just about anything except harm done to my loved ones, and if I feel that way about MY loved ones then I must feel that way about everybody else too as every victim is of the human family to me.
Two questions:
Suppose there is no God, the naturalistic account of the
universe is correct. We finite beings happened along
for the standard evolutionary reasons.
Why couldn’t it also be true that human life is of
value and merits respect and protection? Is it your view
that, if God doesn’t exist, the Holocaust wasn’t wrong? Best
For the religious person, if God doesn’t exist, he has no moral foundation, its gone, because it was based on “God says…”
And that’s the flaw.
Our morality needs to come from somewhere real, not fantasy land.
So I am at a loss on the subject of capital punishment. I know what the right answer is supposed to be, but I don’t have what it takes to give it because I am still just too primitive to go there. I can forgive just about anything except harm done to my loved ones
I, for one, don’t think you’re being unreasonable. The entire platonic tradition, the dominant one by far in Western thought, works against the Aristotelean definition of man as a rational animal. The platonic tradition tends very much to see man as a rational being, and to try to suppress the needs of the animal. For Thomists, man is a unity of body and soul, animal and intellect: the highest of the animals, or the lowest of spiritual beings–but a unity of the two. That’s why I believe that symbolism is so important. Because of our compound unity we rely very much on symbolism, acted out morality, etc. Big topic.
Why couldn’t it also be true that human life is of
value and merits respect and protection? Is it your view
that, if God doesn’t exist, the Holocaust wasn’t wrong?
I could see viewing the Holocaust as wrong, but I would be unable to justify my position–it would only be a personal view. That said, I see an uncreated universe as an absurdity.
For the religious person, if God doesn’t exist, he has no moral foundation, its gone, because it was based on “God says…”
I know you read my posts and think about the issues that are being discussed. If you think back, you should see that the “God says…” school of moral theology, often called voluntarism ( = God’s will, from Latin voluntas, will; sorry), is what I spend half my time opposing. Voluntarism in Christian theology is unquestionably a product of the Augustinian tradition through the Franciscan school in the late middle ages; it was precisely this that I was inveighing against at such length yesterday and today. Check out some standard ethics textbook like Fagothey’s Right and Reason for a flavor of rational moral philosophy in the more or less Thomist tradition–it’s actually still in print. Sorry, I don’t know what the newer ones might be.
mjacob says that “Our morality needs to come from somewhere real, not fantasy land.”
What do you mean by “real”? The world we live in is real. Mythologies are more in the area of “fantasy-land”.
Ethics are essentially based upon what is fair…that is what you would not want to have done to you. We clearly can have a rational ethics, not based upon religion. Rather, it is based upon what is perceived by thinking people to be a fair relationship between members of a community. The “Golden Rule” is probably far older than anyone can say, certainly older than the Bible, and is repeated by cultures throughout the world. It is our most basic human concept of what is fair, and may be based on far more primitive antecedents that gradually socially evolved into the memeplexes we call moral codes. The Chinese, the Greeks, even so-called primitive tribes probably had an idea of the “golden rule”.
fear of damnation’s fire (an un-Jesus concept in my opinion and a loathful thing upon which to base social ethics…a God that damns one foreever in scorching tortuous flames…and yet who calls for US to forgive those who trespass against us? It does not even pass the common-sense test) need not be the motivating factor between human beings. I find that whole fear thing to be abhorent.
When God is the entire creation itself, being both created and creator, then as part of God, you live your whole being in God and walk and breath in God. all the elements of your body have always been and will always be; they are just borrowed for a while to be a constantly-changing “you”. Since the entire universe, past, present and future is God, then the notion of punishment, Hell and Heaven begin to look like very human constructions, likethe tribal mythologies of ancient societies whose world-stories never stood the test of time.
The whole notion of good and bad in a REAL world become just what is pain and pleasure to us as animals of a species amongst other animals. We can do the math and know that for us to avoid pain, it is most useful to avoid causing it to others. Therefore we do unto others as we would have them do unto us (all the rest being commentary). Upon this we can base a more complex social ethics, and upon these, base our laws. Life is not a “jungle” without a fear of Hell, and if civilized life can exist only with a fear of Hell, then we are far more primitive in our evolution than I thought.
O, elendil–how am I doing?–you are a fountain of wisdom! But, really, you take me to be more settled on these matters than I am. And my admiration of your command of these issues is not just a rhetorical trick (okay, I did overdo it a bit on that last post…) I’ll cut to the chase…
chortle wrote:
Surely we can be apply the teaching of Rerum Novarum in a way that doesn’t lead inexorably to membership in the Republican National Committee.
elendil wrote:
Perhaps you could suggest some ways to “apply the teaching of Rerum Novarum” outside the political arena.
I wasn’t suggesting one should look for ways to apply Catholic social teaching outside of the political arena, just outside of the RNC. This is very difficult in the United States, given the DNC’s hostility to any politicians who are not pro-life, as you note, but there are exceptions (the current governor of Louisiana, for one). I didn’t say it was easy, but lay Catholics seemed to have given up the fight even in those arenas–intellectual journals–where the DNC’s reach does not extend. It’s an intellectual/policy issue, not just one of electoral politics. This is more of a lament, not a criticism of your explanation.
Re: the USCCB & their pastoral letters–I should have clarified that when I spoke of orthodox Catholic writers in the Catholic press a few posts back, I meant lay writers. My error for not making this clear. As we both would agree–and I think we agree more than the tone of this exchange might suggest–it is we, the laity, who have the primary obligation to carry the Church’s message to the day to day workings of the world, the Gaduium and the Spes. We don’t need more pastoral letters; we need more lay Catholic intellectuals willing to look at these issue (again, lament, not critique).
I would also take issue with your characterization of the the CCC as containing “teachings,” as if it were promulgating new doctrine. Your earlier characterization of it as a “compendium” is more accurate by far.
My terminology is sloppy, to be sure. The Catechism is a compendium of what the Church teaches. It is meant to be used for teaching, as the apostolic constitution, Fidei Depositum, states. I was not suggesting it presents new doctrine, which would make no sense given my subsequent comment about “tried-and-true,” as you rightly note. But isn’t just a thick door stop, either. It is meant to be used by catechists in teaching the faith, to provide guidance on moral and theological issues to believers after 20 years of much confusion which followed the close of the Council. Perhaps I judge the danger of comments about its “flaws” on the faithful more seriously than you–especially a badly under-catechized faithful as we now possess whose “informed knowledge” is considerably less than yours. That’s a judgment call, to be sure, based on–what else?–what little informed knowledge I can avail myself of.
In your next paragraph, however, you appear eager to accept some “deeper understanding of the notion of justice,” some “true development of doctrine.” No offense intended, but I do rather suspect that you haven’t placed all your cards on the table. In any event, you can’t have it both ways: whether in judging the relative merits of the CCC or the truth of falsity of some purported development of doctrine, informed knowledge and genuine passion for truth are all you have to rely on. Should you suggest that we wait for infallible papal pronouncements, I would respond: 1) they have been few and far between, and God has not absolved us from using his gift of reason in the meantime, and 2) in the hypothesis I presented re capital punishment it is unlikely in the extreme that such a statement will be forthcoming.
Poor as my understanding of theology is, I certainly wouldn’t expect ex cathedra pronouncements on the death penalty, so let me just get that out of the way. As for my agenda, I really have no hidden cards (I have a very poor poker face, as my wife will attest). I rather like the CCC’s Article 2266 on the death penalty, and I think it should be treated as more than a personal pet peeve of the present Pontiff (couldn’t resist, sorry). That the Pope uses his office to advance these ideas doesn’t upset me, perhaps only because I don’t have a theologian’s or philosopher’s sophistication in these matters, which I readily admit.
Oh, yeah, and about having it both ways: you left me without a leg to stand on there. But how boring is that? So I continue…
What most concerns me is the continuing resurgence of the Augustinian tradition in the Church at a critical juncture in its history. Do a search on my posts if you care to learn what I think about that. In 25 words or less–well, OK, maybe a few more than 25–I believe that, from an intellectual/history of thought standpoint, this Augustinian tradition led more or less directly to the Protestant Revolt, to the rise of dangerous modern ideologies and philosophical schools, and to basically all of the most troublesome currents in the church during the past several hundred years.
If I did look up your position on Augustinian traditions, I wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of them for the most part. My knowledge of Augustine doesn’t extend beyond Confessions, and the little philosophy I know I learned at the feet of Mortimer Adler, who didn’t seem to much of an Augustinian himself, may he rest in peace. It does seem to be a lot of weight for poor St. Augustine to carry on his shoulders, though, but I defer to those more schooled in such matters, as you clearly are.
Is it possible that Christianity has been misunderstanding Jesus for the better part of two millennia, but now, thanks to Kantian personalism, is on the brink of “a deeper understanding of the notion of justice”? Call me a skeptic.
elendil, you’re a skeptic.
Have not most of these fundamental issues of theology and the Church been considered by great thinkers for two millennia? Yet that has not stopped the Church from expanding, however slowly, our understanding of the unchanging Tradition over the centuries. The odds against such a thing? Oh, definitely high, but I don’t see why it has to so rare as to be next to impossible. According to Cardinal Dulles in a recent interview of EWTN, the documents of Vatican II themselves contain important doctrinal developments in the area of ecclesiology, and we’ve been thinking about how the Church is ordered for a long stretch prior to 1963. So development can happen, it appears to me, but I’ll grant you that it doesn’t happen every third Tuesday.
chortle wrote:
On this same general topic of “Just how bad a pope has JPII been, anyway?” I am curious as to whether you share the somewhat revisionist view of his papacy by some orthodox writers with regards to his overall governance of the Church.
elendil wrote:
On the other hand it would hardly be “revisionist” to suggest that attention to administration has not been this Pope’s strongest point–it’s a widely shared view, even among my best nearly inside the Vatican sources.
Now, see, here’s one place where we differ: I have no inside the Vatican sources 
. In reading The Wanderer for the first several years of this papacy (an orthodox & politically conversative lay newspaper), though, I don’t recall many sour notes about JPII, administrative or otherwise. No doubt others such as yourself knew better, but I still think there is a wee bit of revisionism going on among some writers now that a new pope seems more likely to take the stage. Or perhaps I was/am (as usual) misinformed.
I could certainly have wished for more leadership in the recent sex scandal, and I don’t like Bishop Marcinkus evading Italian justice by remaining inside the Vatican walls. I would very much like to hear more publicly from Rome re NFP, as well. I am also concerned that he may have frittered away some of his moral authority on quixotic crusades when he should have been getting to know potential bishops a little better.
I agree completely re: the sex abuse scandals, a responsibility he shares with his fellow bishops. Re: NFP–I would place the blame here more on local ordinaries and national conferences than on Rome, to be fair. The USCCB is going to put together a pamphlet on the topic in 2004–only took 'em 3 decades! Has the pope not written extensively about the underpinnings of the Church’s position on the transmission of life via his “theology of the body”?. Perhaps he could have done more specifically to discuss and promote NFP, but in all this I think back of the state of the Church 25 years ago, and I think the balance sheet is largely in the black on this pope on most issues. That doesn’t make him immune from criticism, but I think all in all we’ve done pretty well.
Real, to me, is the fact that life is an intrinsic part of the earth. That it is created as part of how the universe operates, and as such is a good thing. From there I can say that we need to respect all life.
Thats my idea of getting morality from somewhere real, where morality from the bible may be fantasy, if God does not exist. But one cannot easily deny that the earth exists, that life exists, that the sun rises and sets.
So, I can always see the holocaust as wrong and justify my position based on fact, not just personal opinion, at least thats the idea. Maybe it only makes sense to me ? I hope not.
Elendil wrote:
…you should see that the “God says…” school of moral theology, often called voluntarism ( = God’s will, from Latin voluntas, will; sorry), is what I spend half my time opposing.
So you are basically against the divine command theory? Can you be against that, and still get your morality from religious doctrine? If so, how does that work?
Chortle, I’ll try to be brief on this one. I think the reason the average orthodox lay Catholic is so favorable toward JP2 is in significant degree because of what the state of the Church at the time of his acession, and the air of strength and straightforwardness he brought. I felt the same as way back then as almost everyone else of approximately my bent. I began to see things a little differently when I tried writing an article about Religious Liberty. I came across a couple of quotations of or opinions imputed to JP2 by Rocco Buttiglione–the first time I ever heard of him–that I was sure had to be a misrepresentation. Up till then I pretty much accepted, oh, the Pope is a Thomist. After reading Buttiglione I thought, well, I’ll go to the horses mouth and show that B. had it wrong. I found out B. was basically right, and I began digging deeper, began seeing that the reality was quite a bit more complex than the image.
I agree with much of what you say here. I, too, get intensely irritated to find Catholics adopting a basically libertarian line rather than thinking through the implications of their faith–but there are still good people out there. I’ve seen thoughtful articles in First Things, Crisis, National Review to some extent, and other places. That’s no blanket endorsement, but the thoughtful lay Catholics are out there. Partly, too, though, this is a fault of the bishops, or a corruption of the clerical establishment, if you will. They have for far too long failed to hold Catholic public figures accountable, have failed to project a morally resolute image. After all, what lay Catholics should be leading the way in the political arena if not the Senators and Congressman–inspired and prodded by intellectuals and spiritual authorities.
A major continuing flaw that I see in Catholic thought in general, is the use of Scripture in a very Protestant fashion, almost fundamentalist at times. The example I gave was of JP2’s idea that the evangelical counsels are mirrored in philosophy by Kantian personalism. Number one, that is simply not true as philosophy or as history. But number two, it gives the impression that Scripture is essentially an essay in theology, moral and ecclesiastical. That also is not the case; it’s an example of Catholics reacting to the Reformation by adopting, implicitly, the position of their opponents for lack of a well developed understanding of their own. And that’s why I consider the CCC’s position on tradition and revelation to be a significant restatement of the true Catholic position: that Jesus in person is the primary meaning of revelation; that the writings that the Church approved as scripture are more properly considered written tradition than as revelation per se, or as revelation only in a secondary sense compared to Jesus himself. Look it up in your CCC for the exact wording. My favorite writer on Scriptural matters happens to be the Anglican N. T. Wright (also called Tom Wright, the name he uses on his less academically oriented books), and I recommend his books very highly.
My view of what the Pope’s proper role should be is taken from St. Paul’s admonition to Timothy to hand down the deposit of faith. Rather than a development of doctrine, I think it is truer or better to describe what happens as an explicitation, an unpacking or deepening of understanding. Development to me has too much the sound of novelty, and I think we have our hands full enough handing down what has already been received without worrying too much about new developments of established doctrine. On the other hand, I’m very much in favor of intellectual renewal within the Church; yet, that doesn’t call for new doctrine, just better understanding, based more on recovery than on innovation. And for all my championing of a theologian who came 1200 years after Jesus, I don’t actually believe there is that much new in basic doctrine.
Regarding the death penalty, my big problem is that the Pope’s statements appear to contradict–not develop–millenia old doctrine on the purpose of punishment itself. It therefore calls into question the idea of eternal punishment, for example: if punishment is only for the purpose of self defense, who is God defending himself against? And that is a position that was condemned as a heresy many many centuries ago–that all will be saved. It is a position that has been cautiously revived by theologians whom this Pope admires, like Hans Urs von Balthasar. So, yes, I think the Pope should occupy himself with current problems and not worry so much about being “creative” or about his standing as an “intelligent.” I can give you quotations from his writings if you think I’m being flippant.
I’m not actually putting it all on Augustine. In most ways he did the best he could at the time. It’s the later theologians who developed the Augustinian tradition, and they’re the ones who concern me, for the reasons I’ve already stated. When a Pope declares himself a Kantian in moral philosophy, you should be worried too, because that means that he doesn’t actually have much use for natural law thought. That happens to be what his “theology of the body” is about. Remember he claims to find Kant’s personalism in the Gospels. His theology of the body is an attempt to ground Humane Vitae’s conclusions on scripture rather than natural law–a very dangerous undertaking in my view, since Scripture is not intended to be a philosophical treatise. This has been recognized by theologians, as well (yes, I have citations). Yes, when push comes to shove and they need to reaffirm received doctrine, as in Evangelium Vitae, they have to run back to St. Thomas, but that’s not what they want to do. Read Ratzinger’s autobiographical writings if you doubt that; he, too, was part of the crowd that wanted to deep six Aquinas. He recognizes now that he was naive, but he hasn’t become a Thomist by a long shot. There is virtually no heterodox trend of thought going back centuries that cannot be traced back to origins in the Augustinian tradition, so this is serious stuff to be playing with.
Sorry I had to write this in a rush, take care.
mjacob, i’ll get back to ya tomorrow. gotta get some sleep or my wife will kill me.
So, allow me to attempt to simplify your argument: life exists. Therefore it is good. Therefore it is wrong to kill.
There’s a break in the logic there. Prove to me that if life is a good thing, it is wrong to end it. You’re assuming that the former statement follows logically from the latter. It doesn’t. Your whole argument rests on this false assumption.
BTW, Celtoid, there’s quite a bit of fire and brimstone in the NT as well, and quite a bit of mercy in the Old. Your views on the differences between the Old and New Testaments are common, but I would hold that they are mistaken.
Want to make a quick response to this as well…
If God is God, who are you or anyone else to say whether He can condone killing?
'Quote:
Why couldn’t it also be true that human life is of
value and merits respect and protection? Is it your view
that, if God doesn’t exist, the Holocaust wasn’t wrong?
I could see viewing the Holocaust as wrong, but I would be unable to justify my position–it would only be a personal view.’
ONe might say, if you can’t justify this view it’s merely personal,
by which iI take it one means subjective. But there are views
that can’t be justified, in the sense of derived from
from other principles, that are not subjective. For example
the laws of logic. In some sense they’re fundamental, and
so cannot be demonstrated (any effort to demonstrate them
would use them), but that doesn’t make them
subjective.
So, on it’s face, if one can’t prove that human life is valuable
and worthy of protection, this doesn’t yet
entail that the view isn’t objectively true.
That fundamental truths can’t be derived
doesn’t make them subjective. This might be a fundamental
moral truth. If so one can’t give a ‘reasoned defense’
of it, precisely because it’s fundamental.
Certainly it’s conceivable that there are ultimate facts
about the universe, e.g. that quarks have a certain
property. It’s unexplainable. It’s a primitive fact about the universe. Well, why not
primitive moral facts, too?
Suppose moral properties are real and some acts have
them, but that’s primitive in the way that facts
about quarks are primitive. It’s a primitive fact
that when you get self-conscious morally free
life it has value. Then it’s a real objective fact
that can’t be justified.
But just as we can learn primitive facts about
quarks, say, we can discern primitive facts
about morality. If somebody asks me why
I believe it, how I know, I can say a great deal about the
experiences that led me to the belief, point to
its widespread acceptance by people who
have lived deeply and know history, the
fact that it’s included in virtually every
moral code, and the difference between
people who believe it and those, like
Adoph Hitler, who reject it.
In that sense we can justify moral facts,
not by deriving them from other principles
or from God, but by answering the question:
‘Why do you say that’s a fact?’ We can
give an epistemic account of how
we came to believe them.
I don’t think there’s anything incoherent
about this picture. So I disagree that unless
I can justify my view that human life is of
value and deserves protection, it’s merely
a personal view. There might be fundamental
object moral facts, which can be learned but,
because they’re fundamental, can’t be derived or
proven..
So far I don’t think you’ve yet
given a persuasive reason to believe that without
God there could be no objectively
true moral principles.
You enlist the idea that an uncreated universe is an
absurdity. Will you say why?
Best
“You enlist the idea that an uncreated universe is an absurdity”
It’s that kind of deeply entrenched thinking that makes me swear I could never belong. I couldn’t stand to have Aesops proverbial dog collar’s wrinkle around my neck, even if I had gained a sense of freedom. He has no choice but to see things that way, and to me, any discussion about reality under these conditions is futile, doomed from the start, but I admire your persistence.
mjacobs wrote:
So you are basically against the divine command theory? Can you be against that, and still get your morality from religious doctrine? If so, how does that work?
Catholic morality, as elaborated in moral theology/philosophy, doesn’t come directly from religious doctrine. Yes, of course, Catholics accept the moral standards put forth in the ten commandments and handed down from Israel to Christianity, however…
Catholics are convinced that man is capable of rational insight into reality such that an understanding of human nature can be derived that will be sufficient to delineate what actions or types of actions are conducive to being fully human or, on the other hand, what actions are a result of less than human impulses. So, we would argue that abusing small children causes one to fall short of human nature, makes one be less human. The Greeks elaborated a theory of virtue to explain this, and it was largely taken over by Christianity. According to the Greeks, if you cultivate the four cardinal virtues of Justice, Prudence, Fortitude and Temperance you will maximize your humanity; you will become what is admirable in being human. From this we move to particular acts–Christians argue that the ten commandments all fall under these virtues in one or more ways.
Added to these cardinal virtues, Christians add the three theological virtues of Faith, Hope and Love. However, the origins of these theological virtues can also be found, not only in the religion of Israel, but also in ancient Greek thought. They are said to work together and perfect the cardinal virtues. For example, we are urged to go beyond justice and show mercy, etc.
There are many many explanations and justifications that go into this, some of which I’ll try to bring up with Stoner a little later. The basic idea is that the practice of virtue helps us to “be all we can be,” as being human. Ultimately, this means that we are imitating (in a limited, human way) the creative source of our being human: the unlimited Being we call God. You can also see that ultimately this means that the good is precisely what is good for us as humans, and the bad is what is bad for us as humans. From that standpoint, these are not arbitrary commands meant to crimp our style, but rationally derived guidelines based on rational observation of human nature.
Hope that helps.
Oh, I forgot to add that Christians have always found a Scriptural justification for this type of moral reasoning in many places, but preeminently in the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Romans, where he says that the Gentiles are at fault for their wickedness even though they didn’t have the Jewish law. The reason is because, says Paul, they were perfectly able to understand God’s nature from observing created beings and also to understand the basics of what is good and bad, also from observing human nature. So they are as much at fault as were the Jews who transgressed the Mosaic law. This concept of the human ability to come to a basic understanding of human morality was pretty common among the rabbis of that time and was known as the Noachic law, I believe. I’m sure contemporary Rabbinic Judaism retains some form of this natural law teaching: that through reason we can understand what’s good and bad for humans to do.
I’ll try to get into the whole voluntarism thing lately, including why I thing it is fostered by what I call the Augustinian tradition.
Thinking on the fly here…in the case of logic, we can see that the world operates consistently on the rules of logic. I don’t think it’s nearly that clear with morals. We can see that they benefeit people who have them, and that they have been around a very long time, but even then they could easily be a human construct.
Certainly it’s conceivable that there are ultimate facts
about the universe, e.g. that quarks have a certain
property. It’s unexplainable. It’s a primitive fact about the universe. Well, why not
primitive moral facts, too?But just as we can learn primitive facts about
quarks, say, we can discern primitive facts
about morality. If somebody asks me why
I believe it, how I know, I can say a great deal about the
experiences that led me to the belief, point to
its widespread acceptance by people who
have lived deeply and know history, the
fact that it’s included in virtually every
moral code, and the difference between
people who believe it and those, like
Adoph Hitler, who reject it.
In that sense we can justify moral facts,
not by deriving them from other principles
or from God, but by answering the question:
‘Why do you say that’s a fact?’ We can
give an epistemic account of how
we came to believe them.
I see what you’re saying, but I think it is a weak basis for morality.
First, it is so because of a lack of consequence. There’s is no stigmus outside of ones own personal goodwill to follow such a code.
Second, in a naturalistic view, it doesn’t make much sense. If we came from an amoeba(sp?), then how are we different from an amoeba except that we are more evolved? Are amoebas sacred under this moral code?Animals certainly don’t follow most of the moral codes considered practical by humans.
It’s remarkable Jim that you have percieved morality as a fundamental truth. I certainly think how you have stumbled onto the correct view. However, how you can believe in moral facts in the abscence of any greater being is beyond me; indeed, how you can believe in facts at all, really. I’m glad that you have retained enough confidence in your ability to percieve what it true to see the universality of such realities as morals and logic.
I don’t think there’s anything incoherent
about this picture. So I disagree that unless
I can justify my view that human life is of
value and deserves protection, it’s merely
a personal view. There might be fundamental
object moral facts, which can be learned but,
because they’re fundamental, can’t be derived or
proven..
In order for a moral fact to be useful outside of the personal realm, than that fact would need to be proven.
So far I don’t think you’ve yet
given a persuasive reason to believe that without
God there could be no objectively
true moral principles.
If physical life is all that is, then what that physical life percieves is all that can be known. However, if different entities of that physical life form percieve contradictory things, then which one is right? Neither can claim authority, because they have similiar origins. Thus post modernism, which as I see it is the only truely consistent atheistic viewpoint.
The real question here is whether objective truth can exist in the absence of authority. I refer to my argument in the previous paragraph, and hold that it can’t.
If humans are the only reasonable creature, then humans can be the only origins of morality.
First things first. I’ve been throwing around the phrase “Augustinian Tradition” (AT) with quite a bit of abandon lately, so I’m going to try to explain what I’m talking about and why I think it’s particularly relevant to these moral debates. Actually, it would be just as accurate to refer (as I have, occasionaly) to the Platonic Tradition (PT), but I usually say AT because the dominant PT in the West was transmitted or mediated via St. Augustine.
Platonic philosophy arose in the wake of the Greek discovery and development of formal logic, and it experiences in acute form a universal tendency of the human mind: “the human mind irresistibly ‘reifies’ its concepts” (Manent, The City of Man, but also many other authors). That is, it treats concepts as things. Indeed, it isn’t too much to say that, for a Platonist, if a thing can be separately conceived it must exist separately (and from this also arises the tendency in all Christian influenced Platonisms to come up with some version of the Ontological Proof that Jim was discussing not long ago). For our practical purposes, what that means is that most Platonisms are determinedly dualistic–they hold that mind and body, or soul and body, which can be separately conceived, exist as two separate things and these Platonists usually go on to maintain, whether implicitly or explicitly, that man is essentially an intellect (or soul or mind) that “uses” a body. And therein lies the problem: according to the Platonist, the intellect knows general or abstract concepts and the body knows sensory objects, they are separate “things,” so how in hell do the twain meet? (I’m not going to get into my favored alternative to Platonism, which is Thomism, and which holds for a unity of soul and body in the unity of one substance: man.)
Platonisms are usually somewhat embarrassed by the body and tend to dodge this question. Plato used the myths off anamnesis or recollection and reincarnation to explain this problem: the soul, basically imprisoned in a body, “remembers” concepts that it knew in its prior existence free of the body. Let’s leave aside for our purposes whether Plato himself really intended this as a rational explanation or merely as an explanatory myth. What matters is that if we take this as a rational explanation we are inexorably led to a skepticism regarding the possibility of human knowledge of material reality.
Augustine, who got his Platonism through Plotinus, had to face this problem too, but as a Christian he could not use the idea of a pre-existence of the soul. Augustine’s solution was called “Divine Illumination”: since the soul and body are separate “things,” and it is impossible that the lower, the body, should act upon the higher, the soul, it is impossible that man should derive his unchanging and eternal abstract concepts from the material world through sense perception. Therefore, it must be that God “illumines” the intellect or soul by providing it with the needed abstract concepts. I hope the essential similarity of Plato’s and Augustine’s explanations are apparent: the mechanisms of explanation may differ, but the solutions are functionally identical. I hope, too, that the fundamentally skeptical tendency of this theory with regard to knowledge of the material world will be evident. This theory of Divine Illumination was widely embraced throughout the Medieval period, most prominently by Bonaventure (whose great modern champion was, for a time, Joseph Ratzinger). This theory has also had great currency in modern thought, albeit in a wide variety of guises: most explicitly, perhaps in Descartes’ innate ideas, Malebranche’s “occasionalism”, Berkeley’s idealism, but also in Kant’s categories of thought–all these are forms of Platonism, fundamentally dualistic and skeptical regarding knowledge of material reality, all relying on “deus ex machina” solutions: innate ideas, Divine intervention or illumination, innate structures of the mind, etc. Much of the history of modern philosophy is simply the history of the embrace of these types of solutions, followed by demonstration of their theoretical inadequacies and reaction against them, and then the search for a new solution.
Through most of Western history Augustine’s theological authority in the West has been virtually unrivalled. Even today if you consult the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC) and count up the number of citations to authorities, among theologians Augustine takes pride of place by an overwhelming margin. This is part of that resurgence of the AT that I was referring to; a major reaction against the renewed interest in the thought of Thomas Aquinas in the 20th century was a sharp reaction by the AT, led by such men as Henri de Lubac and Joseph Ratzinger. They sought, largely successfully, to marginalize Thomism and to return to the AT tradition of thought based on meditation on the writings of the Fathers of the Church, especially Augustine.
These neo-Augustinians have also been very receptive to modern trends of thought that historically derive from the late medieval AT. These modern trends of thought include Cartesianism (JP2’s protege Rocco Buttiglione–who is said to have assisted in the writing of at least one encyclical–has attempted to rehabilitate Descartes as a “misunderstood Augustinian”), Kantianism (JP2 openly states that “kantian personalism” is simply the philosophical expression of the “evangelical counsels” found in the Gospels) and Phenomenology (JP2 is a big fan of Max Scheler, the apostate German philosopher; other modern Catholic thinkers have embraced the thought of Martin Heidegger, a former student of Edmund Husserl and also a former member of the Nazi party). Most interestingly, perhaps, and confusing, is the relatively little known fact that Pierre Rousselot, who started the train of thought that led to what is usually termed “transcendental Thomism” (think Joseph Marechal, Karl Rahner, Bernard Lonergan, etc.) was inspired by the neo-Augustinian Blondel. “Transcendental” Thomism is largely, then, an attempt to domesticate Thomas Aquinas and return him to the fold of the AT. What of Karol Wojtyla’s formerly much ballyhooed “Lublin Thomism” (we haven’t heard much about that since the early days of his papacy)? That, too, is a Thomism that has been heavily influenced by phenomenology and kantian thought. Finally, no catalogue of modern AT influenced Catholic thought would be complete without mentioning Teilhard de Chardin.
Interestingly, Platonism is able to morph into widely divergent forms, ranging from extreme skepticism to extreme rationalism–the direction depends to a great degree on the temperament of the individual thinker. However, the one constant that remains is the problem of somehow placing man the intellect in contact with material reality–and especially with other “subjects” (read: people). This inherent skepticism of the AT with regard to the ability of the human mind to know any reality beyond one’s own mind has led in the Christian West to numerous forms of Fideism: the rejection of reason and philosophy and attempt to seek certainty through faith alone. This tendency is especially strong among Protestants, as witness many of the posts on this board on this topic. Catholics too, however, are often strongly attracted to various forms of Fideism, despite the Church’s repeated condemnation of such positions. Among Catholics, a common form of Fideism is an exaggerated reliance on papal infallibility or on less authoritative papal pronouncements–there is a distrust of human reason: if we are required to get into discussions about these basic issues there will be no certainty, etc. Catholics, too, under the influence of Protestant forms of Fideism, sometimes seek refuge from reason in an quasi-fundamentalist interpretation of Scripture: I’ll have an interesting example of that later.
It should come as no surprise, therefore, that natural law theory, with its explicit reliance on human reason, should be explicitly rejected by Protestants and modern philosophers. Nor, given the predominance of Augustine’s authority in the West and the AT throughout the history of the Roman Church, is it surprising that Catholic thinkers should often seek refuge in voluntaristic forms of modern thought: a given act is morally wrong 'cuz God says so. This is almost inevitable when a religious tradition is infected by skepticism. However, because of the Roman Church’s commitment to reason and natural law theory, it is not so easy to attack reason without eventually getting into theological difficulties. (I like to tell the story–stop me if I’ve told this already–of G. K. Chesterton’s “The Blue Cross,” in which Fr. Brown exposes a false priest: you attacked reason, says Fr. Brown, that’s bad theology.) One possible end run is as follows: don’t necessarily attack natural law theory, per se, but maintain that, well, the natural law theory is fine of course but, guess what, we’ve found a justification for this in Scripture, or in a phenomenological meditation on Scripture, or in a personalist interpretation of Scripture. That the motivation is often doubt as to the capabilities of reason, or perhaps rationalist optimism in the latest and greatest strain of modern thought, is clear enough. That the danger is a slide into either an essentially fundamentalist or analogical interpretation of Scripture that rips passages out of context and leads to skepticism re scriptural interpretation in general (how many times have you heard people say, oh, they can make scripture mean anything they want?) should also be clear.
Now, here’s that example. I’m quoting from an article by John Grabowski, a professor at Catholic university who claims that JP2 is attempting precisely what I just described with regard to the conclusions of Humanae Vitae. Here’s the heading:
John Paul II’s movement from natural law language
to more biblical categories
has been a hallmark of his teaching across the board.Evangelium Vitae
and Humanae Vitae:
A tale of two encyclicals
Now here are some selected quotations from the article. As we’ll see, it involves the “theology of the body” that chortle brought up in his recent posts:
This is Wojtyla’s philosophical answer to the first question noted above. While agreeing that the older natural law arguments prohibiting contraception were insufficient, he has attempted to supply newer and more philosophically compelling versions. Contraception is no longer treated primarily as a frustration of natural processes, but as a refusal of the complete self-donation which sex is meant to express. This personalist argument has surfaced with varying degrees of authority throughout his papal teaching: most definitively in Familiaris Consortio ; in his weekly general audiences given from 1979-1983 collectively referred to as his “theology of the body”; and, most recently, in his Letter to Families.10 A careful reading might also detect some echoes of it in Evangelium Vitae (e.g., nos. 13, 42-43).
In spite of the importance and controversial nature of this topic, it is striking to note how little response this effort has evoked from many theologians.
Now the author continues:
In his “theology of the body” one can discern the outlines of a second line of argument concerning contraception, related to but nevertheless independent of his personalist account. The springboard for the pope’s catechesis on the body is the second creation account (Genesis 2-3). In it he claims to locate a theological account of “original human experiences” of solitude, unity, and nakedness which underlie and illuminate present day experience.14 It is on this grid that he situates and amplifies his description of sexuality as embodied self-giving and procreation as cooperation with God’s own creative act. Motherhood and fatherhood are not therefore mere biological functions, but personal and experiential participations in the mystery of creation. This notion too has echoes in Evangelium Vitae.15
Locating this pattern and the normative conclusions which John Paul II draws from it in scripture is a significant step. No longer is the teaching regarding contraception simply to be viewed as a truth of human reason (natural law), but now it is located within biblical revelation.16 The motive for this innovation can probably be found in the text in Vatican II’s Dogmatic Constitution on the Church in the Modern World, Lumen Gentium , no. 25 which states that the Church’s charism of authority extends as far as the deposit of revelation.17 Thus if contraception can be shown to be a revealed truth, not simply a truth of natural law, it can presumably be taught with infallible authority.
Here’s footnote 16:
16 Thus one of the conclusions which John Paul II derives from his theology of the body is that “precisely against this full context, it becomes evident that [this] moral norm [of Humanae Vitae] belongs not only to the natural moral law, but also to the moral order revealed by God.” Reflections on Humanae Vitae 9-10.
Let me conclude with several points:
My uneasiness is caused by several factors. 1) JP2’s views as to the inadequacy of natural law theory, which I consider to be philosophically unjustified and very troubling given the millenia long acceptance of natural law in Catholic theology; 2) I find JP2’s optimism regarding the relative superiority of “personalist” justifications to be quite unwarranted. These personalist theories are in origin based in the AT with their dualist view of man; these are the theories that led JP2 to make his famously ill-considered remarks re men committing the sin of lust with regard to their wives. I’d be perfectly willing to grant the possibility of such a sin, however when this thesis is based on a dualist view of man it leads to many troubling issues of dubious orthodoxy. That JP2 failed to see this at the time is an indication of his absorbtion in these modern philosophical circles. 3) I would be among the first to maintain that the Church’s teaching on contraception does have a scriptural basis. If you check out the word pharmakeia in a concordance and look up its contexts you’ll find that it’s normally translated as sorcery (obviously involving “pharmaceuticals” or drugs). Even such noted opponents of the Church’s teaching as John Noonan agree that the drugs in question were almost certainly purported contraceptives and actual abortofacients. I consider this to be a perfectly legitimate use of scripture, but am uneasy with personalist meditations on scripture in a doctrinal context–it is all too easy to take the passages totally out of their proper context and to end up relativizing scripture. Moreover, the author’s claim the JP2 is using “more biblical categories” is very questionable. Citing a biblical passage is not the same thing as using a “biblical category.” In this case, it appears to be something like transforming a biblical passage by placing it within a context proper to and understandable only from within the world of Kantian personalism.
In closing, I would also like to indicate that I by no means deny JP2 his share of insights into human nature, and will gladly grant the validity of some of his observations. However, based as they are on what I believe to be unsound philosophical bases, I believe that they are all too open to other less than orthodox interpretations–contrary to JP2’s intentions, but equally valid from a philosophical standpoint, granted the premises.
Jim, I haven’t forgotten. Sometime later today.
OK, I think I’ve fulfilled all my obligations. 
All quotes from Stoner, except for the one indicated otherwise.
there are views
that can’t be justified, in the sense of derived from
from other principles, that are not subjective. For example
the laws of logic.
I’ll be using Gilson’s terminology from Thomist Realism and the Critique of Knowledge so we’ll have some common ground. As you’ll recall, in Chapter 7, “The Knowing Subject,” Gilson distinguishes axioms or principles from postulates and conclusions:
Gilson wrote:
What then is a postulate? It is a proposition which must be accepted as true, although it is neither evident nor demonstrable. … If the proposition in question is evident [i.e., self-evident; that is the meaning of the French word > evident> ], it is an axiom or principle, not a postulate. If the proposition is demonstrable, it is neither a postulate nor a principle but a conclusion. Thus, the postulate named after Euclid is an assumption which is presented as such. It is impossible to justify it by means of a demonstration, yet it is equally impossible to deny it without contradiction.
So, let’s start again from the top. It would appear that we’re in full agreement: some things that are quite evidently true cannot be justified; these self evident truths, such as the laws of logic, are called “principles.”
So, on it’s face, if one can’t prove that human life is valuable
and worthy of protection, this doesn’t yet
entail that the view isn’t objectively true.
That fundamental truths can’t be derived
doesn’t make them subjective. This might be a fundamental
moral truth. If so one can’t give a ‘reasoned defense’
of it, precisely because it’s fundamental.
Now, let’s take the proposition: “human life is valuable.” Is this a principle, a self evident truth? Is it a postulate, a proposition which must be accepted as true, although it is neither evident nor demonstrable? Or is it a conclusion, a proposition that is demonstrable? We’ll return to that.
Certainly it’s conceivable that there are ultimate facts
about the universe, e.g. that quarks have a certain
property. It’s unexplainable. It’s a primitive fact about the universe. Well, why not
primitive moral facts, too?
I will presume until shown that I’m in error (sorry for my astronomic ignorance) that scientists have demonstrated that quarks have certain properties, either through observation (presumably with the aid of scientific instruments) or a deductive process based on observable effects. If this isn’t the case, we’ll have to consider whether quarks are self evident principles or possibly postulates. If they and their properties are observed facts then they might well function as principles in further research. If their existence and properties have not been observed, they may be the conclusion of a demonstrative process, similar to the way the existence of Pluto was deduced from the observed behavior of other planets before it was itself detected by astronomers’ instruments. Such a conclusion may, of course, not be conclusive and must await experimental verification. In that case it may fall into an additional category to consider here: they could be an hypothesis or working construct of some sort. On the other hand, I see no reason to invoke “primitive moral facts” since natural law theory provides justification for the moral facts that concern men. These “moral facts” are in fact conclusions, demonstrated from observable facts and self evident principles.
If somebody asks me why
I believe it, how I know, I can say a great deal about the
experiences that led me to the belief, point to
its widespread acceptance by people who
have lived deeply and know history, the
fact that it’s included in virtually every
moral code, and the difference between
people who believe it and those, like
Adoph Hitler, who reject it.
The widespread agreement of men about certain moral matters is, indeed, significant. It is indicative of a moral law in general and even, in some cases, of certain tenets of the moral law. However, the widespread disagreement regarding the details of morality is a strong indicator that the content of the moral law is not necessarily self evident, nor even a postulate, properly speaking. Let’s return to the proposition: “human life is valuable.” Even a cursory review of history will reveal that, although many people have in fact agreed with this proposition, many others would dispute it. Leaving aside self defense and crimes of passion, the prevalence throughout history of slavery suggests that large numbers of men have pondered the proposition “human life is valuable,” have asked the further question “valuable for what?” and come to a different version of value of human life than most of us now hold to. Of course, the mere fact that I dispute a self evident proposition but offer no reason does not make the proposition any less self evident: it simply means that I’m an ass. But what if there is a justification for this proposition? That would show that it isn’t actually a principle but is instead a conclusion. In fact, I will go so far as to say that I believe that the evidence is very strong that this proposition is a conclusion rather than a self evident truth, based on this historical fact: men have had to learn the truth of this proposition; the learning curve has been fairly steep and we haven’t all made it to the top yet.
So far I don’t think you’ve yet
given a persuasive reason to believe that without
God there could be no objectively
true moral principles.You enlist the idea that an uncreated universe is an
absurdity. Will you say why?
In your previous post you hypothesize the existing universe, but without God. I have a problem with that. As you know, I consider the existence of God to be non-self evident to man–in need of demonstration. However, having once realized that the very existence of finite existents cannot be explained by what they are, I know that there must be a source of their existing that exceeds their limited natures. By common agreement we call this creator God, and we further agree that since existing in and of itself is not and never can be a part of the actual nature of a finite existent, all finite existents are held in existence only through the creative will of God–they are, in effect, in a constant state of being created.
This distinction between the “what” and “that” of existence–what a thing is not the same as the fact that a thing is, as is notoriously so in the case of unicorns–introduces ipso facto purpose into the realm of being. When we observe existents we discover that they have a dynamism or tendency associated with their nature: they act to fulfill their nature, to the extent that they are able to do so. Another way of putting it is that they act to maximize their being to the extent that they are able to. Being is their good, and how could it be otherwise since non-being doesn’t exist? In some sense, too, created finite being imitates God’s being–as infinite uncreated being, God must be the fullness of possible being and the height of goodness.
The task that natural law theory sets for itself is to understand as far as possible both the nature of God and the nature of man. Based on that understanding natural law theory then seeks to determine what actions will assist man in more closely imitating God’s fullness of being (and thus of goodness), because in doing so to the extent that a human is able to, he will be doing what is good for a human being to do and to be. All finite existents, as created, are in this position: God as infinite being is the standard for all beings and is the guarantor of objective good.
I submit that the universe I have sketched out is, in fact, the universe that we inhabit. Some may disagree, but I submit that an dispassionate examination will lead to the conclusion that this is recognizably the universe that we inhabit, that this outline of the structure of being is one that rings true. That being so, the question arises, could this universe, such as we have described it, possibly be as it is without a God. I say no. Without creation by the infinite uncreated God, there is no standard for being. Morality in such a hypothetical universe becomes an absurdity when seen in this light.
SOMETHING BETTER: (independent thinking)
The problem, as I see it, with authoritarianism is the growing lack of independent thinking that is required for a system needing checks and balances. And who could deny that every system needs checks and balances? In fact, all “follow the herd” type organizations start out with independent thinking. Then, as authoritarianism begins to develop, and independent thinking is abandoned and discouraged, the authority becomes the gardian and the believer his ward, the sheperd places himself above his manufactured sheep. Most authoritarian systems of education are only interested in turning out a pattern. The result you have is the onset of ignorance without cognitive recognition (sheep).
What’s the difference between a religious authoritarian system and a government with a little dictator?
The best examples of people with good leadership in helping humanity forward are those who dared to think outside the box, people who by independent thinking dared to step out of a system. Examples abound at every stage where new systems of religion have been started. Someone from within abandons his/her former beliefs and dares to find a more progressive understanding of reality.
Without a following, there is no such thing as authority, no matter how right of an opinion this authority may have. Authority depends on someone giving in to higher control. These controlling (above the people) systems have begun falling apart and what we see still administered today, even within large church organizations, seems nothing short of a placebo.
No, authority is not the way to determine what is right from wrong, nor is it the way to determine what’s best. No matter how you understand scripture, there’s no excuse for an authority to change scripture, omitting a text here, adding one there, changing the context when needed. The type of system that needs authority to make changes bears all the qualities of someone with a potential conflict of interest. I’m amazed at how many so-called Christian denominations have found the need to write their own bibles. These bibles should not be called paraphrasing or any such thing. They should be called “editorials.” Believe me, I’ve read them. Only the original manuscripts should be used by Christians, and preferably the New Revised Standard Version which is the most accurately translated of all bibles.
As one philosopher said, “independant thinking should be humanity’s motto, and show that these two words may become a magnificent bridge over which any person may ascend from the lowest to the highest rung of human existence, from ignorance to knowledge, from weakness to strength, and from discontemtment to fulfillment.”
Pardon me for a dullard, Lorenzo, but was your post a response to my claim that morality cannot exist in the absence of authority, or am I completely off here? I don’t think I’m quite understanding who or what issue you were trying to address.
As for the quote, I will not deny that humanism sounds glorious. Man can learn the truth through science and perfect himseld, right? In reality, it doesn’t work. Ignorance to knowledge? Because of humanism, we now know that nothing is true. Instead of fulfillment, we have a whole lot of people who believe that life is meaningless. I know some of 'em firsthand, most of you probably know at least a few of those types too. They spend their life getting drunk and taking drugs, all in an effort to have as much fun as they can before they die. That’s the true result of naturalistic humanism.
It may have been you who raised the “authority” issue. I was thinking about the concept for what it alone was worth, not any particular person’s spin. There are some broad-spectrum applications though for all of us I think.
Semantics can cause a lot of confusion, so it depends on what a person means by “authority.” If it applies to a family, well, then authority will aways be useful to a point, after all the parent has been there.
But if “authority” means God, scripture, clergy, governor, etc., it’s easy to show that peaceful societies have done quite well for up to 25,000 years until western theology came into areas like Indonesia, dressed everyone up like little western saints, took their pictures, spread their western diseases, got them hooked on a world economy based lifestyle, reorganized their conscience, and watched their children go to the dogs like so many kids who have rebelled in our own Christian societies.
Yes, I’m saying tribes like the Panara, the Uru Eu Wau Wau and the Ava-Canoeiro of So. American, and the Dani and the Asmat tribes of New Guinea were far better off before missionaries brought in their forms of authority and left their residue.