Posted on 01/03/2008 8:33:44 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
One of the biggest obstacles facing what’s called the “New Atheism” is the issue of morality. Writers like Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, and Christopher Hitchens have to convince people that morals and values are possible in a society that does not believe in God.
It’s important to understand what is not in doubt: whether an individual atheist or agnostic can be a “good” person. Of course they can, just as a professing Christian can do bad things.
The issue is whether the secular worldview can provide a basis for a good society. Can it motivate and inspire people to be virtuous and generous?
Not surprisingly, Richard Dawkins offers a “yes”—grounded in Darwinism. According to him, natural selection has produced a moral sense that is shared by all people. While our genes may be, in his words “selfish,” there are times when cooperation with others is the selfish gene’s best interest. Thus, according to him, natural selection has produced what we call altruism.
Except, of course, that it is not altruism at all: It is, at most, enlightened self-interest. It might explain why “survival of the fittest” is not an endless war of all against all, but it offers no reason as to why someone might give up their lives or even their lifestyle for the benefit of others, especially those whom they do not even know.
Darwinist accounts of human morality bear such little resemblance to the way real people live their lives that the late philosopher David Stove, an atheist himself, called them a “slander against human beings.”
Being unable to account for human altruism is not enough for Sam Harris, author of Letter to a Christian Nation. In a recent debate with Rick Warren, he complained about Christians “contaminating” their altruistic deeds in places like Africa with “religious ideas” like “the divinity of Jesus.” Instead of rejoicing at the alleviation of suffering, he frets over someone hearing the Gospel.
In response, Warren pointed out the inconvenient (for Harris, that is) truth: You won’t find many atheists feeding the hungry and ministering to the sick in places like Africa or Mother Teresa’s Calcutta. It is precisely because people believe in the divinity of Jesus that they are willing to give up their lives (sometimes literally) in service to those whom Jesus calls “His brothers.” And that’s why my colleagues and I spend our lives ministering in prisons.
In contrast, the record of avowedly atheistic regimes is, shall we say, less than inspiring. Atheist regimes like the Soviet Union, Red China, and Cambodia killed tens of millions of people in an effort to establish an atheistic alternative to the City of God. For men like Stalin and Mao, people were expendable precisely because they were not created in the image of a personal God. Instead, they were objects being manipulated by impersonal historical forces.
One atheist understood the moral consequences of his unbelief: That was Nietzsche, who argued that God is dead, but acknowledged that without God there could be no binding and objective moral order.
Of course, the “New Atheists” deny this. Instead, they unconvincingly argue that you can have the benefits of an altruistic, Christian-like morality without God.
Nietzsche would laugh—and wonder why they don’t make atheists like they used to.
Regarding Spinoza....there are a lot of questions about just how much Einstein studied Spinoza or that he even considered him carefully at all. Spinoza was most assuredly not an atheist, pantheist, or monist, or any of the usual things people make him out to be. It was, however, a fashion in those days to name-drop Spinoza.
When it came to atheists one thing is for sure, Einstein held them in contempt:
‘The short version being that anything not done for the glory of God is not good.’
That’s a circular argument and not worth debating. If you propose that ‘anyone not religious is immoral’, then by definition, any atheist would be immoral.
By the same logic, an atheist could say, ‘anyone who believes in God is stupid’. Therefore, all atheists are smarter than all Christians.
Yes I understand that. My question was, and is, is the meme learned or inherited?
“Einstein states that he doesn’t believe in God over and over again and you choose to parse his words for meanings to the contrary.”
Incorrect. “Parsing” implies an analytical breakdown of a thought and pulling out only the component parts that fits ones agenda.
You can say I am misinterpreting what AE meant, but again I do not care about his personal beliefs.
Einstein restated a broad concept created long before his time. I chose his particular utterance of it, only for convenience. The thought is not his alone, nor would I argue that his opinion concerning God is worth more than anyone else’s.
I disagree, but let's table it and part friends. :-)
A professed Christians may be a practical atheist, while a professed atheist may be a practical Christian. The atheist doctor in A.J. Cronin’s “Keys of the Kingdom,” has many real-life counterparts and so there are many “Christians “who are not Christian. But the “bourgeois morality” that the flower children so scorned ultimately depends on a faith in Christ. Thomas Huxley and his successors simply substitute evolution for God as the “cause” of a morality the conventional morality that governed their lives. A later generation— in the “gay ‘90s”—when the sexual revolution really began—rejected this premise. The cold-blooded atheism of revolutionaries like Lenin never geneflected to this moral code. Hence we get the most murderous century in world history—so far.
Nice quote.
That’s a circular argument and not worth debating. If you propose that ‘anyone not religious is immoral’, then by definition, any atheist would be immoral. By the same logic, an atheist could say, ‘anyone who believes in God is stupid’. Therefore, all atheists are smarter than all Christians.
No, it's not circular in it's entirety. In the short form, it's based on an assumption. That assumption is that anything not of God is not good. This is a point you can either agree with or disagree with. I'm merely pointing out that the assumption stated early in the article *is* debated. Some theologists believe that atheists are incapable of ever being good. That conclusion is rationally drawn from the belief that God is the only source of 'goodness'.
We cann all change our preferences, and/or opinions, and indeed, convictions!
I don’t have a problem with Einstein as a Jew, believing in the God of the Bible!
Or, at the very least, I don’t see as far away from the truth!
George Sylvester Viereck, “What Life Means to Einstein,”
The Saturday Evening Post, October 26, 1929.
As early as December of 1940, in an article published in Time magazine, the renowned Nobel Prize winning physicist Albert Einstein, himself a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany, paid tribute to the moral “courage” of Pope Pius and the Catholic Church in opposing “the Hitlerian onslaught” on liberty:
Being a lover of freedom, when the Nazi revolution came in Germany, I looked to the universities to defend it, knowing that they had always boasted of their devotion to the cause of truth; but, no, the universities immediately were silenced. Then I looked to the great editors of the newspapers, whose flaming editorials in days gone by had proclaimed their love of freedom: but they, like the universities, were silenced in a few short weeks. Only the Catholic Church stood squarely across the path of Hitler’s campaign for suppressing the truth. I never had any special interest in the Church before, but now I feel a great affection and admiration because the Church alone has had the courage and persistence to stand for intellectual truth and moral freedom. I am forced thus to confess that what I once despised, I now praise unreservedly.
Historians have a difficult time pinpointing any one source for the demented Hitler and his anti-Semitism appears suddenly around the time of his infamous book, and yet you “know” these things?
Now, though the scale of Christian persecution can’t be compared to the Jewish Holocaust of 1941-1945, except perhaps in Poland, the ultimate destruction of Christianity was one of Hitler’s pet projects starting in 1933
Albert Einstein said, after the war, “Only the Catholic Church protested against the Hitlerian onslaught on liberty. Up till then I had not been interested in the Church, but today I feel a great admiration for the Church, which alone has had the courage to struggle for spiritual truth and moral liberty.”
Apparently, Dawkins doesn't know the definition for the word 'altruism.'
“There is no absolute truth”
Is that absolutely true?
“If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to, then…what is the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought…I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime.”
(Dahmer in an interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, 11/29/1994)
Ahem:
“Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view.” (Humanist Manifestos I & II, 1980, Introduction, Paul Kurtz)
Maybe we can send him a dictionary to help him out.
“I am convinced that some political and social activities and practices of the Catholic organizations are detrimental and even dangerous for the community as a whole, here and everywhere. [Albert Einstein, letter, 1954]”
OK, maybe he was playing to his audience? Messin’ with you, me and the Walls?
Now, let us consider that Einstein was WRONG about a great many thinks!
Also, take a deep breath and may I ask you: What is truly stated when someone says, “SCIENCE PROVES….”
That only means mere humans are using their abilities to examine data according to their standards in order to draw conclusions that are consistent with their theories. Hmmmm.
“If the facts don’t fit the theory, change the facts” – Albert Einstein
Science can only prove things that can be measured and observed with instruments made by people. Science could never prove that things like LOVE or GOD actually exists, not even with the latest and greatest 21st century state-of-the-art instruments.
“God has also set eternity in their hearts!” (Ecclesiastes 3:11)
So you can THEORIZE, ANALYZE, SYNTHESIZE and HYPOTHESIZE until your last dying breath and behold the truth:
“BEFORE GOD WE ARE ALL EQUALLY WISE – AND EQUALLY FOOLISH.” – Albert Einstein
Case Study:
JOHANN KEPLER (1571-1630)
Johann Kepler was “one of the greatest astronomers that ever lived”.
Though he made numerous discoveries (e.g., the tides are caused by the moon), he is most famous for three astronomical laws which he recognized.
First, he noted that the planets travel around the sun in an elliptical orbit, with the sun at one focus of the ellipse.
Second, he found that a planet’s speed increases as it nears the sun, but decreases as it gets farther away. But no matter what its speed may be, a line drawn between it and the sun will always sweep over exactly the same area of space in the same length of time.
Third, the time a planet takes to circle the sun depends on its distance from the sun. The square of the time it takes will be exactly in proportion to the cube of its average distance away.
Kepler’s discoveries prepared the way for the work of Isaac Newton.
As Kepler studied the heavens, he was awed by the power and wisdom of God. He once said that in his discoveries he was merely, “thinking God’s thoughts after Him.”
(A quote that Einstein repeated)
Kepler wrote: “I thank Thee, my Creator and Lord, that Thou hast given me this joy in Thy creation, this delight in the works of Thy hands; I have shown the excellencies of Thy works unto man, so far as my mind was able to comprehend Thine infinity”
Source: Northrop, Stephen Abbot (n.d.), A Cloud of Witnesses (Cincinnati: John F. McCurdy).
But, it’s fun watching silly atheists squirm, and FUSS over the God that they claim doesn’t exist!
“BEFORE GOD WE ARE ALL EQUALLY WISE – AND EQUALLY FOOLISH.” – Albert Einstein
Beware of “relevent” religions where believers “know” God is what Nietzshe was saying.
Wow. Thanks for that explanation. I knew it wasn't as simple as the catchphrases and have Nietzshe way down on my reading list.
You are right that there is sometimes compassion and care in the animal world. But these are not the same as sacrificial sacrifice .. like dedicating your life to caring for the needy, or giving your life to protect the undeserving.
I think you are somewhat confusing Nietzsche with Kierkegaard.
Nietzsche!
DON’T GET ME STARTED!
Albert Einstein, Theoretical Physicist said:
“The man who regards his own life and that of his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unfortunate, but almost disqualified for life.”
Vs.
Fritz Nietzsche:
“I will now disprove the existence of all gods. If there were gods, how could I bear not to be a god? Consequently, there are no gods.”
Ahem, and, just who were Nietzsche’s sources of inspiration or Professor/teachers?
Jean Jacques Rousseau believed that humans are inherently good; yet he saw that goodness did not prevail. His political theory described social contracts that would capitalize on this innate goodness. But such notions were soon overturned in the flames of the French Revolution. Any philosophy that assumes that man is innately good finds its optimism ever disappointed, and disproved by history.
In addition to Jean Jacques Rousseau, we should mention Schopenhauer!
By 1865, Nietzsche gave up the study of theology and began to devote increasing amounts of his attention to philology, the science of language. While in Leipzig visiting a friend, Nietzsche happened across a philosophical work which would influence his thought in profound ways. That book was Arthur Schopenhauer’s two volume, The World as Will and Representation, published in 1819.
Schopenhauer was a strange man. He was educated at Germany’s finest institutions including Gotha, Weimar (the home of Goethe) and Jena. In 1819, he became a lecturer at the University of Berlin. While at Berlin Schopenhauer held his lectures at the same time as Hegel but without success. No one came to hear Schopenhauer lecture.
His major contribution was his concept of Subjective Idealism — that the world is my idea, a phantasm of the mind, and therefore, in itself, meaningless. Will, the active side of our nature, or Impulse, is the key to the one thing we know directly from the inside — the self, and therefore the key to the understanding of all things.
It gets better:
Although the will is entirely real, it is not free, nor does it have any ultimate purpose. Rather, it is all-consuming, pointless, and negative, “all life is suffering.”
His ideas were strongly influenced by the Upanishads and Buddhism. Schopenhauer was the first major European philosopher to make a point of atheism; however, he admired the asceticism of Christianity and Buddhism, declaring that after removing the dogmas these religions have as their philosophical underpinning the abolition of the will.
Ha!
So much for the Happy Buddha! (smile)
Schopenhauer’s strongest influence was on Nietzsche, Freud, Wittgenstein, and musician Richard Wagner, whose Tristan and Isolde puts to music the BLIND WILL. (Yeah, That Blind Will tune must have been Hitler’s favorite - Hitler was a spiritual child of Neitzsche;)
See:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/civilization/cc0009.html
Friedrich Nietzsche was influenced by Rousseau and later was to call himself “the Anti-Christ,” and wrote a book by that title. He argued for atheism as follows:
He scorned reason as well as faith, often deliberately contradicted himself, said that “a sneer is infinitely more noble that a syllogism” and appealed to passion, rhetoric and even deliberate hatred rather than reason.
He saw love as “the greatest danger” and morality as mankind’s worst weakness. He died insane, of syphilis, at home with his Mother, but just after leaving an asylum. He signed his last letters “the Crucified One.”
In his book:[B]“The Genealogy of Morals”[/B], he claimed that morality was an invention of the weak (especially the Jews, and then the Christians) to weaken the strong. The sheep convinced the wolf to act like a sheep. This is unnatural, argues Nietzsche, and seeing morality’s unnatural origin in resentment at inferiority will free us from its power over us.
What would replace God?
The same being who will replace man; the Superman or [i]Übermensch[/i] Nietzsche’s magnum opus and masterpiece, [B]“Thus Spake Zarathustra”[/B], celebrates this new god.
Nietzsche call “Zarathustra” the new Bible, and told the world to “throw away all other books; you have my “Zarathustra.” It is intoxicating rhetoric, and it has captivated adolescents for generations. It was written in only a few days, in a frenzy, perhaps of literally demon-inspired “automatic writing.” No book ever written contains more Jungian archetypes, like a fireworks display of images from the unconscious.
Nietzsche wrote of his: Overman, who was superman—humanity that had evolved beyond our current state into a more powerful and more awesome form. Thus humanity was between superman and beast. Nietzsche wrote:
[INDENT]What is the ape to man? A laughingstock or a painful embarrassment. And man shall be just that for Overman…[We] have made our way from worm to man, and much in [us] is still worm…[So] man is a rope tied between beast and Overman…[and so] what is great in man is that he is bridge and not an end.[/INDENT]
Thus Nietzsche looked forward to man evolving into superman.
See also:
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/education/ed0245.html
The Breakdown of Morals and Christian Education, by ÉTIENNE GILSON (Adapted)
This, “God is Dead” revolution was meant to be the most tremendous revolution that ever took place in world history. At the very beginning, those who envisaged a godless society experienced a feeling of liberation. At last, man was going to be free!
However, it was Nietzsche himself who had been fully aware of the fact that, when man should at last be liberated from the authority of God, he would find himself face to face with the entirely new task of creating his own moral values, that is, determining what should be considered as right or wrong, good or evil.
Next came Jean Paul Sartre, a typical representative of the French school of existentialists. And, expounding on this philosophy, at the 1950 philosophical Congress of Bordeaux (France), another French philosopher, Polin, calmly announced that he was going to speak against the traditional notion of moral “wisdom” because, so far as he could see, there were no objective moral values. (Bingo, but perhaps it was Nietzsche or Rosseau who said it first.)
Only that is morally good, he said, which we declare to be so, and only what we specifically affirm to be morally wrong is actually morally wrong. Man, said Polin, is the creator of moral values. Now this is a very extreme position indeed, especially for a “professor of Moral Philosophy and of the Science of Education” in a State university, yet, after all, it is a consistent one.
[B]For indeed, if there is no God, who but man himself can teach man the distinction between what is right and what is wrong?[/B]
This is perfectly logical. However, when all is said and done, there is still one more question to be answered.
[B]What do we mean by man?[/B]
Man in general does not exist; there are individual men only, and who, among them, will have authority to teach us the distinction between good and evil? Thus far, no one. And this is what I call the true breakdown of morals, not indeed the all too frequent breaking of a moral code, but the new fact that today there is no moral code to break.[/size][/font]
Quoted in part and adapted:
Étienne Gilson. “The Breakdown of Morals and Christian Education.” (Candlemas Day 1952).
This lecture was delivered in the Adult Education Program of St. Michael’s College at the University of Toronto.
THE AUTHOR
Étienne Gilson was born in Paris, France, in 1884. He was educated at the University of Paris, and for eleven years was a member of its faculty. From 1932 until 1951, he was Professor of Mediaeval Philosophy at the College de France. He was guest professor at various universities such as the Angelicum (Rome), Oxford, Cambridge, Aberdeen, Harvard, ....
Paul Hollander suggested that in the absence of an appeal to God the source of morality becomes politics. In a sense that is what the social contract argument is stating as well. The difficulty is that when it does so morality loses its universalist characteristic and becomes subjective as a function of political identification.
This isn't unique to secular sources for morality - it is the same difficulty that a non-universalist appeal to religion finds itself in when that is a function of a similar identification - the different rules with respect to believer versus non-believer in Islam are an example of this. For example, is it immoral to lie to another human being? Where are of the latter are equal in the sight of God, yes. Where they are differentiated by group identification as believer or kaffir, no.
I suggest therefore that the real issue is that in the absence of God no universal root of morality is possible, but that the mere acknowledgment of the presence of God does not guarantee it.
This has interesting echoes in Western legal theory (it is literally ALL of Islamic legal theory). Ask a professor of law sometime to explain the difference between malum prohibitum and malum in se and get ready for an earful regarding something called a "value consensus model." The roots of that consensus are precisely the roots of morality we're discussing here. Huge topic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.