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Posted June 23, 2005
re: ethics
I rarely argue with Christians in person. Why pry them away from their illusions and delusions? Well, there's one good reason to: when they are doing themselves or other people harm in the promotion of their beliefs. But on the Web extensive argumentation seems inevitable. I come across these bizarre arguments against, say, evolution, and it seems indecent to let their non sequiturs go unchallenged.
The blog Church and State 101 is a case in point, and all in all appears to be the work of one of those Christians for whom I feel no pity, no charity. The blogger is as nasty as nearly anyone else on the Web, foreswearing common forms of dialectical politeness. One gets the heady thrill, almost as if one were debating Tertullian, since invective and outrage are the common rhetorical jab of Ophir's Razor
(a person whose Christian name is, if I've deciphered the site correctly, Chris). So, when I came across the blog entry The Taxonomic Failure of Evolutionary Theory, I responded in the comments section. Feel free to be amused at one and all.
For my part, I am now just marvelling at how confident a person can be in holding truly nutty notions. It's not merely that this person believes in the Hebrew version of creationism (something geologists pretty much falsified centuries ago), but that he believes that ethics is a subject filled with facts. This is how this blogger re-explained his original point:
I argued from evolutionary theory to show that its various forms have in common that they logically imply that nothing is in fact wrong for humans to do. And, so, if "genocide is wrong," (Or if anything else is wrong) for humans to do, then Evolutionism is false. This is not anethical argument,but one which makes a point about the logical relationship between Darwinism and objective moral values.
What is this relationship?
I took for granted that slavery is wrong, and used this ethical fact as a counter-instance to various forms of Darwinism to show that evolutionism is nonsense (which, fortunately, is not hard to show).
Now taking something for granted, as a given, does not make it a fact. Other people taking a norm or rule as a given doesn't make it a fact, either. But of course, some crude form of objective value is hidden here, but not disclosed to allow further examination.
Now, his assumption that slavery is wrong is a product not of Christianity but of Western civilization (two different things), and his pretense that Judeo-Christian morals univocally supports this moral rule strikes me as droll. There is little moral talk in the Bible about slavery. Of course, it's looked down upon when our people,
the Jews, were allegedly enslaved in Egypt. But condemned? Name the passages, please. In the Christian New Testament,
there's one great occasion to bring the subject up: Paul's epistle to Philemon. Instead of bringing it up, Paul has other things on his mind. That's OK; there's plenty to talk about. But it never crosses Paul's mind to say something like Hey, Philemon, in Genesis God allows man to rule the beasts, but not each other; slavery is thus wrong. So, maybe you should let poor Onesimus free?
Paul was, instead, silent on the question. This should show us how little of a fact, to him, was the nice, civilized notion that slavery is wrong.
The response from the blogger to my bringing up Philemon? I've engaged in a fallacy: the argument from silence.
I hadn't been aware of this named fallacy before, but my point seems to stand. I had written that Slavery was accepted in Biblical times, and Paul's advice to Philemon was, basically,
I was making a statement, not an argument as such. Slavery was accepted in Biblical times, and was not a major issue with the Jews or Christians — arguably, the Christians less than the Jews, since Christians were waiting for the end of the world, not trying to live in it on a permanent basis. I mentioned Paul and Philemon and Onesimus simply to show that slavery was no big issue. His silence on the justice of slavery better indicates a tolerance of slavery than a hidden disapprobation. (I should have quoted Paul's other entreaties to slave to obey their masters. The cumulative effect of reading these passages should dissuade anyone from believing that Christianity opposes slavery, or was the Biblical source for opposing slavery.)
treat your slave Onesimus nicely,
not set him free.
Now, as a person who believes that evolution happened as well as that the processes that led to past evolutionary changes are even now going on, what I make of the basic idea in this strange post is best expressed by a shaking of the head. When you see a student repeatedly treat 2 + 2 as leading to 7, that's the basic reaction. But still, one must demonstrate the error.
The laws of every land consider it proper for men to own animals, and yet most (at least the civilized ones) forbid a human to own another human (i.e. slavery). By forbidding slavery and not animal ownership, our laws distinguish clearly between the dignity of man, and the lowliness of animals. The Christian has an easy explanation at the ready: God created man and woman specially in his likeness, after his own image; but the animals he did not create with such glory. This makes slavery wrong and animal ownership just peachy, so long as we do not abuse the poor, lowly animal.
But imagine for a moment, that you are a neo-Darwinian evolutionist. You must somehow — on your view — make a distinction between man and animal to justify your opposition to slavery. But on what possible grounds? For, on this view, man and animal merely differ as tohow advancedeach is. They do not differ in kind as with the biblical account.
First off, how stark is the distinction? Genesis does indeed tell the tall tale that man and women were separately created. But, so was every other species of land animals, on the sixth day. Adam and Eve didn't even get a separate day of creation! They were made on the same day that the Creator let the earth bring forth
land creatures, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth.
Now, though it is clear that Adam was made in the image of this being identified as God in the King James Version, it is not clear that this Creator was not himself, somehow, a land animal. A very powerful land animal, to be sure, but . . . he made, on the same day as other land animals a particular mammal that was said to be in our image,
with an our
suggesting that God is somehow a committee. And he gave to this new mammal dominion over the other creatures. That's how the story runs.
So, this idea that God made man in His (notice how we usually change pronouns, against the text in Genesis?) own image, and gave man dominion over other species, does make a distinction between man and other animals. It does not declare that man not an animal, as biologically illiterate folk pretend otherwise. It makes man an animal that is special, given special powers because of his design, or make-up. (My argument here is that Man is implicitly an animal in the text, since he didn't merit another day of Creation. Need I restate it in purge syllogistic form?)
So, how could a Darwinist, or neo-Darwinist, or (as I am) quasi-post-neo-Darwinist (ha!) justify the existence of laws allowing the enslavement of non-human animals but not the enslavement of human ones?
Well, because of the obvious differences between species. It is quite obvious that human animals have greater capacities than others. These capacities, we believe, did arise from more rudimentary capacities to think and plan and act, but the actual differences are amazing leaps ahead.
And they are enough of a difference to make a difference in law and in ethics.
But our Christian blogger doesn't like that kind of argument. He says that the differences between men and other animals are not a difference in kind, but a difference in mere degree that he implies can't make a difference. To me and my kind, who believe that evolution happened and that no gods impinge on human affairs, he writes: You folks cannot have it both ways. Either man really was and is created in God's image, so that slavery is wrong and owning animals is yet fine — or else — man is a mere animal with no ethically-relevant difference from giraffes, zebras and pigs, since he does not bear God's image. But this would affirm slavery in principle, by breaking down the barrier between man and beast — even if no honest neo-Darwinians come forward to admit the truth.
First, there is an actual fallacy here. He begs the question
: he's saying that the only difference that can make a difference is being created in God's image. But this is mere assertion. It begs the question to be proved. Why can't a moral principle rest on the many differences between Homo sapiens and other animals?
Second, he does not consider the question of what has been called speciesism. According to moddish environmentalist radicalism, it is wrong to be speciesist,
that is, discriminate on the basis of species. But why not discriminate on the basis of species — especially since different species have different qualities? One thing that evolutionists note is that nearly all species are speciesist. They treat members of their own species differently than they treat their own kind. Something so widespread seems to indicate a principle, and evolutionists might take a cue from nature and continue to treat our differences from other animals as good enough reason to treat other animals differently. (The other interlocutor in the comments section made a similar little argument about speciesism, only to find it prissily dismissed as a fallacy when it did precisely what it was supposed to do, explain how evolutionists could go about opposing slavery.)
Would our dogmatic Christian argue that evolutionists have no principled reason to prefer taking human mates to animal mates? Maybe, maybe not. Christian conservatives like to bring up bestiality at the drop of a hat. But evolutionists don't get hysterical about the subject, but simply and sagely note the obvious biological reasons why humans prefer human mates to chimp or canine mates. And though Christians often assert that secular humanists can't argue against bestiality — that, if you tolerate homosexuals you might as well tolerate bestiality — this gambit really only pays if you've already bought into the nutball theism being propounded. Evolutionists can simply smile at these contra-speciesist nonsense.
Our Christian interlocutor, of course, is likely too deluded by his theology to explore the many reasons people have to be speciesist, and be proud of it. What reason could we have, without a belief in our special status granted by a deity we've never met, to treat human beings differently and as more important than dogs and camels and giraffes? Well, reciprocity, for one. Human beings are at once more dangerous than other animals, and more beneficial in our interactions. We have every reason to encourage beneficial relations with others, and suppress hostile relations. The higher actual capacities of humanity make a difference. (A practical person, rather than a philosopher or Christian, might simply say that this is Common Sense! He would have a point.)
Further, from birth we are able to empathize with others to a degree that far outweighs our abilities to correctly track, by reason, instinct, and imagination, the behavior of other animals. So of course we treat humans differently than animals. And our emotions — of amity as well as enmity — reinforced with the logic of reciprocity and advantageous co-operation indicated above, lead to a greatly enlarged sympathy for our own kind, a sympathy that led to the recent abolition of slavery in most parts of the world.
Now, where do our ideas of reciprocity, co-operation, and sympathy come from? You can pretend it's God, but you'd be merely pretending. People from all walks of life, around the globe, from many religious perspectives, have been led to reject man's inhumanity to man, in many forms. You can pretend it's from the Bible, but, well, you'd be lying.
And that's what our interlocutor rests his whole case on, a lie. The evolutionist, he claims, in opposing slavery is actually borrowing (under the table, so to speak) from the Christian outlook to justify the unique sense of outrage he may hold against the institution of slavery.
Unique sense of outrage? Unique to whom? Paul in writing to Philemon? Jesus in . . . what passage?
The general outrage against slavery took time to develop in society, over the course of history. Of course, newly enslaved people are often outraged. But that those who are otherwise free might sympathize with their plight, well, that wasn't so common until recent times, at least not common enough to abolish the enslavement of innocent people. That various forms of anti-slavery opinions came to fruition under a late stage of Christianity does not mean the source is Christian as such. The originating documents of Christianity lend little or no support to the opposition of slavery. It was only over time that Christians, accommodating themselves to a commercial world, where war is not ever-present, and where social mobility was becoming the norm as well as an ideal, began finding metaphysical arguments in the Bible (such as presented on Church and State 101).
There is a fallacy here, too. It is called the Fallacy of the Questionable Cause. Our interlocutor ignores a common cause — sympathy for slaves increases as freedom becomes more general, and the universalist aspects of moral argument and reasoning gain ground — and ascribes the rise of anti-slavery to Christianity, which deserves little of the credit. If any.
This is not to say that many of the anti-slavery advocates in American and elsewhere in Europe were not Christian. Many were. But many were deists, too. Some were no doubt closet atheists.
What I am arguing is that Christianity was not the decisive factor in the rise of the opposition to slavery. The rise of an anti-slavery ethic could have arisen under even the barren ground of Hinduism, had other elements been present.
To pretend that Christianity was decisive is, I think, dishonest. It means ignoring the actual processes by which people become more civilized. It is to express little or no curiosity at those processes.
Why a Christian would ignore those processes is no mystery, I hazard. The whole theology rests on a psychology — an understanding of the human soul — that ignores what really goes on, and ascribes motivations and behavior changes to such fictional causes as the movements of the Holy Spirit
and the temptations of the Devil. As a pixillated would-be inhabitant of such a fantastical world, my interlocutor perhaps deserves better than being called a liar. He is simply deluded. He cannot see the actual processes that make humanity and its civilization evolve because he is committed to notions about humanity that are at great variance with reality.
And so he tries, with much bluster, to construct arguments that make evolution seem dangerous to our moral sensibilities.
Evolution is, of course, a process that evolutionists say has happened, and was caused by a number of factors (those factors differing, somewhat, from theorist to theorist). Whether it has happened is easier to prove than how it happened. But what we are to make of it, how it affects our values, that is another level of thinking, and requires more subtlety than can be managed on the blog Church and State 101. It may require a level of sophistication beyond the 101 college course.
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