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A Flawed Analogy to Morality

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Leah Libresco has responded to my recent post on objective morality. I’ll pull out some of her comments that need responses.

What I don’t understand is why Bob sees his conscience as worth listening to.

Leah imagines that I have a choice. My mind is programmed to give much weight to the moral evaluation that comes from the conscience. It’s not the only input—for example, I might not aid that old person who dropped a package if I’m carrying something fragile or important myself and can’t risk dropping it—but it’s a major input.
Leah goes on to wonder about mechanical brain implants or drugs that would override or mimic the conscience. Sure, that’s increasingly possible.
Here’s the parallel that comes to mind for me. Suppose I’m communicating with Leah using public key cryptography. I get a message from Leah that’s encoded with her secret key. What else can I do but assume that it’s really from her? Once I hear of a security breach (maybe some hacker is out there, mimicking other people), I will no longer trust signed messages like this. But until then, I have no choice but believe that it’s from Leah.
This brain-implant thought experiment would work the same way. “What’s that? My conscience says that I ought to hit that cute little baby? All righty!” If it looks and quacks like a conscience, I’ll assume that it’s a conscience. As you can imagine, I can’t see any way to verify what my conscience says against an external, objectively true answer. (But of course this comparison would be ridiculous. If I had access to an infallible source, I’d use that and not bother with my imperfect conscience.)
Maybe my view of how the mind works is more machine-like or more rigid than Leah’s. Am I missing how the brain is configured?
Leah imagines another experiment.

“Hey, Bob,” I say. ”I’ve got a pretty nifty computer program here. It can give you advice about what to do when you’re not sure about a moral problem. In long-duration clinical trials conducted here in the present, people who did what the black box told them whenever they asked it a question were more likely to have children than people who ignored the black box’s advice, people who weren’t given a copy of my black box, and people who were just given a magic eight ball hidden in a black box. (I had a devil of a time getting an IRB to approve all those control groups, but I wanted to be thorough). Would you like a black box of your own?”
I’m not sure why Bob should turn me down

Meh. Having more children doesn’t have much appeal. My DNA may have more interest in your offer, but I don’t care what it thinks. What shapes DNA and what motivates the mind are different things.

The box I’m offering him is optimized according to pretty similar criteria as the conscience he trusts because it was shaped by evolution.

My conscience has my mind on a pretty short leash—it’s just how the brain is wired. My mind listens to my conscience but doesn’t worry much about the origin of things. Improving fertility has little appeal.
Leah responds to one of my points by referencing some of the words I used.

“Rise above” presupposes some dimension of height. “Hone” implies some form that we’re getting closer to by paring away extraneous material. If you have a sense that more is possible, then you must have some expectation that an external standard exists, and that you have some kind of access to it (even if it’s as limited as our access to physical laws, which we have to painstakingly deduce).

Hmm—am I appealing to an external standard? Let’s think about this.
Morality obviously changes—slavery was moral (that is, acceptance was widespread) and now it’s not, legal alcohol was immoral and now it’s not, and so on. But Leah asks if I see not change but improvement. Sure, morality changes, but can we claim that it’s improving?
Society always sees the change as improvement—otherwise, why would it make the change?—but by what standard do we claim it’s an improvement? We look back with mild horror at what passed for acceptable morality in society in the past, but why think that what we see today is more than simply change?
Here’s another parallel. We’ve all seen jiggle puzzles (also called dexterity puzzles) like the one in the photo above. It’s a handheld box with a picture and a few small ball bearings. The picture has tiny wells that can each hold one ball bearing, and the goal is to carefully move the box to put certain ball bearings (they sometimes have different colors) into the correct wells.
Consider a popular model of morality that parallels a jiggle puzzle. Once we’ve correctly figured out a moral issue (say: concluding that slavery is wrong), we’ve placed that ball bearing in the correct well. That problem is resolved once and for all, the ball bearing isn’t going anywhere, and we can move on to worry about placing those other ball bearings.
But why imagine that this is a valid analogy? Why imagine that we were objectively wrong on slavery before and we’re right about it now? Sure, we think we’ve got it figured out … but different societies in centuries past thought that they had it figured out too, but they came to very different conclusions. “Morality” is a moving target.
My ongoing challenge to those who imagine objective morality: resolve an as-yet-unresolved moral conundrum (abortion, stem cell research, etc.). They can’t do it, and yet they hold on to their claim. One of us is missing something. Am I phrasing the challenge correctly?
The definition we’re using for objective morality is “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.” If these values exist and are reliably accessibly to almost all adults, we should all be singing from the same songbook. Since we aren’t, I think the problem is that we’re not using the same definition of “objective.”
Any thoughts?

The true measure of a man
is how he treats someone
who can do him absolutely no good.
— Samuel Johnson

Christianity Supports Same-Sex Marriage: the Movie

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This is a longer version of my recent summary of how Christianity, seen correctly, supports same-sex marriage. That summary was deliberately brief, but this video (my first) explores the topic in more depth.
I developed this in support of Washington’s upcoming referendum 74, but I’d like to pass it along in the hope that it will provoke conversation.

Many thanks to the great folks at the Living After Faith podcast for technical help with this project.

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken …
   If this be error and upon me proved,
   I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
— William Shakespeare, Sonnet 116

Objective Morality Reconsidered

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Leah Libresco at the Unequally Yoked blog has responded to my blog post about objective morality, as have many commenters. I’ll try to hit the ball back over the net and respond to some of these ideas.
A serving of vegetables that we need to get out of the way first is the definition of “objective.” I tried to nail down the definition that I wanted to use, but I still think many readers and I were not on the same page.
Here are three definitions that I see being used. Each is reasonable, but we need to agree on the one we’re using.
1. Objective means “strongly or viscerally held.” Christian apologists often use this. “By ‘objectively wrong,’ we refer to those things that we all know are just wrong,” they’ll say, and then give something hideous (torturing babies is popular) as an example.
2. Objective means “universally held” or “that which reasonable people can be argued into accepting.” Consider this statement: “Bob’s car is yellow.” No one cares much about this claim, but ignore that—suppose that you wanted extraordinary evidence. I could send you a photo of me in my car. I could email you the names of people who could vouch for this claim. I could show you my driver’s license (connecting my face to my name), my car registration (connecting my name to a particular car’s vehicle ID number), and then the yellow car in my garage (with that VIN). And so on.
I think that this is what the Declaration of Independence means when it says, “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” “These truths” are such that someone either already accepts them or can be convinced that they’re valid.
3. Objective means “grounded outside humanity” or, as Merriam-Webster defines it, “having reality independent of the mind.” 1 + 1 = 2 may be objectively true by this definition, for example. Leah’s example: “Russell’s teapot is orbiting the sun.” This claim is hard to prove, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s either true or false.
Each of these definitions has its place, and I can accept each. But now let’s focus on the topic at hand: objective morality. Objective morality by definitions 1 and 2—strongly held or universally held moral beliefs—certainly exists but I see no evidence for objective morality of the third kind. Return to William Lane Craig’s definition for objective morality: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.” This is what I see no evidence for.
Consider this parallel to humans’ common moral instinct: our common appreciation of cuteness. Small, helpless, big-eyed things like babies or kittens provoke caring feelings in most of us. “Kittens are cute” is probably objectively true by definition 2. We can analyze why we feel this way (evolution probably selected adults who are drawn to help human babies and similar-looking things) but that doesn’t matter. What’s interesting is that it’s a sense shared among most humans.
Why do we react instantly when we see someone in serious danger—stepping in to pull someone out of harm’s way, shouting  for help, and so on? We just do, and almost everyone would act in a similar way. We can analyze the action from an evolutionary or physiological standpoint, but again the point is that this is a shared human instinct.
About Leah’s debate with Hemant Mehta, who shares Leah’s sense of objective morality, she says,

I was trying to press him on where the yardstick or rulebook or whatnot comes from.

My answer is that morality is composed of an instinctive part (the Golden Rule, perhaps) along with a societal part. The first part explains the commonality among people, and the second explains the differences.
Obviously, the instinctive part doesn’t express itself identically in every person. For example, the popular TV series Dexter is about a sociopath (someone without this instinct) who was taught how to pass in ordinary society. Similarly, every person from Seattle doesn’t express an identical Seattle moral sense. These are tendencies, not immutable constraints.
There’s my answer, but how do proponents of objective morality answer this? I’d like to know more about the external grounding of this morality, and I wonder why it’s even introduced since it seems a far more fanciful explanation that no better explains the morality that we see in society.
Leah said:

[Bob is] claiming that we can’t even ask if [a widespread moral] consensus is correlated with anything, since there’s nothing for the consensus to be true about.

I’ll agree that there’s nothing absolute for the consensus to be truth about. When we say, “Capital punishment is wrong,” there is no absolute truth (the yardstick) for us to compare our claim against. Is capital punishment wrong? We can wrestle with this issue the only way we ever have, by studying the issue and arguing with each other in various ways, but we have no way to resolve the question once and for all by appealing to an absolute standard.
Let me bring up accessibility again. If there is objective truth about capital punishment but we simply can’t access it (as if God’s Big Book of Morals exists but we don’t have a library card for God’s library), the objective moralists have won a pyrrhic victory. Yes, objective moral truth exists, but if we can’t reliably access it, what good is it?

If Bob doesn’t think there’s some external standard that his personal understanding of morality can grow to more perfectly resemble, then I’m really baffled about how he approaches new questions. Is the goal just to more perfectly and consistently live out your essentially arbitrary moral preferences?

Again, I get stuck on this idea of an external standard. I’ve seen no evidence of such a thing.
As for “arbitrary,” my morals may be arbitrary in an absolute sense, but of course they don’t feel arbitrary in a throwing-darts-at-a-list-of-possibilities sort of way. I consult my conscience with moral questions, and it gives me answers. No need for an external anything. (If you say, “Wait—where did that conscience come from? Didn’t that get put in there by an external agent?” then I point to evolution as the source.)
If we were bears or Klingons, we’d evaluate situations differently. We can be horrified at the actions of other species, but by what external standards do we judge those actions objectively wrong?

As it stands, I don’t understand why Bob feels a particular loyalty to his arbitrary moral preferences. Any debating atheist knows that we’re running on buggy hardware [that is, we have lots of biases]…

As for loyalty, that suggests that I have a choice, but all I have is a conscience that tells me what’s right and what’s wrong. I have no higher authority to appeal to to check its imperfect moral claims. If Leah’s point is that we shouldn’t be too smug about what our fallible brains tell us, I agree. But these imperfect brains are all we’ve got.

There’s no reason for Bob to treat his moral preferences as any more sacred or central to his identity than his gastronomic preferences.

My moral preferences certainly aren’t any more sacred in an absolute sense (as if God tallied my morals but didn’t care about what I ate). But from my perspective, I think that my morals are more important. If you violate my moral sense, I might tell you that you’re mistaken or I might even take action to stop you, but not much happens if you violate my culinary sense.

Either [moral or gastronomic preferences] could be maladapted to his current environment, and it’s worth poking around to see if he can come up with something better. Does he really think we’re powerless in the face of these questions?

There’s evidence that evolution built us to think that rape and slavery are okay, as long as you’re on the giving end. We see this attitude in the Old Testament, for example. However, modern society teaches us something different. This is the instinctive moral sense being overridden by the societal moral sense. Sam Harris writes about this in his The Moral Landscape. As I understand this, he argues for an objective morality of the second kind—one that we can hone with science and reason.
Here I agree with Leah that we aren’t stuck with our evolutionary programming. We can and do rise above our instincts.
I’m left rejecting objective morality (again: I’m using the William Lane Craig definition, above) for two reasons. First, this resolves no puzzles. The natural explanation is sufficient. And second, I see no evidence for it. The dictionary doesn’t appeal to an objective element to morality, and I see no need to either.

Religion gives people bad reasons for acting morally,
where good reasons are actually available.
— Sam Harris

Photo credit: Wikimedia

C.S. Lewis on Morality

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C. S. Lewis’s Mere Christianity is a fundamental work in Christian apologetics. Many Christians point to this book as a turning point in their coming to faith. I’d like to respond to some of Lewis’s ideas.
Lewis says that there is a “real” right and wrong. If this were not so, how could we declare the Nazis wrong? Find a man who rejects this premise, Lewis says, and you will quickly detect the hypocrisy. He may break a promise to you, but as soon as you do the same, he declares that that’s not fair and falls back on a “real” rightness.
I don’t see it that way. “Right” and “wrong” come with an implied point of view. I’m happy to say that the Nazis were wrong, but when I do so, the word wrong is grounded in my point of view. (Kind of obvious, right? I mean, whose point of view would I be using but my own?)
That statement is simply a less clumsy version of, “The Nazis were wrong according to Bob.” There is neither a need to imagine nor justification for an absolute standard.
Lewis doesn’t use the term “objective morality” (he wrote about 70 years ago, which explains a few odd phrasings), but I believe this is what he means by “real right and wrong.” Let’s use William Lane Craig’s definition for objective morality: “moral values that are valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not.”
Despite Lewis’s claims, we needn’t imagine that morality is objectively true. We see this simply by looking in the dictionary. The definition of “morality” (or “right” or “wrong”) doesn’t require any sense of objective grounding or absoluteness.
Like Lewis, I insist that you keep your commitments to me, that you follow the basic rules of civility, and so on. When you don’t, I’m annoyed not because you violated an absolute law; you violate my law. It ain’t much, but it’s all I’ve got, and that’s enough to explain the morality we see around us.
To the person who insists that objective morality exists, I say: show me. Take a vexing moral issue—abortion, euthanasia, stem cell research, capital punishment, sex before marriage, torture, and so on—and show us the objectively true moral position. If you want to say that objective morality exists but it’s not reliably accessible, then what good is it? This kind of objective morality that looks nonexistent might as well be.
When we see a widespread sense of a shared morality within society, are we seeing universal moral truth? Or are we seeing universally held moral instincts? That latter, natural explanation does the job without the need to handwave objective moral truth into existence.
Evolution explains why part of morals is built-in. What we think of as proper morals has survival value. It’s not surprising that evolution would select for a moral instinct in social animals like humans. Evolution is often caricatured as being built on the principle “might makes right.” No, natural selection doesn’t favor might but fitness to the environment. A human tribe with trust and compassion might outcompete a more savage rival tribe without those traits.
We see this moral instinct in other animals. In a study of capuchin monkeys, for example, those given cucumber for completing a task complained when others got grapes (a preferred food) for the same task. These monkeys understood fairness just like a human. (An excellent video of the monkey’s reaction is here.)
As an aside, I think it’s a mistake to look down on other primates and their “less-developed” sense of morality. The same powerful brain that gives us honor and patriotism, justice and mercy, love and altruism, and other moral instincts that we’re proud of also gives us racism, self-pity, greed, resentment, hate, contempt, bitterness, jealousy, and all the others on the other side of the coin. No other species has perfected violence, slavery, cruelty, revenge, torture, and war to the extent that humans have.
If we exceed the morality of our primate cousins on the positive side, we also do so on the negative side. Let’s show a little humility.
Human morality is nicely explained by an instinctive and shared sense of the Golden Rule plus rules that are specific to each culture. The dictionary doesn’t demand any objective grounding in its definition of morality, and neither should we.

I believe in Christianity
as I believe that the sun has risen:
not only because I see it,
but because by it I see everything else.
— C. S. Lewis

Photo credit: ho visto nina volare

I’ll Do What I Wanna! Pulpit Freedom Sunday

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Rev. Ken Hutcherson has made a name for himself in the Seattle area as an anti-gay defender of the sanctity of marriage. He tried to organize a boycott against Microsoft when they first extended health benefits to same-sex partners of employees, years ago.
I attended Antioch Bible Church last Sunday to hear Rev. Ken Hutcherson speak on a different topic. It was Pulpit Freedom Sunday, and “Hutch” said that 1500 churches would be participating by breaking IRS rules against politicking from the pulpit. Church-state separation is fine, but to him this means that the state should stay out of the church and the church can say what it wants about politics.
At the end of the service, he brought up three local politicians and endorsed them. He said that this would all be taped and sent to the IRS. Though he joked about hoping that people would visit him in jail, his bold action wasn’t particularly dangerous, both because of the safety of the herd and because the IRS has been toothless about responding to provocations like this.
Consider the logic of Hutcherson’s position. He positions this as support for free speech rights. Ordinary citizens can publicly endorse candidates, so how could this be denied to churches?
But, of course, this comparison is flawed. Ordinary citizens aren’t offered nonprofit (IRS 501(c)3) status, so they don’t need to obey Internal Revenue Service rules constraining political activity. By contrast, churches eagerly accept this contract, but the obligations go both ways.
In return for parishioners’ being able to deduct their church donations from their income when computing tax owed, churches agree to certain rules:
Thou shalt not participate in any political campaign, either for or against any candidate.
Thou shalt not make any partisan comments when acting in a church capacity.
Thou shalt not contribute money to a political campaign.
Thou shalt not excessively lobby government.
Issue advocacy is allowed, but thou shalt not use it to make an implicit endorsement of a candidate.
But the IRS is righteous and just, and churches may organize non-partisan voter education activities, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote drives. Religious leaders speaking for themselves can say whatever they want, and they can speak “about important issues of public policy.”
For his sermon, Hutcherson used the first verses of Romans 13.

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. (Romans 13:1)

The U.S. Constitution doesn’t recognize this divine authority, but if Hutcherson does, then his flouting the rules is all the more surprising.
Churches enter into IRS tax-exempt status of their own accord. If they don’t like these constraints, they don’t have to declare themselves nonprofits. This isn’t a free speech issue; it’s a contractual issue.
I wonder if Reverend Hutch remembers “Let your ‘Yes’ be yes, and your ‘No,’ no” from James 5:12. That is, there should be no need for the Christian to say “I swear to God” (and risk violating the Fourth Commandment against blasphemy) because he should be a man known for keeping his word.
To Church leaders: if the IRS constraints against speaking out on political issues are a problem, then don’t enter into a contract with the IRS. Drop your nonprofit status, tell church members that they can no longer deduct donations, and then give your opinion about any candidate or issue.
But to keep your nonprofit status, you must follow the rules.
If what you’re saying is that the whole relationship between religious nonprofits and taxes should be critiqued, I’ve written a lot about how messed up that is (here, here, here, here, and here). I’m happy to see some sunlight let into that issue, but I doubt you are.

Congress has not violated [an organization’s] First Amendment rights
by declining to subsidize its First Amendment activities.
— U.S. Supreme Court, Regan v. TWR (1983)

Photo credit: Wikimedia

Christianity Supports Same-Sex Marriage

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In four weeks, Washington state voters will be deciding on Referendum 74, a law that, if approved, would allow same-sex marriage. This op-ed of mine, urging support for the referendum, was published in a Seattle-area newspaper last week. It’s a more well-behaved version of my usual argument—enjoy.
A century ago, America was immersed in social change, and Christians were leaders. They wrestled with issues such as women’s suffrage, prison reform, temperance, racial inequality, child labor, and labor unions. Christians were a positive force for social change.
Now, at a time when Christians lament the decline of marriage, gay and lesbian couples want to embrace it. This represents a great opportunity for Christians to lead once again. They can do it by supporting Referendum 74 (R-74), which would approve the bill, signed by Gov. Chris Gregoire, to legalize marriage equality in Washington.
Of course, some Christians may claim there are numerous religious arguments against same-sex marriage. Let’s examine these to see why this argument falls flat.
Many loudly proclaim that homosexuality is unnatural, but homosexuality has been observed in 500 animal species, including all the higher primates. That means humans, too. Yet homophobia has been observed in only one species: ours. Perhaps it’s homophobia that’s unnatural.
Biblical marriage is not the institution that conservatives imagine it to be. The Old Testament says that you can only marry someone from your own tribe, and once you are married, it’s fine to have sex with concubines. It offers other marital advice as well: You can marry a woman by first raping her; you can make sex slaves of captured women; a man must sleep with his deceased brother’s wife to produce heirs; and polygamy is permitted.
Let’s not pretend that the definition of marriage has been static. In fact, marriage was most recently redefined in the United States less than 50 years ago when laws against mixed-race marriage were overturned. Perhaps society has matured so that we can expand it again to include all consenting adults.
For arguments against homosexuality, many Christians point to the biblical towns of Sodom and Gomorrah, which God destroyed with fire and brimstone because of the perceived sin of homosexuality. But the Bible makes clear that the true sin of Sodom was attempted rape. This has nothing to do with the loving, monogamous, homosexual relationships that stand at the center of today’s discussion of same-sex marriage.
The Book of Leviticus is another source of anti-gay ammunition used by opponents of same-sex marriage because it calls gay sex an abomination. This sounds pretty damning, but the word “abomination” is also used to describe eating forbidden food such as shellfish, sacrificing blemished animals, performing divination or wearing men’s clothing if you’re a woman. These are ritual abominations; homosexuality was not forbidden because of any innate harm. With what justification can one select the anti-homosexual verses and ignore the rest?
The underlying objection to homosexuality for many is that gay sex is icky or distasteful. Fair enough, but then the solution is easy: If you don’t like gay sex, don’t have any.
If you’re prudish about gay sex, consider that there may be ickier or more distasteful sex happening between straight partners than gay, simply because there are far more straight couples. The solution is simply to let consenting adults resolve these questions themselves.
Another popular Christian argument against same-sex marriage is that the purpose of marriage is procreation. But is that all they get out of marriage vows? “I promise to be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in bad, in joy as well as in sorrow”? And what about couples who don’t want children, can’t have them or are beyond child-bearing age? Are these marriages invalid or inferior? Of course, if you were to ask opponents of marriage equality why a straight couple should get married instead of living together, the procreation argument would likely go out the window, replaced with profound thoughts about love and commitment — precisely the reason same-sex couples want to get married.
Open-hearted Christians have a chance to reclaim that revolutionary spirit that guided them a century ago. To today’s religious leaders, I say: With all the disease, poverty, famine, natural disaster and economic troubles in the world, should same-sex marriage be a major worry?
There’s far too little love in the world as it is. It’s reprehensible to stand in the way of what love is here.
The time has come for marriage equality in Washington. The time has come to approve R-74.

Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red,
and he placed them on separate continents.
And but for the interference with his arrangement
there would be no cause for such marriages.
The fact that he separated the races
shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.
— Initial judgment against Mildred and Richard Loving, 1959

Photo credit: Economist Mom