Ethics in Crisis.

Howard Taylor.

When everything is moving at once, nothing appears to be moving, as on board ship. When everyone is moving towards depravity, no one seems to be moving, but if someone stops, he shows up the others who are rushing on, by acting as a fixed point. [1]

Two of Bertrand Russell's questions, which he says have no answer, can be rephrased as follows:

Does real goodness exist independently of our own opinions -  individual or collective? If goodness does exist, how are we to partake in it?

In other words, does the concept of absolute, objective moral values have any validity, or is goodness entirely subjective, just a matter of personal or collective opinion?

According to the latter, subjectivist viewpoint, each individual person or each individual society decides the difference between good and evil, and each opinion is as valid as any other. Thus, there is no goodness independent of human opinions.

According to this view, there is no way to settle a dispute about what is good. There is no point even trying, because the question of who is right has no meaning

This problem is graphically illustrated in the following hypothetical example:

Hitler believed that only some human life is valuable. He ordered the killing of millions of people, believing that humans of their type have no value at all. He felt like it, believed it right, and so did many others. Suppose he had won the war, brainwashed or killed those who disagreed with him, so that the remaining human society came to believe that the Holocaust was right, would that have made it right? Or is there some objective goodness – independent of a person or society’s beliefs and feelings – that says it is wrong even if every person believes it to be right?

This hypothetical example is not as far-fetched as it might seem. Stephen Pinker (The Blank Slate, 2002) writes that ‘several scholars have noticed that their students are unequipped to explain why Nazism was wrong, because the students feel it is impermissible to criticize the values of another culture.’

Are certain actions intrinsically right or wrong, or are right and wrong merely matters of culture and public opinion?

In 1960, Bertrand Russell wrote:

'I cannot see how to refute arguments for the subjectivity of moral values, but I find myself incapable of believing that all that is wrong with wanton cruelty is that I don't like it.' [2]

Commenting on Russell's views, his contemporary philosopher and biographer Alan Wood writes:

Within Russell's own life time men came to power in great nations who openly challenged old and new moralities. They said Christian ideas were mistaken, that it was right for the strong to kill off the weak, for a Nordic race to exterminate non-Aryans, and for Bolsheviks to enslave non-Bolsheviks. They defended cruelty and falsehood, and Russell could not prove that they were wrong. On his principles he could only say 'I dislike your views very much, but I have to admit this is purely a matter of personal opinion'.[3] (Emphasis added.)

In a wide-ranging review of the moral sense and its place in the human personality, Henry Haslam (The Moral Mind, 2005) argues that although our moral values are our own, and to that extent subjective, we can only make sense of these subjective values if we recognise the existence of objective values. The more strongly we disagree with another person’s moral principles, the more firmly we are acknowledging the existence of true moral values outside ourselves, objective values which we are striving to understand and attain, objective values of which  our own subjective values are imperfect reflections.

Evolution and attitudes to life

If we think of our essence as mere accidental descent from bacteria, we can find it depressing, as did George Bernard Shaw. He wrote of Darwinian evolution:

When its whole significance dawns on you, your heart sinks into a heap of sand within you. There is a hideous fatalism about it, a ghastly and damnable reduction of beauty and intelligence, of strength and purpose, of honour and aspiration.[4]

Or we can rejoice in the meaninglessness of life - and allow the strong to eliminate the weak as in the quote of H. G. Wells who revelled in the ruthlessness of nature: He said:

And how will the New Republic treat the inferior races? How will it deal with the black? . .  the yellow man? . . the Jew? . . those swarms of black, and brown, and dirty-white, and yellow people, who do not come into the new needs of efficiency? Well, the world is a world, and not a charitable institution, and I take it they will have to go. . . .

And the ethical system of these men of the New Republic, the ethical system which will dominate the world state, will be shaped primarily to favour the procreation of what is fine and efficient and beautiful in humanity—beautiful and strong bodies, clear and powerful minds. . . .

And the method that nature has followed hitherto in the shaping of the world, whereby weakness was prevented from propagating weakness . . . is death. . . .

The men of the New Republic . . . will have an ideal that will make the killing worth the while. [5]

Or we can attempt to rise above the meaninglessness of life in the personal existentialism of Sartre and Camus.[6] Or perhaps we can take the post-modern position of the present era, which I refer to again soon.

Sociobiology: An alternative way of understanding human behaviour and morality

The term ‘sociobiology’ was defined by Edward O Wilson in Sociobiology: The New Synthesis as the systematic study of the biological basis of all social behaviour. The study emphasises  natural selection as the main factor responsible for our behaviour. Wilson expounds this further in his later book, Consilience.[7]

Natural selection has its own values (if it helps survival and breeding it is good; if not, not) and it cannot support any other values. It therefore cannot explain morality, which has its own, different values. Wilson himself wrote on p3 of Sociobiology that the central theoretical problem of sociobiology was ‘how can altruism … evolve by natural selection?’ The answer he gave was ‘kinship’. However, there is much more to morality than the kind of altruism that can be explained by natural selection and the human moral sense cannot be explained by natural selection alone – as argued by Haslam on the basis of his wide review of many different kinds of moral thinking.

Sometimes supporters of sociobiology say we actually exist for the benefit and propagation of our genes. So according to this view it is they that give us our purpose and therefore value and therefore morality.

We are machines built by DNA whose purpose is to make more copies of the same DNA … Flowers are for the same thing as everything else in the living kingdoms, for spreading ‘copy me’ programmes about, written in DNA language.

This is EXACTLY what we are for. We are machines for propagating DNA, and the propagation of DNA is a self-sustaining process. It is every living objects’ sole reason for living. [8]

The individual organism is only the vehicle (of genes), part of an elaborate device to preserve and spread them with the least possible biochemical perturbation.. The organism is only DNA’s way of making more DNA.[9] [10]

There is no way to rationalise a view of the purpose or value of human life, or any life, if one holds these views.

In opposition to this we have Objectivist Ethics. This is founded on the belief that there is something called goodness which is independent of us – out there somewhere or revealed by God. ‘This action is good’ means it conforms to that goodness. ‘This action is bad’ means it is in opposition to that goodness.

Can one derive an `ought' from an `is'?

Science can tell us what is the case, but can it tell us what ought to be the case? Electrons behave as they do – that is neither morally right nor wrong – it is just the way things are – the whole story. We behave in certain ways but that is not the whole story for we know we ought to behave in certain other ways. Therefore there is more than one kind of reality. The first of these realities is subject to scientific investigation and discovery. The other one isn’t – and yet somehow we are convinced that objective moral values exist and are real. However distant they may seem, and however much we may differ from other people about details of morality, we have a sense that these values are there, validating our own moral struggles.

After a period in the twentieth century when subjectivist theories of morality were popular among philosophers, most recent writers support the idea of objective values. Some of these writers are atheists, but attempts to reconcile objective moral values with atheism are not very successful.

Christian Objectivist Ethics

Our moral awareness must be something above and beyond what we actually do. It must be something real that is pressing on us, though we often try to forget it. We, from the inside, know there is a moral imperative. We cannot follow it, but God comes to us and from the inside makes us what we ought to be.

Many people think Christian Ethics is a list of rules found in the Church or the Bible. It is true there are commandments but that is not the basis of Christian Ethics. Lists of rules cannot define true Goodness because it is deeply personal. Personal relationships (e.g. friendship) cannot be defined by a list of rules about how we relate to one another. If we are friends with someone and then try to frame rules and obligations to define our friendship, we will fail and spoil the friendship. Hence in the Biblical revelation, God only adds laws because we are already sinners[11] and we live by faith not by works of the law.[12]

Christian goodness means being `godly’ i.e. having the character of Christ in relationships with God, our fellow humans, and the natural world.

This character of God is shown not in rules but in a Person (Jesus Christ). In Christ, God self-sacrificially suffers for our sins giving us forgiveness so as to lift us up to where we belong eternally. That is the meaning of `love’ and it sums up true goodness and greatness.

The cross of Jesus has a better effect on us than 1,000 rules and commandments. By the grace of God we are called to love as He loves us.

This goodness of God shines through all of nature. So all peoples (of whatever culture) intuitively recognise there is something real called `goodness’. This is so even if they don’t know where it has come from.

We often reject that goodness and so have a bad conscience and feel guilty. However Christ’s cross brings us forgiveness and new life.

In this imperfect world we need guidance in the form of commandments, so God gives us the Ten Commandments, the Sermon on the Mount and much other teaching.

Indeed, when those who do not have the ‘teaching’ [i.e. The Ten Commandments etc], do by nature things required by the ‘teaching’, they are a law for themselves, even though they do not have the ‘teaching’, since they show that the requirements of the ‘teaching’ are written on their hearts, their consciences also bearing witness, and their thoughts now accusing, now even defending them.[13]

Modernism and Postmodernism

First what does the term Modernism mean?

It had/has many differing forms, mainly expressing beliefs about science and/or politics and the meaning of human history. It was/is the quest for certainty without reference to religion. Modernism that puts all its faith in science (naturalism is this kind of modernism) usually holds that objective scientific method can be applied across the board in the soft sciences such as sociology and psychology. Since the physical sciences cannot tell us what ought to be the case, only what is the case, it finds it difficult to place morality in its scheme. A scientific approach, such as that attempted by Henry Haslam[14] can observe and record the moral sentiments that people hold, and it can see how the moral sense engages with different aspects of the human personality, but it cannot make a moral judgement about the relative merits of different moral principles. The real question is whether or not our moral sense is sensing anything real – something non-physical that is pressing upon us, telling us what we ought to be doing. Haslam concludes from his survey that the (subjective) moral sentiments in the human personality only make sense if objective values exist: the most reasonable interpretation of the scientific evidence is that such values are real, although this cannot be proved by scientific means. Haslam also comments on the reluctance of mainstream psychology to recognise the moral sense as an important part of the human personality. As an example, he observes that The Oxford Companion to the Mind has no articles on conscience, ethics, guilt, morality, temptation or values. But how can one understand human mind without considering these concepts? Haslam goes on to comment about mainstream psychologists: ‘Ethics has a place in their own practical workaday lives, but, as theorists, they construct a model of the human personality in which ethical considerations have no part.’

I am reminded of those professionals who advocate mere physical forces to explain different aspects of humanity's behaviour, beliefs and thoughts. They always make the exception of themselves! They assume that their own lectures, TV programs, and books were not composed as a result of the previous distribution of particles in the universe, but as a result of their own reasoning that was free to make moral judgements and pronouncements as to how they believe society (say) should act towards all the other people who can't help do what they do and believe what they believe.

In August 1999 I went to Cornwall to see the total eclipse of the sun. Astronomers using mathematics had correctly predicted this event many decades before. We can understand the behaviour of the stars and our moon by scientific laws. Modernism usually holds that all events in the universe (including my thoughts and efforts to write this book) could be predicted in much the same sort of way. Laplace, the early nineteenth-century French scientist whose views were similar to those of the modern-day naturalists, wrote:

An intelligence that knew at one moment of time all the forces by which nature is animated and the respective positions of the entities which compose it...would embrace in the same formula the movements of the largest bodies in the universe and those of the lightest atoms; nothing would be uncertain for it, and the future, like the past, would be present to its eyes.

If this were true then it would have been possible, hundreds of years before the event, to predict the writing of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. So, in principle, from this prediction it would have been possible to actually write the music before Beethoven. (If it had been so composed, Beethoven would not have needed to compose it because it would already have been composed. So the prediction would have been wrong after all!). If the prediction had been possible it would have been possible to predict the prediction and so on back to the beginning of the world and beyond perhaps! So there must be more to Beethoven's genius than scientifically analysable physical particles, laws and forces. Again, naturalism fails.

Others, holding to modernism, thought they could derive certainty from history and politics. Marxism was one political example of modernism. It held that certain economic, class and political laws could be applied to human history giving certainty as to its direction which would lead to a utopian communism.

Problems with Modernism

Political theories broke down. Marxism simply proved itself wrong.

Instead of science solving all mysteries, its advance revealed, and continues to reveal, more and more mysteries undreamed of by an earlier generation. So it was seen that it couldn't answer the ultimate questions after all.

And then there is the perceived harmful influence of modernism giving us wars, pollution etc. There is also its perceived depersonalising tendencies, not being able to come to terms with our personal self-awareness and spiritual longings. Its optimistic belief in progress has been undermined by recent human history.

We can call all these different ways of understanding history as ‘Big Stories’ or ‘Meta narratives’.

So if the Meta narratives of Modernism fail should we return to the big stories or Meta narratives of religion? Postmodernism says No!

Jean-Francois Lyotard (French Canadian), in 1979, defined Postmodernism as `incredulity towards (all) Meta-narratives’. Neither science nor politics nor religion give us universal truth. There is no `big story’ – there is no universal truth. However don’t worry – just pick and mix what makes you feel good. Don’t consider the big questions. Just enjoy your own little world. Mix together ancient and modern images, sayings and teachings. Don’t ask yourself what they mean – meaning does not matter – there is no universal meaning. If possible enjoy both religious services and speeches by atheists. If they appear to contradict one another – don’t worry – its how they make you feel that matters. Just don’t get bored.

Postmodernism is a ‘care-free’ attitude to life, coming from the conviction that there are no universal truths.

If there are no truths then there can be no moral judgement that this behaviour, custom, music or art is better than that behaviour, custom, music or art.

In one of my ‘Philosophy of Science and Theology’ Adult Education classes in a UK university I gave the students (adults) two statements and asked for their comments.

1. Water Boils at 100⁰ C at sea level whatever the local culture says.

One student disagreed. She held that cultures decide ‘truth’ - i.e. truth is subjective not objective.

2. It is morally wrong to kill new-born babies just because they are twins, whatever the local culture says.

Three disagreed. Their Teacher Training Colleges and Sociology classes had taught them that cultures must make their own morality - i.e. morality is subjective not objective.

But can the postmodern conviction remain care-free? In a peaceful prosperous environment when life is running smoothly maybe it can. But when troubles and tragedies abound?

So modernism depersonalises us and postmodernism stops us making judgements about right/wrong and beautiful/ugly.

Mary Warnock writes about the prevailing cynicism in our society, which 'may have a creeping and insidious effect, and especially so in schools, where teachers may find themselves bewildered by their own half-articulate principles that they must not  be dogmatic, they must not presume that there are any disinterested or unbiased arguments, and above all they must not be "judgmental".’[15] So how can children be taught the difference between right and wrong and how will they learn to appreciate real beauty and differentiate it from sheer ugliness?

Our society seems to be dominated by the contradictory beliefs of modernism and postmodernism at the same time. A book discussing the appalling results of this in our society is After Progress by the President of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, Professor Anthony O'Hear.

However, postmodernism has a major intellectual difficulty. ‘There is no absolute truth’ is itself a statement that claims to be absolutely true! Postmodernism therefore refutes itself and, like naturalism and modernism, cannot be true!

Is there a reasonable alternative to these views of secularists? I believe there is and it is Christianity with its roots in the Judaism of the Hebrew scriptures. But even if we accept this, will it give us a sure guide? Well, yes and no. It tells us of an objective reality – the source and meaning of the natural world and all goodness. However it deliberately leaves room for human free will and rational discussion.

Lord Hailsham:

It is the objective validity of morality as proclaimed by the sages of all nations which explains and justifies the perpetual tension, the endless dialogue, between individuals and minorities on the one hand and the State on the other, between freedom and authority, between liberty and law.  In other words it is the free will and the rationality of the individual, the dignity of the individual, in tension with moral responsibility of the individual which explains and justifies the writings of the political authors, the debates in Parliament, the regulations made by Ministers, the treaties concluded between sovereign communities, the demand for freedom, and the necessity for law which constitute the history of the West, and ultimately of all mankind.  The fact that these things are not measurable, calculable, or verifiable explains much, perhaps all, of the argument.  But the fact that they remain objective realities proves that the argument is not about nothing.  A law which does not appeal to the rational in man is no better than a stick or a carrot applied to a donkey, by whomsoever or whatsoever it is passed.[16]

So we soon go on to explore some reasons for believing that the claim that we should turn to the Bible is reasonable.

But first the case against the Church written so eloquently by our erstwhile ally in this book, Lord Hailsham:

At first sight, the history of the Christian Church is not a matter of edification.  At the most favourable level, the divine light of the Gospels and the epistles seems to have given place in a matter of a generation or two on the one hand to endless squabbles about unverifiable points of doctrine which continue to divide Christians to this day, and on the other to a mass of pious fables and superstitions, bogus miracles and fake relics, all or most commercially exploited, which have persisted almost continuously from sub-apostolic times, to the bon-dieuserie of shops and shrines which can still be seen all over the Christian world.  But this is the least part of it.  The cruelties and persecutions, the civil wars and blind hatreds, the autos da fe, the burnings and rackings, the hangings, the drawings and quarterings, the anathemas, the inquisitions, the pogroms, the crusades, the sackings, the holy wars, are not, one would think, good advertisements for the divine society, inspired by the Holy Spirit, against whom we are expressly told the gates of hell shall not prevail, that it is to guard the keys, that its judgements are to be endorsed by the heavenly courts, …..  and even if one forgets all this, the amount of sheer and self-contradictory nonsense which emerges from clergy and ecclesiastically-minded laymen on the radio and television when they talk about secular and political subjects is enough to damp the ardour of the most spiritually-minded of devotees.  It is not enough to say that the same can be said of the history of most other organised bodies of human beings whether secular or religious, Jews, Moslems, Hindus, Buddhists, Communists, Fascists, and so on.  The Church claims to be something special, and it is not enough for it to excuse its appalling record by saying that it shares human faults with other human organisations.  It is there to redeem humanity and not to share its failings.[17]

Remembering this is a quotation from his book describing how he turned from atheism to Christianity, let us remind ourselves of his words quoted at the beginning of this book. It comes from a much fuller passage as follows:

It remains true, in my experience at least, of the events of my lifetime that the moment a society consciously begins to reject Christianity and its values and, for whatever reason, begins pursuing the opposite, the most startlingly evil practices appear once more to emerge from dark corners and flap their hideous wings abroad. How much of what is now taken for granted in what is good in society owes its original inspiration to a consciously Christian motivation, even where the work has been subsequently overtaken, and taken over, by the apparatus of the modern state.  Wilberforce was motivated by Christianity when he set about his campaign to end the slave trade.  Florence Nightingale's original motivation was Christian, and the source of her expertise when she first sought to revive the almost forgotten craft of nursing was a teaching order of nuns where the art had been kept alive.  Our whole system of education, public and private, our network of hospitals, our social security system itself, have each a clear origin in Christian foundations and, whatever can be said against much of the theorisation, and much of the practice which they embodied, the motivation which underlay them was good and, in origin at least, the practice was disinterested.  The Christians have been pioneers of good work throughout their history.  They have been the originators, and secular society has largely caught up with their efforts, made good their deficiencies of scale, and corrected their faults.  No one who has studied the ancient world can get very far without being horror-struck with the hurricane of libido, lust, cruelty and greed of which Jung spoke, and those of us who have an increasing contact with the post-Christian society in which we live are disturbed to find the very same features reproducing themselves under widely differing political systems, in almost exact proportions as the spirit ceases to be cultivated, and the life of the spirit lived. [18]

How do we reconcile these passages?  The first is about the history of a Christian Church where spiritual authority is misused. The second is about Christianity as revealed in the Bible. What does he say about the Bible itself?

Looking back on my life I find that the Bible in its coherent entirety has been one of the main influences on my character and conduct.  I believe this is true of everyone who has come into contact with it and has not deliberately chosen to disregard its message.  It is impossible to read the Bible out loud week after week without finding the immense power and vitality of almost every part of it.  It seems to come to life and movement on your lips like a living thing. It almost wriggles, like a fish on the line, like a snake in the hand.  It is not a dead word, but a living word....  It is when it is treated as a living source of inspiration and enlightenment that it does its work.  It can only be used in conjunction with the life of meditation, self-criticism and prayer.  But so used there is nothing like it, and there is no substitute for it.[19]

I add here that if one wants to find a book that is as clear as any in its denunciation of the exploitation of spiritual power and abuse of spiritual teachings (albeit God given spiritual authority and teaching), there is none better than the Bible itself.[20]

The world does not need more religion - it has plenty already. But it does need God as revealed in Christ, who loved his enemies, prayed for those who persecuted Him, suffered human death to take away the sins of the world and reconcile us to Himself.

In His resurrection from the dead, He promised to come again in power to judge the world in righteousness and save those who humbly look to Him.

Rather than leading an army and killing people, He suffered for the sins of the world although he had done no violence, nor was any deceit in his mouth.[21]

 If He had promised us a perfect Church or a permanently strong Church then we would have reason to lose faith in His Word. On the contrary Jesus tells us:

"Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven.  Many will say to me on that day, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and in your name drive out demons and perform many miracles?' Then I will tell them plainly, 'I never knew you. Away from me, you evildoers!'" [22]

Howard Taylor.