The End of Christianity (62 page)

11
. For example see Ronald Inglehart, Roberto Foa, Christopher Peterson, and Christian Welzel, “Development, Freedom, and Rising Happiness,”
Perspectives on Psychological Science
3, no. 4 (2008): 264–85. When combined with the evidence surveyed in the previous note, this study establishes there is no evidence rising atheism leads to any decline in morality or happiness.

12
. This is inherently obvious to any informed observer of modern Christianity (and its history), as well as all other religions (which employ the exact same threats and promises to ground their own moralities), but for Christianity this is well enough proven in
The Christian Delusion
by several chapters collectively: David Eller, “The Cultures of Christianities,” 25–46, and “Christianity Does Not Provide the Basis for Morality,” 347–67; John Loftus, “What We've Got Here Is a Failure to Communicate,” 181–206; and Hector Avalos, “Yahweh Is a Moral Monster,” 209–36 (with Richard Carrier, “The Will of God” at
http://sites.google.com/site/thechristiandelusion/Home/the-will-of-god
).

13
. Hector Avalos, “Atheism Was Not the Cause of the Holocaust,” in
The Christian Delusion
, ed. John Loftus (Amherst, NY: Prometheus: 2010), 368–95.

14
. See, for example: Monika Keller, Wolfgang Edelstein, Christine Schmid, Fuxi Fang, Ge Fang, “Reasoning about Responsibilities and Obligations in Close Relationships: A Comparison across Two Cultures,”
Developmental Psychology
34, no. 4 (1998): 731–41; Nancy Eisenberg, Klaus Boehnke, Petra Schuler, Rainer K. Silbereisen, “The Development of Prosocial Behavior and Cognitions in German Children,”
Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology
16, no. 1 (March 1985): 69–82; and discussion and sources in Sinnott-Armstrong,
Moral Psychology
, 3:297–370. That hell-centered moral theories actually correlate with societal dysfunction, see Gary Jensen, “Religious Cosmologies and Homicide Rates among Nations: A Closer Look,”
Journal of Religion and Society
8 (2006):
http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2006/2006–7.html
.

15
. This is amusingly but accurately lampooned by “The Gospel of Supply Side Jesus” in Al Franken,
Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right
(New York: Dutton, 2003), 313–23 (cf. 213–16). Some prominent devout Christians (including both Catholics and Evangelicals) have documented the same facts with sadness: Ronald Sider,
The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience
(Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2005); Garry Wills,
What Jesus Meant
(New York: Viking, 2006); Gregory Boyd,
The Myth of a Christian Nation
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2007); and Robin Meyers,
Why the Christian Right Is Wrong
(San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2008).

16
. Other respects in which Christianity harms moral progress include its central doctrines that humans are innately sinful and thus incapable of their own moral reform (so nothing they do of themselves will make them better people) and that through a mere faith claim they will be forgiven all crimes no matter what they do (thus negating all the moral incentives Christianity is supposed to have provided in the first place): see Evan Fales, “Satanic Verses: Moral Chaos in Holy Writ,” in
Divine Evil? The Moral Character of the God of Abraham
, ed. Michael Bergmann, Michael Murray, and Michael Rea (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).

17
. David Hume, “Of Morals,” in
Treatise on Human Nature
(1739), § 3.1.1, where he only declares that “vulgar systems of morality” have failed to establish that connection, not that no system ever could; to the contrary, in the very next section he argues he
can
—so, even if you believe his specific moral theory is incorrect, it's still wrong to claim he declared a reduction of values to facts to be
impossible.

18
. First extensively demonstrated by Immanual Kant in his
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
(1785); subsequently modernized by Philippa Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” reproduced in
Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches
, ed. Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997) 313–22; and others. See Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 331–35.

19
. Immanuel Kant,
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
or
Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten
(1785) § 3.4 (Kant's arrangement) or § 4.454 (Royal Prussian Academy edition), 112–13 in Kant's 2nd German ed. (1786), or 122 of H.J. Paton's English translation (New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1964); see also Robert Wolff,
The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals
(New York: Harper & Row, 1973), 211 (§ 3.5). Psychology has since verified and revised Kant's claim considerably: see Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 313–27.

20
. Hence one might attempt to patch up Kant by proposing other reasons to obey
K
(e.g., such as from game theory: that it's contrary to your interest to promote, by example, actions the universalization of which would bring you to harm), but if that is factually true and sufficiently motivating, then it's simply
M;
and insofar as it
isn't
true or sufficiently motivating, then it's overridden by
M.
Either way, we're left with
M
as the only relevantly true moral system. Similarly, in Philippa Foot,
Natural Goodness
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), she revised her earlier work by proposing instead that a system of hypothetical moral imperatives follows from desiring most to be a rational person (thus allowing irrational people could never be persuaded), but just as with Kant, even that is still at root a hypothetical imperative (see note 36 below).

21
. This is effectively argued by Stephen Darwall in his own demonstration that Kant's categorical imperatives either necessarily reduce to hypothetical imperatives (as I have also shown) or else have no motivating truth value: Stephen Darwall, “Kantian Practical Reason Defended,”
Ethics
96, no. 1 (October 1985): 89–99. From the principles assumed therein it's obvious that the same reduction can be performed on
any
moral system. Conversely, through a covering law, all true hypothetical imperatives reduce to a categorical: R. S. Downie, “The Hypothetical Imperative,”
Mind
93 (October 1984): 481–90. But that categorical is tautologically also a hypothetical (that we be rational and informed: see note 36).

22
. Note that any such proposed
M
-defeating alternative need not be verified
empirically
, it need only be verified as true by any means that's sufficiently motivating (thus I am not presupposing only empirically verified imperatives can warrant our overriding obedience—although I seriously doubt anything else can, it's not necessary to assume it can't).

23
. Bernard Williams, “Internal and External Reasons,” in
Moral Discourse and Practice
, 363–71. Supported in
Moral Psychology
, 3:173–90 and 217–25. In effect, externalism reduces to descriptive, not prescriptive ethics.

24
. For the formal proof of this, see Argument 1 in the appendix to this chapter (on p. 359). See also following note.

25
. For the formal proof of this, see Argument 2 in the appendix to this chapter (on pp. 360–61). See also the upcoming section of this chapter, “That There Are Moral Facts to Discover.”

26
. Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 291–348; Drescher,
Good and Real
, 273–320; also Casebeer,
Natural Ethical Facts
; Flanagan,
Really Hard Problem
; and now most recently Harris,
Moral Landscape.
As my statement implies, a virtue theory of ethics has the most scientific support (see, for example,
Moral Psychology
1:209–67, 2:207–11; modern social contract theory still explains the evolution of most human moral reasoning, e.g.,
Moral Psychology
, 1:53–119, 143–64, but such reasoning still assumes the primacy of associated virtues), and is thus what I defend elsewhere, but virtue theories still reduce to a system of foundational imperatives (e.g., “you ought to develop and cultivate the virtue of compassion”), from which follows a system of occasional imperatives (e.g., “if you are compassionate, then you ought to
x
in circumstance z”); hence in
Sense and Goodness
, I present a unification of teleological, deontological, and virtue ethics (see 345–48), and I further unify cognitivism and intuitionism (see 339–41, with 178–80,192). A theory that can unify all competing theories under one umbrella (and thereby explain and justify them all) has a strong claim to being true.

27
. That moral truth must derive from rationally informed motives, not the actual motives of the moment, is demonstrated in Stephen Darwall, “Reasons, Motives, and the Demands of Morality: An Introduction,” in
Moral Discourse and Practice
, 305–12. I give an important example of this in Loftus,
The Christian Delusion
, 100–101.

28
. In the absence of perfect knowledge, approximate knowledge is optimal, a fact we accept in all domains (e.g., we needn't know exactly what's in an atom to make successful predictions from approximately what's in an atom; for a broad defense of this principle, see Kees van Deemter,
Not Exactly: In Praise of Vagueness
[New York: Oxford University Press: 2010]). Thus if we do not know (because due to our limitations we cannot know) what the best thing is, we can still know what the best thing is
so far as we know
, which will always be better than any other thing we know (see discussion in Sinnott-Armstrong,
Moral Psychology
, 1:1–46). It may still be the case that something is better, and thus we will be obligated to find out what that is as soon as we are able, but when we are unable, we are not obligated (see note 34).

29
. See Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 316–24, 341–42.

30
. This is not the only unsettling conclusion game theory entails a rationally informed slavemaster must live with. The complete analysis (for all morally asymmetrical relationships) is provided in Drescher,
Good and Real
, 273–320. See also Ken Binmore,
Game Theory and the Social Contract
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press: Vol. 1, 1994; Vol. 2,1998).

31
. Many examples of this, even in the very field of moral psychology, are discussed in contributions to the volumes of Sinnott-Armstrong's
Moral Psychology
, and examples in the study of differential happiness are even more numerous: besides the many references provided in Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 322–23, including most notably (but not only) Martin Seligman,
Authentic Happiness
(New York: Free Press, 2002), more recent summaries include: Daniel Pink,
Drive: The Surprising Truth about What Motivates Us
(New York: Riverhead, 2009); Sonja Lyubomirsky,
The How of Happiness
(New York: Penguin, 2008); Eric Werner,
The Geography of Bliss
(New York: Twelve, 2008); Eduardo Punset,
The Happiness Trip
(White River Junction, VT: Sciencewriters, 2007); Daniel Todd Gilbert,
Stumbling on Happiness
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2006); and P. R. G. Layard,
Happiness: Lessons from a New Science
(New York: Penguin, 2005); and an important
earlier
example I had missed is Martha Nussbaum and Amartya Sen, eds.,
The Quality of Life
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

32
. Harris,
Moral Landscape
, deals with both issues deftly and in detail (how scientific methods can answer these questions, and why unknowable truths are still nevertheless true facts of the world).

33
. Of course someone may ask what to do if there are conflicting moral imperatives: well, either (a) one will be the more imperative and thus supersede or (b) neither will be the more imperative, in which case there will be no truth of the matter as to which should be preferred (i.e., doing either will be exactly as moral as doing the other—though still to the exclusion of everything else). If any sound and valid argument can be made to the contrary of (b), then that argument necessarily entails that (a) (i.e., that one is the more imperative than the other, and therefore (b) is not true).

34
. Things we want that are unachievable are of course out of account precisely because there is no action we can take to obtain them and therefore no true imperative fact upon us in the matter. But this distinction can only pertain to the absolutely unachievable (e.g., stopping a bullet with your hand), not the contingently unachievable (e.g., failing to take cover when cover was obtainable in principle). Free will is thus not an issue. The distinction is between defects of calculation and defects beyond any calculation to overcome (which are different states, regardless of free will)-because (a) improved calculation can correct the one but not the other, and (b) the one is a causal product of the character we wish to evaluate while the other is not (see Carrier,
Sense and Goodness
, 97–117).

35
. Given the formal proofs in the appendix, this entails moral facts are such that: “
S
morally ought to do
A
” means “If
S
's desires were rationally deduced from as many facts as
S
can reasonably obtain at that time (about
S
's preferences and the outcomes of
S
's available alternatives in
S
's circumstances), then
S
would prefer
A
over all the available alternative courses of action (at that time and in those circumstances).” This definition does mean willful irrationality is immoral, but not irrationality born of (a) unalterable mental defect (because unachievable ends can never be imperative for
S
—see note 34) or (b) inaccessible information (because then
S
has properly acted on all information reasonably obtainable at that time—see note 28). Nevertheless, though irrationality
itself
can be morally excusable on either case, irrational
actions
can still be morally blameworthy even for such people, insofar as they know what they are doing is nevertheless wrong, or they had reasonable access to facts that would have informed them that it was (even given their irrationality), as then the moral end (and knowledge thereof) was obtainable and still neglected (hence a failure of calculation, not of calculability). Nevertheless, excusability exists in principle, so we can sometimes acknowledge people as “acting morally” yet who could have done better had they known better (see note 28 on optimal moral knowledge). Conversely, we have greater emotional and institutional interest in actions by others whose generalization or continuance can put ourselves or people we care about at risk of harm (and thus we often voice “moral outrage” at only such acts), but that certain moral failures are of greater concern to us does not mean acts of lesser concern are not also moral failures. A similar logic makes supererogatory acts possible (acts that are not morally obligatory but nevertheless praiseworthy). Praise and blame thus only report what we like and dislike, not necessarily what's right and wrong (although there will still be a right and wrong about what to praise or blame).