#relative morality

[uboat53]

SHORT RANT (TM) time, I've been thinking again.

INTRODUCTION

As an atheist who isn't shy about it who grew up in a very rural, conservative, religious area, I've had a lot of moral discussions with white conservative Christians and, pretty much universally, they get stuck on one aspect of morality. Thinking about it recently, particularly in light of the way that MAGA has taken the mask off of a lot of white conservative Christianity in general, it's seems like it's actually their morality that has this specific problem, not mine.

(NOTE: I should note that there are plenty of people who consider themselves white, conservative, and Christian who do not match the description I'm about to give and, to those people, I apologize, but you haven't been the majority of this particular group for a long time. I played around with other descriptors like "white Evangelical Christians", but there's really no easy way to describe this particular group in a way that doesn't rope in a smaller group of people who don't share the traits I'm complaining about. As I said, I apologize for that and I wish you luck in claiming/reclaiming the majority and/or leadership of this particular group.)

ABSOLUTE VS. RELATIVE MORALITY

Okay, every single atheist can pretty much recite this argument verbatim because we've heard it so many times. Essentially it goes like this, "there can be no firm basis for morality without God because, without a single, objective source for morality, all morality is relative."

For the moment, we're going to leave aside my usual counter-arguments about how none of us heard it directly from God so we're all relying on a human interpreter who supposedly wrote it down and told others, how we have no way of knowing which God/religious system is actually true because all of them resist definitive proof, and how we can't even actually prove that any God or metaphysical phenomenon actually exists, so the whole thing might just be some guys' personal moral system which makes it not only just as relative as a non-religious moral system, it makes it more limited because you're preventing other people from contributing.

All of that does actually need to be considered in a real argument, but I'm going to move past it now because my actual point here doesn't even rely on refuting the initial argument directly. The argument I'm making here is that their own behavior proves their arguments wrong!

HOW CONSERVATIVE CHRISTIANS BEHAVE

Here's the thing, I reject the idea that the God these people believe in provides an objective an universal morality not just because I don't believe in that God and don't trust the people purporting to tell me what He says, but also because white conservative Christians themselves don't act like these are objective and universal moral rules!

Both the research into moral foundations and just observing the MAGA political movement, whose purported basis is conservative Christianity and whose ranks are filled with self-described white conservative Christians, makes it fairly easy to see that white conservative Christians apply a very different moral lens to people outside their own group than they do to people within it.

Just look, for example, about how white conservative Christians view people of other races. White conservative Christians consistently show higher than average hostility to African-Americans. It's a pattern we see over and over again where white conservative Christians consistently show more negative views toward out-groups than they do toward their own in-group.

And it’s not even just directed at outsiders. Look at the case after case where white conservative churches have sheltered child abusers and rapists, sacrificing their own women and children to maintain the reputation of powerful men who offend again and again and again. I only linked two here, but I was able to find them with a simple search on DuckDuckGo in a few seconds, there are so many, many more if you care to dive in.

This is supposed to be objective, consistent, and universal morality? This group that we consistently see espousing the sacred and inviolable nature of the family while cheering on our government's family separation policies? The group that consistently calls for harsh discipline and punishment for others but forgiveness when their own are charged with a crime? The same group that condemns Bill Clinton's sexual assaults and ignores Donald Trump's? Look, my moral system may come from myself rather than some all-powerful, all-knowing entity, but at least my moral system applies universally.

Because that's the thing, white conservative Christians don't act like they have a moral system with objective and universal rules, they act like they have a moral system that lets them be cruel to others while always letting them off the hook. It hardly seems like their moral rules are objective and unshakeable truths of the universe when they're constantly bending them for the people they happen to like.

CONCLUSION

Look, I'm not going to claim my moral system is objective, I live in a universe without anything metaphysical that could possibly make such a system a fundamental fact of reality, but at least my system is consistent and universal.

White conservative Christians clearly have developed a moral system that doesn't apply to everyone, has constantly shifting rules, and no longer seems to even pretend to have any basis in anything but their own tortured interpretations. At this point, if there are not rules that actually apply to or limit their own actions, can we even say they really have a moral system at all?

[lovelyyishe]

- C.S Lewis

[tomfooleryprime]

Starfleet’s moral relativism problem: is it ever okay to condemn another culture?

Central to all of Star Trek has always been the Prime Directive – that set of rules that governs our intrepid space explorers from Captain Kirk to Captain Janeway and everyone in between. Poor Captain Archer existed in a time before, and I’ve often pitied him for having to shoulder the burden of having to make some really questionable ethical decisions without having a Prime Directive to shift the blame to when it turned out his decisions really sucked.

At its core, the Prime Directive dictates that Starfleet cannot interfere with the internal affairs or development of alien civilizations. Some of the best Star Trek episodes involved our heroes clashing with the ethics of a rigid application of this doctrine, but there was always one implication of the Prime Directive that bothered me – the idea that we shouldn’t judge other cultures through the lens of our own because who’s to say what’s right and what’s wrong?

This philosophy of moral relativism argues that there are no universal moral standards – sentient beings are completely at the mercy of their own societies to impart a code of moral behavior and whatever it comes up with is “good enough.” There may be common themes among many societies in terms of morals – most seem to agree it is wrong to commit murder, for instance – but ultimately, what is “right” according one society is not guaranteed to be “right” for another. And let’s be honest with ourselves – even with the topic of murder, we still fiercely debate exceptions to the “no murder” rule such as war, capital punishment, or self-defense, not to mention we have heated arguments over what even constitutes murder when we discuss issues of abortion or animal agriculture.

Our own society provides an incredible patchwork of thorny moral and ethical issues that we still have yet to decide upon. We debate things like abortion, torture, slavery, free speech, and more. We probe these issues by asking ourselves questions like, “At what point does life truly begin?” and “Is torture ever justified?” We explore them by posing philosophical experiments like the Trolley Problem and asking ourselves whether it is morally acceptable to kill one person to save the lives of two or more others.

But at the end of the day, might (in terms of numbers) makes right in moral relativism. While I don’t subscribe to that theory, there are times when our beloved Star Trek characters do under the guise of defending the Prime Directive. On the surface, it sounds very peaceful and anti-colonialist. After centuries of watching many empires from the Romans to the British set fire to cultural diversity – and given arguments that many Western nations continue to do this today, just without being quite as invadey – this sounds like a nice change of pace. Live and let live. But this also creates a mind-boggling acceptance of suffering, genocide, exploitation, and oppression within Starfleet.

One of the first chronological examples of the faults of moral relativism is found in the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, “Cogenitor.” Archer and his crew meet an affable, three-gendered species called the Vissians, but we quickly learn that only two of the society’s genders have any real rights. The third gender is referred to as a “cogenitor,” and Trip Tucker ends up on Captain Archer’s shit list for teaching it how to read and putting ideas in its head. When the cogenitor later begs for asylum, Archer refuses. It gets worse – the cogenitor is sent back to the people who basically treat it as chattel and commits suicide, and Archer points out that Tucker’s interference led to its death and will mean the Vissian couple will probably never get to have a child. No winners in this ethical dilemma of an episode, only losers. Until you remember none of this would have happened in the first place if the Vissians had just treated the cogenitors like people.

In the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Angel One,” we encounter the cringe worthy society of Angel I, a planet of misandric women who oppress men. We all got a few giggles at the ladies of Enterprise-D being suddenly held in higher regard than their male counterparts, but things get very dark when Beata, the Elected One of Angel I, decides some dudes need to die for spreading heretical teachings that imply men are equal to women. We get a sort of cop out solution in which Beata has a change of heart and decides to banish rather than execute these “heretics” after Riker makes an impassioned speech about basic rights, but Riker was more than willing to let things go bad if need be, because, “The Prime Directive” and “Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean it’s wrong.” In another Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, “Symbiosis,” we’re introduced to the Ornarans and Brekkians and we find out that after an ancient plague, the Brekkians started peddling an expensive and addictive drug to the Ornarans and calling it a “treatment.” There’s no plague anymore – the Brekkians just control the Ornarans through their drug addiction. Dr. Crusher finds a way to synthesize this drug and offers to help wean the Ornarans off their addiction, but what does Captain Picard do? He tells her to mind her own damn business because it’s not the Federation’s place to tell the Brekkians that it’s wrong to deceive and enslave the Ornarans through an addictive drug. And this is the most uncomfortable part of moral relativism – who gets to draw the line and where do we draw it? On one end of the spectrum, we have moral relativism which claims anything goes – societies should be able to torture animals, employ the slave labor of children, and oppress women as they see fit – just as long as enough people agree it isn’t wrong to do so. At the other end of the spectrum sits moral absolutism, a theoretical construct that would result in a perfectly unified, homogenous culture, but one that would also strip away many facets of culture that lead to human diversity.

If Star Trek is supposed to serve as a guide for how we might become a more progressive society, it does a terrible job a lot of the time. Now, there are many instances of our protagonists saying “to hell with the Prime Directive!” and taking what most of us would agree is the more morally praiseworthy route. But there’s no rhyme or reason to it. Just look at how they treat the Borg. Why is it okay to let some societies oppress men or drug another species into submission but it’s not okay to let the Borg assimilate the galaxy in their ultimate quest for perfection?

I’m going to guess the answer is that until the Borg decided to stick nanoprobes in a Federation citizen, the cheerful little robots simply weren’t the Federation’s problem. We might argue that the Prime Directive certainly has provisions for self-defense — how ridiculous would it be to consent to being annihilated or assimilated just because the Federation is afraid of offending another culture and refuses to draw a line in the sand where right stops and wrong starts? The slope gets slippery here though.

We could say this mirrors the concept of large Western nations trying to police the rest of the world and impose their customs on other societies - but how many of us watched documentaries about the Holocaust in school and wondered why the hell previous generations allowed shit to get that bad? How many of us continue to stand by while people in Iraq and Syria live under the threat of the Islamic State? I doubt most people even realize what’s going on in the Philippines or Venezuela right now because hey, “Not my country, not my problem.”

It is a huge gray area for what constitutes forcing certain customs on unwilling societies and trying to genuinely help people, but if we can’t agree that Nazi extermination camps and religiously motivated beheadings are bad and need to stop (even when they aren’t happening to us personally), I’ll be surprised if we ever make to the 24th century. It makes me wonder how exactly Earth “solved its problems” and created a utopian society in the first place with this attitude of moral relativism.

Let’s face it – we have no shortage of modern travesties that sound ridiculous in the context of this philosophical approach. The Chechen Republic has been reportedly rounding up gay men and torturing them in recent months, and moral relativism would have us shrug and say, “But their culture says homosexuality is a sin.”

Bacha bazi, a practice where adolescent boys are groomed for sexual relationships with older men, remains pervasive in many Pashtun societies. Moral relativism would tell us that we shouldn’t condemn predatory pedophilia because to do so would mean unfairly imposing our Western beliefs on their culture.

I could keep going on, but this post is already long enough. The bottom line is, all too often, Star Trek lazily glosses over a lot of moral and ethical dilemmas by using the argument, “Who are we to judge?” June is Pride Month, and in honor of LGBT individuals all over the globe who all too often have less rights than their cisgender heterosexual counterparts, maybe we should avoid looking to the “progressive” future of Star Trek and instead ask the question, “Who are we to not judge?”

While I can’t resolve one of the greatest philosophical questions ever devised, someone once gave me a great piece of advice that I think applies to this idea of moral relativism: no person’s belief is inherently worthy of respect, but every person is.

[paramorin]

No I didn't think it was about justice :). "To forgive and rehabilitate" may just not be a choice in his case, but to love still could. A friend of mine keeps thinking Warrick a traitor of humanity, so to speak, when he loves Toreth (like in "Helen"); I keep admiring him for the continued surplus of kindness. Sorry for naive questions. I actually think Warrick will run out eventually, because he's not superhuman. Scary thought.

Except I think it is exactly the same thing. If we can’t see the complexity of humans, we dehumanize them. Toreth causes a lot of pain, and some joy.

Until “First against the wall”, he is a cog in a bigger machine. Many of us would avoid doing his job, but he has few actual alternatives, none of them serving a cause that could be defined “good” (A bodyguard to corporates? A sab?)

There could be a case for refusing to do “the dirty work” - if we all objected, no one would - but more often than not, most people think this sort of thing “must be done”, but wouldn’t want to get their own hands dirty. (For example, think of the many people who wouldn’t work in a slaughterhouse, but aren’t vegetarian).

Starting “First against the wall”, I can see a case for Toreth as holding personal responsibility - but even then, it could be argued that he tried to make the system more humane (for his own reasons, admittedly, and yet).

Yes, he breaks his own P&P - but higher ups approve of it. And according to B-C, many others find ways around it.

The thing is, for me, the real heart of the matter is - in real life, people who led much worse things, who killed millions, who led wars and genocides - were still loved by family and partners. Still showed kindness, still had a soft side.

Does it mean we have to forgive them? Of course not.

Does it mean they shouldn’t pay a price? Of course they should.

What it means, though, is that to understand evil, we must accept it is not outside of ourselves. That we can’t just shun it by killing or imprisoning or just not talking to people who do evil. That the only way to overcome evil is education, and courage, and compassion. Standing up for the persecuted, seeing the humanity of others, and supporting the change we want to see in the world.

Who has responsibility over atrocities? Those who plan them, those who preform them, those who quietly support them, but also those who say nothing, who do nothing.

In a totalitarian regime, saying something is a big risk. Tarin takes that risk. Warrick avoids it. Were Warrick to talk Toreth into moving to the private sector, would that serve any purpose? I&I would still be running - Warrick would have an easier feeling about his partner, but would also have less protection from his own rash actions. 

And this is what the series is about, I think. When doing the moral thing entails a great risk, what would you do? If you could end up bringing the velvet revolution, or a violent era of terror, or end up dying for nothing, like the students of Tienanmen square - and you can’t know which one will be it?

Would you take the risks Tarin takes? Or would you just twist your nose like Dillian, not wanting to be too aware of it, because you know you won’t take that risk?

Honestly, I respect Tarin, and I respect Warrick. Both acknowledge the situation and pick their actions accordingly. Dillian doesn’t want to think of a rotten system, so it’s easiest to place the blame on individuals. I’m not buying into that.

If the system wouldn’t want Toreth to torture - or the rest of I&I to find substitute methods of abuse and sleep deprivation - no one in I&I would do it. (They’re actually afraid of Justice, for crying out loud). As long as the system supports it, fighting the individuals is futile. That’s why “the unrest” was (somewhat) effective - it didn’t target Int-sec employees at home, it targeted I&I itself.

Now, I’m not saying anyone should date, or be friends with, people they find reprehensible - I don’t, either. But I do think targeting individuals is not effective, and not a moral imperative.

[thylasupial]

this is apathy’s theme song tbh

[soycrates]

Does Justice Need Love To Survive?

Sometimes I try hard to find a species of animal cute or loveable. I see posters and images from vegan organizations or blogs comparing a household pet to an animal that is commonly exploited. They ask, why love one but not the other? Oddly enough I can feel myself getting anxious, even angry sometimes, when I see these photos and read these heartfelt pleas. It’s an agitated feeling in the back of my mind that I can’t ignore if I’m being completely honest with myself. Because, you know, there are animals I would not let in my house. There are animals that I would not want to take care of. There are animals I know I would find unpleasant over time, or would annoy me with how they sound or smell. Some animals I just don’t feel a huge connection with. 

What I thought made me feel anxious about this, at first, was the idea that maybe one day I would give up being vegan because of these feelings - that if I secretly harbored some sort of distaste or animosity for any species, I might one day again be okay with having them harmed so long as I didn’t have to personally witness it, or cause it with my own hand. I mean, I’ve been vegan for about 7 years now, but there’s always some family member or friend hoping it’s “just a phase”, right?

But really, the issue is this: the idea that love is the sole motivation for not killing someone is absurd to me. Whether I find an animal cute being the basis of my judgement is absurd. Being able to love a creature really isn’t a stable basis for whether or not they deserve to live free from unnecessary harm. And I really think we need to be vocal with this concept.

There’s the lingering perception that people give up the use of animal products because they are welling with sympathy for all animals. That they tear up over seeing an animal harmed. There’s nothing wrong with loving every animal, for wanting to cuddle up next to every species or personally care for them. Being emotional isn’t bad. But what if you don’t love every animal? “Well, I just don’t love animals the way you do” is so often cited as the reasoning behind why we pet a cat but kill a pig, play fetch with a puppy but forcefully impregnate a cow. Why we treat animals differently, and why we think it’s logical. If we chose to have the same reasoning anywhere else, we’d be called insane.

You don’t like your boss. Will you kill them? You don’t like willow trees. Will you chop them all down? You don’t personally like a certain TV show very much. Will you petition to get it cancelled? You don’t love these things, but maybe you know someone who does. Even if you don’t, you likely see no need to cause harm to them. Chances are you might even go out of your way minimally not to cause harm to them, or to make life easier for them.

Some people will say “the reason I don’t kill my boss is because I would get caught; it’s illegal to kill another person and if I did that my life would be worse. I could get sent to jail, or people wouldn’t like me any more. It’s just in my best interest not to”. We do on many occasions consider the personal benefit our moral actions will hold. Praise, compensation, co-operation. Even just bragging rights. It’s a significant factor, but it’s not really the only factor, is it?

Most know that, given the opportunity to kill someone we do not really care for, we would not do it, could not do it. There’s no reason to do so. We would not be acting out of necessity but out of a temporary desire - one that we know very well will hurt someone else. Laws may keep us more aware of ethical boundaries, but it is the moral code in ourselves that will enforce it even when we have the chance to commit an unlawful act and get away with it. In fact, there are moments in life where one may feel compelled to break a law because they feel morally right in doing so, proving that at least for a sizable audience of people, the moral compass is stronger than the legal punishment.

When no one is watching, the average person still considers themselves a moral agent. When we meet people without this behaviour in our society, they are more often the criminals, the ostracized, those deemed malicious or harmful. Sometimes we even consider it an illness if someone cannot, over an extended period of time, act like a moral agent without the promise of personal gain. This is someone who continues to act maliciously to others whenever it appears they might get away with it.

I think there are enough people who realize that the majority of harm is unnecessary, but are continually tricked by both sides of the argument into believing that you must feel strong emotions (towards a cause, like a movement, political stance or religion) to act on that knowledge. To see justice as a reasonable outcome does not require us to love those being harmed. It simply requires us to ask ourselves what we believe is fair, and to furthermore ask if that answer coheres with our other believes and actions.

This is how we can love one, but not the other - and still understand that it isn’t necessary to harm either.

[qatharms]

If you think the world has turned upside down, Chris Skates agrees with you. How did we get here?  

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[gotanewblog]

Addressing an argument by Eric Hovind

Occasionally I write about arguments by fundamentalists. This is one of those times. 

As an atheist who writes and does some work online, I have pretty much constant exposure to arguments by all levels of theists, and a variety of theistic beliefs (such as Christians, Muslims, Hindus, etc.). The following argument is one I've seen almost exclusively from fundamentalist Christians; "Without the Bible I'd go out and commit crimes!" although other versions exist and one can just replace the Bible with the holy book of whatever religion the person making this claim happens to be.

One specific example of how this argument might sound comes from Eric Hovind. In a video uploaded June 1st 2012 to the Living Waters YouTube account, Eric Hovind and Ray Comfort discuss the "harmful effects of the evolutionary worldview" and make the claim that without the Bible, without their professed Christianity, he (Eric) would live with "no restraints at all" and Comfort claims that he would "be in jail if he weren't a Christian." But they falsely state that others would react like that as well. This is an absurd claim.

This claim CLEARLY shows more about these individuals than it does for irreligious individuals. But how can it be addressed? One way is by pointing out that atheists are virtually invisible in jail, at least in the United States. This isn't the way I'd do it, personally. I'd counter it by stating that morality is ultimately subjective. Because it is. On a fundamental level, we need to point out that making sweeping generalizations doesn't further any conversation about morality, about humanity, and about the validity of religion. Also: regardless of whether or not one acts "morally" doesn't do anything to prove or disprove the claim that God exists and the Bible is true. The effects of the "evolutionary worldview" on children, have ABSOLUTELY nothing to do with whether or not evolution is true. This is meant to be seen as an argument against teaching children about evolution, but if (and this could arguably be a big "if") the purpose of education is to teach children the truth, then the effects "an evolutionary worldview" has on children is irrelevant to teaching evolution. And given that science education is meant to education children in science and not morality, this is fundamentally an irrelevant argument to make. But it's also a scary one. This reveals that at least a few people have improperly conflated morality and religion to scary results. We need to stop this argument anywhere and everywhere it appears.

What are your thoughts on this argument? On other arguments made by fundamentalists? Do you have any arguments you'd like to see addressed?

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AkAcNyvV4M (the mentioned part begins at roughly 17:30, but more specifically at 19:18 and ends at about 20:14)