All sane people are horrified at the recent mass murders in Norway. This tragedy provides an opportunity for reflection on morality itself.
While we all condemn the acts of Anders Behring Breivik, we condemn them for reasons that differ according to our understanding of life, God, etc.
For example, Christianity teaches that killing innocent people is mortal sin. It's objectively wrong, independent of human judgement.
Atheism, of the materialist stripe, explains the moral sense of right and wrong as evolved adaptations, lacking objective reality. We are appalled at certain acts because we have evolved by natural selection (and kin selection, yada yada) certain social constraints that have helped us reproduce.
Atheism intriniscally lacks recourse to objective moral law, in the sense of moral law that exists independently of human beings and that would be objectively real and true even if all men disagreed.
I'm not saying that atheists don't feel moral law as strongly as Christians do. I'm saying that, despite the horror we all feel, atheist ideology provides no basis for asserting that the moral law is objectively true.
Atheism concludes that killing children in a summer camp is wrong only as a matter of opinion, and not wrong as a matter of objective fact independent of opinion.
So here's my question for atheists: was Breivik's slaughter of scores of innocent people last week objectively wrong, as opposed to a subjective adaptation, an evolved opinion?
I know I shouldn't be commenting, because it will invite your display of self offended ridicule, but I have been continuing to look at your blog just to see how irrelevant it is.
ReplyDeleteWhenever I don't comment, you tend to get very few comments, mostly one liners agreeing with you as in an echo chamber.
But as an atheist, I think that Breivik was objectively wrong. Humans evolved to have empathy due to the overdevelopment of mirror neurons and Von Economo neurons.
Humans instinctively feel other humans' pain, intuitively know how they are feeling.
Killing even for atheists is very hard. In the Second World War, it was well known that very few troops tried to shoot their opponents. Some soldiers killed very large numbers of their enemies, but most deliberately shot over their enemies' heads or nearby.
In particular, Soviet commanders were alarmed to find that as many as 60% of their front line troops didn't even fire their rifles, even though their foes had committed unspeakable atrocities in their country, so they were justified morally in attempted to kill them. The Soviet commanders even debated that soldiers with unfired weapons should be charged with desertion.
I don't know what Breivik's mental problem is. I suspect that he is a psychopath with no empathy for fellow humans. I don't think he's insane. More extremely bad, rather than mad. I wouldn't let him out of gaol until he's an extremely old man, if ever. And no, I don't agree with capital punishment.
Of course, not all psychopaths are mass murderers or serial killers. And not all individuals without empathy are psychopaths. Others have narcissism or borderline personality defect. Another group of individuals with absent empathy are those on the autism/Asperger syndrome spectrum.
So in short, Bach, you think he is defective, sick, or otherwise damaged goods? Then I guess there is no need for evil, good, right,or wrong. So, why do you claim an objective position? Seems redundant.
ReplyDelete"Methinks he doth protest too much!"
Love the whole 'poor victim - me - I - me' stuff, though.
Kills me all the time with you Atheists. All martyrs and victims for the great causeless cause. Makes me feel like I am at the vineyards! All WHINE and some really OLD cheese :P
@bachfiend:
ReplyDeleteBut you still don't address the core issue: atheism offers no explanation how moral law can be objective, independent of human opinion. Breivik may have defective "mirror neurons" or whatever, but this atrocity raises the question that atheism can't answer: how can there be objective moral law?
It is a devastating refutation of atheism. If youi really believe atheism, then you must deny that anything is objectively evil.
The trouble with saying that our evolved natures provide an objective basis for morality is that evolution, if it is actually our creator, has also produced the following: Aztec human sacrifice, Nazi genocide, rapists, the Gulag, the Cultural Revolution, etc.
ReplyDeleteA counter-answer to this might be that these are fringe phenomena, and not in the mainstream that evolution has produced. However, by that standard, atheism is also a fringe phenomenon compared to all other religious perspectives, and as such, is immoral compared to non-atheism.
Brilliantly put, Matteo! Kudos.
ReplyDeleteYou correctly point out that atheism doesn't imply an objective moral framework, but you assert that Christianity somehow includes just that.
ReplyDeleteThe problem is that when the creator of the universe can telepathically communicate with you and order you to kill somebody, all objectivity goes out the window.
@Anonymous:
ReplyDelete[You correctly point out that atheism doesn't imply an objective moral framework, but you assert that Christianity somehow includes just that.]
Atheism's lack of an objective moral framework is fatal to it, because it requires an honest person to adhere to a transparently wrong view (that nothing is objectively right or wrong) in order to maintain atheist belief.
If we accept the existence of objective moral law (e.g. it's wrong to kill innocent people, it's wrong to commit rape, etc), it follows that that law has a source.
Theists of various stripes assert various sources.
Christians assert that God is the Source of moral law, and there is a profound moral theology built upon this view.
[The problem is that when the creator of the universe can telepathically communicate with you and order you to kill somebody, all objectivity goes out the window.]
That's Plato's Euthyphro dilemma. It it wrong because God forbids it, or does God forbid it because it is wrong?
There is a Christian answer to this, which I'll blog on when I can. Short answer: God is Goodness. We can't apply the dilemma to Him.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteI knew you would do this. You asked whether I, as an atheist, regard what Breivik did as being objectively wrong, and I answered, that yes it was objectively wrong.
Mirror neurons aren't all that confined to humans. Monkeys in experiments if given food only if they press on a lever which simultaneously gives a painful electric shock to a monkey visible in a neighboring cage stop pressing on the lever and starve, the record being 12 days. So did the Christian God implant empathy/morality in monkeys too?
Humans are the only species capable of being ordered to commit atrocities, such as Millgram's sham experiment of physical pain improving memory. The subjects in the experiment were told that they were testing the hypothesis that physical pain improved learning and were instructed to administer progressively increasing electric shocks to 'test subjects', who were in fact actors pretending to be in increasing distress (the electric shocks were in fact not real) and most of the real test subjects were happy to go along with the authority of the experimenters.
It explains why humans, unlike all other species, are happy to participate in genocide. It also explains why so many soldiers in battle actually don't try to kill the enemy (in battle, they are not under close supervision by their commanders, that would be impossible).
Matteo, was the Albigensian Crusade a fringe phenomenon? This was the Catholic Church's campaign to root out the Cathar heresy. In the massacre at Beziers in 1210 where 100,000 people were killed, 450 people were captured many of whom claimed to be good Catholics. The papal legate was asked what they should do and he answered 'Kill them all. God will know his own'. Christianity does have a particularly good record in following objective morality.
And I repeat, I regard Breivik as being extremely bad, not mad, I think that he was a psychopath. No normal human is going to be able to shoot to kill another human at close range, as we know from the number of soldiers who actually kill their enemies in battle. Christians as well as atheists can be indoctrinated to overcome this basic evolved human attribute. Military training, with its formation marching (of not much use in modern battles) aims to do away with individuality and cause collective thinking. The difference between a well trained unit and a poorly trained rabble is that a rabble will run away when 10% of their number are killed, and a well trained unit will continue to fight until only 10% are left. Indoctrinating troops into thinking that their enemies are subhumans, not part of the group, is part of the training too.
You keep on trying to assert that humans are special. They aren't. Great apes and monkeys also show empathy. Humans are more developed in degree perhaps.
If we accept the existence of objective moral law (e.g. it's wrong to kill innocent people, it's wrong to commit rape, etc), it follows that that law has a source.
ReplyDeleteThat is starting out with the conclusion and coming up with the evidence. I prefer to do it the other way around.
@Anonymous:
ReplyDelete[That is starting out with the conclusion and coming up with the evidence. I prefer to do it the other way around.]
So how did objective moral law come to be? Where does it come from. By definition it doesn't come from us, or it would be 'subjective'. Big question. Atheism has no answer. Nothing new about that. Atheism is 'duh' and 'shit happens' masquerading as philosophy.
@bachfiend:
[So did the Christian God implant empathy/morality in monkeys too?]
Yep. Where else did it come from? Oh, yea, shit just happens. I forgot atheism's stock answer.
[You asked whether I, as an atheist, regard what Breivik did as being objectively wrong, and I answered, that yes it was objectively wrong.]
Where then does the moral law come from? Just happens?
[Christianity does have a particularly good record in following objective morality.]
Humanity doesn't have a good moral record. Christianity is the best effort I know to rectify that. If you want perfection, you're looking in the wrong universe. And why should anyone take criticism about morality/ideology from an atheist? The term 'sadism' came from one of your guys.
[You keep on trying to assert that humans are special. They aren't. Great apes and monkeys also show empathy. Humans are more developed in degree perhaps.]
Humans have spiritual souls, unlike animals. We share much in common with animals (bodies, instincts, appetite, etc), but we have reason and language. We are made in our Creator' s image.
And just as a matter of practicality, there is no assertion that is more dangerous to man than the assertion that man is not exceptional. It is the root of genocide and other horrors.
We are exceptional, because we carry His image.
@bach
ReplyDeleteYou keep on trying to assert that humans are special. They aren't. Great apes and monkeys also show empathy. Humans are more developed in degree perhaps.
How much degree do you find between this and this?
When does kind replaces degree?
How thick are you?
OK Michael,
ReplyDeleteProve that humans have a soul. Where is it? I know I have a conscious mind. But I also I know that it's a product of my brain. The human brain is the most complex structure that we know of in the Universe, with 100 billion neurons ( as many stars as in a reasonably sized galaxy), all potentially connected directly or indirectly with every other neuron, all modulated by countless more astrocytes. The brain functions in multiple modules each doing something that my mind is unaware of but each sending its product to my mind fooling it into thinking that it's in control. I decide to do something for unconscious emotional reasons and then my mind rationalizes the decision. Damage the brain and you affect the mind. Cause hypoxia in the brain and you get the illusion of near death experiences. The human brain is larger and more complex than our nearest relatives, the chimp, common and Bonobo.
If the human brain wasn't complex, if it was simple, then you'd be justified in postulating an ethereal insubstantial soul. But it isn't. The mind does everything that you reckon the soul does, and more. Personally, I agree with Darwin was right, other animals do have minds. We know that monkeys have a sense of fairness. A monkey offered a piece of cucumber will get very upset and reject it if another monkey in sight is offered a raisin (a more favored treat). And the favored monkey also shows distress at being favored.
Christianity puts humans on a pedestal as being special. We aren't. The only thing we have unique is the ability to destroy the world and cause our and many other species' extinction. Nothing much to be proud of.
So where's your proof that the soul exists. 27 grams perhaps?
Matteo, was the Albigensian Crusade a fringe phenomenon?
ReplyDeleteGiven that you had to go back 800 years to find it, then I'd have to say yes. 100,000 is about three orders of magnitude off from what the atheists have perpetrated in just the last one hundred years.
I still don't see how it affects the original point, since I never claimed that the Albigensian massacre was a good thing.
Bachfiend--
ReplyDeleteYou are effectively asserting that the brain is conscious because it is a complicated computer. I know of no computers that need consciousness to carry out their functions for the simple reason that physics gets the job done perfectly well. That being the case, why would consciousness have the slightest reason to "emerge" just because you have a big enough rat's nest of wiring in the human brain? Does the rat's nest cause the laws of physics to get confused such that they have to "tag team in" consciousness to help them get the job done? Do the laws of physics just throw up their hands and say "Man, that is one COMPLICATED rat's nest! Whatever are we going to do? Consciousness, please help!!" If consciousness doesn't add anything to the physical outcomes by acting as a separate cause of events, just precisely why does it bother existing at all?
To the extent that you can give a detailed explanation of precisely how the brain works in every detail, you've explained why we should be unconscious, not conscious.
You're simply going to have to give a much better philosophical explanation of how mind emerges from matter than merely asserting that complexity results in a magical *poof* which brings a wholly-superfluous-from-the-point-of-view-of-physics consciousness into being.
12 comments now. If I hadn't commented, then there'd be hardly a comment.
ReplyDeleteIt illustrates how irrelevant this blog is. Steve Novella's blog often gets dozens of comments. Larry's blog 'On the Sandwalk' gets similar numbers. The Guardian blog you linked to got over 700 comments. Even theistic evolution sites gets many more comments.
Michael, admit it, you're preaching to a minute number of acolytes. You're wasting your time, and I imagine as a neurosurgeon, your time is very valuable.
Pepe, I don't have any problem in explaining why a gorilla uses a branch to ... what is it actually doing anyway? ... and humans have built the Shuttle, which was a total failure anyway, and is now mothballed. The Shuttle (and the ISS) certainly weren't pinnacles of human rational thought, waste of money that they were and are. A lot of scientists stated before the two programs started that it was a waste of money and of no scientific use. With Apollo, NASA said, we want to go to the Moon, let's develop the technology. With the Shuttle and the ISS it said, we have the technology, what can we do with it?
Matteo,
ReplyDeleteThe Albigensian Crusade wasn't a fringe phenomenon, it was started by the Pope, God's Vicar on Earth. 100,000 deaths in Beziers was just one atrocity. As a proportion of the French population it was enormous. France only had a population of 17 million the next century just before the start of the Black Death.
And the human brain isn't a computer. It's much better. A computer isn't conscious. It won't work unless it's told to. Comparing your computer to your brain is ludicrous.
@bachfiend:
ReplyDelete[It illustrates how irrelevant this blog is...Michael, admit it, you're preaching to a minute number of acolytes. You're wasting your time, and I imagine as a neurosurgeon, your time is very valuable.]
This is my hobby, not my profession. I do it because I like it. I don't care how many/few people read it. I'm actually quite pleased with my readership and with the discussions we've had.
If I didn't know better, bachfiend, I'd say that you wish I'd shut up.
@bachfind:
ReplyDelete[So where's your proof that the soul exists. 27 grams perhaps?]
The soul is the form of a living thing. Living things are composites of soul (intelligible principle) and matter (principle of individuation). A soul has no weight.
Plants have vegetative souls (growth, nutrition). Animals have sensitive souls (vegetative powers plus sensation, locomotion, appetite, will etc). Men has rational souls (vegetative and sensitive powers, plus reason), and man's soul is spiritual as well.
There is a very detailed understanding of the human soul, beginning with Aristotle and Aquinas and developed further by modern philosophers.
You need to read more.
Michael,
ReplyDeleteAll you are doing is telling a story. All you are doing is asserting WITHOUT ANY PROOF that the would exists. Telling stories doesn't make it true. We know empathy exists. We know the mind exists. How do we know the soul exists? Citing ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and addled theologians such as Aquinas and modern BS artists as thinking about the soul doesn't make it any more than the nonsense it is.
And no, I don't wish you would shut up. I enjoy you're wasting your time. I like looking at the opposing viewpoint to discover how bare of reason their viewpoints are. Many thanks.
And the human brain isn't a computer. It's much better. A computer isn't conscious. It won't work unless it's told to. Comparing your computer to your brain is ludicrous.
ReplyDeleteAnd you still haven't explained how neurological wires and switches become conscious.
It seems to be the case that any physical description of the workings of the brain and nervous system that we can give "explaining" consciousness would apply equally well to an unconscious neurophysiological robot exhibiting the same behavior. Given that a merely physical description can in no way allow us to distinguish between the two cases, how can one claim that consciousness is explained?
You yourself said: "Prove that humans have a soul. Where is it?" Let's for the sake of argument substitute "consciousness" for "soul". It's a good question. You certainly won't find consciousness by examining individual neurons or synapses. So precisely why would an ensemble of them become conscious? And please don't give me the analogy that individual water molecules aren't wet, but water is. Individual water molecules have measurable dipole moments, and the properties of water can, in principle be deduced from that fact (if not, then what is the point of physics?). Unless you are willing to state that each neuron contains some sort of monad of consciousness, the water analogy is not going to help.
I'm absolutely serious here: what is your explanation for mindless matter becoming conscious? Remember: In your last response you vehemently ruled out a computational explanation. So what is your explanation?
Got to stop commenting on an iPad. The second sentence should read, in part, ... that the soul exists. Spellcheck is a bane ...
ReplyDeleteThe Albigensian Crusade wasn't a fringe phenomenon, it was started by the Pope, God's Vicar on Earth. 100,000 deaths in Beziers was just one atrocity. As a proportion of the French population it was enormous. France only had a population of 17 million the next century just before the start of the Black Death.
ReplyDeleteAgain, how is this relevant? Suppose I say, "Fine, it's not a fringe phenomenon".
This would mean that evolution is throwing this sort of thing into the mix all the time. But you stated that we get our objective morality from the way we evolved. So, I take it, then, that the Albigensian massacre was objectively moral from the point of view of evolution? Or what?
Matteo,
ReplyDeleteFrom an atheist viewpoint, the Albigensian Crusade was objectively wrong. The Pope started a crusade to root out a heretic Christian sect. To an atheist, all flavors of Christianity, all religions in fact, are all ga-ga. Some more ga-ga than others, but only in degree. Christianity, with its claim of an immortal soul which survives the death and destruction of the body, can't be detected but which exists anyway, lies towards the extreme end of the scale.
But most people who evolved do not agree with this. I'm assuming there is a moral flaw in being "ga-ga", otherwise why are militant atheists constantly in such a state of high dudgeon and indignation? Most human products of evolution find atheism to be objectively wrong. You stated that evolution gave us objective morality. So is the opinion of most folks against atheism the objective moral truth?
ReplyDeleteMatteo,
ReplyDeleteIf atheism was a religion, which it isn't, it would be the 3rd most prevalent religion in the world. Just because atheism is unpopular amongst your peer group doesn't mean it's unpopular world wide. 5/7 of the world's population, if explained what the dogma of Christianity is, would certainly reject it outright because it either contradicts their religious dogma or because it posits an improbable god that has evolved.
And again, you miss the point about the conscious mind. If the brain was simple, then you need something else, call it a soul if you want, to explain the mind. But the human brain is incredibly complex. It's 3 times the size as a chimp's brain.
If computers were as complex as a human brain, then they'd also probably be conscious too. But computers are actually very simple. A standard desktop computer probably has about the computing capacity of a housefly.
Atheism would be the third most prevalent religion amongst Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, and Hinduism?
ReplyDeleteReally.
Even if so, third most prevalent certainly doesn't mean majority. So we come back to your original point. You stated that evolution gave us morality. It is certainly the case that atheism is in the minority among evolved beliefs. Since it goes against the morality of most evolved human beings, does that then make it immoral?
I still await your explanation as to how any arrangement or matter whatsoever, either could, or would need to become conscious.
First allow me to note that most of the points I had intended to make were made far more eloquently by Matteo. Again, my hat's off. Pepe and Mike fill in the gaps nicely... not much left to say. But I'll try :P
ReplyDeleteSecondly, allow me to apologize for any part I may have had in whole 'Crusade' thing.
This always happens when I communicate Atheists or even Militant Muslims on-line with this nicname. I hold a degree in Medieval history and taught classes on this specific period. It is/was also my military call sign. They see the name and a little light goes off somewhere. Talking points are gathered and .... voilà!
the same tired old stuff.
I will gladly write or direct the readers to pertinent writings on these much maligned military adventures. But not now.
They are irrelevant and a straw man; as I see it.
Finally, here is what I see as the central point of the reaction to your question, Mike:
"Michael, admit it, you're preaching to a minute number of acolytes. You're wasting your time, and I imagine as a neurosurgeon, your time is very valuable."(Bachfiend)
...or in plain English: I want you to stop blogging. There is an artful retraction later in the posts, but there you have it.
The response reduced?
0H SHUT UP, besides what about the Crusades? HUH?
That the best you have materialism? REALLY?
@bach...
ReplyDelete...the Shuttle, which was a total failure anyway...
I guess the same applies to Christopher Columbus discovery of the Americas!
A total failure indeed…
As an atheist, you are correct. But I have no idea why you think this is in any way a huge blow to atheism...
ReplyDelete@adamimos:
ReplyDeleteIs killing innocents wrong objectively, or is the view that it is wrong merely an opinion?
If it's wrong objectively, then the Moral Law has a source other than man.
That would be God.