Christian Humanism is the name of my Junior religion class. For those of you who are unaware, which is probably everyone, I go to a Catholic high school. Something that I'd guess no one here knows is that I'm actually an agnostic atheist, and more and more I'm leaning towards being a full blown atheist.
But I still find this course interesting. According to my teacher, it's just a course on how the Christian man views other humans and his surroundings. I disagree with almost everything that comes out of his mouth, but I still enjoy learning about it. We've read some books that I probably would have never even thought to have picked up if it wasn't for taking the class, and we discuss some basic philosophies.
That being said, some of the stuff that we've discussed is objectively wrong. There were some "interesting" article choices that we had to read that were basically full of misinformation and logical fallacies, but now my class has gotten to a point where we're talking about conscience and moral law. Although we've barely touched the surface, I knew what direction the discussion would immediately head to: Is there an objective moral law that defines right and wrong? First, I'd like to pose that question to you guys, and then offer my own thoughts about it.
1.) To get the conclusion that there is an objective definition of right and wrong when it comes to morals, that means that there has to be a clear definition of right and wrong. This just simply is not the case for many, if not most, scenarios in life. There are better and worse decisions, but saying that a choice is right or wrong is oversimplifying the situation.
I understand Christian-Judao thinking would assert that the Bible has a clear definition of what is right or wrong in a specific situation, but to say that you can extend these definitions and make blanket statements for what is right or wrong for everyone is ridiculous.
2.) According to my teacher and the book we just read (Man For All Seasons by Robert Bolt), responsibility for one's actions is also affected by one's conscience. But that means that everyone must have a conscience that is formed "correctly" according to what is considered right or wrong by the Bible.
This is easy for certain clear areas. Obviously sociopaths tend to be an exception for some of these, but things like murder, assault, rape, etc. are all pretty obvious when it comes to morally "right" or "wrong." The 5th commandment (thou shalt not kill) is extended to things like insulting someone or physically harming them, but what about making someone feel bad about himself or herself because that person feels that being homosexual is a sin and they will go to hell for it?
Is the gay person's conscience incorrectly formed because they don't think that what they are committing is a sin? This creates a bit of a gray area that isn't simply answered by the idea that there is a moral right and wrong.
3.) Not everyone is Christian (or Jewish)! This is pretty obvious, but not everyone agrees with what they believe. So how does that impact the development of that person's conscience? Are they doomed to make certain mistakes over and over again because they haven't been exposed to Christianity? There is the fact that people who aren't Christian can still go to heaven, but how is something like avoiding premarital sex an "obvious" moral right or wrong? There's nothing wrong with premarital sex, marriage hasn't been around since the dawn of mankind. Humans are meant to carry out basic biological functions, among them reproduction.
So all this said, I know that this is a bit of a controversial topic. I don't mean to offend anyone and I'd like to have as open of a discussion as possible. I don't disagree with everything Christianity offers, but there is a bit of circular logic involved with coming to conclusions about morality and conscience.
could you mabye explain a bit more what you exactly did in your class and what you dislike so much? like, did you actually talk about a specific example as a moral wrong/right?
to answer your question, there is obviously no such a thing as a truly objective "moral law" that defines right and wrong. however, i believe that there is a more or less objective way to evaluate the different subjective "moral laws" to some extend.
out of curiosity, why exactly do you go to a catholic school?
For moral right and wrong, we'd usually take a look at something that is explicitly stated outright as wrong according to the Bible. This includes anything stated in the 10 commandments, anything explicitly stated as bad in the Old Testament, or anything that is considered an extension of the 10 commandments.
To give you some really simple examples of morally wrong things, here's a list of a few major ones:
-Physically harming someone for any reason that's not self defense (or justified war) -Premarital sex of any kind -Stealing someone else's property
These are all general circumstances. Then, one would use his or her conscience to go from a general circumstance, to their specific situation. Instead of just saying that premarital sex is bad, the person would have to understand why in the context of his or her situation premarital sex is bad. Or why killing someone in that person's specific situation is morally wrong. Using a person's subjective sense of right or wrong, we perform an act that is judged against an "objective" code of right and wrong.
out of curiosity, why exactly do you go to a catholic school?
That's a bit of a long explanation, but I can explain that one too.
1.) My dad's side of the family really pushed for me to go to the school. My mom is actually Jewish (lol) and I rarely, if ever, go to Church on my own freewill.
2.) It's the best school anywhere near my area that is not in New York City. Hands down the best school in my area.
3.) I went to a really small middle school (only about 80 kids in my graduating class) and went to a school of about 400-450 in a graduating class. It's a completely different, and more competitive, environment and I wanted to get out of the monotony of seeing people I knew every single day, in a small neighborhood. There was nothing wrong with my old school and I have some really close friends from there, but I just wanted to have a bit of a change of scenery.
4.) The school is actually ridiculously close to my house. Some people travel upwards of 2 hours to go to my school; it's a 5 minute drive for me.
5.) I wanted to be challenged more in high school. My old school was incredibly easy for me. It was so easy for me that I would just not do homework, pay attention, or study at all. This ended up in me doing some pretty dumb stuff and I wanted to go to a school where I would be challenged to the point of needing to do work.
That's not to say I'm entirely happy with my choice, but I'm kind of dedicated to it for the next year and 5 months or so. This is a pretty superficial explanation, but that's basically the reasons I chose to go to my school.
I can't discuss something I don't fully understand. I do agree with the points you raised in your spoiler though. You'll find a lot of classes are just there for professors to ramble.
You are a full blown atheist because agnostic atheism is full blown atheism. If you do not believe in any God or gods you are an atheist.
Theism and atheism are belief claims. You either believe that a God or gods exist, or you do not believe that a God or gods exist. Gnosticism is a knowledge claim, you know a God or gods exists, or you do not know that a God or gods exist. So when you say that you are an agnostic atheist, you are saying that you do not believe in a God or gods, and that you do not know for sure - which is the position that the vast majority of atheists identify with.
As far as the topic, you should really read Sam Harris' book 'The Moral Landscape". It pretty much deals with everything that you wrote in the spoiler.
Matt Dillahunty gives a nice lecture on the superiority of secular morality, also
i enjoyed religion in school(its like a course we have to have in a normal high school). i had a very young priest as a teacher who was a very cool dude (apart from being religious). it was pretty philosophy based (like advanced religion, how religion applies to moral situations etc.) and we learned about different opinions on those matters the only thing that annoyed me all through highschool was the constant nietzsche bashing T_T like all we got taught was that he was some nuts guy who said stuff like "god is dead" (not even the full quote lmao) and only his very late stuff (wheres hes actually nuts) to show how nuts all he said is. i guess it depends on the teacher, all through 5th to 10th grade we had an old priest who pretty much only taught the old testament lmao (even tho we liked it when he told those fucked up old testament stories about killing and war :D )
Hey Mtl long time no see! I understand your position fully right now as I was in a Catholic high school and had to take religion class while also slowly discovering myself as an "atheist" if that's what you want to call it.
As someone pointed above me before Sam Harris' book "The Moral Landscape" has a pretty good start on the complicated topic of morals and ethics. The thesis is basically that there is a landscape with highs and lows (situations and conditions) and to be "good" if it has any definition is too strive and practice to move towards the greatest possible happiness and well-being for everyone while moving as far away from the greatest possible suffering of conscious creatures. Once we understand the sciences of psychology and neurology more than we can make objective claims about right and wrong. The only knock I have on this book though is he spends more time pointing out the flaws in religious and scripture based morals instead of supporting his own claims.
The truth of the matter is, is that morals are completely a human phenomena. We are fully aware of our actions and their motives as well as the consequences because our capacity of emotions and reflection. Every other species on the planet (except maybe some domestic exceptions) is driven purely by the nature of survival. Humans have slowly removed themselves from that obviously as daily survival is no longer a concern for the majority of us. Then slowly this creation of right and wrong was brought into being.
To put it as clearly as I can;Humans are the only species that can cause physical and also emotional suffering through actions that are not driven by survival or protection of our offspring. Therefore, to be "Moral" is too strive to minimize and resist this capacity to create (unnecessary) suffering that we are capable of.
I hope I taught you something you can use in your class
The first thing I'd suggest is that you take a good, long, honest look at yourself and really ask yourself if you are as intellectually pure as you think because I just don't see it. You'll find, hopefully, as you become more educated that the world is not full of people who are "objectively wrong" as if their philosophy was a math problem and they forgot to carry the one. Instead it is full of competing worldviews that cannot be dismissed as merely fallacious. Also, have some humility and understand that while you may think the class simple (it's for high school students, for pete's sake) you couldn't possibly hope to hold an intelligible argument with its source material.
Now on to your actual questions: Now the title of your blog (and class I presume) is Christian Humanism. This is an important distinction because it's not exactly whole milk Christianity. Rather, it's how can we explain Christianity to non-Christians and advance Christian arguments without explicitly requiring Christian faith. Leaning in that direction.
Now, as you say, in order to construct a moral framework, there must be something to ground this morality. This reference for Christians is not "because the Bible says so" but the metaphysical worldview contained in the Bible and all of the subsidiary literature. Another way of saying this is to say that Christians subscribe to a "natural law". Saying that murder is wrong is not just a moral statement but also an assertion about the nature of the universe. Now what is a conscience? It's our "moral map" and shouldn't our moral map depict the moral contours of nature? Part of the assertion of natural law is that this morality is not found only Christianity but is part of the common human heritage (see the appendices of Stephen Pinker's The Blank Slate for a list of almost universal human compunctions) and is to some degree innately known by all humans ("the law is written in their hearts"). Obviously, though, not everyone at all times is good so the moral sense must be plastic and through either faulty reason or violent passions becomes subverted. This also suggests that an act does not merely have a practical effect, but has consequences for your nature/character/soul/what have you.
If you wished to argue against a particular premise in this system, you could say that you hold a different view of nature, but the beauty of natural law is that it can be transposed to nearly any other system. Every particular custom may not line up exactly, but the basics should and the rest can be deduced by reason. To answer your question, a natural law Christian would say that, of course, it's possible for a pagan to be good, but Christianity is not only a moral system.
The other, and far more common, argument, is to assert that the universe has no definite metaphysical nature. If you do that, though, you really can't convince me of anything. Some writers, with an almost mulish obstinacy, insist that they can construct a moral framework from practicality, but that only extends as far as it is actually the case. You could not convince Stalin or Mao or Franco that the greater good outweighed their personal good. You could only convince them that on average it is better to follow your code, but not everyone is average.
I mentioned earlier that the "humanism" part was important. I joke that anyone who says humanism is about to do something really inhumane. While I don't think nothing good has come out of Christian Humanism, I think they are for the most part misguided because the phrase is an oxymoron. As I said before, in order to accept Christian morality, you have to accept Christian metaphysics, but humanists are essentially trying to convince you of the former without the latter. It's not surprising, then, that when you examine it with your own basic premises, like relativism, you think it has holes.
You don't, I think, make very clear your arguments regarding gray areas and when a thing might be right or wrong for different people, but that won't stop me from talking.: Gray areas was a good phrase because it's common to talk about the dogmatism of Christian sin as if it were a list of Dos And Don'ts- cross off the list and you go to Heaven, fail to do so and you go to Hell. In reality, it's all gray area. Every little action you do either conforms to the nature of the universe or it doesn't. Imagine it's like a Bioware game. Flip off your neighbor, -1. Rescue a kitty from a tree +10. I'm really joking here, but it seems like half the anti-Christian arguments are Christianity says this is wrong, therefore they hate them and want them dead and burning in hell.
There are a lot of things that are variable for person to person. You might say, for instance that liberal democracy may not be the best form of government for every country, or that some people are better doctors and some people better librarians. I'm not sure how this relates to moral decisions though. I don't think anybody argues that homosexuality or premarital sex are "moral rights", they are either moral wrongs or there is simply no morality governing it. Morality does not give choices, it either says Yes (in an imperative sense), No, or nothing. Your argument about premarital sex also seems weak because I could argue that marriage arose out of the natural proclivity of humans to form monogamous pair bondings.
Here are some books you can read if you wish to further educate yourself:
If you wish to explore actual Christian arguments and not condensed textbook crap, I recommend Introduction to Christianity and Truth and Tolerance, both by His Former Holiness, Joseph Ratzinger. These books are not light reading from a conceptual or vocabulary standpoint, but I think they are wonderfully written and very accessible.
As for general philosophy, I think Cicero might be a very good place to start. Starting with Plato will just confuse you. So read De Legibus and De Officiis by Cicero, then you can read Aristotle's Ethics and start on Plato with something light like The Symposium or Gorgias.
Well, as much as I'd like to watch an hour long video, I really wouldn't. If someone wants to summarize it for me I would respond to it, since I insulted people like him in my previous post. :p
On December 12 2013 10:44 ninazerg wrote: I hereby prophesy that this thread will end up in some kind of endless argument over something stupid.
On December 12 2013 09:08 Myrkskog wrote: You are a full blown atheist because agnostic atheism is full blown atheism. If you do not believe in any God or gods you are an atheist.
Theism and atheism are belief claims. You either believe that a God or gods exist, or you do not believe that a God or gods exist. Gnosticism is a knowledge claim, you know a God or gods exists, or you do not know that a God or gods exist. So when you say that you are an agnostic atheist, you are saying that you do not believe in a God or gods, and that you do not know for sure - which is the position that the vast majority of atheists identify with.
'Atheism' is more naturally taken to mean a disbelief in gods than a lack of belief in gods.
The distinction frogrubdown is making is that you can believe that there is no proof of God/gods or believe that there are no gods. Of course, anyone arguing about it would say that there is no proof of gods because that has the lesser burden of proof (in fact the latter is impossible to prove, at least by empirical standards). In any event, I don't think it makes much difference because they are still asking you to behave as if there were no God/Gods (criminy, that is annoying to type everytime). I think most of the real partisan atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens, what have you) really believe (or wanted to believe) that there is no God, but in the real ivory tower of thinkers, there are quite a few that have tremendous difficulty reconciling their atheism with a coherent worldview (see my paragraphs on natural law) and they are the only ones I would rightly allow the term agnostic.
To respond to Myrkskog, the vast majority of "atheists" are such for the same reason that the vast majority of people are religious- because that's what their culture taught them (or didn't teach them). So it's no surprise that when pressed, they would give the lowest common denominator opinion. A better response might have been, "I hadn't really thought about it."
All of the prominent atheists, Dawkins, Hitchens, Harris and Dennett, have said they are agnostic atheists. That's a pretty bold assertion of you to make to tell us what they actually believe.
Edit: Under the definition of humanism that means ethics can be intrinsic to humans, and do not need to come from an outside source, such as a god. Which is its real definition, as far as I know.
I think ninazerg's prediction just came true. JK JK.
You know I kind of unintentionally did something I try to avoid. I don't think that those guys are at the highest rung of thinking and I don't think we should spend that much time examining their ideas. I also don't want to bash on bad thinking, just like I don't like lowest common denominator Christian bashing. I brought them up to signify a particular stratum of thought, i.e. someone who had put together an at least coherent view, rather than to comment on their particular opinions. However, I still hold to my point.
You're right, I don't really know what they believe. I also think there are often several layers to a person. I do know that that has to be their official position. You can't advance a position so easily dismissed and you want to capture the largest audience possible.In fact Dawkins is philosophically bound to admit his agnosticism. I do believe, though, that it seems awfully strange that a carefully crafted conclusion could then lead to so much vitriol and utter contempt for their adversaries.
I also don't think it really matters. The practical effect is the same and what is only "technically accepted" one generation becomes dogma the next. They wouldn't even make the distinction if there was no adversary.
Every agnostic I've ever known or read about seemed to be in limbo: Either they believed in God but couldn't reconcile it with their worldview or vice versa. Others had some qualms, like the one we've been discussing, that they had to work through eventually. Agnosticism is not their position, it's a transient phase. A period of development. I think it would take a very subtle mind indeed to truly deserve the title agnostic. These guys aren't in limbo; they are very set in their beliefs. They may call themselves agnostic atheists, but I cannot discern any difference than someone who simply calls themselves an atheist. A rose by any other name.
But let's discuss something more interesting shall we? You know that saying about people, events, ideas, etc...
Edit: Under the definition of humanism that means ethics can be intrinsic to humans, and do not need to come from an outside source, such as a god. Which is its real definition, as far as I know.
EPT
