by rem 34 Replies latest jw friends
p11, in the chapter some objections, makes the point regarding Universal Natural Law:
"Think once again of a piano. It has not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong ones. Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another."
Is his statement true? Are all possible actions right, if used in the correct context, but worng if not (and hence misused)?
Lisa,
::May I please respond to some of the things you say about this book? I am very poor at debate and I am not looking for a debate, honestly! I just really am interested in these books and the author and his logic, etc. I found them more logical than some of you, and that worries me a bit. Perhaps I am being too easily persuaded.
No problem... this is what I get for starting a thread about a book I didn't really feel like debating in great detail. That'll learn me! :)
::I suppose I am arguing with you about some of your points, but only in the most friendly and open-minded way?My goal is to test my thinking?. Be easy with me if you respond because I am a sensitive soul, but I am trying to toughen up a bit.
I'll try and be gentle. :)
::Lewis spends no less than two chapters supporting his argument for this universal moral law. That is, two chapters supporting the idea with some logic (imo), not proof. I don't know how he could 'prove' there is a universal moral law any more than he could 'prove' there is a God, or you could 'prove' there is not a god.
The two chapters or so (comes out to about 14 pages in my book) are filled with anecdotes, opinions, and a priori reasonings, but no real evidence is given. If you cannot 'prove' that there is a Universal Moral Law then you are on shakey ground for the rest of the book because what it really comes down to then is a book of opinions. If this were the foundation of my argument, I would have spent more time dealing with all of the exceptions and objections - but really the tough questions are ignored and strawmen are attended to.
Now I can definitely understand what he means and how he understands the world, but I don't happen to agree that there is an obvious Moral Law. Maybe it was obvious back in the 1940's when standards in the West were different but a modern reader should bristle at such an assertion.
For one thing, he is committing the Texas Sharp Shooter fallacy by defining his Moral Law how he likes. He conveniently explains away exceptions and narrows down to what he believes is the core of morality. The problem is that once he does this, his morality no longer seems mysterious and doesn't need a supernatural explanation.
For example, Murder is bad. No society that I know of condones murder. Some condone certain types of killing, but murder (killing of innocent people) is usually looked down upon. Is this because God put it in our hearts to feel bad about it? Or is it because Societies that do not frown upon murder happen to be unstable and die out?
There are many books that deal with human and animal behavior and why certain mixtures of behaviors are evolutionarily stable and others are not. Richard Dawkins' Selfish Gene is a good primer. There is actually a bit of mathematics involved - it has its roots in game theory.
Now Lewis' argument is only good down to the lowest common denominator - the core, because he admits that there are different cultures that apply the core morality in different ways. This works fine for Murder, but another example he uses is selfishness. But selfishnes can mean a whole lot of things in different societies. Capitalism is a form of selfishnes (do CEO's feel bad that they are making a profit at the expense of their workers?) and it is highly regarded by many, while others hate it. Which view of capitalism is correct? Most children are born selfish and have to learn not to be (in a specific way) by their parents who learned it from their parents who were successful in that particular society. So what is this moral law against selfishnes?
And to say the Moral Law applies to what you ought to do instead of what you do doesn't answer the question. Many people have different ideas of what ought to be done in certain situations. Feeling bad about something is not evidence that you are breaking a moral law. Perhaps you feel bad due to empathy? Or maybe you feel bad because society has taught you to feel bad. Or maybe you feel bad because you are doing what society tells you is the 'right' thing, but you know it will hurt your friend. There are so many reasons why someone might feel they 'ought' to do something that an appeal to a Universal Law is overly simplistic.
It seems to me that his "law" is ill-defined and only seems to apply in certain contexts. The context has to be the particular society in which a person lives. I think the Evolutionary explanation is much more parsimonious - but that's just me. I'm not trying to prove that there is or is not a supernatural "Moral Law". The naturalistic explanation takes into account the special cases and shows why they are retained, while the supernatural explanation merely glosses over them.
::::At best he shot down some weak strawmen against his position.
::Can you give me some examples here, so I can judge if I agree with you or not?
This may not have been a strawman at the time he wrote this, but he takes a very cartesian view of consciousness. In the "objections" chapter he deals with the herd instinct and the decision to help or to flee. He asserts that it cannot be instinct that decides between the two actions. To me this is merely word play. Of course it is instinct - it's a social instinct. Even animals have this - just like the parental instinct that makes you want to protect your children even if it means you harm. Social instinct can be just as powerful and the Evolutionarily Stable population explanation takes this into consideration.
The multiplication table explanation is another. The thing is that he is not really answering the critic - he is bringing up a red herring by analogy - an analogy that seems to apply but really doesn't. Again it's word play. Is the multiplication table supernatural? Is the multiplication table different in different cultures? Of course the labels for the numbers may be different, but this is only a superficial difference, while morality in different cultures is more than superficially different - there is no direct one-to-one mapping of morals. He also claims that it is possible to judge one culture as better or more 'right' than another. He uses the example of the Nazi's. The problem is that from our perspectives (because of our society) the Nazi society seems really bad, but to the Nazi's and to modern-day neo-nazi's it seems just fine. Today, the Islamic countries find the US extremely immoral, while we find their society oppressive. Who's right? But 2 x 2 always equals 4 in any culture. His example doesn't support his case.
Also, the argument is circular: You already have to believe in a One True Moral Law for the argument to work. Also it doesn't take into account naturalistic explanations, such as the Evolutionarily Stable society.
The last one in chapter 2 is probably most accurately a "Straw Man". He talks about burning witches... that's about one of the silliest objections... How about a meatier one, such as: but the Islamic people find us extremely immoral? You may be able to argue that the Moral Law explains why women have to wear burkas because of the core issue of immodesty, but what about cultures that don't seem to have any issue of modesty? What about the morality of oppressing women? What about slavery, as another example? What about examples of morality/immorality in the animal kingdom? What about the killing of babies in the bible? Why is god's morality different than man's? Why did god's morality change from the OT to the NT in the Bible? There are many tougher objections against his theory that he does not address.
Another one he brings up is at the end of Chapter 3 when he tries to say that a Societal explanation for morality is circular. He really does a mockery to what any thinking person would really say about the subject. A thinking person would not just say, "Because you ought to be unselfish" in response to "Why should I care what's good for society except when it happens to pay me personally?". The Evolutionarily Stable society answer is because you will never know what action will benefit you or not - sometimes selfish ones will and sometimes selfless ones will, with a bias toward selfless. The calculation is much more complicated than "selfish act = good result for me". There is such a thing a payback and social interaction that have serious consequences. When you are younger, you actually think of such things because most people are much more selfish as a child and you try your best to calculate the odds in your favor. As a grown-up, the calculation becomes subconscious or second nature because we've done it so many times. It's also known as experience.
::::At worst he totally contradicted himself by claiming that some people don't know this Universal Moral Law and have to learn it.
::I don't think so. Lewis does suggest that just because a law must be taught, does not mean that the law could not be a ?universal?, (not of human invention), law. In support of this idea, he used an analogy of the multiplication table. We learn the multiplication tables. If we do not learn the multiplication tables, that does not mean the universal multiplication laws do not exist. Whether someone taught you it or not, there is a universal law of multiplication.
::*This analogy does not prove that there is a Universal Moral Law, but it does show that just because something is learned, doesn?t mean it can?t be a universal law. And that is all Lewis was trying to show.*
I used a poor choice of words... when I said "know" I was implying that they also do not "follow" the Moral Law (Chapter 3). First of all, what good is a Universal Moral Law if some people - even whole cultures don't know it or follow it? Lewis used the Nazi's as an example. What did god create the law for if the Nazi's weren't aware that they were breaking it? Or were they not really breaking it because they felt justified in their mass killings? They didn't feel they ought not do that. (This sounds like moral relativism, which contradicts his premise) This law seems somewhat useless to me if it's powerless to *do* anything. Really, how universal is it? The more I read about it, the more it seems that this "Universal Moral Law" is only as universal as C. S. Lewis' own moral compass.
::::Other things he says are silly to me. He dismisses atheism because it's "too simple". He likens it to fish who don't know they are wet - atheism can't be true because if life really had no meaning then we wouldn't know it.
::He did not say that atheism can?t be true because if life really had no meaning then we wouldn?t know it. Lewis said that his old argument for atheism did not explain why we have the Universal Moral Law, and so atheism didn?t answer his questions about the universe: it was ?too simple?. (and he had already explained why he believed there is a universal moral law)
I have to disagree here. He says nearly the exact thing I said. I'll quote it hear from the end of Book 2 Chapter 1: "Consequently atheism turns out to be too simple. If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."
I believe in his analogy he is equating "dark" with "justice", which was what he was pondering as an atheist that led him to this line of thinking. The problem is, though, that "justice" means different things in different societies. It is a learned concept. He was simply projecting his provincial concept of justice out on the universe. There is no mystery about it. So I believe I am correct in stating that he dismisses atheism too quickly and easily without really going beyond attacking a strawman.
::Take it or leave it if you like, but he is laying out a line of reasoning that is possible. Not proven, Possible.
Possible doesn't cut it for me. Otherwise I'd have to believe in (or at least give serious considerationi to) Vishnu and Muhammed, etc.
::This book was not intended to prove Christianity, or disprove atheism, imo. It is intended to ?explain and defend the belief that have been common to nearly all Christians at all times.? It is a good book to see what Christians as a whole believe, and how their beliefs are logically possible. If you are looking for proof of if there is a God or not, you are not going to find it here. Or, in my opinion, anywhere.
Who do you defend Christian beliefs against? Other Christians? I'm merely stating that he certainly has not targeted his book to the appropriate audience if he is attempting to defend his beliefs.
::...Ok I am back, and I am still not sure what I think about this problem (?) of him not calling these things ?neutral? instead of ?good.? It seems to me that he is talking about dualism, and by definition there is no 'neutral' in dualism so why bring it up in a discussion about dualism?
First of all, I'm not sure that dualism denies neutral qualities. The theological view of dualism is just that the world is ruled by antagonistic forces of good and evil. It doesn't necessarily mean that everything within the world has to be one or the other. At any rate he assigns arbitrary moral values to these things. Why is power good rather than evil? Is that based on his own morality? It's more of a side point, anyway. Maybe dualism was a hot topic in the 1940's?
::2.) In contrast, the Christian idea is that of one God who is Good, period. All else in the universe is judged next to this measure. It is a totally different idea. That is all Lewis is saying at this point.
But why is the Christian god good? Is it because he follows good laws (a higher moral law), or is he good by definition so that any law that he creates is by definition good? In other words, if god said that rape was good, would it automatically be good because he said it, or would it not be because he is in subjection to a higher morality? No need to answer this.. I don't mean to go off on a tangent.
::Thanks for talking about this subject and thanks for reading my long post,
No problem... Sorry my answers are so disjointed. Hope I made sense!
rem
Lisa, I loved your post.
Lewis speaks to hearts very well, and I think his greatest contribution for many readers is to correct their misunderstandings of what the core of Christianity is. He has helped me a great deal, and thru his writings I have really found my capacity to know and love God enlarged. I am not the only one. His writings are a great springboard; he writes very well through analogy and allegory.
I tentatively agreed with Lewis about a universal moral law when I first read this book, but I wondered if this was not actually rather a shaky foundation. After several years, I have come to understand more clearly what he meant and I now agree with him 100%. To try to live without any reference to right, wrong, or our sense of justice would leave each of us utterly conflicted--or psychotic. I cannot simply pass off this human quality as evolutionary development. That has been much more difficult for me to believe, no matter how fancy the explanation.
I don't think it's reasonable to think that everyone will agree with Lewis on every point (I don't), or that ever person will be converted to his views. NO author has ever done this. Nonetheless, Lewis points out that there is an aspect of humanity, the importance of which is generally overlooked, which actually gives us a path to discovering God. Namely, our understanding of right/wrong, or our sense of justice if you will. (By calling it universal law, he means that every man does have an understanding of these concepts, not that we all agree on the very best expression of them.)
In my own experience, I can say Lewis was right! Our consciences are the beginning of the path that God uses to lead us to Himself.
bebu
LT,
Maybe it's like playing jazz piano. To some people the notes sound wrong and to others they sound sooooo right. And then, some people are just tone deaf. ;)
rem
REM:I don't believe this to be an apologetic work, but rather a simple portrayal of Lewis's perspective.
Maybe it's like playing jazz piano.
Maybe there's more than a grain of truth in that.
That brings us back to JamesThomas's alleghory of beauty (on the Faith thread).
