Human Morality, Religion, and American Secularism: Everyone's a Fundamentalist
I touched on my ideas about human morality a little while ago in my post entitled "Religion," but I read a buffle-brained article in the New York Times today that made me want to elaborate. The gist of the article is that secular reasoning is by nature devoid of the moral axioms that are necessary for policy debate, so it must steal them from religion. It is true that moral axioms are necessary for policy debate, and the author is right to criticize the idea that religious people should not reason according to their religious beliefs in a policy debate. However, he commits a common logical error by assuming that moral axioms are by definition religious.
I am a proponent of logic. In some ways, it trumps morality - for example, when I found that it was divorced from religion, I became an atheist. But while the use of logic can make your beliefs internally consistent and consistent with facts, it cannot provide an actual foundation for morality.
The reason for this is that all logical reasoning must ultimately rest on axiomatic truths that cannot themselves be explained. As I understand it, in science these are called physical constants, one of which is the speed of light. We know that the speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. Why? That's just the way it is. We observe that fact, a kind of axiom of the physical universe, and then we can use it in logical calculations.
Aside from being a physical constant, the speed of light is an objective, universal truth - a fact - something that is true in all places, at all times, and for every single person. People can disagree with that, but those people can be proven wrong.
For a while, I thought the key to life would be to find moral facts and use them in my moral calculations in order to find an objectively and universally true moral belief system that no intelligent, honest, well-meaning person could possibly argue with.
Ah, the foolishness of youth. Moral axioms, as it turns out, cannot be observed in the natural world. Thou shalt not kill - but why not? You cannot give an answer that does not refer back to opinion or preference. "It's just wrong" is an opinion. "It's wrong because a deity says so" assumes the existence of a deity, which is unproven and therefore also an opinion. "Because you'll be thrown in jail" appeals to most people's preference for staying out of jail. Moral axioms are entirely subjective, and they are not universal. It is not a fact that killing is wrong, or that any deity has ever opined on the subject, or that going to jail is bad.
Similarly, it is not a fact that dropping a nuclear bomb on Toronto just for fun is a bad idea. It is an opinion, and one I hope everyone shares with me. Hence the relevance of moral axioms to policy debate.
Since every moral axiom is basically arbitrarily decided by individuals for their own purposes, there is absolutely no qualitative difference between secular and religious moral axioms. What's the difference between belief in a deity and a belief in, for example, the essential goodness of human beings? Is there a difference between belief in religious dogma and belief in human rights? No - none of those things can be observed or proven, and individual minds are the source of them all. Hence the fallacy in assuming that moral axioms are "stolen" from religion.
But even though opinions, beliefs, and preferences are non-factual, every single human being on the planet thinks that their moral beliefs are universal. Including me - even though I understand that my moral beliefs are completely my own non-factual opinions, I still think murder is wrong, and that other people should be barred from doing it even if they don't share my opinion.
In other words, just like the Christian fundamentalists that I and my fellow liberals like to rant about, I want to impose my beliefs on other people, and everyone else does too.
However, the author of the abovelinked article misses completely the reason why so many people say that Christians shouldn't impose their beliefs on other people or rely on religious reasoning in policy debates or decisions. It isn't because they have no beliefs, and it isn't because they think beliefs of all kinds should be banned from policy.
It's because their most deeply held moral axioms are secular, whether they say so or not. It's because, even if they pay lip service to religion, they fundamentally disagree with a Christian point of view, and are not convinced by references to the bible. Their moral reasoning is built on non-religious axioms, which they are usually unable to identify as such, and which may seem as natural to them as breathing.
These same non-religious axioms - some of them, anyway - are the genesis of American secularism, the primary religion, in my opinion, of the majority of Americans.
Some common constituent elements are belief in the following things, however defined:
Of course, they don't cover everything. They're broad and open to interpretation, yet they leave vast swathes of life and policy untouched. Often these voids are filled by religion, though in quite a lot of cases they aren't even if the person professes to be religious. Thus very many Americans, while primarily secular, are also religious to some extent.
It is this dualism in American morality that leads people to believe such statements as "We should keep religion out of public debate." You can only do that, or even believe it's possible, if you are a primarily secular religious hobbyist. A truly, deeply, fundamentally religious person who really puts nothing before religion cannot actually leave religion out of anything. In order to keep religion out of public debate, you'd have to keep religious people out of the public debate, and in order to do that, you'd have to violate free speech principles.
So instead of trying to keep religious people out of public debate, let's just settle for disagreeing with them.
I am a proponent of logic. In some ways, it trumps morality - for example, when I found that it was divorced from religion, I became an atheist. But while the use of logic can make your beliefs internally consistent and consistent with facts, it cannot provide an actual foundation for morality.
The reason for this is that all logical reasoning must ultimately rest on axiomatic truths that cannot themselves be explained. As I understand it, in science these are called physical constants, one of which is the speed of light. We know that the speed of light is exactly 299,792,458 meters per second. Why? That's just the way it is. We observe that fact, a kind of axiom of the physical universe, and then we can use it in logical calculations.
Aside from being a physical constant, the speed of light is an objective, universal truth - a fact - something that is true in all places, at all times, and for every single person. People can disagree with that, but those people can be proven wrong.
For a while, I thought the key to life would be to find moral facts and use them in my moral calculations in order to find an objectively and universally true moral belief system that no intelligent, honest, well-meaning person could possibly argue with.
Ah, the foolishness of youth. Moral axioms, as it turns out, cannot be observed in the natural world. Thou shalt not kill - but why not? You cannot give an answer that does not refer back to opinion or preference. "It's just wrong" is an opinion. "It's wrong because a deity says so" assumes the existence of a deity, which is unproven and therefore also an opinion. "Because you'll be thrown in jail" appeals to most people's preference for staying out of jail. Moral axioms are entirely subjective, and they are not universal. It is not a fact that killing is wrong, or that any deity has ever opined on the subject, or that going to jail is bad.
Similarly, it is not a fact that dropping a nuclear bomb on Toronto just for fun is a bad idea. It is an opinion, and one I hope everyone shares with me. Hence the relevance of moral axioms to policy debate.
Since every moral axiom is basically arbitrarily decided by individuals for their own purposes, there is absolutely no qualitative difference between secular and religious moral axioms. What's the difference between belief in a deity and a belief in, for example, the essential goodness of human beings? Is there a difference between belief in religious dogma and belief in human rights? No - none of those things can be observed or proven, and individual minds are the source of them all. Hence the fallacy in assuming that moral axioms are "stolen" from religion.
But even though opinions, beliefs, and preferences are non-factual, every single human being on the planet thinks that their moral beliefs are universal. Including me - even though I understand that my moral beliefs are completely my own non-factual opinions, I still think murder is wrong, and that other people should be barred from doing it even if they don't share my opinion.
In other words, just like the Christian fundamentalists that I and my fellow liberals like to rant about, I want to impose my beliefs on other people, and everyone else does too.
However, the author of the abovelinked article misses completely the reason why so many people say that Christians shouldn't impose their beliefs on other people or rely on religious reasoning in policy debates or decisions. It isn't because they have no beliefs, and it isn't because they think beliefs of all kinds should be banned from policy.
It's because their most deeply held moral axioms are secular, whether they say so or not. It's because, even if they pay lip service to religion, they fundamentally disagree with a Christian point of view, and are not convinced by references to the bible. Their moral reasoning is built on non-religious axioms, which they are usually unable to identify as such, and which may seem as natural to them as breathing.
These same non-religious axioms - some of them, anyway - are the genesis of American secularism, the primary religion, in my opinion, of the majority of Americans.
Some common constituent elements are belief in the following things, however defined:
- The primacy of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights
- Democracy, or at least representative government
- Freedom
- Capitalism
- The rule of law
- Individualism
- Separation of church and state
Of course, they don't cover everything. They're broad and open to interpretation, yet they leave vast swathes of life and policy untouched. Often these voids are filled by religion, though in quite a lot of cases they aren't even if the person professes to be religious. Thus very many Americans, while primarily secular, are also religious to some extent.
It is this dualism in American morality that leads people to believe such statements as "We should keep religion out of public debate." You can only do that, or even believe it's possible, if you are a primarily secular religious hobbyist. A truly, deeply, fundamentally religious person who really puts nothing before religion cannot actually leave religion out of anything. In order to keep religion out of public debate, you'd have to keep religious people out of the public debate, and in order to do that, you'd have to violate free speech principles.
So instead of trying to keep religious people out of public debate, let's just settle for disagreeing with them.