Considering "Morality"
I want to recommend a fascinating piece at Pam Spaulding's, called "Former American Family Association columnist Joe Murray speaks out against homophobia and hypocrisy" (Pam's House Blend, 27 March 2007).
The first reason is that she reminded me of this tidbit from the mouth of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Pace:
I believe homosexual acts between two individuals are immoral and that we should not condone immoral acts. I do not believe that the United States is well served by a policy that says its is okay to be immoral in any way.
There are all sorts of reasons why it's inappropriate — no, let's say "wrong" — to refer to immorality in that context, but what it's done for the moment is provoke me into realizing the sneaky bit of misdirection that's been persistently invoked by the right: using "moral" when they mean "biblical".
Some people might think that it's a big question whether homosexual activity is immoral — I don't: it isn't — and then they get confused and start thinking therefore, somehow, that being gay is immoral. There was a time about 20 years ago at the height of the "love the sinner, hate the sin" feint, when homophobes did try to make such a distinction, but they seem lately to have slipped down their own slippery slope and forgotten that they ever thought such a thing.
But that aside, I have yet to find a single instance of someone who thinks homosexuality is "immoral" who doesn't claim to base that viewpoint on their reading of the Bible. Further, all such people are convinced that all human morality flows from their God, their Bible, and that there can be no morality without it.
All that is hogwash, of course. It amazes me at times how little some people know or understand about their own religions, their own "holy book", and their own theology — let alone believing something so immature as that there would be no morality without their book of stories. One imagines that they can only be such vehement partisans of their own religion by knowing so little about it.
I do find it amusing that many of these people revile me even more as an atheist than as a gay man. If only I felt inclined to join the Communist party!
At any rate, my thought upon reading General Pace's remark again was simply to think that perhaps it's time to start working harder on separating "morality" from "biblical", and perhaps discuss what is truly "immoral" versus some of the bizarre collection of misinterpretations from translated biblical texts that are thought to be the font of all morality. I note — again — in passing that homosexuality is not even mentioned in the much vaunted "ten commandments", although adultery is. Now, which sin can we deduce from this observation must be the more venal in their god's eye?
Now, before I forget to mention it, Pam's piece is a longish Q&A session with one Joe Murray, who used to write famously homophobic columns for the American Family Association, a notorious group of anti-gay activists. He's had something of a change of heart, and now apparently feels that the AFA goes too far. I found his answers to Pam's questions fascinating, and his steps on the path to moral enlightenment interesting, knowing with what voice he had spoken until recently. It's as though he has found the truth new and fresh, and sometimes it sounds that way coming out of his mouth.
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I welcome comments -- even dissent -- but I will delete without notice irrelevant, rude, psychotic, or incomprehensible comments, particularly those that I deem homophobic, unless they are amusing. The same goes for commercial comments and trackbacks. Sorry, but it's my blog and my decisions are final.
on Tuesday, 27 March 2007 at 18.36
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Hi Jeff. Sounds like you're creating your own Ethics 101 course. Now it's been more than 40 years since I took such a course (actually it was a 200-level course, second year philosophy, but that's beside the point). As I recall, there are several "schools" of ethics, of which the "God says so" approach is one. According to that school, indeed, in its Christian form at least, "ethical" does equal "biblical." But not all ethical systems are based on revelation.
There's Aristotle, where happiness is the measure of what is good and ethical — does this act promote the happiness of all involved? If so, it's ethical. If it doesn't, it isn't.
The "revealed" approach "understands" that without God telling us what to do, our natural inclination is to do evil. It's interesting that this approach takes the most extremely negative view of humanity in its "fallen" state. Without God telling us what's right, we'd all be out there raping and pillaging, murdering and stealing, defiling ourselves, everyone around us, and the environment, with narry a second thought. It's hardly any surprise then, is it, that we find a great deal of anger, hostility, and violence lurking beneath the outwardly righteous veneer of the religious. This is the opposite approach to Aristotle, who assumes that, when left to our own devices, we will seek the good as the means to true happiness.
There's the Utilitarian school which again bases ethics on what makes for the greatest happiness of the greatest number.
And there's situational ethics, which says that what is ethical in any particular situation depends on the circumstances. Derided by the "God's law" school as relativistic, it is, I think, actually the approach most people take. Stealing a loaf of bread to feed a starving child is "ethical" under the circumstances, even if it breaks the eighth commandment. Entering into a sexual relationship with a person of the same sex is the "right" thing to do for a person of same-sex sexual orientation, and marrying a person of the opposite sex in order to repress or hide one's sexual orientation is wrong. But don't try to tell the "God's law" proponent that! They're afraid that situational ethics will cause them to abandon revelation, and descend to a truly Hobbesian brutal human nature. And they seem to be so aware of that as the only alternative to "God's law" that they become quite hysterical on the subject.
NOW: coincidentally, CBC Radio 1 is, this week, broadcasting the 2006 Massey Lectures, delivered by Margaret Summerville, and called "The Ethical Imagination." There's a summary at http://www.cbc.ca/ideas. The lectures are part of the "Ideas" program, and are being broadcast at 9 p.m. (as always, of course, 9:30 in Newfoundland, which is always half an hour ahead of the rest of us). The broadcasts can be found at http://www.cbc.ca. "The Ethical Imagination" has also been published as a book.
I think you would find Summerville's approach to ethics interesting and acceptable.
on Thursday, 29 March 2007 at 02.31
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"The "revealed" approach 'understands' that without God telling us what to do, our natural inclination is to do evil."
I've long wondered what kind of God the father would make his children in such a way that they default to evildoing when, inevitably, they slip off the straight-and-narrow path of his teachings.
Jeff, here's thought that's not new but I think it's appropriate here. If we were to follow biblical mores literally and to the letter, the stoning of sinners would be a common occurrence and those wronged in some way could cite "eye for an eye" justification for exacting vengeance from someone who had wronged them in some way.
That we don't do these things, IMO, leaves us closer to God's will, not farther from it. While there are things to be learned from Bible, people should remember it was written not by an all-wise and knowing God, but by imperfect men.
on Thursday, 29 March 2007 at 20.18
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Thanks, Bill, for the summaries. Sometime — when I have the spare time — perhaps I will study ethics. I probably am mostly under the influence of having recently read Daniel Dennett's "Freedom Evolves", which has quite a bit to say about ethical matters from a naturalistic viewpoint as he talks about the evolution (literally) of free will. But then, I start out as some sort of humanist anyway, not to mention that I am myself an atheist, although not quite of such celebrity as Dennett, whose books I find productively stimulating.