The End of Christianity (46 page)
Besides laudably preaching some of the great moral truths of humanity, the New Testament presents a few ideas that are surely less than laudable:
• You must follow Jesus and only Jesus to be saved(John3:17–18; 14:16).
• You must hate your family to be saved (Luke 14:26).
• You must not get divorced (Mark 10:1–12).
• You must not practice homosexuality (1 Corinthians 6:9–10; Romans 1:26–27).
• Women must be subservient to men (1 Corinthians 14:34–35; 1 Timothy 2:11–12).
• We should keep slaves obedient (Ephesians 6:5–9; 1 Timothy 6:1–2).
According to D'Souza, you will receive the benefits of these “moral” gifts if you believe in Jesus and the afterlife.
D'Souza brings up the famous argument called “Pascal's wager” made by the French philosopher, physicist, and mathematician Blaise Pascal. A medieval Muslim thinker, Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, may have proposed the wager earlier. Basically, the argument is that you have everything to gain and nothing to lose by betting on the afterlife. On the other hand, you have nothing to gain and everything to lose in rejecting it.
Many people, including the great philosopher Bertrand Russell, have seen the flaw in this argument. Assuming God is a just God, wouldn't he look with more favor on someone who honestly didn't believe for lack of evidence than someone who, without evidence, says he believes so he can get his ass into heaven?
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Following an approach used by philosopher William James, D'Souza draws up a balance sheet of the assets and liabilities for belief in the afterlife. Let me list these systematically:
Assets of Belief in an Afterlife
• It provides us with hope at the point of death and a way to cope with our deaths.
• It infuses life with a sense of meaning and purpose.
• It gives us a reason to be moral and a way to transmit morality to our children.
• Clinical evidence exists that religious people who affirm the afterlife are healthier than nonbelievers.
Liabilities of Belief in an Afterlife
• You may not take action to seek justice in this life if you assume it will be provided in the next.
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• You may live in constant fear that any sin you might have committed will condemn you to an eternity of suffering in hell.
• You may not exercise your own best judgment in matters and allow yourself to be controlled by others who claim sacred authority.
• You will not live your life to the fullest if you think that it is not all the life you have.
I am sure the reader can think of arguments to add to both sides. But I don't see what they have to do with the
reality
of life after death. Indeed, I don't see what they have to do with
belief
in life after death. You could agree completely with D'Souza's four points, and more, and still not believe.
Nevertheless, I would like to challenge each of D'Souza's points:
• The idea that you will live forever gives you not just hope but a false sense of a glorious self that leads to extreme self-centeredness in this life. Knowing you are not going to live forever restores a sense of your true place in the scheme of things.
• Rather than an afterlife giving your life meaning, you will find more meaning and purpose in this world when you realize it is the only world you have.
• As we have seen, morality comes from humanity and has nothing to do with belief or nonbelief in an afterlife in a different world.
• A systematic review of sixty-nine studies of an initially healthy population showed (p < 0.001) that religiosity/spirituality was associated with lower mortality, but the association was negative for cardiovascular mortality. Furthermore, twenty-two studies of a diseased population showed no such effect
(p
= 0.19). So all they really found was that people who attend church regularly are healthier than those who don't, and thus “organizational activity” (e.g., church attendance), and not religious belief, was associated with greater survival, and only in healthy populations.
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But that isn't surprising. A lot of people are too sick to go to church. Moreover, none of these studies compared religious believers with
philosophical
atheists. If the merely apathetic unbelievers are separated from those actively pursuing a self-examined life, the difference from religious believers might vanish completely.
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The same authors found, for example, that merely having a positive mood and a sense of humor had the same or greater benefit as spirituality on mortality and health for all populations.
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A FEW OTHER ARGUMENTS
Finally, let me just briefly mention a few of D'Souza's additional arguments.
Modern Physics
D'Souza claims that modern physics shows that matter exists that is “radically different from any matter we are familiar with.”
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Referring to the dark matter and dark energy that we now know constitute 96 percent of the matter in the universe, he totally misrepresents the science involved. He tells us that the discovery that the universe contained more matter than was visible with our telescopes, and that the cosmic expansion was accelerating, required “a reassessment of the entire scientific understanding of matter and energy.”
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This is simply not true. The dark matter and dark energy have all the properties that we have identified with matter since the time of Newton: mass, energy, momentum, the presence or absence of electric charge, and so on. They were each detected by their gravitational effects. The dark energy is simply called “energy” to distinguish it from dark matter. Energy and mass are still equivalent by E = mc
2
. The dark energy has repulsive gravity, which was a big surprise but nevertheless can be found in the equations of general relativity. Furthermore, for three decades we have had a fully reductionist model of elementary particles called the
standard model
that has agreed with every observation made in all of science without a single confirmed anomaly over that time. It provides us with a full knowledge of the physics of the universe back to when it was only a trillionth of a second old.
D'Souza also tells us that “[p]hysics also demonstrates the possibility of realms beyond the universe and modes of being unconstrained by the limits of our physical laws.”
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Here I assume he refers to other universes besides our own. Yes, they are possible and, indeed, predicted to exist by modern cosmology. But nowhere do physicists and cosmologists say that these other universes are not made of matter and not described by natural laws (much less that our minds travel to any of them when we die).
Modern Biology
D'Souza claims that modern biology shows that the “evolutionary transition from matter to mind does not seem random or accidental but built into the script of nature.”
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He wishfully interprets this as a transition from material to immaterial. First, this view is far from the mainstream of modern biology and held by a small minority of biologists who allow their religious faith to intrude on their science. Second, even if they are right about some previously unrecognized teleological principle in action, there is no basis for assuming it is not purely material.
Modern Philosophy
Modern philosophy distinguishes between experience and reality. While many physicists would disagree, I concur that this distinction is valid. The quantities and models of physics are human inventions that are used to describe observations. Those observations no doubt result from an underlying objective reality, and since the models agree with observations they must have something to do with that reality. However, the models do not necessarily have to exist in one-to-one correspondence with reality. In fact, we have no way of knowing from observations alone the true nature of reality.
D'Souza refers to the idea of Kant and Schopenhauer that two worlds exist, the phenomenal world of our observations and the noumenal world that is behind a veil and unavailable to us directly. Since the two worlds are connected, we humans are part of both, and so when we die we turn to dust in the phenomenal world but live on in the noumenal.
This is possible, I suppose, but I do not see why the two worlds can't be one. Referring to the allegory of Plato's cave, we are like prisoners tied up in the cave where we can only see the wall and the shadows cast on it by figures around a fire. They are real, and the shadows are images. But note that they are both in the same world. There is no evidence our world is any other way.
by Dr. Richard Carrier
I
t's claimed that if no religion is true, there is no reason to be moral. But quite the opposite is the case: only empirically confirmable facts can constitute a valid reason to be moral, and yet religions do not provide any. Since only observable natural facts can ever provide a sufficient reason to be moral—and those facts do not require any religion to be true—religion is either irrelevant or in fact harmful to moral progress in society by motivating people to embrace false moralities or preventing them from discovering the real reasons to be moral. It will here be demonstrated that there are natural facts that show everyone will benefit from adopting certain moral attitudes and behaviors, that science could demonstrate this if it undertook the proper research program, and that as a result Christianity is either irrelevant or an obstacle to genuine moral belief.
1
To reach these conclusions I will first dispense with the “is-ought” problem. Then I will analyze the logic of Christian morality, showing how it does in fact derive an “ought” from an “is,” but then I'll prove it makes this connection so poorly that it must be considered philosophically defective. Then I will demonstrate how secular philosophers like Kant and Hume derive an “ought” from an “is,” revealing parallels with the Christian attempt that entail a universal definition of what we all must mean when we ask what we morally ought to do, which further entails that “what we morally ought to do” is empirically discoverable. Then I will address common irrational fears of what might happen if we allow moral conclusions to be empirically refutable (and empirically confirmable), revealing the proper connections between scientific and moral facts. Then I will prove that certain moral facts must exist, and must be empirically discoverable, which are true for any given individual. I next expand on that analysis to show that at least some of these moral facts are morally universal, and thus true for all human beings. Then I will summarize all these conclusions and what they entail. Finally, an appendix to this chapter contains
formal deductive proofs
of every one of these conclusions, fully verifying that they are necessarily true.
GETTING AN “OUGHT” FROM AN “IS”
It's often declared a priori that “you can't get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’,” and that therefore science can't possibly discover moral facts. This is sometimes called a “naturalistic fallacy.” But calling this a fallacy is itself a fallacy. Indeed, it's not merely illogical, it's demonstrably false. We get an “ought” from an “is” all the time. In fact, this is the only known way to get an “ought” at all.
For example, “If you want your car to run well, then you ought to change its oil with sufficient regularity.” This entails an imperative statement (“you ought to change your car's oil with sufficient regularity”), which is factually true independent of human opinion or belief. That is, regardless of what I think or feel or believe, if I want my car to run well, I still have to change its oil with sufficient regularity.
2
This follows necessarily from the material facts of the universe (such as the laws of mechanics, thermodynamics, and friction, and the historical facts of modern automobile construction). It therefore must be discovered empirically (or follows necessarily from premises that have been discovered empirically), and science is capable of making such empirical discoveries. In fact, science has been extensively confirmed to be the
most reliable way
of making and verifying such discoveries (if not in some cases the only way).
3
There are countless true imperative facts like this that science can discover and verify, and that science often has discovered and verified, from “If you want to save the life of a patient on whom you are performing surgery, you ought to sterilize your instruments” to “If you want to build an enduring bridge, you ought not to employ brittle concrete.” The desire to do these things (of engineers to make enduring bridges, of doctors to save the lives of surgery patients, of drivers to keep their cars running) is an objective fact of the world that science can empirically discover and verify (already the sciences of psychology and sociology routinely study what it is that people really want and when and why).
4
And the causal connection between behavior and result (of sterilizing instruments saving lives, shoddy construction collapsing bridges, or neglected engines functioning poorly or seizing up entirely) is an objective fact of the world that science can also empirically discover and verify. And wherever both are an empirically demonstrated fact, the imperative they entail is an empirically demonstrated fact.
5
Therefore, the claim “you can't get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’” is demonstrably false and has been refuted by science too many times to mention. Let it never be uttered again.
Whether
moral
imperatives are sufficiently similar to these other kinds of imperatives (commonly called “hypothetical imperatives”) is a separate question (which I'll soon address). But if science cannot discover moral facts, it cannot be because “you can't get an ‘ought’ from an ‘is.’” Because science gets an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ routinely and without any special difficulty. There is no rational argument to be made against the conclusion that
true imperative propositions exist
and are as much objective facts of the world as the structure of the atom or the germ theory of disease. And this is not a novel proposition. Philosophers have long established the point.
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THE LOGIC OF CHRISTIAN MORALITY
The most popular Christian theory of morality is that we had better be good or else we'll burn in hell for all eternity, but if we
are
good, we'll get to live forever in paradise. Christian intellectuals chafe at this, but despite their lament, it's the mainstream view. More sophisticated theories replace “heaven” and “hell” with more abstract objectives, such as “you had better be good or you will disappoint God,” or “you had better be good or else you're belittling your existence,” and half a dozen other things that have been proposed.
7
But these all amount to the same thing: an appeal to something
bad
that will happen if you don't comply (and something correspondingly
good
that will happen otherwise), combined with the assumption that you care about that—and not just care, but care about that more than anything else instead.
All Christian moral systems thus reduce to the same argument:
1
. If you do
x
,
A
will happen; and if you do ~
x
,
B
will happen.
2
. When rational and sufficiently informed, you will want
A
more than
B
3
. If when rational and sufficiently informed you will want
A
more than
B
(and if
B
, then
~
A
; and if and only if
x
, then
A
), then you ought to do
x
.
4
. Therefore, you ought to do
x
.
This means, for the conclusion to thus be true, all three premises must be true.
A
must in actual empirical fact result from doing
x
.
B
must in actual empirical fact result from doing ~
x
. And we must in actual empirical fact want A more than B when we're rational and informed.
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It must also be true that these two facts entail what we ought to do (premise 3), as otherwise declaring that the conclusion follows from them is a non sequitur, even for a Christian (more on that later).
If, for instance, God is going to send everyone to hell who
obeys
the ten commandments, the Christian claim that “you ought to obey the Ten Commandments lest you burn in hell” would be factually false, and thus not a true moral statement after all. Likewise, if God will actually be
pleased
if we break the Ten Commandments, or it will actually
honor
our existence if we do (or [
insert reason
here]), then the claim that we should obey the Ten Commandments lest we offend God or belittle our existence (or whatever) is likewise false. Christian morality thus depends on its claims of cause-and-effect being
factually true.
But it has no empirical evidence that any of those claims are true. There is no one to point to in heaven or hell to verify what sort of behavior brings us to either place. There is no empirical evidence as to how God
actually
feels about any particular behavior.
9
There is no empirical evidence of Christian morality's superiority over many soundly argued non-Christian alternatives in producing a healthy society of happy people. There isn't even any empirical evidence that convincing people to believe in Christianity makes them morally better—statistically, the more Christians there are in any society, often the more social problems
increase
, and in no case do they substantially decline overall (all else being equal).
10
Even in terms of achieving personal happiness and well-being, there is no empirical evidence that other moral systems don't perform as well or better.
11
Christian morality is thus wholly unverified or unverifiable. There is therefore no more evidence to support it than supports any other morality, or even exactly the opposite morality—apart from wholly secular facts that are observably true even if Christianity is false.
Christianity
also
depends on its claims regarding human desires being true. If, even after becoming fully informed, we will actually
prefer
to burn eternally in hell, then there is no relevant sense in which “you ought to be good lest you burn in hell” would be true. Likewise for anything you substitute: if we actually
prefer
to displease God, or actually
dislike
feeling right with the world, or actually
enjoy
belittling our existence more than honoring it, and every other thing, and
still
felt that way even after becoming fully aware of all the consequences of either option, then no Christian morality is true (at least for us). Even if it accurately reported what God commands, those commands would be no more binding on us than anyone else's, or even our own. We would simply have no reason to care about that.
We can fabricate moralities all day long. We have no reason to obey any of them. Yet there is no difference between a Christian moral system we have no sufficient motive to follow, and any moral system chosen at random. Our motive to obey is identical in each case, which is to say, identically absent. We have no more reason to obey a nonmotivating Christian morality than we have to obey the Pythagorean morality (in which eating beans is gravely immoral) or the orthodox Jewish morality (in which picking up a telephone receiver on Saturday is gravely immoral). And if there is no reason to obey it, there is no meaningful sense in which it's true. It might be true that “God commands
x
,” but it will not be true that “You ought to do
x
.”
That's why naive Christianity is so popular, in which eternal heavens and hells are invoked not merely to create a motive but as if they were the only conceivable motive—such that the prospect of not believing in heaven or hell is assumed to entail a rapid tailspin into shameless debauchery (the evidence decisively proves otherwise, but Christian belief rarely tracks reality—see previous note). Even more sophisticated theories simply replace this motive with some other (such as a love of God, or a profound concern for his opinion of us, or a feeling of “being right with the world,” or what have you), always in the end appealing to what we supposedly want most, and thus want more than anything else we could obtain by acting differently. And yet, once again, if we truly wanted something else more—if we were fully informed of all the consequences of doing either, and still even then we'd always prefer eternal hell (or whatever deterrent is proposed)—then there would be no meaningful sense in which we “ought” to do anything Christians prescribe. Their declarations would simply be false—as false as “you ought not to eat beans” or “you ought not to pick up phone receivers on Saturday.”
Thus every Christian moral system conceived either derives its “ought” from some “is,” or has no relevant claim to being true. Yet no “is” from which Christianity derives its “oughts” is empirically verifiable, except facts that would remain observably true even if Christianity is false (such as the effect moral behavior has on our own well-being), and facts that are actually verifiably false (such as the claim that homosexuality impairs human happiness or does measurable harm to society). The “is” that Christians attempt to derive their “oughts” from is the same double claim to fact that warrants any other imperative, only with claims of the supernatural thrown in: (1) a claim about what God is or wants or will do (or how he has arranged the world to work, or some such thing) and (2) a claim about what we all really want—more specifically, the claim that, when we're rational and sufficiently informed, we will want the consequences of pursuing the goal entailed in (1) more than the consequences of not pursuing it. If the latter is false (if we
don't
want that outcome more than the other), so is the entire system of Christian morality based on it. Likewise if the recommended behavior does not even obtain the consequences entailed in (1). And Christians have never verified that their morality does that. Therefore, apart from what we can already justify without it, Christian morality has no foundation and nothing to recommend it.