My previous post, William Lane Craig, Original Sin and Original Guilt, touched on the doctrine of original sin. According to the standard western articulation of this doctrine it has three components. First that human beings have a propensity towards doing wrong. Second, this propensity is inherited from our ancestors, it is not that we come into the world perfect and then later abandon perfection. In Edward Oakes’ words in “Original Sin: A Disputation”, “sin after Adam always takes the form of acquiescence and not of origination. We are born, that is, into a world where rebellion against God has already taken place, and the drift of it sweeps us along.” Finally, despite this we are responsible for this propensity in some way.
As both theologians and philosophers have noted for centuries this doctrine appears paradoxical. How can we be responsible for something we inherit? I agree that there is something of a paradox in the notion of original sin and it is hard to find a coherent way of making sense of it. In this post I will take a different tack; I want to suggest that denying theological doctrines of original sin will not resolve this paradox. The reason: the paradox is in fact a paradox which is part of human existence and human moral experience. Hence, even without a doctrine of original sin, the paradox is still apparent to anyone who reflects on their experience.
This was made clear to me in a conversation I had in a bar with an atheist friend. My interlocutor, who had had a staunch Calvinist upbringing, was railing against the Calvinist doctrine of original sin and the apparent contradictions in it. His observations were fairly astute. He noted that on the one hand Calvinist parents instilled personal responsibility in their children and brought them up to accept responsibility and accountability for their actions. This he commended as morally good. At the same time he noted that these same parents believe in original sin. They believed human nature, as it exists today, is corrupt. Humans come into the world with a propensity to evil; their view is that from birth onwards it is inevitable that we will sin, that our hearts are inclined towards evil and so on. He proceeded to argue that if the latter view was correct then the former must be false. The doctrine of original sin undercuts the idea of personal responsibility.
I listened carefully to my friend’s argument, when he had finished I asked him a question:
Did he consider himself a moral agent who was responsible for his actions?
Unsurprisingly, given his recent praise for personal responsibility, he immediately answered yes.
Then came my second question:
Have you ever lied?
His answer was an obvious yes.
Did he believe it was wrong to lie, absent special justifying circumstances such as lies to save someone’s life?
Again yes.
Has he ever lied in situations where those circumstances were not present?
Yes.
Was it a once off?
No, he conceded had done it hundreds if not thousands of times.
Did he consider himself unique in doing this?
No, he was pretty sure everyone who was asked these questions would answer the same way.
I asked him if he had ever done anything wrong? Had he ever treated people with contempt when should not have? Had he ever been excessively selfish or rude or inconsiderate?
Again the answer was yes.
Was this once off thing or had he done things like this too often to count in his life?
The answer, too often to count.
Was he morally perfect?
No.
Did he always do his duty all the time even when it was difficult or not in his apparent self interest?
Again no, he conceded he was not morally perfect and that no he did not always do his duty. In fact, he often, when he could get away with it and when it was in his apparent self-interest, he violated his duties.
If he was not morally perfect was he close to being morally perfect?
Again the answer he gave, quite honestly, was no, he was far from moral perfection.
I then asked him again if he thought he was unique in this respect, was he the only person who would have offered the answers he did to this question or would everyone answer the same if they were honest?
He stated that he considered that everyone would answer similarly. He had never met anyone who was morally perfect or was even close. He did not know of anyone who had not repeatedly in their lives succumbed to the temptation to do wrong.
I then asked him a further question:
Was he responsible for all the actions he had conceded to doing or not doing?
He said, “Obviously, yes.”
From the discussion I then suggested two things were evident. First, that it is inevitable that every human being will fall far short of what morality requires. No human being born into the world, no moral agent will live a life even remotely close to the life morality requires of them. Second, this failure on their part is something they are responsible for and culpable of.
I think these two facts are evident from our moral experience. We know we continually, frequently and often do what we ought not to do. We know it is inevitable that we will do this. We do not know of any person for whom this is not true of. Moreover, at no time in our lives were we once morally perfect but then simply failed to maintain that state; we have always been like this. At the same time, however, we also know that we are often to blame for this fact – it is no one else’s fault.
It seems then that this paradox is part of our moral experience. It is inevitable that we will sin. In an important sense we cannot but fail morally and yet we are responsible for our moral failure. On the face of it, there appears only two ways to address this. One is to deny we are responsible for our moral failures. The other is to claim that we can achieve moral perfection. But both claims seem to be obviously false and as such are implausible.
In his book “The Moral Gap: Kantian Ethics, Human Limits, and God’s Assistance” John Hare calls this phenomenon the moral gap, we recognise the demands morality requires of us and we inevitably fail to meet it yet we still maintain that we are responsible for our failure, at least in a large number of instances. Hare goes on to argue that, in fact, only a theological ethics addresses this. This is because theological ethics have the notions of atonement, grace and forgiveness which are unavailable in secular systems. It is this apparent paradox that the doctrine of original sin tried to make intelligible.
I am not sure how to make it intelligible here and no theory of original sin has me entirely satisfied. Yet at the heart of my moral experience, the basic insight it proposes seems to me to be obviously true. How to resolve the paradox I do not know yet I am inclined to think it must be resolvable because it is true.
Tags: Atheist · Edward Oakes · God and Morality · John Hare · Moral Gap · Original Guilt · Original Sin30 Comments
A common objection to belief in the God of the Bible is that a good, kind, and loving deity would never command the wholesale slaughter of nations. In the tradition of his popular Is God a Moral Monster?, Paul Copan teams up with Matthew Flannagan to tackle some of the most confusing and uncomfortable passages of Scripture. Together they help the Christian and nonbeliever alike understand the biblical, theological, philosophical, and ethical implications of Old Testament warfare passages.
This:-
” How can we be responsible for something we inherit?” (the paradox)
Plus this:-
” the paradox is in fact a paradox which is part of human existence and human moral experience.”
Equals this:-
That we inherit responsiblity for original sin is part of human existence and human moral experience.
This is somehow coherent, or more coherent to you? Isn’t this just ‘the doctrine’??
Isn’t this just you muddying the waters a bit?
Similarly this, “I want to suggest that denying theological doctrines of original sin will not resolve this paradox.”, is just taking the doctrine as a given.
You do this all the time. You conjure God by suggesting that we imagine that God is a given. In a thought experiment there is an intelligence involved that ‘we know’ that is the equivalent of ‘God’, and so on.
What is this if not just rhetoric, turning the ‘problem’ into a ‘given’ and arguing from that. A neat trick to be sure, but just playing with words and twisting perspective.
Silly example. I invite you to imagine God has good reason to remain hidden from us, lets say, under a stone. Now, reach out, with your mind’s hand and pick up that stone. Can you not see God now? (Well no. You see how God, what is to be demonstrated, became a given?)
“No human being born into the world, no moral agent will live a life even remotely close to the life morality requires of them.”
Let’s imagine that we are Muslims and a virgin has been convicted of a capital crime. It is immoral to execute a virgin and it is your moral duty to take part in the ritual which will allow sentence to be passed on her.
So, do you participate in the gang rape, or not?
@pboy
Assuming you read Matt’s article, can you answer any of the questions [he posed to his friend] any differently?
As to your 2nd response, Can you demonstrate that gang rape is the prescribed Muslim technique for executing a virgin?
Because if you cant then your question is meaningless drivel.
Let’s imagine that we are Muslims and a virgin has been convicted of a capital crime. It is immoral to execute a virgin and it is your moral duty to take part in the ritual which will allow sentence to be passed on her.
So, do you participate in the gang rape, or not?
You’ll have to clarify, Is this a world where it really is immoral to gang rape so that is in actual fact my duty, or a world where people mistakenly believe this?
I see Jeremy, so Plantinga’s thought experiments are tops, while mine are ‘drivel’?
The question actually was, “Which morality?”, but of course, even if you ‘saw that’, it’s easier to pretend that you didn’t, right?
I’m trying to recall the last time that I lied without being railroaded into it.
(amounting to an answer to, “Do I look fat in these pants?”, or (ANGRILY), “It wasn’t YOU WHO DID THIS, WAS IT?”)
I think I tell the truth as best I can because I honestly expect people not to lie to me.
I see Jeremy, so Plantinga’s thought experiments are tops, while mine are ‘drivel’?
Well , in this case yes.
Your thought experiment involves an impossible artificial conflict.
However back to my question, could you have answered the questions any differently?
“I’m trying to recall the last time that I lied without being railroaded into it.” —- so you not having to tthe backbone to tell the truth in the face of potential disapproval or conflict shifts the guilt to the other person? your dishonesty is their fault?
Whats more the question of lying was one among many, are you claiming moral perfection?
The question of whose morality is a diversion and irrelevant, can you deny having failed even by whatever morality you accept?
That is the point, everybody fails to do what they know they should. Sooner or later everyone chooses what they want [self] in preference to what they know to be right.
Do you claim to be any different?
All else is just a diversion, your dislike of a particular theological doctrine that attempts to explain this just avoids the issue of your own moral fallibilty.
“Well , in this case yes.
Your thought experiment involves an impossible artificial conflict.”
Got Google?
“However back to my question, could you have answered the questions any differently?”
Sure I could have.
“I’m trying to recall the last time that I lied without being railroaded into it.” —- so you not having to tthe backbone to tell the truth in the face of potential disapproval or conflict shifts the guilt to the other person? your dishonesty is their fault?”
And you don’t see how this changes ‘morality’ into ‘my Jeremy’s morality’ then? You don’t see how you are doing the exact railroading, to try to browbeat me into feeling the guilt that this post is trying to impose on ‘the atheist drinking buddy’ here?
“Whats more the question of lying was one among many, are you claiming moral perfection?”
It was mostly about lying and circumstances around lying, and how the guy felt about those lies and those circumstances.
There is no absolute morality, and I don’t want to hear a worst case scenario where we are almost certain to agree that some action would be wrong, because you must know that that is ‘drivel’.
Morality is based on two different premises, guilt and shame and we are taught the difference to a greater or lesser degree.
Once again, “…so you not having to tthe backbone to tell the truth in the face of potential disapproval or conflict shifts the guilt to the other person?”, is just a cheap trick to view it from your perspective, which I obviously disagree with.
If Original Sin is to be demonstrated, it cannot become a ‘given’ to demonstrate it.
Matt, you are so close. I don’t know why you refuse to go all the way and admit the obvious: the concept of original sin is incoherent.
All I see this post explaining is how all humans have a propensity towards failing from the moral standards they set for themselves. Failing to meet a requisite moral standard requires:
1. the ability to meet or fail to meet the standard;
2. knowledge and appreciation of the standard; and
3. an act or omission that constitutes meeting or failing to meet the standard.
If any of #1, #2 or #3 above are missing, it would be irrational to hold a person responsible for failing to meet a moral standard. The concept of original sin (however you choose to define it) ignores all three. People are supposedly born responsible for something (what?), committed by some ancestor (who?) for reasons unknown (why?).
The whole idea of the ‘questioning of the atheist’ is to ‘blame the pigeon’.
A series of questions asking if a person has ever felt that they have done ‘bad’ in their own eyes.
Sure I have felt bad about the way I acted, and a lot of that is in the nature of ‘saving face’ and, given some thought, the outcome of face-saving response would have been very bad for me.
“I should have beaten the HELL out of that bully!”, kind of thing. (Well, I might be in prison now, for murder, who knows?) Kind of hard to invite a judge into your mind to weigh one’s options at the time, yet easy to ‘kick yourself in the arse’ every time you think about it, right?
Suffice to say, when it comes to lying, how ‘guilty’ one feels about it is not some ‘absolute moral guidance’ that we have at all, as this post seems to be implying.
People have many “propensities.” Often at the same time.
Darwin proposed that creatures like us who, by their nature, are riven by strong emotional conflicts, and who have also the intelligence to be aware of those conflicts, absolutely need to develop a morality because they need a priority system by which to resolve them. The need for morality is a corollary of conflicts plus intellect:
“Man, from the activity of his mental faculties, cannot avoid reflection. Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or anything like as well-developed as in man.”(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man)
That, Darwin said, is why we have within us the rudiments of such a priority system and why we have also an intense need to develop those rudiments. We try to shape our moralities in accordance with our deepest wishes so that we can in some degree harmonize our muddled and conflict-ridden emotional constitution, thus finding ourselves a way of life that suits it so far as is possible.
These systems are, therefore, something far deeper than mere social contracts made for convenience. They are not optional. They are a profound attempt–though of course usually an unsuccessful one–to shape our conflict-ridden life in a way that gives priority to the things that we care about most.
If this is right, then we are creatures whose evolved nature absolutely requires that we develop a morality. We need it in order to find our way in the world. The idea that we could live without any distinction between right and wrong is as strange as the idea that we–being creatures subject to gravitation–could live without any idea of up and down. That at least is Darwin’s idea and it seems to me to be one that deserves attention.
Mary Midgley, “Wickedness: An Open Debate,” The Philosopher’s Magazine, No. 14, Spring 2001See
@ pboy
you are continually avoiding the question
have you never done wrong even by your own standards, dont worry about mine or anyone elses.?
Can you say that you have never chosen what you want to do in preference to what you know you ought to do?
Because if not, then you are as guilty of original sin as anyone and everyone else.
The only available alternative is that there is no “ought”, no right or wrong. I invite you to try living as though that is true.
I do not believe that ethics “without the Bible” are “completely relative.” People with no Bible to guide them still feel similar pains when stolen from, slapped, or called a stinging name. People with no Bible to guide them also feel similar pleasures when hugged, given a gift, or verbally petted. In other words, “ethical authority” resides in our bodies and brains, and in the multitude of lessons learned during lives of interaction with our fellow human beings. Neither is it easy for a person to turn to anti-social behavior if they have been taught from childhood to view other people’s feelings and needs through the inner lens of their own. People also recognize (regardless of their religious beliefs or lack thereof) that “joys shared are doubled, while sorrows shared are halved.” Such recognitions even form the basis for wanting to “double” society’s joys, and “halve” society’s sorrows.
Of course not everyone learns morality in the manner described above. Some are raised to “fear hell” and memorize lists of “holy commandments.” Such people are liable to “fear what they (and others) might become” once such “external” holy threats and commands are called into question. Ironically, in nearly all cases, such a “hell” does not exist to promote universal ethical behavior, but to promote belief in the truth of that person’s particular theology/denomination as opposed to rival theologies/denominations. So if you do not share their particular theology nor belong to their particular denomination, then they are convinced you are going to hell regardless of whatever kindnesses you share with them or society at large. So the threat of “hell” only helps promote good behavior in those who accept that particular theology/denomination that preaches “hell;” and such people can only understand the idea of a “moral” nation as one that consists solely of “fellow believers” in their particular theology/denomination. Of course any morality that tries to base itself (and impose itself on others) upon purely “external” religious threats and commands will break down once the religion supporting it is called into question.
To avoid such “breakdowns” it makes more sense for a nation, culture, or family to emphasize “internal” rather than “external” morality/ethics, just as it makes more sense to raise children to think and act in terms of how “they would feel if what they did was done back to them,” rather than depending on rote memorization of lists to promote ethical understanding in all circumstances and among all people. All the world’s religions enshrine the principle, “Do not do to others what you would not want done to yourself,” and, “Do to others what you would want done to yourself,” which assume in both cases that “you” already possess an “internal” recognition of what you should and shouldn’t do. So, there need not be any overt conflict between “internal” and “external” morality and ethics. However, stressing the “internal” variety seems to have a far greater chance of drawing society together, rather than tearing it apart.
“Internal” ethical recognitions preceded the composition of humanity’s earliest law codes such as those of King Hammurabi, or the moral injunctions found in the Egyptian Book of the Dead, or the later but more famous, “Ten Commandments.” Such “internal” recognitions inspired the creation of laws, and still do, and remind us that laws are but dust when people neglect to seek out what is best within themselves and each other.
-E.T.B.
A man’s ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hope of reward after death.
-Albert Einstein
Original Sin, MandM, and me
MandM: This is a very interesting discussion on Original Sin which makes the point well that the Augustinian formulation has its problems yet it profoundly highlights the truths of our existential situation.
http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.leaderu.com%2Fftissues%2Fft9811%2Farticles%2Foakes.html&h=a27b4
BABINSKI: The Greek view of Hubris has some problems but it profoundly highlights the truths of our existential situation. The Hindu view that we are enslaved to ignorance (rather than “sin”) has some problems yet it profoundly highlights the truths …of our existential situation. In the ANE everyone thought that appeasing deities was the way to go, animal sacrifices, otherwise one’s person, one’s nation, could be cursed, the gods could turn against the people, such a view has some problems but it profoundly highlights the truths of our existential situation.
And then there’s the evolutionary view:
We’re not perfectly tame nor perfectly socialized mammals. What else is new? Our existential situation is somewhere between apes and angels. And not just humans but other animals can love and care for others like Koko the gorilla and her love for her cat. Mothers that love their children and sacrifice for them is quite common in nature. And did you ever see these animal videos? http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=4C81FBF1BBCE946E
FINAL QUOTATIONS
“A preacher thundering from his pulpit about the uniqueness of human beings with their God-given souls would not like to realize that his very gestures, the hairs that rose on his neck, the deepened tones of his outraged voice, and the perspiration that probably ran down his skin under clerical vestments are all manifestations of anger in mammals. If he was sneering at Darwin a bit (one does not need a mirror to know that one sneers), did he remember uncomfortably that a sneer is derived from an animal’s lifting its lip to remind an enemy of its fangs? Even while he was denying the principle of evolution, how could a vehement man doubt such intimate evidence?”
SALLY CARRIGHAR, WILD HERITAGE
“We are told by those who assume authority in these matters, that the belief in the unity of origin of man and brutes involves the brutalization and degradation of the former. But is this really so? Could not a sensible child confute by obvious arguments, the shallow rhetoricians who would force this conclusion upon us? Is it, indeed, true, that the Poet, or the Philosopher, or the Artist whose genius is the glory of his age, is degraded from his high estate by the undoubted historical probability, not to say certainty, that he is the direct descendant of some naked and bestial savage, whose intelligence was just sufficient to make him a little more cunning than the Fox, and by so much more dangerous than the Tiger? Or is he bound to howl and grovel on all fours because of the wholly unquestionable fact, that he was once a fertilized egg cell, which no ordinary power of discrimination could distinguish from that of the fertilized egg cell of a Dog? Or is the philanthropist, or the saint, to give up his endeavors to lead a noble life, because the simplest study of man’s nature reveals, at its foundation, all the selfish passions, and fierce appetites of the merest quadruped? Is mother-love vile because a hen shows it, or fidelity base because dogs possess it? [As Mark Twain wrote, “Heaven goes by favor; if it went by merit, you would stay out and your dog would go in.”] The common sense of the mass of mankind will answer these questions without a moment’s hesitation. Healthy humanity, finding itself hard pressed to escape from real sin and degradation, will leave the brooding over speculative pollution to the cynics and the “righteous overmuch.”
T. H. HUXLEY, EVIDENCE AS TO MAN’S PLACE IN NATURE
“Creationists criticize evolutionists for the demeaning idea of `coming from apes’ and say that man is more noble than that, and then have sermons where man is called a miserable worm worthy to be burned eternally in hell.”
WILLIAM BAGLEY
“Forgiveness is not, as some people seem to believe, a mysterious and sublime idea that we owe to a few millennia of Judeo-Christianity. It did not originate in the minds of people and cannot therefore be appropriated by an ideology or a religion. The fact that monkeys, apes, and humans all engage in reconciliation behavior (stretching out a hand, smiling, kissing, embracing, and so on) means that it is probably over thirty million years old, preceding the evolutionary divergence of these primates…Reconciliation behavior [is thus] a shared heritage of the primate order…
“When social animals are involved…antagonists do more than estimate their chances of winning before they engage in a fight; they also take into account how much they need their opponent. The contested resource often is simply not worth putting a valuable relationship at risk. And if aggression does occur, both parties may hurry to repair the damage. Victory is rarely absolute among interdependent competitors, whether animal or human.”
FRANS DE WAAL, PEACEMAKING AMONG PRIMATES (see also, Morton Hunt, The Compassionate Beast: What Science is Discovering About the Humane Side of Humankind; and, Alfie Kohn, The Brighter Side of Human Nature: Altruism and Empathy in Everyday Life)
“Studies of food sharing by chimps at Atlanta’s Yerkes Regional Primate Research Center [show that]…chimps most often get food from individuals whom they have groomed that day. Dominant males are among the most generous with their food. Fights occur rarely and usually stem from attempts either to take food without having performed grooming services or to withhold food after receiving grooming. Chimps usually kiss, hug, or otherwise make peace after a fight, especially if they need help and cooperation from one another in the future, according to Dr. Frans de Waal.”
“CHIMPS REAP WHAT THEY GROOM,” SCIENCE NEWS, VOL. 146, DEC. 17, 1994
“As Darwin pointed out in The Origin of Species (opening pages of chapter. three), the `struggle for existence’ can often be described just as well as a mutual dependence. And harmless coexistence as parts of the same eco-sphere is also a very common relation…
“Among social creatures, positive gregariousness, a liking for each other’s company, is the steady, unnoticed background for the conflicts.”
MARY MIDGLEY, EVOLUTION AS A RELIGION
“Those communities which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.”
CHARLES DARWIN, THE DESCENT OF MAN
“It is not the especially aggressive primate that reaches the highest rungs on the ladder of rank, but the especially friendly one that knows how to win the others’ sympathies. In baboons, rhesus monkeys, and Japanese macaques the ability of a male to make friendships with others is a prerequisite for high-ranking status. A high-ranking male must be tolerant toward young animals and allow them to play round about it. It must furthermore be a good protector. Thus positive social qualities determine status and not just the aggressiveness of an animal striving for dominance.
“It is true that a certain aggressiveness, which motivates a striving for dominance, also goes with a high-ranking position. But the trials of strength are to a great extent ritualized. We have already mentioned Jane Goodall’s chimpanzee, which improved its rank after discovering it was good at making a noise with empty petrol cans.”
IRENAEUS EIBL-EIBESFELDT, LOVE AND HATE
WHAT IS MAN?
Not a superman who stumbles,
But an ape with makeshift manners
In whose nickel plated jungles
Roam mechanical bananas.
WILLIAM TENN
“When Washoe [the chimpanzee] was about seven or eight years old, I witnessed an event that told about Washoe as a person, as well as causing me to reflect on human nature. [The account proceeds to describe the chimp island at the Institue for Primate Studies]…One day a young female by the name of Cindy could not resist the temptation of the mainland and jumped over the electric fence in an attempt to leap the moat. She hit the water with a great splash which caught my attention. I started running toward the moat intent on diving in to save her. [Chimps cannot swim.] As I approached I saw Washoe running toward the electric fence. Cindy had come to the surface, thrashing and submerging again. Then I witnessed Washoe jumping the electric fence and landing next to the fence on about a foot of bank. She then held on to the long grass at the water’s edge and stepped out onto the slippery mud underneath the water’s surface. With the reach of her long arm, she grasped one of Cindy’s flailing arms as she resurfaced and pulled her to the safety of the bank…Washoe’s act gave me a new perspective on chimpanzees. I was impressed with her heroism in risking her life on the slippery banks. She cared about someone in trouble; someone she didn’t even know that well.”
ROGER FOUTS, “FRIENDS OF WASHOE” NEWSLETTER
“Apart from Washoe and Lucy, the chimp that made the strongest impression on me was Ally. He was very bright, a very good signer [signing = using one’s hands to communicate], and he was also very agreeable. Like Lucy, he spent his early years as part of a household where, apart from learning sign language, he was apparently also given lessons in religion. One sign in Ally’s vocabulary when I knew him was a crosslike sign that was supposed to signify Jesus…
“The tragedy of chimpanzees is that while they are close enough to being human to attract our attention, they present us with a mirror that we find unwelcome. They have a smaller brain, they are excitable, their behavior seems to mock our veneer of civilization. They compound the tragedy by growing up into chimpanzees, and not into complaisant pets, or eager would-be human beings…They remind us of an evolutionary history that it seems we would like to forget.”
EUGENE LINDEN, SILENT PARTNERS:
THE LEGACY OF THE APE LANGUAGE EXPERIMENTS
“A chimpanzee comes to a stunning sight in the midst of a tropical forest: A twenty-five foot waterfall sends water thundering into a pool below, which casts up mist some seventy feet. Apparently lost in contemplation, the chimpanzee cries out, runs excitedly back and forth, and drums on trees with its fists. Here we see the dawn of awe and wonder in animals.
“A famed heart surgeon, Dr. Christian Bernard, once witnessed a chimpanzee weeping bitterly and becoming inconsolable for days after his companion was taken away for research. Bernard then vowed never again to experiment with such sensitive creatures.”
A. J. MATTILL, JR., THE SEVEN MIGHTY BLOWS TO TRADITIONAL BELIEFS
“Apes and monkeys have drawn and painted pictures, displaying intense concentration, and appearing to gain satisfaction in the process. Artistically, a chimpanzee makes the same progress, by the same steps, as a human child does, though none have ever been known to get beyond the `simple circle dotted with marks resembling facial features,’ i.e., they do not add arms, legs, a body, etc. Still, ape and monkey art takes a lead ahead of children in placing its forms in the center of the page — they balance their compositions. Apes have also been seen tracing their shadows with their finger, and even using their breath to wet a window pane so they could draw upon it. One famous monkey artist, a Capuchin, began to draw with rough objects in her cage even before anyone showed her how. With most other monkeys and chimps all that human trainers had to do was put a pencil in their hand and paper in front of them. They discovered how to use it soon enough, and even how to hold the writing implement properly. The primates that were tested also knew when their pictures were finished, and enjoyed looking at them afterwards…
“Wild chimpanzees have been observed dancing round an object, employing unique modes of rhythym. They also make drinking cups out of folded leaves, and they pluck a stick clean of leaves to make a feeding-tool they use to extract ants and termites from holes in the ground or wood.”
SALLY CARRIGHAR, WILD HERITAGE [quotations have been condensed and edited]
Kanzai the chimpanzee can strike two rocks together, until some sharp-edged flakes chip off, then use those flakes to cut through a nylon rope that secures a box that the chimp wants to get into! See Kanzai: The Ape at the Brink of the Human Mind by Sue Savage-Rumbaugh and Roger Lewin (New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1994).
“Question: If we think that we are just animals, won’t we behave like animals? “Answer: What animal species are you thinking of? Porpoises are gregarious, intelligent, and fun-loving. Baboons are protective of the young. They show cooperative group behavior. Gorillas are docile, family-oriented, and vegetarian. Chimpanzees form `bands’ of more than one family, while orangutans live alone. From an evolutionary viewpoint, natural selection has produced people who behave like people. Humans, like all other species, are unique. There is no reason why we should behave as if we were some other species…
“We are a highly social species. Most of our behavior is learned, not genetically determined. [Compare the behavior of a child who is raised by human beings, with one who is not raised by human beings, i.e., during the first few months or years of the child’s life. Then you begin to realize how near to animals we really are, and what a large proportion of human behavior is learned during a long socialization process, which is itself the result of millions of years of cultural, merely biological evolution. [See Douglas K. Candland’s Feral Children and Clever Animals: Reflections on Human Nature.] We can learn behavior that will contribute to group well-being and our long-term survival as a species. We can even `unlearn’ whatever traces of instinctive behavior we may have inherited. Even if war between tribes is `natural’ human behavior, we can learn not to make war. Systems of morals and ethics serve, in part, to channel our behavior away from behavior that is socially and biologically destructive.”
WILLIAM THWAITES, “WOULD WE ALL BEHAVE LIKE ANIMALS?”
TAM
You write “The concept of original sin (however you choose to define it) ignores all three. People are supposedly born responsible for something (what?), committed by some ancestor (who?) for reasons unknown (why?).”
This is actually the doctrine of original guilt, its not clear that the doctrine of original sin requires this doctrine. Like I pointed out in a previous post, in fact eastern orthodoxy accept a version of original sin which does not hold to original guilt.
As to the rest of your comments, you seem to miss the point which is this, what you see as incoherent about original sin, is simply an apparent incoherency that is part of our moral experience.
[1] Morality requires certain standards of us [2] It seem seems practically impossible for a anyone to meet these standards of morality. [2] All people are responsible for their failure to do meet these standards . [4] it’s unjust to hold people responsible for things they cannot do.
Compare with [1] Gods law requires us to meet certain standards [2] people inherit a condition which makes it practically impossible to meet these standards [3] all people are responsible for failing to meet these standards. [4] Its unjust to hold people responsible for things they cannot do.
It seems to me that the two case are analogous. So I fail to see how rejecting the second triad solves any problems, because whatever problems are in the second are also in the first.
“@ pboy
you are continually avoiding the question”
Yes. I explained.
Matt, I trust you will understand that I have difficulty travelling down this road because I am a firm non-believer in contra causal free will. That being said, I find your “inherit a condition” language interesting because of its farcical results. Your god imposes a divinely commanded standard and then creates beings for whom it is impossible to meet that standard. How could they possibly be held responsible for that failure, even if they have free will?
@ pboy and TAM and etc
forget about the doctrine of original sin
just explain why we all freely choose to do things we know we ought not to
dont worry about where the various “ought” or “ought not” may have come from
just explain why humans inevitably sooner or later choose self before ought or ought not
what is it about you as individuals that means you inevitably fail to live up to your own standards
Jeremy, you said, “just explain why humans inevitably sooner or later choose self before ought or ought not”
I think this goes back to the fact that all life wants is more. If there ever was life on the Earth that didn’t ‘want it’ more than we do, we ate it. When I say ‘we’, I don’t mean just humans, of course.
I think that the standard business model(making this up as I go) is grow, grow, grow and as we can see, the human controllers of the very successful businesses will keep going and going and going, growing and growing and growing, to the point where they’ll just ‘pop’.
Still, we are smart enough to assess this kind of growth as wrong when it comes to someone else’s business or when it comes to World population and of course other people’s’ shortcomings.
We’re social, which means that we can see other people’s point of view, even if we don’t really care if they suffer or perhaps knowing that they suffer even.
Still, being social and knowing that, we cannot help but turn this critical lens on ourselves and consider, “I know what you ought not to do, therefore I know what I really ought not to do.”
My list of ‘ought not to dos’ is likely very similar to yours, Jeremy. Why don’t I measure up to my list sometimes? Same reasons that you don’t.(the real ones like ‘just lazy’, ‘because I can get away with it’, ‘lack of respect for the other party’, and stuff)
I think that we are instilled with a list over our formative years from parents, teachers etc. yet we are creative and can bend the rules.
Plus, we look to others for cues and permission, don’t we?
Example. How many people have you ever seen walking down the road naked? How do we know that it is not ‘right’? We are SO instilled with this ‘ought not to’ that it’s written in your Scripture that you ought to be ashamed of MY nakedness and cover me up.
TAM, first, the staunchest defenders of original sin, Calvin Augustine, Jonathan Edwards, also did not believe in contra causal free will.
Second, you again seem to be engaging in special pleading here. After all what’s relevant to responsibility here is that “we can’t meet the standard” . If God does not exist and nature lays down some standard, and nature also makes us so we can’t meet it, why would n’t that also mean we can’t be responsible for our actions either?
If Original Sin is to be demonstrated, it cannot become a ‘given’ to demonstrate it.
1.we inherit a world in which it is inevitable that we will do wrong.
2.we are responsible for our moral failure.
Which claim do you deny.
Matt asks: If God does not exist and nature lays down some standard, and nature also makes us so we can’t meet it, why wouldn’t that also mean we can’t be responsible for our actions either?
Without contra causal free will (regardless of whether that state results from nature or your lord), I agree that the concept of moral blameworthiness is meaningless. Without reservation, I accept the thesis put forward in Derek Pereboom’s Living Without Free Will although, to be frank, it is not an easily accessible read.
The rest of this post is an excerpt from a column I wrote on this issue a few months ago:
If you accept this reasoning, it has some unsettling implications. For example, should criminals be held morally responsible for their crimes if they could not have acted otherwise? If there is no such thing as contra-causal free will (i.e. decisions that are not fully caused), punishing criminals for the sake of retribution is a waste of time. Punishing people for bad behavior because you think they should be punished for making the wrong choice is just as useless as heaping praise on them for doing something good when they supposedly could have chosen to do something bad. The only justifiable reason for punishment should be to deter the offender and others from committing the crime in the future.
Similarly, should a spouse hold their partner morally blameworthy for infidelity? The answer to this question, I believe, is no – not in the sense that a person who decides to cheat on their spouse could have made a different decision. If the spurned spouse’s desire is to save the relationship, there may be plenty to be gained by trying to impose moral blame on the cheater but only insofar as that blame might cause the actor to act differently in the future. If the spurned spouse has decided that the marriage has been irreparably harmed, there is truly no point in blaming the actor for something which they did not have the free will to change.
University of Chicago biologist Jerry Coyne (author of Why Evolution is True and a blog of the same name) has summed up the prevailing view as follows:
We simply don’t like to think that we’re molecular automatons, and so we adopt a definition of free will that makes us think we’re free. But as far as I can see, I, like everyone else, am just a molecular puppet. I don’t like that much, but that’s how it is. I don’t like the fact that I’m going to die, either, but you don’t see me redefining the notion of “death” to pretend I’m immortal.”
None of this is intended to suggest that behavior cannot be influenced. We can exert causes on our own future behavior and that of others. However, once a deed is done it is futile to believe an actor could have freely chosen to act otherwise.
“1.we inherit a world in which it is inevitable that we will do wrong.”
We inherit the unique circumstances we are born into, into a family that has been born into their own unique circumstances, where what is taught us, right and wrong, depends on the emphasis placed on the teaching together with how one’s parents live up to their own standards etc. etc.
For example, it doesn’t matter how harshly your parents command you never to smoke, if they’re smoking while they’re commanding it.
Parents are(more or less) very good at laying out right and wrong verbally while demonstrating what is really is permissible.
I just think that we both know what I’m getting at here and you’re likely thinking, “Yes, yes it’s a tapistry, but I want to narrow it down to ‘good and bad’, ‘right and wrong’.”, which I don’t believe is possible.
Things are hardly as simplistic as, “..we inherit a world in which it is inevitable that we will do wrong.”
“2.we are responsible for our moral failure.”
At what age are do we become responsible? At what age are we responsible for judging the moral values instilled in us?
Example. If you’d ever been driving on a highway where the signs say, “90km. MAX.”, and everyone is driving at 110, how would you feel if the police pulled you over and gave you a ticket? Kind of ambivalent, right? YES, you DID wrong, “but… COME ON!”
Still, we look to others for cues and permission which is where we get our morals in the first place and which is why someone brought up in the country has a different set of morals than someone brought up in the city.
Circumstances and locations play a huge role in how right or wrong an action is too.
For example, you’re a member of a bike club, and a bunch of strangers show up and start disrespecting your club and your friends. You are morally obligated to join in the donnybrook which will inevitably ensue.
Other example, you notice a kid walking by where you have your picnic set up and see him stealing a candy bar. You shout at him but he runs away laughing. You think about calling the police, but you know they are going to imagine you are nuts to pursue this ‘Crime of the Century’, right?
Change locations. It’s the supermarket and a kid is seen pinching a candybar(that same kind), he is apprehended, dressed down by the management, the police arrive and handcuff him, take him away to the station where his parents are called and arrangements are made to have the kid stand before a judge to be dealt with according to law!
Now which kid is going to feel that they’ve been ‘bad’? One kid is going to go on with their life as if nothing had happened, laughing about ‘playing a trick on you’, while the other is going to be encouraged to see themselves as a horrible untrustworthy person, a THIEF..
Not for the candybar, same candybar, but for the shame brought to the family and the store’s intolerance and the police’s obligation to the store.
But we could likely go on for hours giving examples of how circumstances themselves change the amount of guilt a person feels and even how whether anything was ‘really’ done ‘wrong’,
Finally, what does me having a sense of right and wrong have to do with the Doctrine of Original Sin? The paradox here seems to be that you can try to infer that the doctrine from a list of morals which we carry around in our head.(presumably ‘God-given).
But we don’t all have the same morals and, as I was touching on above, there is no hard and fast rules for every person and/or every circumstance.
There just isn’t. You have to be ignoring the reality of how you, yourself, grew up to believe that there is.
Will Matt be Mad?…
Philosophy of Religion? What’s that? Whatever it is, it’s associated with Alvin Plantinga and William Lane Craig. It’s also a hobby horse much ridden, whip flailing, on the MandM blog, New Zealand’s most widely read biblioblog – number 6 on the lat…
Whether or not this conversation ever happened, and whether it happened in the form presented here I do not know. However it is flawed right from the start. You have here a person who was raised in a Christian nation (more or less) and who had Christian parents… and then you are asking then a series of questions to see if they have a Christian understanding of sin and morality… and surprise surprise they do. What does this prove other than they they were raised in a similar environment?
Go try the same thing with people from completely different cultures and then report back.
@pboy
Your example of the treatment meted out to two boys who committed the same crime does not indicate a difference in morality. The act, theft, was morally wrong in both instances. You know it, otherwise you wouldn’t use it as an example.
That it was treated differently in your hypothetical examples makes no difference to the question, “is stealing wrong?” The guilt you feel about it is irrelevant to the legal question “are you guilty?” I myself don’t feel guilt (I really don’t feel much of anything) so if “guilt” was the measure of whether or not an action was morally wrong, I’d be fine with anything.
Your other examples are not examples of “morality.” I actually don’t see any morality in the question of jumping in with your friends during a fight, perhaps matters of loyalty and group identity, but not “morality.” Besides, as long as no one is seriously injured, a brawl can be a fun way to let off some steam.
Smoking likewise is not a matter of morality. For the record my father smoked, he also encouraged me not to. I didn’t need much urging, but I didn’t see any incongruity between action and instruction. After all, who better to advise not to smoke than someone who’d tried it?
Moral norms can be enforced by the group, but so can immoral norms. We can easily cast our minds back about 65 years for an example. Unless we accept that there are moral norms that are independent of the group then we cannot judge actions approved by the group as wrong. Wrong for us perhaps, but not wrong in an absolute sense.
As to whether there are any real differences between what you see as moral and what Matt does? If you were raised in the West then what differences there are would be small. In that regard Chesterton observed that men differ not so much in what they call evil, they differ in what evils they consider acceptable.
Those raised without that cultural inculcation may still share some moral values, but it’s hard to say. Usually there is a degree of tribal loyalty, but that doesn’t often extend outside the tribe. Missionaries in New Guinea described tribes who valued befriending, betraying and murdering members of other tribes, usually for dinner. Even those tribes had some things that were just unacceptable, such as killing a child exchanged with another tribe as a symbol of peace.
How we know matters of morality, where we learn them and from who, is different to the question of whether moral duties exist.
Question 193 “Overweening Ignorance”…
This on MandM was also good … Dr Flannagan touches briefly on the doctrine of sin and paradox that Luke was alluding to in his question to Dr Craig. Flannagan then relates a conversation with an atheist he had in a bar on the topic….
Jason, you seem to be willing to bicker with me about what morality is not.
Morality. “In its “descriptive” sense, morality refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that distinguish between right and wrong in the human society.”
My comment here was specifically to demonstrate that these morals or lack thereof, and the punishment for committing crimes and the other things I talked about, are connected, and open up a huge grey area.
But if you’re content to play a word game, “THAT’s not ‘morality’, and THAT’s not ‘morality’!” and so on. Fine.
Did anyone end up in one of our courts for being moral??
(and I’m not talking about the Sanhedrin either, you know who I’m talking to.)
Max, the story is based on a true conversation, but its not a word for word verbatim record of it.
The person in question had a particular ideology, they were a follower of Ayn Rand, I suspect the argument would work on other Randian’s. As to other people, I don’t know, there are some who hold to an idea that human nature is perfectible, others deny people are responsible for there actions. I don’t find these views plausible but obviously I would take a different response in responding those objections.
I suspect however a lot of secularists would answer yes to the questions I laid down.
Yes – but Randians have a God – so not really an atheist as such!.
“There are some who hold to an idea that human nature is perfectible”
Not just perfectible – but in fact perfect already. There are a lot of people who fall into this category.
“others deny people are responsible for there actions.”
Like a lot of socialists… a lot fall into this camp too.
“I suspect however a lot of secularists would answer yes to the questions I laid down.”
I agree a lot would… but largly due to being raised culturally as Christians or theists of some sort… culturally not religiously you see… but a lot wouldn’t.
Max , not in disagreement with you here. John Hare has a book on this I plan to read. He argues that “moral gap” is a common part of secular ethics, he also notes the different ways of trying to solve it you mention and offers critique. Something like this is what would be necessary to do a full discussion of the issue and you couldn’t do that in a small blog post.