One of the arguments I face most in defense of the morality of believing in God or being religious is that it ought to be left up to one’s cultural beliefs.
“If the people near me/similar to me agree with what I think and it’s accepted in whatever cultural group I’ve drawn for myself, then it’s totally morally acceptable.”
This is, unequivocally, a garbage belief to hold.
1
In my debut series on irreligion (Parts 1, 2, and 3 are here, here, and here) I went through my rational arguments against the existence of God, then went into some of the ethical ramifications of religious belief, and finally the historical, anthropological, and psychological factors leading to religion’s rise.
In that series, particularly in Part 2, I decided to simply disregard any relativistic arguments, things like, “it’s moral to do something based on belief in God because it’s part of my culture.” My justification at the time was something along the lines of “because I hate it,” so the plan is to be a bit clearer about my reasoning here.
Where I’m coming from is the idea that there’s some sort of universal, moral fact. That the statement “x is a good action” doesn’t change in truth between different people.
There are a few arguments against this that feel comforting or convincing to some, and I’ll attempt to address them completely and assume best intent from each perspective, though no promises.
2
As humans, we have the tough job of being moral actors. In fact, I think there’s a decent chance we’re the only moral actors in the universe.1 The point of ethics is to help us make decisions which fulfill our moral obligations, to do things that increase “good.”
Yes, “good” is an oversimplified, overgeneralized term for what I’m trying to express here, but you get the idea.
The way I see it, there are certain things which are absolutely, universally good and things which are absolutely universally bad.
I’ve thought up a nice little proof-by-induction to verify this claim for those who may be skeptical:
Take the statement “torturing people is bad.” That seems mostly true, but I’d argue not universally. (What if it’s absolutely 100% necessary to get information that would prevent a nuclear apocalypse?)
Then we refine the statement to allow that exception: “torturing people is bad unless it’s absolutely necessary to prevent a nuclear apocalypse,” or we can do a more general improvement: “torturing people just for our own amusement is bad.”
Now we've reached a slightly more universal moral truth.
It follows, then, that with increased refinement (say, from a super-intelligent AGI) we can begin to approximate the, actual, unknown universal truth much more closely.
At some point, we reach a 0.9999… = 1 sort of deal, and we’ve found the truth.2
Once we’ve decided that there are universal, moral truths, it’s ridiculous to suppose that can change based on one’s cultural surroundings or personal beliefs.
There is, however, an important distinction to be made when discussing relativism.
3
In Chapter 5 of his introductory philosophy book, The Philosophy Gym, Stephen Law differentiates between two systems: boring and interesting relativism.
Boring relativism is, obviously, boring. It refers to obviously subjective statements: “I like x” or “my leg hurts.” Of course the truth of these statements changes from person-to-person, their meaning very clearly relies on the person who is saying them.
I have no problem with boring relativism.
Interesting relativism is the issue. It’s the batshit crazy idea that, as Law writes, “the very same claim can be true for one person or culture and yet false for another.”3 (emphasis in original)
This is where we run into the immorality and irrationality that irks me so.
Above I established my reasoning for the existence of universal truth. It’s pretty clear how that existence is incompatible with (interesting) relativism in an extreme, infinite knowledge case.
But what about the simpler, less nuanced moral statements we actually have access to with our limited-knowledge monkey brains?
4
Relativists argue that the assertion of universal, moral truth is an injustice. That it represents some form of cultural imperialism. That asserting one’s beliefs to be inherently superior to another culture is wrong on principle.
However, this fails to grasp that the claim that there is universal, moral truth, is not the same as the claim to knowing that universal, moral truth.
A key part of this mindset I prescribe is cooperative refinement to a better understanding. Engaging with people and cultures that think differently, and together moving toward a stronger understanding of universal morality.
As Law puts it:
Tolerance, sensitivity and open-mindedness are not the unique preserve of the relativist. Tolerance and sensitivity towards other cultures and moral points of view do not require that you accept that these other cultures or points of view are correct.
Ironically, it’s only someone who rejects relativism who’s free to consider tolerance and sensitivity universally applicable virtues. For what must the relativist say about, for example, a group of religious zealots who believe that tolerance is a bad thing and who execute all those with whom they disagree? They must say that, for these zealots, tolerance is a bad thing and they are quite right to execute dissenters!
The understanding that some things are straight-up right and others straight-up wrong is actually vital to maintaining tolerance for alternative moral beliefs!
Even if our monkey brains are often wrong, putting them all together to push for the closest we can get to universal truth is obviously better than letting each, arbitrary group regress to its own internal principles, as developed by fewer, necessarily more strategic monkey brains.4
5
Not only is relativism a poor moral framework, it’s a completely useless philosophy.
To a relativist, anyone’s beliefs are as true as their own. This means that one reading this essay, for example, would have to concede that my critique is as totally right as their conflicting framework.
The relativist cannot possibly provide any reason that they’re right and another is wrong! Of course, for any point they make, they must concede that the opposite is just as true for the person who proposes it.
What good is a philosophy or ethical framework if it considers every belief to be equally legitimate?5
Relativism is a moronic, hypocritical, and intolerant moral system masquerading as just the opposite. It’s entirely self-defeating as a philosophy, and an affront to the most basic of rational thought.
That’s why I hate it.
Thanks for reading.
An Additional, Semi-Related Personal Rant For Those Interested
Among the, for lack of a better word, dull-witted responses to my comments on religion (including, “You said you’re Jewish, so you believe in God, but then you said you don’t believe in God??”)6 there were a few responses which aligned more with, “this is white-male-Westerner cultural imperialism, you’re trying to impose your beliefs as more important and better than other people’s unjustifiably.”
In fairness, I am a white-male-Westerner, and other white-male-Westeners in the past have definitely engaged in rather violent rejections of non-white-male-Westerner beliefs.7
Then again, this point makes no actual, substantive complaints. It doesn’t point to a flaw in my arguments (of which there are many)8 but instead a supposed flaw in my intention in writing them down.
I agree, generally speaking, that it’s pretty crappy to barge in with, “you’re wrong and my morals are better and you should share all my morals right now,” but only if those morals are actually wrong, or some violent threat is added at the end.
No, I can’t say for certain that I’m right. That’s why I tried to invite dialogue, discussion, differing perspectives—to get closer to that point of universal truth. And it’s why I don’t threaten anyone who thinks differently. I’ve only tried to make my opinion known, available, and debatable.
Of course, the caveat is that the debate should be about the content of my arguments, not my character, and with the explicit purpose of refining our shared understanding. Otherwise, I absolutely reserve the right to tell you to shut up, stupid.
The reasoning is, more or less: life is a really unlikely thing to happen, that life turning into intelligent life is even more unlikely. These unlikelinesses and uncertainties, it turns out, are on such a ridiculous scale that even when multiplied by the vastness of the universe, the odds of intelligent life are vanishingly small.
See (Sandberg, Drexler, and Ord, Dissolving the Fermi Paradox) for a considerably more mathematical approach.
I can spot some arguments to be made against this whole thing. For instance: just like we can keep making more and more numbers by grabbing the diagonal from our existing list of numbers, we can make more and more objections by crafting a ridiculous scenario dodging each extra line in our rule set.
I think, however, that this can be avoided by making more general rules. Sort of like writing a set of numbers instead of a single digit. In other words, we make our rule list infinite enough to dodge the extra objections that would otherwise arise.
The Philosophy Gym – Stephen Law
Darwinian-ly speaking, this is clearly true. The group with the set of morals which best serves its continued success (things which encourage recruitment, survival, loyalty, etc.) will be far more prosperous than a more ethical but less viral group, so to speak.
Sometimes you get back, “Oooh, but equality! Everyone is equally good and has equally good ideas,” or something like that. That’s obviously stupid—some people are not good, people obviously are not perfectly equal, and even they were, that wouldn’t necessitate all their ideas being equal too.
The point of a moral or philosophical framework is to sort the right from the wrong, and relativism fails at just that.
I get it. I understand why they thought this, I can’t really blame the person who brought it up to me, more a general misunderstanding of Judaism (there’s debate within the community too, see Society for Humanistic Judaism vs. David Novak, My Jewish Learning) . Then again, I think I made clear that secular, culturally-Jewish practice is a thing and is also my thing. Whatever.
Often in the name of Christ, in fact, but I digress.
There’s a million really interesting ontological arguments that I just skipped, and the Bertrand Russell “the universe needs no explanation” argument against Aquinas I cited is hardy convincing.