The subject of the natural law came up in a talk with a friend a while back. She is very passionate about the rights of illegal aliens, border issues, etc. I happened to know prior to the conversation that she considers herself a “nontheist.” If I understand correctly, the word nontheist is being used by some to get away from the highly negative associations attached to the word atheist.
Anyway, I listened to her talk about the rights of various people and finally had to ask: “Where do those rights come from?”
She thought about it and said, “I think I’d go with the Constitution on that.”
I replied, “Those are just words on a piece of paper. They could easily say something else.”
She then returned, “I can’t see the answer being natural law.”
Me: Why not? I have a friend from Nigeria and we agree on the essentials. Lying is wrong. Stealing is wrong. Murder is wrong. Unprovoked assault is wrong. Yet, we are on opposite sides of the globe. These notions seem to be built into the structure of reality.
She: But there have been people who sacrificed virgins!
Me: That doesn’t do anything to undercut natural law.
She: Huh?
Me: The people who have sacrificed virgins have offered justifications for doing so. In fact, they offer an ultimate justification — to satisfy a god. What would damage natural law thinking would be if they thought it wonderful to sacrifice virgins for no reason at all. They may be wrong about the justification, but they aren’t wrong that one must have a good one before murdering innocent people.
And at that, we had to switch the subject because she did not wish to be converted to natural law any more than to Christianity.
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November 2nd, 2009 | 9:40 pm | #1
“And at that, we had to switch the subject because she did not wish to be converted to natural law any more than to Christianity.”
Exactly. There are just way too many implications when one sees human nature as our foundation rather than the varieties of human culture: The foundation for an objective morality, a limit to political over-reaching, a limit to gnostic and utopian heresies, the idea of a teleology behind our lives, a teleology which leads to the idea of Creation, which leads to—Nope. It’s easier just to claim “nontheism.”
We just had a long discussion in one of my classes recently about the implications of natural law in the American cultural and political scenes. You should have seen my students’ eyes begin to bulge when we worked our way around to the anti-naturalness of the sexual revolution.
November 2nd, 2009 | 11:37 pm | #2
Frans de Waal is perhaps the world’s leading researcher of primate ethics. He has just released his latest book released on the topic, The Age of Empathy, describing the likely origins of human morality — our intrinsic or “natural” sense of right and wrong.
A few months ago he was asked if “an animal be ‘immoral’ or are they ‘amoral’?” He replied;
“An organism can only be immoral if it is part, and adheres to, an agreed-upon system of morality, as we do. I don’t believe that chimpanzees, or other nonhuman animals, are moral beings in the sense that we are. But to call them amoral isn’t correct either. Amoral means a total absence of morality, and it is obvious that the building blocks of morality (empathy, sympathy, cooperation, social rules) can be found in animals other than us.
“The view that the natural world is ‘amoral’ comes from Charles Darwin’s contemporary, T. H. Huxley, who felt that nature could never have produced human morality. He saw nature as inherently nasty. I strongly disagree with this bleak view, as did Darwin himself (in The Descent of Man), but Huxley’s views are unfortunately still very much with us.”
November 3rd, 2009 | 12:54 am | #3
The Constitution grants rights to illegal immigrants? Really? She must be confusing the U.S. Constitution with the Mexican Constitution.
November 3rd, 2009 | 9:46 am | #4
Quite right, Anthony!!!
November 3rd, 2009 | 11:09 am | #5
She’s a girl (no slight to girls mind you) and so she says “But there have been people who sacrificed virgins”.
I wonder, what if you had said ‘But some people sacrifice babies, unborn ones even’ if that would be a problem.
Just curious.
On the other hand, it is strangely difficult to tell if she had a problem with sacrificing virgins or if she thought is was bad, but had no clue why.
You’d think her own visceral reaction to sacrificing virgins (if that was her reaction) would make her pause and wonder where that came from.
Or maybe it just comes from a girl not liking so hear about other girls getting killed.
She confuses me.
November 3rd, 2009 | 12:11 pm | #6
I’m a girl….but that isn’t why I think I understand the point of her statement. Any time we come close to objective morality in my ethics class, the students invariably point to the ethical disparity of the world we live, making the point that Mackie makes in his argument for skepticism based on relativity. Boiled down, because we don’t agree on morality, there simply can’t be any objective morality. Of course, I don’t agree….which makes teaching quite the challenge! :)
November 3rd, 2009 | 2:11 pm | #7
Sarah, the answer to your students is simple. They may not agree verbally, but in reality they do. They all expect to be treated fairly, to be told the truth, for commitments to be honored, etc. Tell them you are going to give a test and will assign grades randomly or better yet, based on how well you like them.
November 3rd, 2009 | 2:25 pm | #8
Hunter, absolutely! I tell them that all the time, that they function and that they depend on others functioning as if there are objective morals. In a secular establishment, I stop short of filling in all the blanks, but I teach ethics from a worldview perspective allowing for ethics to be spoken about through all possible worldview perspectives.
November 3rd, 2009 | 3:59 pm | #9
Sarah,
It seems to me that you are incorrectly using the term “objective morality”. Certainly any individual or group can formulate and adhere to an objective morality, but no one can objectively prove that said system is “The Truth” in the absolute-Christian sense.
November 3rd, 2009 | 4:28 pm | #10
PLEASE recommend a book about this…I have been trying to understand natural law forever, and it’s hard to grasp. If the book could be really easy, preferably something I could find in the Juvenile section of my library, that would be helpful. But if not, I will try to read a book for grown-ups!
If you can’t think of a good book, feel free to write one! Please e-mail me at erinehale@hotmail.com when it comes out.
I am only half kidding.
November 3rd, 2009 | 4:49 pm | #11
Erin,
I think you could read a couple of books by J. Budiszewski and learn quite a bit. Written on the Heart is one. Another is What We Can’t Not Know. I think you would also enjoy some of the Socrates books by Peter Kreeft, like The Best Things in Life.
November 3rd, 2009 | 5:12 pm | #12
R Hampton, I never said anything about proving the existence of objective moral facts, just that most people function as if they exist and that in the classroom setting, as much as it pains me I resist pointing them to the worldview that best explains morality. Pojman, however, has done a great job for me pointing them in a theistic direction, and Beckwith has been phenom in undermining the argument from tolerance. But it doesn’t take but a few minutes before they sink back into the comfort zone of relativism.
November 3rd, 2009 | 8:28 pm | #13
The problem with using examples such as lying, stealing and murder as things that are always wrong is that they are not always wrong. There can be circumstances in which they are right and proper.
November 4th, 2009 | 5:25 pm | #14
Chuck, that goes back to the point I made in the post. The existence of a real justification, or the offer of one, matters.
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