The Moral Argument, Part 2: Summary of Debate
Taking a fatalistic view that was at odds with his ostensibly cheery humanism, he used to say that “if you look in playgrounds, you see the little judge and the little burglar and the little murderer and the little banker.” He tried and failed to derive consolation from religion, and once had the following exchange with Cardinal Basil Hume: Hume pontificated to him that, were there to be no God, human life would be absurd. “Well, exactly” was Mortimer’s rejoinder. (Mortimer Rests His Case)
Canon Press recently took aboard a short debate between Christopher Hitchens and Douglas Wilson. The resulting small book is titled “Is Christianity Good for the World?” If the reader is uncertain as to how the two authors are inclined to answer this question, I suggest a preliminary perusal of the respective links. (I just switched Wilson’s link from wikipedia to his NSA page as an act of fairness, and just discovered in the new link a picture of someone wearing a gray sweater that looks a lot like the one I am currently wearing. I’ll go turn around and look in the mirror. Yep, that’s a picture of me. Notice that I am the one paying attention – further proof of my loyal Kirkship.)
My interest in this debate is two-fold. First, I believe this debate sheds further light on the work, life, and psychology of fundamentalism’s most intriguing American leader, Douglas Wilson, as well as the beautiful world he brought forth from the dust of the earth, which I like to call – as did Wilson not long ago – the Kirk. Second, Christopher Hitchens’ reputation as one of our most important public intellectuals is further supported by the invigorating and challenging prose he provides during the course of this debate – which can be seen as a practical extension of his new book god is not Great. I will reserve my worries about god is not Great for a future entry, and for now just admit that the book is, it seems to me, one of the finest ever written. It is therefore a pleasure for me to analyze the collision of the two lives and the two positions that went into the making of this debate.
Due to Wilson’s insistent neo-presuppositionalist method (as the theowonks who hold the keys to the reformed tradition might want to call it), the argumentative course rarely veers too far from what I call the Moral Argument. The Moral Argument is based on the theist claim that morality is inescapable, while also, apart from a theistic metaphysic, inexplicable. Another way of stating it – if one would opt for oversimplification – is that if God does not exist, there is no right or wrong or good or evil.
The importance of the Moral Argument itself cannot be overstated. The debate between Christianity and atheism is in a politically strategic position. We continue to see the ramifications of fundamentalist religion throughout the world, and on the subjects of divine authority and holy writ, America now stands as the most ambivalent sovereign. The debate among Americans over theism is therefore one of the most important debates the world currently knows. The American fundamentalist now enjoys the responsibility for halting the encroaching skepticism of cosmopolitan society, not just in America, but by extension and global influence, throughout the world. And the Moral Argument is perhaps one of the theist’s most important argumentative and rhetorical tools by which to accomplish this.
In this entry (Part 2) I provide a summary of the debate between Hitchens and Wilson. In part 1 of this series I explored one of Colin Turnbull’s anthropological narratives of the Ik people in order to wrestle with what it means to say morality is ‘innate.’ In Part 3, forthcoming, I will begin my analysis of the debate.
Some of my readers might be a bit disappointed by Wilson’s literary and philosophical performance as displayed in the summary below. So I will seek to first show just how capable the Moral Argument is to stir and perplex. To accomplish this, I allow C.S. Lewis a brief moment to make the case. It turns out, the Moral Argument can be offered with at least a small dose of empathy and cogency.
C.S. Lewis’ chapter on animal pain, found in his book The Problem of Pain (1962), led to ‘The Inquiry’ of C.E.M. Joad, the head of the Department of Philosophy at the University of London. The problem Lewis and Joad were considering is often understood to be ‘The’ problem for theism: the Problem of Evil. Lewis and Joad tackle the Problem of Evil by way of a sub-question: how can an all powerful and all good God cause so much pain (‘evil’) in the non-sinful animal kingdom? Lewis concludes his reply to Dr. Joad’s inquiry with the Moral Argument:
I know that there are moments when the incessant continuity and desperate helplessness of what at least seems to be animal suffering make every argument for theism sound hollow, and when (in particular) the insect world appears to be Hell itself visibly in operation around us. Then the old indignation, the old pity arises. But how strangely ambivalent this experience is: I need not expound the ambivalence at much length, for I think I have done so elsewhere and I am sure that Dr Joad had long discerned it for himself. If I regard this pity and indignation simply as subjective experiences of my own with no validity beyond their strength at the moment (which next moment will change), I can hardly use them as standards whereby to arraign the creation. On the contrary, they become strong as arguments against God just in so far as I take them to be transcendent illumination to which creation must conform or be condemned. They are arguments against God only if they are themselves the voice of God. The more Shelleyan, the more Promethean my revolt, the more surely it claims a divine sanction. That the mere contingent Joad or Lewis, born in an area of secure and liberal civilization and imbibing from it certain humanitarian sentiments, should happen to be offended by suffering – what is that to the purpose? How will one base an argument for or against God on such an historical accident!
No. Not in so far as we feel these things, but in so far as we claim to be right in feeling them, in so far as we are sure that these standards have an empire de jure over all possible worlds, so far, and so far only, do they become a ground for disbelief – and at the same moment, for belief. God within us steals back at the moment of our condemning the apparent God without. Thus in Tennyson’s poem the man who had become convinced that the God of his inherited creed was evil exclaimed: ‘If there be such a God, may the Great God curse him and bring him to nought.’ For if there is no ‘Great God’ behind the curse, who curses? Only a puppet of the little apparent ‘God.’ His very curse is poisoned at the root: it is just the same sort of event as the very cruelties he is condemning, part of the meaningless tragedy.
From this I see only two exits: either that there is a great God, and also a ‘God of this world,’ a prince of the powers of the air, whom the Great God does curse, and sometimes curses through us; or else that the operations of the Great God are not what they seem to me to be.
These remarks are ressurected – in the form of faint ghosts – during the course of the debate.
I try to be as evenhanded as possible in the summary that follows. My selections are guided by the reoccurring argumentative themes of both Wilson and Hitchens. This approach has led me to see the Moral Argument as the thread that holds the whole cloth together and most other issues as fairly extraneous. This approach should be welcomed by Wilson. The Moral Argument is clearly the one subject he wants to stay put.
SUMMARY
Introductions
Hitchens’ Introduction:
Hitchens describes himself as an anti-theist, someone who is “delighted that there is absolutely no persuasive evidence for the existence of any of mankind’s many thousands of past and present deities.” Hitchens likens the kingdom of heaven to Orwell’s “dystopian nightmare”, where the regime not only “terrorized obedience” but then went on to require the subjects “profess their love for Big Brother.” God is not “content with omnipotence and omniscience and omnipresence, but is jealous and demanding and impatient, and continually enraged with the built-in shortcomings with which he has deliberately lamed his creatures.” We are commanded to thank “a being who needed not exert himself in the least to ensure that we live, suffer, and die. In the non-spiritual arena of life, power-relationships like this go under the general title of sadomasochism.” Hitchens concludes by noting that “the sinister fairy-tail” of the fall is in fact the very first “recorded rebellion of the free intelligence.”
Wilson’s Introduction:
Wilson opens with an efficient focus on what will be his central argument:
Christopher Hitchens displays great moral indignation, but, given atheism, I want him to justify that indignation. If there is no God, then who cares? . . . I want him to justify his vibrant and engaging prose. If there is not God, then yammer, ymaber, jaw&^%. . .
Round 1
Hitchens to Wilson:
Hitchens begins the first round by saying “negative” to the question at hand – Christianity is not good for the World. First, there is “no evidence that [moral] precepts derive from Christianity.” The Golden Rule is older than monotheism, and “no human society would have been possible or even thinkable without elementary solidarity . . . between its members.” Second, many of the teachings of Christianity are immoral. The refusal to accept the sublime offer of forgiveness “may be punishable by eternal damnation. Not even the Old Testament, which speaks hotly in recommending genocide, slavery, genital mutilation, and other horrors, stoops to mention the torture of the dead.” Third, if Christianity is to claim credit for good things in the world, it must take credit for the bad. If a moral topic as important as slavery can first be supported by scripture and then be condemned on the same basis, “morality requires no supernatural sanction.” Religion is man-made and the “highest form of arrogant self-centeredness,” given that it entails the entire cosmos was made for man.
Wilson to Hitchens:
Some of these ideas, Wilson replies, are like the mystery meats that float to the surface of soup found in a restaurant – “better left unstirred.” But Wilson agrees with Hitchens’ most important point: the world does not need religion for “ethical information.” The point of Christianity is to give us forgiveness and the resultant “ability to live more in conformity to a standard we already knew.” Nonbelievers “do understand the basics of morality.” The gentiles even knew – entirely by nature – some of the tenets of the revealed laws of God.
Leaving the question of the eternal torture of the dead unanswered, Wilson goes on to defend the sacredness of the Old Testament; but he does so not by addressing whatever atrocities it may recommend, but by simply pointing out that Hitchens does not have the prerequisite principles that would explain why Hitchens should give a damn:
Why should any of us care about the effeminate judgments of history? Should the propagators of these “horrors” have cared? There is no God, right? Because there is no God, this means that – you know – genocides just happen, like earthquakes and eclipses. It is all matter in motion, and these things happen. If you are not on the receiving end, there is only death, and if you are an agent delivering this genocide, the long-term result is brief victory and death at the end. So who cares? “On with the rapine and slaughter!”
Wilson concludes:
Given your atheism, what account are you able to give that would require us to respect the individual? How does that individualism of yours flow from the premises of atheism? Why should anyone in the outside world respect the details of your thought life any more than they respect the internal churnings of any other given chemical reaction? That’s all our thoughts are, isn’t that right? Or, if there is a distinction, could you show how the premise of your atheism might produce such a distinction.
Round 2
Hitchens to Wilson:
Hitchens responds by pointing out that all of this is “mildly amusing casuistry,” containing “nothing that distinguishes it from Islam or Hinduism or indeed humanism.” Hitchens offers a ‘thank you’ for the “admission that morality has nothing at all to do with the supernatural.” Hitchens keeps this reply brief, and concludes:
The existence or otherwise of an indifferent cosmos (the overwhelmingly probable state of the case) would no more reduce our mutual human obligations than would the quite weird theory of a celestial dictatorship, whether Aztec or Muslim or (as you seem to insist) Christian. The sole difference is that we would be acting out of obligation toward others out of mutual interest and sympathy but without the impulse of terrifying punishment or selfish reward. Some of us can handle this thought and some, evidently, cannot. I have a slight suspicion as to which is more moral.
Wilson to Hitchens:
Wilson responds by claiming Hitchens has “embraced the internal contradictions of atheism,” is “refusing to answer” Wilson’s questions, and “misconstrued” his point: “My acknowledgement was not that morality has nothing to do with the supernatural. . . ” Wilson then proceeds to give it all one more try: Christianity “makes hypocrisy a coherent concept,” condemning it via “a fixed standard.” Wilson goes on to claim that there is no such thing as atheist hypocrisy, since there is “no standard common to all atheists.” Only Christianity provides the needed fixed standard.
Further, belief in the supernatural is necessary to “give a rational and coherent account of why you believe yourself obligated to live this way.” Wilson concludes by claiming “we need the direction of the standard because we are confused sinners.”
Round 3
Hitchens to Wilson:
Hitchens notes casually that ethical imperatives are “derived from innate human solidarity and not from the supernatural.” Belief in the supernatural is what “make otherwise decent people do things that they would otherwise shrink from.” In response to Wilson’s requirement that the atheist supply a standard for atheistic hypocrisy, Hitchens notes that he has “nowhere claimed nor even implied that unbelief is a guarantee of good conduct or even an indicator of it.”
Wilson to Hitchens:
Wilson responds by claiming Hitchens has once again missed the “central point.” Mosaic law is important because ancient man did not know and “modern man still doesn’t know.” “We have abortion, infanticide, partial-birth abortion, euthanasia, genocide, stem-cell research, capital punishment, and unjust war. Murder is the big E on the eye chart, and we still can’t see it that clearly.” “The purpose of the law code is to have one standard in place for all parties when individuals want to set aside the standards of civilized life to suit themselves.” Atheism does not provide any “rational basis for rational condemnation,” no “basis for condemning evil.” You have to tell us “why it is evil.” Innate morality is not enough since it does not provide the requisite “authority.”
Round 4
Hitchens to Wilson:
Hitchens claims that Wilson now speaks absurdly in claiming that men have never known the essential principle of the Golden Rule. As for murder, Wilson is “trapped in the net” of his own making. Genocide and slavery have been “positively recommended in holy writ,” and abortion is denounced in the Oath of Hippocrates. Atheists are “simply reluctant to say that, if religious faith falls – as we believe it must and to some extent already has – then the undergirding of decency falls also.” ”. . . your strenuous conditions are surplus to requirements.”
Wilson to Hitchens:
Wilson replies by saying “simply reluctant” does not ground Hitchens’ “fierce denunciations of various manifestations of immorality.” “I simply want to know the basis of your florid denunciations . . . all I want to know is what book it is, and why it has anything to do with me.” On Hitchens’ terms, he is “nothing but a random collections of protoplasm.” Hitchens needs to “define what goodness is and tell us what the basis for it is.” “Innate is not a synonym for authoritative. Why does anyone have to obey any particular prompting from within.”
Round 5
Hitchens to Wilson:
Hitchens quotes Darwin:
Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instinct, the parental and filial affections being here included, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well-developed, or nearly as well-developed as man.
But this moral sense is always contradicted “by the way in which species are also designed to fight with, kill, dominate, and even consume each other,” a much milder problem to grapple with than the Christian’s problem of evil. “The fluctuations between social and anti-social conduct are fairly consistent across time and space.” Hitchens concludes:
[D]o not insult the millions of people who have done the right thing without requiring any such supernatural authority. . . . Your Christianity, in case you have not noticed, has actually made you a less compassionate and thoughtful person than, without its exorbitant presumptions, you would otherwise be.
Wilson to Hitchens:
Wilson grows impatient. He is asking for “warrant,” “rational warrant,” for morality. “What could be wrong with just flipping a coin.” Wilson claims he has “not yet received anything that approaches the semblance of an answer.” Hitchens needs “warrant for trusting in reason,” since he is thinking and writing his thoughts not because “they are true, but rather because the position and velocity of all the atoms in the universe one hundred years ago necessitated it.” Wilson continues:
If you were to take a bottle of Mountain Dew and another of Dr. Pepper, shake them vigorously, and put them on a table, it would not occur to anyone to ask which one is “winning the debate.” They aren’t debating; they are just fizzing.
Hitchens argues as if “argument was a meaningful concept.” “I have no need for your ‘argument hypothesis.’ Just matter in motion man.”
Round 6 – The Final Round
Hitchens to Wilson: Hitchens begins: “You ask me for my ‘warrant’ for a code of right conduct and persist in mistaking my answer for an evasion.” “Natural selection and trial-and-error have given us the vague yet grand conception of human rights . . . There is simply no need for the introduction of the extraneous or the supernatural.” Hitchens notes our agreement on the existence of what we call the sociopath – someone who “does not care about people except inasmuch as they serve his turn” – and the psychopath – “someone who derives actual delight from inflicting misery on others.” These kinds of people reflect our “kinship with a nature that often favors the predator.”
Next, Hitchens makes a point that is highly salient to the history of the Kirk (I will explain in my forthcoming analysis):
[Y]ou apparently adopt the immoral and suicidal doctrine that advocates forgiveness for those who would destroy us. Please take care not to forgive my enemies, or the enemies of society. If I have to call such people ‘evil’ (and I find I have no alternative), I do not deduce peaceful coexistence from that observation and do not want you being tender to them when it is my or my family’s life that is at stake.”
Hitchens then moves on to some moral philosophy, addressing the concept of temptation, which, he explains, is associated with the way we strive to resist certain behaviors. Hitchens references Socrates’ daemon, that “inner voice that helps us towards self-criticism.” He admits that thinkers have defined this concept in different ways, but claims that “a definition is something short of an understanding. I am content to regard it as indefinable, which is where we part company. My own inclination is to regard it as a human faculty.”
Hitchens marvels at Wilson’s position, and hopes that Wilson is wrong that ”without celestial sanction,” Wilson would not “be unrestrained in [his] appetites and careless of other people.”
Wilson to Hitchens: In conclusion, Wilson repeats his concerns. Hitchens’ “assumption of what the universe is does not allow for valid descriptions of that universe to arise from within it.” Instead of fizzing bottles we now have some spilled milk on the floor: we do not ask the milk on the floor for an explanation; the “milk wouldn’t know. It’s the accident.” As David Hume has already demonstrated, you cannot get an aught from an is. Hitchens cannot address all of these issues and questions, and is therefore only left to “adjust and compensate with rhetorical embellishment and empurpled prose.” “You say you have no alternative but to call sociopaths and psychopaths ‘evil’. But you surely do have an alternative. Why not just call them ‘different’?”
Posted by metzler on Thursday, March 12, 2009, at 8:01 pm.
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A question about terminology: It would seem to me that Wilson would at-least concede at some level that man being created in the image of God would in someway “innately” know the difference between right and wrong. Wilson originally concedes that all men know right from wrong. Why is ‘innate’ not a proper word for this natural condition?
Comment by Bob Moore — March 13, 2009 @ 8:24 pm
Bob,
Good point. In the forthcoming analysis I address what happened during the debate on this general issue, but I did not think to bring up – once again – the problem with the word ‘innate.’ What first comes to mind is Wilson’s original claim that humanity already has the requisite ‘ethical information,’ which entails that morality is not only innate, but biologically innate (warning: Wilson’s rhetoric is in flux on this point). Certainly it is sound to interpret this as a claim (in view of Wilson’s citation of Romans 1) that morality is all hard-wired, in virtue of creation in the image of God. The closest Hitchens gets to this is a directing to Darwin’s view about a “well-marked social instinct” in social animals that naturally leads to a moral conscience once intelligence is developed near to our own.
Comment by Michael Metzler — March 14, 2009 @ 10:48 am
Well, I visited your site once after you sent me an email inviting me to do so. — Don’t think I’ll waste my time here again.
I have been a member of Christ Church and wonder to how many others there you sent such an invitation. I hope you’ll post this comment, but are you honest enough to do so? Perhaps I won’t know in this lifetime since I do not plan to revisit your site.
Comment by notgonna — March 16, 2009 @ 10:41 am
Hi Kirker notgonna. Thanks for the comment, although I am not sure what the argument is supposed to be here. Feel free to come back and expand the point. Is this a gesture to all other Kirkers indicating they should follow your lead and not read anything here or dialog? Thanks.
Comment by metzler — March 16, 2009 @ 11:43 am
Michael,
I’m not a ‘Kirker’ so I guess it is ok for me to make a comment here. Nice quote from Lewis. Look forward to your analysis of this interesting (bizzare?) exchange. One thought came to me. In the quote from Hitchens’ ‘Mortimer Rests His Case’, Hume is not referring to the Moral Argument is he? Mortimer is ok with absurdity it seems, but I doubt this means he is ok with ousting all ideas of morality.
Comment by Jefferson — March 16, 2009 @ 6:36 pm
Jefferson,
Yes, great point. Really, the Moral Argument is just a species of what I will call the Argument from Meaning. According to Wilson, Hitchens cannot justify moral claims, but this is because Hitchens cannot justify – according to Wilson – his use of ‘reason,’ or even the use of language. There is no meaning without God, just “matter in motion, man.” There is no ethical, linguistic, rational, social, or aesthetic meaning (meaningful distinction) here in our human world without the presupposition of the Christian Trinity.
But the Moral Argument stands out as the prototype, and not only does it pack the biggest rhetorical punch, it is really the only species of the Argument from Meaning that has some credence on the face of it. I think one reason C.S. Lewis’ version of the Moral Argument is more successful is that it does not depend on the Argument from Meaning. It is a little more along the lines of Bahnsen’s pure transcendental argument – although with a healthy dose of C.S. Lewis and no Bahnsen!
As for Mortimer, I am not sure about this after reading Hitchens’ article in Vanity Fair. Mortimer seems a bit ambivelent about both a moral and a meaningful cosmos – seems to enjoy moral absurdity to get a rise out of pretty women.
Comment by Michael Metzler — March 16, 2009 @ 8:01 pm