“Simple-mindedness consists in having too few thoughts and feelings to match the world as it really is. In private life and the field of personal morality it is often possible to survive in that state—indeed, the very statement for that case is over-simple, since the question of what moral demands life makes is not independent of what one’s morality demands of it. But the demands of political reality and the complexities of political thought are obstinately what they are, and in the face of them the simple-mindedness of utilitarianism disqualifies it totally.”
-Bernard Williams, “A Critique of Utilitarianism”
I have been given the good fortune to take a stab at replying to last week’s post by Kevin T Keith on consequentialist ethics with a post of my own on perhaps their main competitor in the field of ethics, deontological ethics. I’d like to proceed in three stages: to try and offer a brief explanation of what deontological ethics are (and why you should care), to explain some of the faults of utilitarianism (there are lots more where these will come from) and a bit of explanation for my own personal hobby-horse with respect to consequentialism (nobody actually believes in it), and then to look at some of the more notable (for better or worse) works which have attempted to incorporate deontological ethics.
Despite, so far as I can tell, having been a deontologist for most of my life, I didn’t actually get exposed to the term until my junior year of college. My professor of political philosophy described deontologists as people who believed in the motto “fiat justitia, pereat mundus” (let justice be done, though the world perish). I think that’s probably an accurate description of my personal ethics, but I think one need not go nearly that far. Any of the following things probably make you a deontologist:
1. Believing some things (torture, murder, etc) are always wrong.
2. Thinking that it is sometimes possible that doing the right thing will make you worse off (which is to say, believing that what’s right and what’s good are sometimes different).
3. Believing that your relation to somebody makes a difference as to what you have to do for them.
4. Believing in general in moral imperatives, duties, or obligations.
(If you have access, the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a nice article summarizing deontological theory.)
To expand just a little bit, deontologists believe that the moral status of actions is ontological, which is to say, it’s part of the universe (whether from God, or rationality, or just because) whether killing someone is right or wrong, and no amount of argument or thinking or anything will make it not so. Deontologists further recognize the separability of the right and the good, and give priority to the right (e.g.: it’s probably better for me if I have no income withheld and don’t pay my taxes, but I think I have an obligation to do what the government reasonably asks of me (Romans 13:7). I think these are different, and that the right is more important than the good). Further, deontology is what’s known as an agent-centered theory, which is to say that your relation to another person matters in terms of calculating your obligations to them (mothers have different responsibilities to their children than casual acquaintances have to each other).
Problems with Utilitarianism/Consequentialism
A good compendium of various problems, on the individual and social level, can be found in Bernard Williams’ “A Critique of Utilitarianism” in Utilitarianism For and Against (Williams is the against). I’ll limit myself to pointing out three failings of consequentialist theory:
1. Utilitarianism is, as Williams says at the quote at the beginning, just too simple to be of much use in the political or social realm. What it does best is reduce everything in the world to a single metric (some form of utility, however that’s defined and quantified), which is perhaps good when you want to decide something utterly trivial, such as whether to eat healthily or go out for fast food. But in the real world, giving the pluralism of judgment in society, all utilitarianism can really claim to do is reduce the world to one single way of measuring with which no one would be particularly happy. As that raging religious conservative Michael Sandel has pointed out (in Liberalism and the Limits of Justice—no Amazon link because, well, he does a transcendental deduction of Rawls’ Theory of Justice, and it’s even less interesting than it sounds), it’s just the case that in the world, even on questions of something as basic as distributive justice, there is disagreement over not only how to apply certain principles of justice in particular policies, but what the relevant principles are (for example, the split between liberals and libertarians on the role of the state). Utilitarianism has nothing at all to say to people who do not think it the right way to judge. Though deontologists will disagree as to what the appropriate moral rules for inclusion or exclusion are, they are at least (by judging for themselves which rules are most important) in the position to begin a dialogue with people who disagree with them.
2. Utilitarianism is critically ungrounded, and this should worry anyone who might want to follow it. Deontological theory is fully grounded because the particular rules which it references it considers to be part of the fabric of the universe—so discussions of better and worse, at least when it comes to the rules, are irrelevant. But utilitarian claims to ‘best’-ness for any outcome are always relative (relative to the circumstances surrounding the act if you’re an act-consequentialist, relative to the rule if you’re a rule-consequentialist (a.k.a. ‘closet deontologist’). To ground utilitarianism in some non-relative way, a consequentialist would have to enshrine some utilitarianism as Utilitarianism (that is, the right way to go about making utilitarian calculations, not merely a good way). One could hypothetically imagine a Utilitarianism* which alters the payoff calculations in such a way as to produce all the same results at Utilitarianism except one, which it can do better. The utilitarian has two options then:
a. They can reject Utilitarianism* as being insufficiently well grounded, and therefore compromise the end to which utilitarianism strives (producing the best possible results), or
b. They can accept Utilitarianism* and accept that utilitarianism is a relative principle
3. Utilitarianism is unbelievably unpracticable for an ethical theory.
Utilitarianism requires, in good game-theoretic fashion, an ability to “see down the tree” to the potentially far-off consequences of one’s actions, to be able to convert them all into a common standard, figure out how much payoffs might diminish in worth over time, and then pick the one that scores the highest. All this requires complete information about all possible outcomes. No one could ever possibly have that, not to mention the time to do such calculations. Further, utilitarianism always requires that there be a ‘right’ answer to every moral question: it has definite opinions, to borrow again from Williams, as to whether 7,000,000 people being murdered or 7,000,001 is worse—it is, in short, critically unable to see the existence of moral dilemmas (a point Michael Walzer makes in his article “Political Action: The Problem of Dirty Hands,” available via JSTOR for those who have access), in which no available option is a good one. Deontology, when done well, is very sensitive to this fact.
Some writings on deontology
It’s actually rather shameful for me to admit that I’ve never read an exceptionally good book which systematically incorporates deontological theory (this does give me some hopes for the publications prospects for my future dissertation, however), in part because I want a specifically Christian deontological ethics. But there are some things I’d be remiss not to tell you to check out:
- Theory of Justice by John Rawls: This is the seminal attempt to fully work out the consequences of deontological theory in the area of distributive justice. Rawls’ deontology is of the “comes from nowhere” variety, which is to say, he considers his principles deontological, but just sort of fiats them in.
- Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia, which is the libertarian deontological rejoinder to Rawls, a much better work (and containing some of the most hilarious asides you’ll ever read in a philosophy book), trying to build a minimalist state off Lockean foundations, while constantly giving pride of place to the right over the good. He errs, of course, in neglecting Locke’s principle of other-regard in the state of nature (and this pretty much sinks his book, at least as an attempt to build off of Locke), but his vision of utopia is actually not all that uninspiring, especially compared to that of Rawls.
- Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, by Immanuel Kant. No one has done more damage to deontology than this guy, trying to gin up deontological principles from rationality alone, ignoring the need for a hierarchy of moral rules (or some other means of adjudicating between competing claims, as in the famous lying-about-hiding-a-Jew-during-the-Holocaust example). Nevertheless, this does have some niceness as a comprehensive expression of the deontological view.
For a more modern view of how a deontological ethics might work (though he might not call it explicitly deontological), there’s blogger (and political philosopher) Norman Geras’ The Contract of Mutual Indifference, an attempt to sketch the implications of the Holocaust for moral imperatives and duties. The book is sometimes bleak, but always illuminating and, I think, a wonderful discussion of adjudicating between moral claims with a solid recognition of what can reasonably be demanded of human beings.
Two others which attempt to show how competing principles of right can be adjudicated in a Christian context, “Why I Am Not a Pacifist” by C.S. Lewis (in The Weight of Glory) and Reinhold Niebhur’s “Why the Christian Church is Not Pacifist” (reprinted here, among other places; all of Niebuhr’s writings on politics exhibit a similar sensibility). Both of these are attempts to look at what appears to be a pair of moral rules in opposition: the obligation not to hurt, and certainly not to kill, another person, and the obligations we have to see that evil does not triumph. Both Lewis and Niebuhr trace the implications of these beliefs, the need to decide between them when they conflict (and in a way that looks at other than just their outcomes), and the need to be humble about the actions our ethics sometimes demand of us.
Deontological theory probably bears the strongest resemblance to the way people naturally think about morality, and allows, in the very best possible fashion, a way to see nuance in the moral world while still standing on principle. There is also, quite happily for the future scholar, a lot of room left to be filled in.
Nick Troester is a graduate student in political theory and international relations at Duke University. His primary interests are in theories of humanitarian intervention, responses to genocide, and (surprise!) deontological ethics. He blogs at Anti-Climacus
Other posts in the series:
- Bill Wallo on Graphic Novels
- Kevin T. Keith on Consequentialist Ethics
Nick, good lead-in for a discussion, but I keep waiting for the grit of the deontological approach: for instance, how *do* you interact with the hierarchy (Kant, after all, believes that true imperatives *will never* disagree with each other--flawed, in his formulation, but if we believe the rules are God's rules, that should follow, no?) problems?
Further, as a lapsed deontologist who still believes God's commands have a priori status relative to our judgments, I'd wonder what you'd say to the following:
Christian morality is a rule-consequentialism based on rules which we follow because God can "see down the tree" perfectly and has asserted that following His instructions lead to the best conceivable consequences. We accept this by faith, and proceed to live by His commands in a manner which has *given rise to* deontological ethics *in the default of* the eschatological conscience which forms the essence of Christian morality.
In other words, deontological ethics is the post-Christian adequation of Christian morality, in much the manner that epistemology is the post-Christian adequation of Christian assurance that the universe is knowable because God wishes to reveal Himself through it.
Cheers,
PGE
Technically speaking, a consequentialist can accept three of your four claims. 3 is easy. Your relationship with members of your family will give you greater obligations to them, because such special obligations lead to better consequences. The world is better if we act as if we have such obligations. These are rules of thumb, of course, but they are obligations when those things lead to the best consequences, and they are real obligations. What justifies it is consequences, and the fact that sometimes there won't be such obligations doesn't negate 3 as you wrote it.
Similarly, 4 is also true with standard formulations of consequentialism. They have one general duty, to maximize consequences. That general duty involves particular duties that will always be true when those duties lead to good consequences. When they don't lead to good consequences, it's simply not a duty, but that doesn't mean there are no duties, and the fact that these aren't absolute doesn't mean they're not duties.
As for 1, consequentialists do think there's one absolute. It's always wrong to do something that leads to worse consequences than something else you could do. That's an absolute for consequentialism, so you can't say believing in absolutes means you're not a consequentialist.
The deontologist view is basically that there are moral constraints in addition to the concern for good consequences, such that in some circumstances it's wrong to seek the best consequences. This doesn't require seeing these constraints as absolute. Some deontologists think the constraints can be outweighed by very serious consequences, but it's not simply a matter of weighing good and bad consequences. It would have to be a very seriously bad consequence, like the dying of all humanity, perhaps, for it to be ok to, say, kill an innocent deliberately and without consent.
If you want to read a good account of how deontological theory might go, I suggest Shelly Kagan's Normative Ethics. It's intended as an upper level text for an ethical theory course, but much of it is devoted to exploring various elements of a deontological theory, because he thinks deontology captures commonsense morality fairly well.
Nick:
Interesting post; thanks for creating a dialogue. I've always liked your blog - this shows why.
It wouldn't be fair to offer an extended rebuttal, but I'll make a couple of points in response:
1) I don't think your distinctions between deontology and teleology (or consequentialism) are that stark - consequentialists certainly regard their conclusions about moral acts as "part of the universe," in the sense of resolving to absolute decisions as to right or wrong, they just regard those parts of the universe as affected by ("relative to") other parts of the universe, which hardly seems strange; also, consequentialists (and most ethicists) also make a distinction between "the right" and "the good," but see the relation between the two differently from deontologists (often expressed as: "the right precedes the good" for deontologists, while "the good precedes the right" for teleologists).
2) Your substantive criticisms of utilitarianism - like most deontologists' criticism - essentially boil down to complaining that utilitarianism suffers from the flaw of being utilitarianism; the problems you point out in it are simply fundamental features of the theory - not regarded as problems by people who seek the kind of moral theory utilitarianism is: it is not too simple to reduce moral comparisons to a single value, it is simply necessary - for one thing, we do that all the time in economics, law, and other fields, and for another, no one has solved the problem of comparing different qualities on incommensurable scales, so a single-scale ethic has the advantage of actually producing answers rather than stalemates when values collide; that utilitarianism is "relative" (to the facts and circumstances of the cases it considers - which one would think would be things moral decisions should be relative to) is not a criticism, in the minds of utilitarians - the theory was designed to give answers appropriate to individual cases, and to avoid always giving the same answer in disparate cases, as consequentialists do - so there is no damage done to the theory by an argument that shows the best outcomes come from "relative" standards - that was the point from the beginning; as to its being impractical, that is a serious problem, and one that has haunted utilitarians - but that does not seem to them a good reason to adopt a theory that is indifferent to circumstances and returns sub-optimal answers, simply because it is hard to follow the theory that gives better answers - the solution is to find ways to make the theory work.
Finally, I would note - because it reflects on utilitarianism too - that Rawls did not "fiat" his moral principles. He argued that they would be the necessary consequences of an elaborate system of rational discourse about human values (the "original position" thought-experiment). Although Rawls is not an utilitarian, his thinking is very much like that of utilitarians who argue that the utilitarian principle is a natural result of thinking about, and trying to promote, human values. Neither case proceeds by fiat - both proceed by an argument about the necessary consequences of taking certain values seriously - leading, as theorists in both camps argue, inevitably to the one best moral system.
(I think it was Rawls who said that J. S. Mill had already written everything that anyone had to know about ethics which is rather confusing in light of Nick's essay.)
My general complaint about these abstract discussions (not especially about this one in particular) is I'm lost as to how one representative of a moral approach would act differently fron another when faced with a real-world ethical choice. Without some good examples it's really hard to see if the outcomes are much different.
So let me ask this question to Nick and Keith:
Is it a prescriptive or descriptive endeavor? Do people do moral philosophy in order to create the "best" framework to, say, teach our children how to make decisions? Or, is it to better understand why we make the decisions we do?
The question is meaningful to me because I don't think anyone actually refers to this or that moral philosophy in making their ethical choices, and as Kieran Setiya, a professional philosopher at U of Pittsburgh, says, "moral philosophers are not notably more virtuous than anyone else." (See here, HT Brian Leiter.)
One commentor on Setiya's blog said:
(See the same link as above.)
That's the sort of thing I was getting at in my previous comment.
@AndyS--
You didn't ask me, but I "overheard," so here's my answer: every endeavor of theory has both a descriptive and a prescriptive component. The prescriptivist must describe what is and what should be, and then provide a compelling argument that we can and ought to move from one to the other; the descriptivist must describe what is, and then provide a compelling argument that we can and ought to act according to that understanding.
The difference between the prescriptivist and the descriptivist is generally whether their descriptions include at the outset a conscience of the is/ought difference, or whether they view the is/ought as a cognitive problem (we don't know what is well enough, so we err) or a moral problem (we know what should be, but we don't do it).
It's a continuum, with clumps at the ends, but everyone engages the matter in both ways, if they're doing any sort of compelling theory work.
Cheers,
PGE
PGE,
Thanks. It seems to me that first you have to describe how we come to make moral decisions before you go on to prescribe them -- although I'm not at sure who might agree with me here. Seems too that many go off and simply prescirbe a system and say "hey, this is the best, do what I do" with little motivation that their prescription is useful in the real world.
Andy,
True dat. Theorists of all stripes are frequently justly criticized for "system-building." They are, however, also often unjustly criticized for same. Seems to me every thought requires some degree of superstructure, some "grant me my premises, here," if it is to be explicitly communicated in public discourse.
I consider myself a prescriptivist, but would never take seriously a prescription which didn't adequately describe the situations I see. To do so would be akin to showing up at the pharmacy with a piece of paper I picked up from the street.
Of course, Plato would fill it no matter where I got it . . . (lurker bait)
Cheers,
PGE
PGE,
I certainly agree with your well-stated comment: "Seems to me every thought requires some degree of superstructure, some "grant me my premises, here," if it is to be explicitly communicated in public discourse." Once we start that communication, of course, the arguments like the one's Keith, Nick, and Joe are trying to make come into play. In a sense they are trying to establish their premises.
My thought is that once we've established how people make their moral choices, then we can take a look at the world around us, and determine what set of rules (as in guidelines) are useful to help people make better ones. One of my premises is that people usually do what's best for themselves based on
1. what they know,
2. how quickly they can access that knowledge,
3. how well they understand the choices available to them,
4. how good they are at projecting the consequences of their actions, and
5. their ability to change their own patterns of behavior.
Many groups (Christian, AA, NA, etc) help people with addictions (i.e. problem with #5) by showing people how they may have more choices available to them (#3) than they might have considered previously which offer different consequences (#4).
This is the kind of thing I'm thinking about when saying that a description of how we make moral choices should preceed prescriptive ethics. Confusion around the descriptive aspect of morality can make efforts to prescribe ethical behavior fruitless. As I've said before, even though most of us can agree in principle to a small set of general rules, it's putting them into practice where push comes to shove.
Some groups have developed expertise in particular areas. AA's "one day at a time" is actually part of an ethical system. Since many drinkers get lost in thinking about all sorts of depressing future scenarios, the guideline to consider just not drinking today is a powerful, positive ethical prescription for that circumstance. And it doesn't require any appeal to ontology or epistemology. It works, it's (hope you are lurking Gordon) pragmatic.
Andy
Do you see moral philosophy as a way of
1. establishing in one's self a framework with which to drive your ethical choices?
2. describing how human beings make ethical decisions?
There are traditional branches of moral philosophy that do both of these; they are know, not surprisingly (and in the language you yourself used), as "prescriptivist" and "descriptivist" ethics, respectively. Descriptivist ethics, however, is more akin to anthropology than to normative ethics - the fact that some people do do certain things does not make them morally right, even for a "natural law" ethicist, an "evolutionary ethicist", or a cultural relativist (though the cultural relativists sometimes forget that).
Most of what most people call "moral theory" is prescriptivist, or at least attempts to lay the groundwork for prescription. It tells us what we should do or how we should behave in order to be moral.
As for whether anyone consciously refers to their adopted moral theory in making real-world decisions, I should hope they do. Of course, most decisions with moral implications are pretty straightforward ("should I pay for these groceries or steal them?"; "should I push that little old lady in front of that oncoming bus or not?") - they don't really require much extended analysis, so the thought process that goes into them is more or less automatic. This is not to say that moral theory does not apply - it just doesn't require anyone who has a reasonably competent understanding of it to give it a lot of thought in most cases, any more than a musician thinks about music theory while playing a concert, or a baseball manager thinks about the infield fly rule while calling a play - but the underlying theory is fully in play in all these cases.
More complicated cases do call for conscious theorizing, however. Perhaps not everyone has the mental skill or the moral discipline to handle them correctly - that is why we refer to our most respected and highly-trained authorities in difficult cases. But I can testify that people do refer consciously to formal moral precepts, and wrestle with them quite seriously, when confronted with difficult problems. In my own field, medical ethics, I have seen many cases in which caregivers and patients or family members were torn over making a decision about a particular case - and the discussions that ensue rely heavily on formal concepts of medical ethics that are promulgated by philosophers and accepted within the profession: "autonomy," "beneficence," "personhood," and so forth. These concepts are brought into real, and very practical, effect by people who agonize over what they imply for particular cases. I have always been impressed by the sincerity, and very often the sophistication, with which rather abstract principles of ethics are considered, and their relevance evaluated, by people who are not professional philosophers but who take the notion of principle-guided reasoning very seriously and are willing both to grapply strenuously with it and be guided by it in their decisions.
I remember a man, from a very conservative family and culture, who had a severely brain-damaged infant son and who said spontaneously, using a term nobody, to my knowledge, had used in his presence previously: "I am afraid my son is not becoming a ." I remember a doctor almost sobbing as he complained that he had no good clinical options for an elderly patient who was slowly dying, saying he feared the continued treatment was causing the patient harm with no benefit but that he felt that discontinuing treatment would violate his duty toward her. Both these people were consciously - and to some degree intuitively - invoking formal moral concepts to frame the problem they faced; in both cases formal discussions with ethicists, caregivers, and others built on these concepts to arrive at a practical solution. I believe the same thing happens in many other contexts, and I hope it happens in people's private lives as well (it does in mine).
Finally, as to whether moral philosphers are moral exemplars, as someone already pointed out, there is no reason to think that understanding something means you will be good at applying it - or willing to do so. "Those who can, do; those who can't . . . !"
Kevin, thanks for the thoughtful reply. My favorite philosophy professor, Margorie Clay, progressed to department chair and then to the position of ethicist at Mass. General. Your field, medical ethics, is a great destination for a philosophy student or as it turns out a professor.
I hope so too and have the further hope that they've adopted their choosen theory -- not because their parents or another authority taught it to them but -- because they have tested it, seen its value, and have a deep understanding of why it's a good guide to ethical behavior. I'm not so sure many people do that.
I agree. Perhaps I'm too cynical, though, in thinking that what this amounts too most of the time is refering to moral precepts that are based on a theory that is neither well-undersstood nor paticularly sound.
Yep, and here my cynicism rears its ugly head again. Most folks have no more of a clue about terms like deontological, epistemology, ontology, etc. than how to do brain surgery. If they have someone like you around to help guide them through difficult decisions about their loved ones in the hospital, they are very fortunate, but that is the exception not the norm. So they must fall back on their favorite authority or go with their own inexpert judgment which thankfully works pretty well most of the time.
Looking at the timestamps, you were probably composing your last comment when I posted the one just above it. One of the things that I was trying to get at there was that, to make a moral philosophy generally effective, it has to be
1. accessible to the general public so appeals to authority are minimized, if not unnecesarry, and
2. descriptive first(at least in the sense of the example I gave) so as to provide a reasonable background for whatever it then prescribes.
PGE made a fine point that applies here about enabling communication which is a natural prerequisit for moral theory to be useful in the world. That utility is a key concern of mine.
And example of my approach: The typical evangelical prescriptive ethics works as far as I can tell against a descriptive background of "all people are sinners" which is so weak in explanatory power that the rest of their program is motivated solely by argument from authority where "the authority" is a particular interpretation of the vast number of ambiguous and sometimes contradictory statements in the Bible. Consequently most of us do not find their prescriptions compelling.
Hey Andy
Since I find this statement so far away from my ethics - I thought I might sort out where I just misunderstand you - or you might misunderstand me.First of all, the root of my presciptive ethics is the "all people are sinners despite knowing the right thing to do". In other words, our conscience (Law of Human Nature of Lewis) and/or morals (descriptive ethics) are not capable of keeping any of us completely in line for even a whole day.
Next, I recognize the authority I will quote because of an empty tomb. If Christ is not risen, the New Testament at least is junk and christianity a waste of time. Nothing new morally (moral teachers tend to reemphasize the same truths anyway) and Christ, as Lewis said:
Third, I do not feel "foolish" relying on authority:
Finally:Before I was a christian I trotted that line out myself. I know you do not mean it that way but this statement is kind of insulting. I've read and studied the Bible from cover to cover. It hangs together quite well. And people have been hammering at its "ambiguities" and "contradictions" for 1500 or so years. Admittedly, we work hard to understand it better - and in that sense it is the most read, analyzed, and generally picked apart book ever written. My online study aides include 23 translations (plus one in Latin), 11 commentaries, 4 concordances, 6 dictionaries, a Bible encyclopedia, 2 lexicons (Greek and Hebrew), and a History. I can almost guarantee that whatever authority you might rely on for your prescriptive ethics has not been so studied.Now of course the prescriptions will not be compelling unless you accept its authority - which rests in Christ Risen. And of course, I cannot blame you for that - I wouldn't either in your situation.
@AndyS--
This has been a very interesting discussion, so I'd hate for us to all "choose up sides" and narrow our options prematurely. That said, I've happily agreed with you (and agree partially with Kevin) about a couple points, now I'd like to disagree with you.
Or rather, to *partially* disagree with you. Let me concede at the outset that your complaint against evangelical public discourse on ethics is often dead-on when folks are, say, trying to articulate to a non-believer the authority of Scripture. That's like explaining to a Canadian living in the US the overriding importance of their submission to Ukrainian law. It's totally non sequitir.
Now, however, I get to disagree a bit with your understanding of evangelical Christianity. Strictly speaking, you are correct that we do proceed from authority. We had better, since our cornerstone of belief is that God exists and has declared Himself to us. If we don't buy that, we should pack it up and move on.
That said, the "sin" of "all have sinned" is not a matter of ethics at all. Ethics come into play only *because* all have sinned. The "sin" of "all have sinned" is precisely in rejection of the God Who evangelicals have been led to submission to.
God's moral universe has two overriding imperatives for us: "Love God" and "Love your neighbor" (where "neighbor" is understood to mean anyone I have any ability to treat lovingly). The elaboration of these comes as a result of our (fallen, fallible, rationalizing) inability to adequately define the content of "love." That is, God commands us to do these things, and He tells us how.
God's instructions, however, are not for the unbeliever. You are entirely free of them, though I do not envy you that state, if you are an unbeliever. Ethics are not your problem, at all--the fact that you prefer to be an enemy of God rather than His friend/child/servant (sorry, those *don't* contradict each other) is the problem.
Evangelicals who don't portray that message adequately, but instead attempt to impose on the unbeliever the conclusions of an argument from authority whose premises the unbeliever fails to acknowledge, are deserving of your criticism. However, they are so by virtue of being *faulty* representatives of their faith, not of speaking the Scriptures well.
Cheers,
PGE
PGE
Very nice
Thanks.
I see we had roughly the same thought. I felt redundant when I hit "post," but thought it might do some good to have the conversation continue, even to have similar thoughts worded two ways.
Non-recognition of authority, of course, doesn't make the authority go away. I just means there's no basis for suasion, and it's misguided to attempt it.
Cheers,
PGE
I'd really love to see Nick hop in again, here, too. He did a great job starting the ball from his line, the replies are in and are cogent, and I'd really like to see the discussion advanced. There's meat here, good meat that we can profit from chewing.
Cheers,
PGE
PGE and JCH: Both of you agree that "God's instructions, however, are not for the unbeliever," for which I thank you. The statement at the conclusion of my previous comment was intended to explain how a nonbeliever views evangelical ethics, not to challenge their veracity.
some minor points
JCH wrote,
I don't want to start a "mine is bigger than yours" competition, but will note that Buddhist texts precede the Bible by nearly 100 years and have been studied ever since. They are not, however, what I rely on for my prescriptive ethics.
PGE said, "... the "sin" of "all have sinned" is not a matter of ethics at all. Ethics come into play only *because* all have sinned. The "sin" of "all have sinned" is precisely in rejection of the God Who evangelicals have been led to submission to.
Perhaps this is a quibble, but it seems like the kind of sin you describe here is especially a matter of ethics, sort of the background against which an evangelical submits to God and accepts His moral prescriptions.
a short editorial
PGE wrote: I'd hate for us to all "choose up sides" and narrow our options prematurely.
I appreciate your sentiment while also noting that we have each choosen our sides on the major themes. I'm plugging away trying to understand the evangelical point of view and hoping to build a bridge of understanding for "atheistic pragmatic naturalism" -- not to convert or be converted but merely to get beyond the false and often mocking characterizations of either side. I think there is great worth in this endeavor. Given the 1000+ hits a day this blog gets, when Joe recently said that people like me must be either hedonists or nihilists I was dismayed. It's not like a passing comment dropped jokingly in a hallway converation at work. No, this is a statement presented as fact from a man who at least some take as an authority and even those that don't will integrate a few of his sound bites into their thinking to the detriment of the wider dialog between people who live and work together in the same society.
I know this cuts both ways. Evangelicals have long born the cross of having their beliefs falsely characterized and mocked, behaviors that in my ethical system are wrong generally and in public discourse especially. The more we can do to stamp out the false memes spinning through the blogosphere and elsewhere, the better chance we have at building up true understanding of each other and getting on with solving real problems.
Even with this generous intent from all sides, however, we find we have conflicting beliefs, can still say things about each other that can offend, and our understanding remains incomplete.
a final note
I appreciate the way you guys go about witnessing your faith. It expands in a positive way my conception of evangelicals.
AndyS,
Thanks, I like chatting with you too. The one point that is probably not true (or should not be) of most evangelicals:
I take the Bible as authority UNDER THE DIRECTION OF THE HOLY SPIRIT [but have a bunch of tools around if translation becomes an issue]. I have never considered taking Joe, (or Pat Robertson, or Falwell, Dobson, etc.) or the minister I listen to every Sunday on authority [Well once with the minister - an action I may end up regreting]. I am very "Buddhist" in the sense that at least with humans they must first get through a "does my experience bear this out" filter; then the Biblical one. Then, in a very serious problem, I will seek many counselors.Evangelicals should be guruless - other than Christ (God, Holy Spirit). Because we consciously keep away from legalism and dogma layered on our theology by men - we ideally have a tougher road. We are required to arrive at the truth of God for our lives and actions in a very non-dogmatic way; but not free as the Buddhist would be from rejecting scripture and canon if it conflicted with our own understanding. Some consider this a crutch - myself an anchor; and a protection from "the world, my flesh, and satan" corrupting me.
Not to say, as you did, that "some" will quote Joe. I quote Lewis alot - but not because I take him on authority; but because he says what I believe better than I do.
Somebody may at some point quote something I say here, or elsewhere - but I hope they never do that on authority.
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