Topic: All Is Permitted
In my post God is Morality is God is Morality I tried to illustrate some of the dubious moral reasoning popular among Christians. In this post, I'd like to clarify why the title of that post was appropriate - how it is that Christians can appear dumbfounded at the prospect of considering morality without God. Christians often have difficulty disentangling God from morality similar to the way some have difficulty understanding how paper money holds value if it's not "backed" by gold. Take away the gold and the money is meaningless. But the reality is, just as money continues to exchange without gold, people still seem to talk about right and wrong without God. And the analogy continues, because just as the value of money has never stayed constant, with or without a gold standard, what is considered right and wrong changes too, independent of the supposition of an Almighty Deity.
But the temptations to continue with the analogy will obscure what I believe to be the key point. Because more important than what can be argued explicitly about the connection between God and morality, is the tacit inseparability in the minds of so many Christians between the very word "God" and the very word "Morality." A lifetime of having a definition reinforced devoid of any kind of abstract thinking about the principle is responsible. The effect is, that even after what has appeared to be a somewhat productive conversation on morals, I'll often leave a perfectly intelligent believer confused because whatever other criteria I can offer in place of God which by the believer's own arguments should account for morals to the same degree God does, doesn't yet find identity with the string of phonemes G-o-d which just happens to trigger some kind of vague but lifelong familiar thought-concept that gives a solidness to the idea of morality. In other words, in the final analysis, for a vast sweep of unreflective Christians, godless morality, in their minds, doesn't fail rationally, but because the superglue which binds the word "God" and the word "morality" together can't be dissolved, their minds are unable to even conceive of the question.
The following excerpt from Aldous Huxley's Crome Yellow is instructive:
"Look at them, sir," he said, with a motion of his hand towards the wallowing swine. "Rightly is they called pigs."
"Rightly indeed," Mr. Wimbush agreed.
"I am abashed by that man," said Mr. Scogan, as old Rowley plodded off slowly and with dignity. "What wisdom, what judgment, what a sense of values! 'Rightly are they called swine.' Yes. And I wish I could, with as much justice, say, 'Rightly are we called men.'
Posted by gadianton2 at 7:22 PM
