9. Argument from Innate Morality

12 Arguments for the Existence of God by Prof. Caner Taslaman https://mim.mbirgin.com/?c=posts&id=276

9. Argument from Innate Morality Even though morality has been a subject of focus for philosophy and religion for thousands of years, it was not until the 18th century that morality was used as an argument for the existence of God. One reason for this is fideism; most theists believe in God, without the need for arguments. Another is that those who prefer to support their faith with arguments often regard the cosmological, design, consciousness and similar arguments to be sufficient for the matter. Virtually unused prior to the 18th century, the morality argument has become a “forsaken land” of philosophy after the 20th century.[80] Nevertheless, we believe that there is still much to say on this subject and hence devote this chapter to it. Morality is becoming an increasingly interdisciplinary subject; other than philosophy and religion, morality is taken into consideration in psychology, cognitive sciences, neurology, anthropology, evolutionary biology, child development etc.[81] In order to bring new arguments about morality, these subjects should also be brought onto the stage. The relation between morality and our innate characteristics has been studied by many of the famous philosophers – despite the differences in their interpretation – including Gottfried Leibniz (1646-1716),[82] Lord Shaftesbury (1671-1713),[83] Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746),[84] Thomas Reid (1710-1796)[85] and Adam Smith (1723-1790).[86] I share, with many theologians and philosophers of history, the opinion that man has innate moral values; my starting point in this chapter. The novelty in my approach will be the amalgamation of the historical arguments with the results from recent scientific studies, and thereby the formation of an argument for God’s existence. I will present this as follows:

1. Humans have innate moral values. 2. We have two alternative views to explain these values: 2.1 The innate moral values emerged out of coincidences and necessities, as ad0vocated by materialist-atheism. 2.2 The innate moral values are created by God, as advocated by theism. 3. The innate moral values are better explained by theism than materialist-atheism, because; 3.1 It better explains “moral awareness”. 3.2 It better explains the situation that innate moral values have a rational basis only if God exists. 4. As a result, theism should be preferred over materialist-atheism.

The first item in this argumentation has always been a vibrant subject in the history of thought. Many theists and atheists have defended the idea that the human mind at birth is like a “blank slate” (tabula rasa). John Locke is one of the best known theist users of tabula rasa (he also popularized the concept). Locke opposed the idea of innate moral values and more generally the epistemological approach that individuals are born with built-in mental content.[87] The rejection of innate moral values is also common in atheism. The defenders of this position often claim that the moral structure in human is an outcome of socio-cultural factors. They regard sociological needs as the sole regulator of moral phenomena. Durkheim is one of the most notable representatives of this approach. He claimed that man does not have innate moral values and such natures are developed and shaped through social factors.[88] Likewise, several post-modern philosophical approaches of the 20th century also adopted a similar position, rejecting innate values (usually due to concerns about the potential for such innate properties to become a basis for the existence of universal/common moral values). As a result, many people, theists and atheists, still reject the idea of innate morality.[89]

The fact that every healthy person can use concepts, which are actually very complex, such as “good-bad, right-wrong, just-unjust”, from an early age and with comfort shows that the ability to use these concepts is given from birth. In my opinion, this point can even be defended without making reference to any scientific study, yet it requires meticulous analysis of the extraordinariness of possessing fundamental moral values. Besides, many recent studies in psychology and cognitive sciences indicate that most moral-related properties start to emerge during infancy. As shown by Jonathan Haidt, moral judgments usually occur without mental reasoning, in a spontaneous, automatic manner.[90] The explanations for this are typically post hoc rationalization. Let us now see some examples of these studies. Many independent studies examined newborns have shown that when infants are exposed to the cries of other infants, they also start crying, show stress-like facial expressions, and reduce sucking of their pacifiers, which suggest that the cry of another infant was detected as a novel stimulus. To determine whether such reactions were against the sound of the cry or just the noise, the newborns were also exposed to other sounds (of the same intensity), artificial crying sounds and also their own cries. In all these test cases, the babies did not show the same reaction as they did at the original baby cry.[91] We understand many feelings (anger, fear, sadness, joy, pain, lust, guilt, shame etc.) of others through empathy. Empathy is an important, complex and many-layered property and its lack means psychopathy.[92] The observation of traces of empathy in infants shows that we possess empathy, a prerequisite of a moral system, from birth.

Other examples come from puppet experiments, which have several variants in different studies. In one experimental scenario, babies watch a show, where a puppet plays with a ball together with two other puppets, and then a fourth grabs the ball and runs away. When this naughty puppet is brought before the babies, they attempt to “apply justice”, i.e. they punish it by hitting its head, for example. In another experiment, 21-month-old toddlers were observed in a place with good and bad puppets. In the arrangement, toddlers could give something to the puppets as a “reward” or take something away from them as a “punishment”. When they were asked to take something, they took it from bad puppets and when they were asked to give, they gave it to good ones. In another setup, 8-month-old babies were observed to prefer those who reward a good puppet over those who punish it; more interestingly, they also preferred those who punish a bad puppet over those who reward it.[93] Awarding the good and punishing the bad has an important place in the concept of “justice”. These experiments performed on babies, who have not fully acquired language yet, indicate that they are born with a background ready to make use of, and evaluate, of moral concepts. John Rawls stated that the concepts, “just” and “unjust”, which are extremely complex and potentially unlimited, and as well as our moral judgments based on them, can be understood through an approach similar to Chomsky’s language theory (related to our innate capacities).[94]

These experiments show that man is born with capabilities allowing the development of a moral system; hence, this justifies the truth of the first item above (pay attention to the fact that we defend the existence of innate properties that allow the development of moral values, rather than the existence of innate moral values themselves). As for the second item in our argumentation: the explanation of the existence of this innate property in human can only be explained via a comprehensive approach that can explain human and his/her nature. As with previous arguments, the two opposing candidates for this explanation are theism and materialist-atheism. Most materialist-atheists will accept this even though they would also claim that their paradigm presents a better explanation. If the reasons listed in item 3 successfully show that theism better explains the innate existence of the basis for morality, the result of the argument (item 4) “theism should be preferred over materialist-atheism” would follow logically. As a result, the critical item here is the third, and its two points will be evaluated below.

Evaluation of 3.1: First of all, I would like to point out that the opinion about the emergence of innate moral values through evolutionary processes is compatible with our argumentation (you can also refer to the previous chapter, on natural desires and Chapter 7, on life). Monotheistic beliefs, in general, agree upon the moral responsibility of humans, as a distinction from animals and plants. The moral awareness that humans exhibit during altruistic behaviors is also quite distinct from altruism in certain animal species (bees, ants etc.). For example, a bee can sacrifice her life for others, showing a climax of altruism. Even though humans also do the same, the mechanisms that push a bee and a human are entirely different. Behavioral methodology cannot penetrate the reasons behind the same apparent behaviors. The distinction between the mechanisms behind the behaviors of bees and humans can be understood by using hermeneutic and introspective approaches that witness moral awareness. When we consider the altruistic action of helping one’s own kind that is shared by bees and humans, whether such an action is taken with moral awareness or not becomes quite critical. In bees, the “altruistic” action of self-sacrifice happens via the “unaware” outcome of a genetic code, rather than a conscious choice and evaluation of right-and-wrong or good-and-bad (there is a consensus among entomologists on this).

As pointed out by John Hick, it is imaginable that a bee could have chosen “not to sacrifice its own life”, if it were able to make a conscious choice with “moral awareness”.[95] The innate moral values in human are not like automatic control mechanisms. Instead, they form a capacity to make moral choices with the awareness of “good-bad, right-wrong, just-unjust”. Richard Swinburne gives special emphasis to moral awareness: “If humans are to make significant choices at all they must have the concepts of moral goodness and badness (in my sense of overall goodness and badness)... If God is to give us significant choices, he will ensure that we develop this kind of moral awareness. But if there is no God, how likely is it that embodied creatures with a mental life will progress to this stage? ... Such creatures may help each other spontaneously and naturally, as many groups of animals do. But having the understanding of these actions as morally good (even when we do not desire to do them) is something beyond mere altruistic behavior... So again, while God will give some creatures moral beliefs as features essential to their being humanly free agents, there is otherwise no particular reason why whatever processes give creatures beliefs should give them moral beliefs. This is shown by the fact that, as far as we can tell, there are many species of animals that are naturally inclined to help others of their species, and yet do not have moral beliefs—there is no reason to suppose that lions and tigers have moral beliefs, or could ever develop them...Moral choice requires moral awareness...”[96]

The materialist-atheist’s claim which is the emergence of “moral awareness”, a complex, costly, and specific-to-man attribute, came about through coincidental processes, with no involvement of any sort of consciousness (in other words, attributing the observation of moral awareness solely in humans among all living beings), does not seem to be logical. On the other side, in the theist view, moral awareness can play special roles in God’s planning; hence there is ample reason to believe that these properties are consciously placed inside us. Furthermore, theism is also more successful at explaining the existence of non-material concepts such as “good-bad”, which also make morality possible. While the moral awareness (obtained through our innate moral properties) is something expected if the view of God’s creation man is correct; it is unexpected if atheism is correct. The question “Why do we have moral awareness, rather than lack of morality?” is answered much better from the theist angle than the materialist-atheist one.

Evaluation of 3.2: A moral and ethical system without belief in God can, of course, exist in practice (indeed, many atheists have strong moral values). However, a binding system of ethics, and one that often requires its subjects to sacrifice personal interests, cannot find rational grounds without faith in God. This point is established by many renowned atheist philosophers, including Nietzsche and Sartre. The following quote from Nietzsche is an example: “... By breaking one main concept out of it, the faith in God, one breaks the whole: nothing necessary remains... it has truth only if God is truth - it stands and falls with faith in God.”[97] We also see similar arguments in Sartre: “The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all the possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori, since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that “the good” exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoyevsky once wrote “If God did not exist, everything would be permitted”; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn.”[98]

The atheist perspective of interpreting innate moral and ethical values as an illusion is evident in the following words of Michael Ruse and Edward Wilson, both prominent contemporary materialist-atheists: “To use phrasing made popular in this century by the Cambridge philosopher G. E. Moore, evolutionary ethics commits “the naturalistic fallacy” by trying to translate is into ought... In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Ethics is produced by evolution but not justified by it... Ethics does not have the objective foundation our biology leads us to think it has.”[99]

When we think about our innate intuitions about “goodness-badness”, which also form the basis of moral judgment, we realize that “goodness-badness” has an ontological status above personal interests and desires; this point is fundamental in ethics. The consideration of moral laws as “orders of God” provides a rational basis, because, in theist ontology, God is all-powerful and we owe everything to Him and thus His orders (moral laws) are above any social expectations, personal interests and desires. On the other hand, in materialist-atheist ontology, intuitions about “goodness-badness” are nothing more than coincidentally-formed biochemical interactions, consisting of physical material properties such as attraction-repulsion, wave nature etc. If everything can be reduced to material properties, as claimed by materialist-atheism, we cannot find a rational basis for intuitions about “goodness-badness” as they must be above material interests and desires. Atheists like Ruse and Wilson, who realize this situation in materialist-atheism, prefer to call those intuitions (ethics) an “illusion”. Furthermore, since animals and humans are formed through the same combination of coincidences and natural processes, there is no rational basis in atheist ontology for the observed ethics in humans.

Imagine that someone loses a considerable sum of money and I find it (no one else knows I did). The money is so much that I can spend the rest of my life living off it. There is no social sanction preventing me from behaving that way; it is just ethics telling us what is “good-bad”. The “goodness” of returning the money can be defended based on the deontological ethics of Kant,[100] or the Mill’s utilitarianism.[101] However, these approaches cannot explain why deontological rules or utilitarianism is supposed to be preferred. In other words, they are unable to build rational grounds for ethics without referring to God’s commands. “Good” is a standard above the self-interests of people. In the autonomous ethics system of Kant, people are supposed to reach a standard of ethics (categorical imperative) by considering the reasoning of everyone, and keeping it above self-interest; there does not seem to be a rational basis for this endeavor.[102] Why is it better to comply with the categorical imperative derived by considering the minds of others, rather than following self-interests and becoming a “slave of the passions”? In the system of Kant, there is no answer to this fundamental question. Those who consider innate morality and rationality to be a product of coincidental natural processes, and consider ethics an illusion, should also consider the feelings of “necessity and binding” derived from common rationalities as an illusion. Why should we attribute goodness to produce the “greatest happiness of the greatest number”, instead of our own happiness?

In short, the existence of innate moral properties in people is seen from the utilization of complex fundamental moral concepts from early ages, and from recent psychological and experimental studies in psychology and cognitive sciences. Humans develop “moral awareness” thanks to these innate properties. As materialist-atheist ontology does not differentiate humans from other living beings, the emergence of such complex and specific properties in only humans should be totally unexpected. The same phenomena are totally expected in theism as it attributes particular moral responsibilities to humans. Furthermore, even many atheists agree that moral laws can only find a rational basis only if God existed. As a result, the creation of innate moral properties by God is the best explanation. To say natural processes generate those innate moral properties means to say natural processes turn our regards towards God, and that is more coherent with the theist view that considers natural processes to be God’s utilities. According to the point of view advocated in this chapter, the Creator of innate moral properties essentially “stamped” his name in human’s nature by granting those properties to him/her from birth. As a result, our evaluations of innate moral properties show that theism is preferable over materialist-atheism.