timeimmortal

I seem to be entering another “atheist” phase on the blog here; the poor dears seem to come in waves.

Case in point: Samuel Skinner writes in to complain about something I said in this article.

I keep on seeing this “Christianity provide moral capital” argument. I don’t know where Christians get this idea from. We have had things like democracy, free speech and atheism invented by the Greeks (yeah, they were very busy).

Saying “moral capital” and referancing Christianity seems to be a covert way of implying that atheists are immoral and that only theists can have morality. It also implies that atheists are only moral when they borrow from Christianity. This happens to be false.

I can go into greater detail or you can use google and hit daylight atheism- or any other atheist blog. It turns out almost all of them have a critique of that idea.

Other Google searches will reveal critiques of almost any idea, including evolution. I trust that the Reader can agree with the Author that the mere fact that rebuttals to an idea exist somewhere on the internet does not mean that the idea being rebutted is actually false?

While I appreciate the mild ad hominem attempt to paint me as a historical ignoramus (I’m well aware of all the various things which the Greeks gifted to us in terms of philosophy and political methodology, O Reader), I can’t help but get the sense that Sam is grasping at straws. He feels that I am being unfair in arguing about the existence of Christian moral capital in society, and yet he has no idea what the term even means (as is evidenced by his straw-man argument in the second paragraph).

As it happens, I am implying nothing about how moral/immoral atheists and theists are relative to each other; everyone is a sinner, whether one believes in God or not. I’m fully aware that atheists can be every bit as moral as theists can, which is as it should be since the call to morality is written first and foremost on the human heart; if a person doesn’t heed the call to live morally that is inherent in his or her being, no amount of words in a book will do anything to change that.

Not that saying that discounts, in any way, the value of the Word.

When I speak of moral capital, and in particular Christian moral capital, I am in a way acknowledging the contributions of the Greek philosophers, among many others, and I am further acknowledging a rather large portion of history that happened in the interim between the heyday of the Ancient Greeks and the modern era — that is, I am being mindful of the moral and philosophical developments of early Christendom, which Sam seems to be discounting wholesale. The fact is, our social reasoning did not jump directly out of Greek philosophical tradition; it emerged out of that philosophical tradition by way of the Church and the unique shaping that nearly two thousand years of Christianity, and in particular Catholicism has applied to it.

It is this willful ignorance of Christian philosophical history that blinds Sam, I think, to the fact that Thomas Aquinas more or less addressed this specific objection several hundred years ago. Fundamentally, the argument can be distilled to something I myself observed above: what could be termed “natural law” should be innate and known by each and every person. To the atheist, this would seem to be the basis to argue that God had anything to do with natural law, or that Religion and faith have anything substantial to do with being moral.

And following his suggestion to Google around for additional commentary on this issue will enable one to discover evidence of that phenomenon in action.

That’s all very well and good, but ultimately incorrect. For the role that religion plays is not to introduce us to morality itself, but that by way of natural law we are called to be moral. Yes, everyone has (or should have) a sense of right and wrong, and yes, there are definite rights and definite wrongs. We should understand that wholly apart from any religious faith (or lack thereof) that we hold. The purpose of religion is not to teach us to be moral, but to teach us whence comes morality, which is the more important question.

Why is understanding the purpose important? Well, we can look around and note that despite the fact that morality is written in to the being of every single person, many people do not act in a particularly moral fashion. Simply knowing, then, that morality exists and that men and women should be moral is insufficient.

By way of example, I observe that Mark Shea notes “that Jesus’s Golden Rule was, in fact, often *not* understood in even the most rudimentary of societies long before it was enunciated by Jesus. That’s because the Golden Rule requires grace in order to be understood, much less lived. Judaism articulated the basic norm that all pagan societies, at their best, could attain: love your neighbor, hate your enemy. It’s the norm we still basically live by today. Jesus’ Golden rule implied love for enemies because it included enemies in the term “neighbor”. It remains, apart from grace, an impossible and (for the worldly) ridiculous standard. The notion that anybody — especially an atheist — would aspire to it is a classic example of the way in which atheists live off Christian capital.”

When I speak of moral capital, then, I am merely echoing Chesterton: “The fact is this: that the modern world, with its modern movements, is living on its Catholic capital. It is using, and using up, the truths that remain to it out of the old treasury of Christendom; including, of course, many truths known to pagan antiquity but crystallized in Christendom. But it is NOT really starting new enthusiasms of its own. The novelty is a matter of names and labels, like modern advertisement; in almost every other way the novelty is merely negative. It is not starting fresh things that it can really carry on far into the future. On the contrary, it is picking up old things that it cannot carry on at all. For these are the two marks of modern moral ideals. First, that they were borrowed or snatched out of ancient or mediaeval hands. Second, that they wither very quickly in modern hands.”

Essentially, I am observing that Western notions about law, freedom, rights, and human dignity each draw heavily, in their own way, not only upon the pagan philosophy of the Greeks, but on the Christian philosophy that expanded upon in in later centuries, re-shaping and transforming it by grace into the very same principles which we draw upon today. I’m making no pronouncements as to who — theists or atheists — is the more moral, but instead am simply observing that all of us live today, in the West, in societies formed and shaped largely by Christian principles, or principles “once removed” from Christian philosophy.

And whenever anyone upholds values such as the equality of men and women, or the right to freedom of expression, or the notion of free will, one is unconciously (or perhaps conciously) drawing upon teleology in order to state one’s case; in a wholly secular framework, there is no basis on which to found the argument that men and women, or white men and black men, or Asian men and white men, are equal, because by all empirical measures they are not. In forming the concept of equality of persons, and equal dignity of persons, we are appealing to higher concepts above and beyond what mere senses can reveal — we are invoking telos, in essence.

And more to the point, we are invoking a very Christian notion of telos, whether we realize it or not. Yes, many of the concepts had their origin in Greek philosophy, but they ultimately arrived at the point they are at today through their sanctification in the philosophy of the Church (that is: through the fusion, essentially, of Christian concepts and ancient truths known to the great pagan religions of old). I do believe St. Paul addresses this in one of the books of the New Testament. Romans, I think.

That is Christian moral capital. One observes that in nations where Christianity was not a prominent feature of the nations’ formation, things tend not to be so pretty. Oh, a few exceptions exist, and that is to be expected — as has been observed, all people are called to be moral regardless of what faith they do or do not adhere to, and we ought not be surprised that others throughout history have “got it right.” But we do observe that they are in the minority. Japan might be one example…though not a very good one.

As to where we get the idea of societies banking on Christian moral capital from, I can’t say. History, perhaps? Reason and rational analysis of the facts? I suspect we think that because that’s just what happens.

~ by Kenneth on April 15, 2008.