One atheist friend holds that we have developed our sense of altruism, our sense of compassion, even love, out of a need to function as a human society. Without that development, he says, societies would collapse in an orgy of personal greed and comprehensive exploitation of others.
So I wonder why some who don't subscribe to a religious outlook find it so difficult to leap to a firm secular code of ethics. I wonder what's missing for them.
And one atheist friend who has had an ecstatic experience of the sacred looks back on what was for him at the time a religious experience, and now calls it "brain chemistry." That seems enough of a value for him. Sufficient in itself because the experience was intensely life affirming.
Andy Schmookler responds:
I will be interested in hearing, Fred, what you learn when you inquire of your friends who are atheists and agnostics and have firm moral beliefs, as to whether their route has anything in common with the one I'm presenting here.
And I share your wonder at the difficulty some people without a religious outlook have in reaching a firm basis for their values.
On that point, a famous line from Dostoyevski's Brothers Karamazov comes to mind: "If there is no God, everything is permitted." (The quote appears in "The Grand Inquisitor," which is "written" by one of the characters, so it is not clear whether Dostoyevski himself buys that logic.)
If only the existence of God can make anything forbidden, does that mean that the only reason people would abstain from wrong-doing is that there's a mighty, all-seeing power around to punish one's misdeeds? Or alternatively, does it mean that the only way that any moral rules can be established is by such a Being?
Both seem like complete non sequiturs to me, for the reasons given in the essay. And fortunately, it does appear from various psychological studies that people do have some inborn moral sense. (Even chimpanzees apparently have an innate sense of fairness, for example.) Which makes sense when one thinks of how our whole primate evolution has taken place in social groups, and how the requirements of healthy, life-serving social interaction would readily select for a tendency to do right by one another.
That point is akin to what your atheist friend says about how societies would collapse. But it does not sound like your friend -- if he talks about "comprehensive exploitation of others" -- is thinking in the long-term evolutionary perspective in which our nature was shaped, where we live in small bands in which the structures to enable such exploitation were lacking.
Turning, finally, to your friends with the ecstatic experience of the sacred. The question of "brain chemistry" does arise. Above, I referred to some experiences of my own that suggest that there may be "more in heaven and earth than is dreamt of in my (natural) philosophy" (using the line from Hamlet). If one has a resolutely secular view of things, it can eliminate some cognitive tension to interpret such experiences as mere "brain chemistry." On the other hand, for me at least, the experiences have called out to be accepted as saying something bigger--something that does not fit so readily into my larger understanding of the world.
I would be interested to know whether your friend, at the time of his experience, thought of that ecstatic contact with the sacred as "brain chemistry," or as saying something that was about more than just him.
There is an element in all this that, for me, remains mysterious. I believe natural selection can fully account for the emergence of the capacity for such experiences. But it is not crystal clear to me.
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Ed Schmookler:
I would like it if you began with an instance (example) of the attitude against which you are arguing (i.e. regarding "value" as not really "real," a matter of opinion, etc.).
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