A stab at morality from the godless point of view

In the last post I attempted to speculate on how a case for morality can be built on a certain conception of divinity.  The underlying problem I was thinking about was the problem of connecting morality with God AT ALL.  I don’t think it’s easy to do.

What about building a case for morality as an atheist? That question has been on my mind for a while, too.

I actually think this is a little easier.

Let me make some suppositions here, too.

1.            Morality is a practical reality.  If, somehow, it was conclusively proven tomorrow that God doesn’t exist, people wouldn’t all of a sudden start slaughtering each other wholesale. 
2.             Let’s define morality liberally as a commitment to respecting the value and autonomy of other people and life forms, including unseen people.  This is roughly equivalent to, “sociopathy is the opposite of morality.”
3.             Not only is morality a practical reality, it is practical.  There are enormous individual and societal benefits for adherence to the generally accepted concept of morality (The emergence of humans as the dominant species on the planet is due to our high level of social cooperation and interdependence).
4.             The minutia of the “rules” of morality doesn’t have to be agreed upon in order for morality to work.  This should be obvious, since there has never been global agreement on any of this and yet, there is widespread general consensus.  That general consensus is far more important than the details.  Broad strokes matter.

Now, I want to make an assertion that some will disagree with.  Religion has not been very useful in establishing morality in mankind’s history.  If we are looking to religion to help us treat each other right, I don’t see much reason to have hope.  Backup?  Some sort of whackjob religion/ideology (that happened to be in power) has justified and moralized pretty much EVERY large scale atrocity ever committed.  Religion has, in its past, approved of mass murder, rape, slavery, racism, you name it.  So, with respect, why should I think that a revealed religion would teach me anything about this?  Where is the track record of goodness that would convince me?  (I will refrain from providing present examples).

On the other hand, the growth of human thought and philosophy (and the attendant rise of secularism) has given rise to actual, functional morality; the kind where you actually try to consider the impact of your actions on other people.  Someone recently posited to me that the rise of legitimate morality parallels the rise of religious activity in the world.  I really like that person, and there’s a darn good chance he may read this, but I just don’t see it.  The world has never been more secular than it is now.  Religion has never been less powerful politically and socially than it is now, IN THE ENTIRE HISTORY OF SOCIETY.  I just don’t fear the Spanish Inquisition any more, folks.  I will make a concession and say that religious thinkers and teachers have taught some wonderful things about morality, but the institutions of religion have done as Joseph Smith predicted they would; exercise unrighteous dominion.

Theists frequently assert that atheists cannot be moral because they don’t have God to provide moral authority.  What they don’t have is someone to clean up their messes; to atone for their sins; to undo the damage.  Atheists actually have the (healthy) view that the buck stops with them.  They are ULTIMATELY and FOREVER responsible for their actions.  That’s a moral viewpoint if ever there was one.

So, the real question I want to address: how can objective morality be supported in a godless reality?  Why does anything matter at all?

Easy.  Things matter because they matter to you.  What matters to other people matters to you because you are not a sociopath, and you recognize that they are beings like you and so their feelings matter because you possess (that most divinely human characteristic) empathy.   

But does that validate anything?  Doesn’t there need to be something outside that gives authority to all of this?  Does anything really matter?

There are two reasons I think that argument is kind of silly.

One: on the question of “authority”, can you find some source of authority outside of humanity?  Why do we need one?  Why can’t we be our own authority?  In fact, we are.  A valid interpretation of religion is that it is simply a societal mechanism for controlling behavior.  It has its issues, but that’s what it is.

Two: Are you willing to say that the things you love, that give your life meaning and joy, do not matter to you simply because they are not validated outside of your self?  Why is this any different?  Do you like mushrooms, or are you permitted to like mushrooms?  Do you prefer the Beatles to the Stones, or is that dictated to you?  Are your passions invalid somehow because they belong to you?  No.

So, your freedom belongs to you, and conversely so does everyone else’s and there is no way that I can think of that divine authority would validate it any more.

Finding purpose… and peace

This morning I had a moment of true transcendence.

In the last couple of weeks I have been heavily engaged in dialogue with a very, very intelligent guy about the objective reality (or lack) of morality as it relates to God’s existence (note to self: if this is what you do in your spare time, you can be sure that you are a complete nerd).  I’m in the middle of Guns, Germs, and Steel,  my wife just read Under the Banner of Heaven, and in the last few days I’ve been able to graphically revisit the degree to which I come off as a violently angry asshole when discussing The Mantle Talk by Boyd Packer (which talk makes me violently angry).  Given that I have a stated objective to NOT come off as an angry apostate, but rather, a charming and happy, even gregarious, apostate, this state of affairs has prompted further frenzied thinking about WHAT TO DO (in the cosmic and mundane sense) with regards to my Mormon-ness.

Late last night, during the lightning storm, my wife and I talked about evolution, and morality, and purpose, and (of course) Church.  I realized how sad she (at least sometimes) feels at the loss of easy-to-identify purpose in life.  I think it has been different for me.  At the point that I realized some questions will NOT be answered, I stopped asking them so much.  I am much more comfortable with some combination of existentialism, nihilism, functional hedonism, secular humanism, deism, atheism, agnosticism…  Let’s just say I like my isms dry, with a full body and slightly bitter aftertaste.

Maybe she prefers her isms to be sweet and comforting, with warm notes, and chocolate overtones.  (I made olive oil ice cream the other night.  She thought it was interesting, but she told me she wants her adventure in the meal, but her desserts to be familiar, comforting, and traditional… how much does this say about our relative approaches to these larger problems?)

…

A quick summary of the salient points:

Internal points

1.          Let’s admit to ourselves that we are evolved beings.  (Alert: If you are invested in the literal Garden of Eden narrative, you might not like the rest of my points either.)
2.          We don’t expect the animals around us to adhere to external rules of morality.
3.          At some point we were among them.
4.          Our self-consciousness, and sense of morality evolved with us.
5.          If you believe in an objective, eternal, God-driven morality, then you must conceptualize a day when God flipped the switch on humans, and we became morally culpable to those eternal realities.  I mean this literally. 

External points

1.          Let’s presume God exists. 
2.          Morality is connected to God’s existence.  In other words, God cares about it.
3.          If that connection is internal, if morality is contained in the being of God, then it has no greater significance than simply being an arbitrary set of rules that God decided.  This is to say, if the truth EMANATES from God’s being, then it cannot be properly called truth, it is simply God’s preference. 
4.          It the connection is external (as I think Mormons believe), then it does not depend on God to exist.  God could go away, and morality is still there.  Thus, whether or not God exists has no impact on morality. 
5.          The internal problem makes morality meaningless, the external problem makes it impossible to identify a source of morality, and it begins to look (to the horror of my friend) like simple human preference.

I don’t know if I am covering all of the points very well, but the point is, it gets really difficult at times to figure out if there is a purpose to life, or some real sense of right and wrong, and for a variety of reasons, that can be depressing to contemplate.

Transcendent epiphany this morning:  If we are all part of God, interconnected in a giant web of time and space, then all of these problems disappear.  If instead of being a discrete being/presence/personality, God is the (admittedly kooky sounding) web of life, progressing forward, evolving into self-consciousness, striving for perfection, creating what perfection is… then suddenly I’m ok.  This blows up the anthropomorphic vision of deity (and I will be the first to admit that it is rather appealing to self-worship), but let’s face it, that vision of deity has its own problems.  It blows up the idea that God is perfect, omnipotent, omniscient, etc. 

I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP.  And I know I’m not really saying anything new, but I had a legitimate (Mormon worthy) spiritual experience as I contemplated all of that.

It makes God… everything.  And then, morality (at least as I see it) becomes tenable again.  It becomes external and internal to us.  It connects us with the object of morality (each other, and the earth, and the other living things).  It gives purpose to life and to evolution, and gives room for moral improvement.

It also fixes the problem of my assessment of God’s most obvious characteristic: absence.  If God is everywhere, then I don’t have to fret so much about the fact that he is not there. 

It gives space for the narrative weight of divine experience for individuals without requiring me (or anyone) to give heed to the attempts some make to control the behavior of others through the (false) authority of those experiences.  It allows those experiences to take shape in an infinite number of ways without having to call them wrong (or right).

Finally, it gives space for empathy.  I can regard the Church as a piece of the whole process of moral evolution.  As it evolves (it does, and it has), I will be able to see it moving to greater moral strength.  Perhaps I can find a way to influence that moral progress.  Perhaps I can understand how I fit into the Church as an apostate.  Perhaps I can find peace with my family and community (both in and out of the Church). 

Does it fix all of my problems?  No.  I still have to work out what my relationship to the Church looks like in practical, mundane terms.  I have to continue to deal with (and attempt to diffuse) my anger.    I have to think through the implications of this further.  I need to continue to read the philosophies of men, so that I can mingle them with scripture, and thus attempt to circumscribe all truth into one great whole.  I have to continue to do my best with what I’ve got. 

Maybe the biggest problem; if I’m going to embrace this kind of thinking I have to figure out how to (unironically) wear amulets, patchouli, and sandals.  Do I have to get dreadlocks?

(It should be noted, not for the first time, that I owe a debt of gratitude to Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God for helping me think through some of this.)

Apologists vs. Apostates

Let’s talk about apologists and apostates for a few minutes.

Everybody knows what an apostate is.  They’re going to hell.  They’re ok with that.  And they presume that the company there will be better than the company of the Saints in the big CK.

Almost no one in the Church knows who the apologists are, except the apostates… It’s crazy.  It’s not until you are on your way out of the Church that you realize that Mormonism is much more interesting than you ever thought!  Maybe that’s why we can’t leave it alone.  The view from the outside is fascinating (while the view from the pews is as lackluster as anything you can think of).

On the outskirts you discover the Church your mother never told you about (because she doesn’t know about it either).  The apologists, the cafeteria Mormons, the liberal and feminist Mormons, the September 6, Sunstone, Dialogue, Richard Poll, Richard Packham, Richard Bushman, all the other Richards… Quinn, Mormon Expression, Mormon Stories, Joanna Brooks, John Dehlin, John Larsen… Who knew the Church could be so incredibly interesting?

There is a world of Mormonism to explore outside the chapel doors, and it’s all kind of a secret. 

Most of that world is not what your bishop would call totally faithful.  But one group is consumed with faithfulness:  the apologists. 

Their name is not helpful for understanding their business.  They are NOT here to apologize for all the damage the Church did to your developing sexuality.  Sorry.

They are the defenders of the faith.  Hugh Nibley was the team captain.  Apologists unabashedly take on the accusations of apostates and the assertions of intellectuals (a.k.a. apostates if you are President Packer).  They provide the difficult defense. 

I have been enjoying a series of online conversations with a guy who I stumbled up against on the Millennial Star blog.  I would like to pay him the compliment of saying that he is far and away the most intellectually honest apologist I have encountered yet.   One could reasonably infer that I have all sorts of nasty things to say about the multitude of other apologists I have been hanging out with, so I will nip that in the bud and just say my encounters with the defenders of the faith have not been numerous enough to be generally disparaging.  Time will tell.

My new friend seems like he wants to approach things honestly, he even wrote a blog post about how to tell the good apologists from the bad ones.  He wrote a fantastic post as well about why having an invested stake in the outcome of a debate makes it extremely difficult for humans to think rationally.    

There was another post recently (by another contributer) about why apostates are comparable to conspiracy theorists.  The logic was bad.  The analogy was inept.  It was a clever way to marginalize people that are inconvenient.  To be fair, apostates spill a fair amount of ink marginalizing apologists, too. 

Why marginalize each other?  WHY CAN'T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG????

This isn’t entirely accurate, but let’s hypothesize that each side has a tangible objective.

If they got their druthers, apologists would prove the Church true.

Likewise, apostates would prove it false.

What does that mean?  And how would you achieve such a goal?  And why does it matter?

What does it mean for the Church to be TRUE?  The crux is this: the Mormon Church is the possessor of God’s exclusive path back to His presence, and there is no other way.

It’s all about exclusivity.  The Mormon Church is THE ONE TRUE CHURCH, THE ONLY WAY, THE ONLY PATH.  The Mormon Church holds GOD’S EXCLUSIVE AUTHORITY, without it, you are… damned.

Exclusive authority.  Exclusive truth.  Exclusive path back to God.

Parenthetically, an apologetic response to this could be taking exception with some aspect of my description, but c’mon, we all know this is exactly what the members believe and what the leaders teach.

So, here’s the quandary for these truth claims.  The whole thing is a logical theorem.  All the pieces must be true in order for the total to be true.  And that’s not just me making the claim, it’s the way the Church presents itself.

There is no room for metaphorical belief in the Church’s teachings. 

Ironically, this paints the Church into a corner and also provides believers with added ammunition.  There is a thought like, “the Church wouldn’t make all these claims if they weren’t confident in them being true.”  La la la la la…

You know you used to think that… you did.  Just admit it.

So, while the apologist has a terribly complicated task of keeping all the balls up in the air in order for the integrity of the truth claims to be valid, the apostate really only has to knock one down.

Apostates don’t have to prove that the Church doesn’t do any good in the world.  They don’t have to claim that the leaders are evil, or even that they are aware of the impossibility of the exclusive truth claims.  They don’t have to provide an alternative Church that is the true Church.  They don’t have to prove anything about God or Jesus at all. 

They just have to demonstrate in some way that the truth claims can’t be entirely supported. 

Why does that matter?

Proving the Church false means one really, really, REALLY important thing in the end:  the Q15 in SLC do not have the exclusive stranglehold on divine truth and authority. 

The implications of THAT can be huge.   

The failure of monotheism

Monotheism, the great divinity experiment that progressed from the Jews to the Christians to the Muslims, has failed us.

I love Judaism.  I love the intellectualism; the Jewish culture (at least the Americo-European version with which I am familiar), but as a major contender for the monotheism title (and the originator of that contention) Judaism hasn’t done so well.  Let’s face it; unless you are Jewish, the God of the Old Testament is not someone you want to hang out with very much. 

Even if you are Jewish, for some reason he doesn’t like foreskins or bacon, and who can really comprehend that?  More importantly, he seems completely tranquil about slaughtering massive numbers of human beings.  The moral rectitude of the OT God is… questionable at best.  What do the Jews think?  From everything I can tell, Jews in general are paving the way in rejecting the literal belief in their faith tradition.  How many Jews now literally believe in their grumpy god?

Let me point out that fundamentally, Christianity has a highly tenuous relationship with monotheism.  The first centuries of Christianity were fraught with argument over how to define the relationship between God, Christ, and the Holy Ghost.  Although the Trinitarian camp eventually won, the debate was fierce.  But Trinitarianism is a poor excuse for monotheism (note the prefix: tri).

Included, too, in the Christian mess of godness is the mythical figure of Satan, who under any honest interpretation looks like just another polytheistic addition to the mix.  All personal presentation of Satan in the bible does it in a mythological, polytheistic way.  Satan may not be the top god, but he certainly is in the pantheon.

That leaves Muslims…. Muslims are winning the competition in terms of sheer numbers but all of the problems that plague Yahweh, plague Allah.  As a socially progressive god you could get behind, Allah is problematic.

In fact, as Robert Wright points out in his fantastic book, The Evolution of God, all three of the major monotheistic faith traditions (including the pacifist-in-name-only-Christians) frequently suffer lapses of moral tolerance and start slaughtering each other with reckless abandon. (He also writes about when they don’t, and the book is WONDERFUL; so go read it.)

I’m going to come out and say it because it needs to be said:  Mormons are NOT monotheists.

Mormons believe in separate corporeal God Father and God Son along with a concrete concession of a Mother in Heaven.  And despite the curious suggestion that we don’t teach or emphasize it, the crown jewel of Mormon theology is that mankind is God in embryo, working to “grow up”.

Feminist Mormon thinkers are one of the three bains of Boyd Packer’s existence; enemies of the Church (the other two being gays and intellectuals… how he manages to live in Salt Lake City, I will never figure out).  I could be reaching here, but maybe that’s because the institutional church is a corrupt, hetero-patriarchy of groupthink.

Feminist Mormons are calling (and have been calling) for the recognition of Heavenly Mother to take her rightful place next to Heavenly Father.  Listening to them speak on the subject is delightful (I had that great good fortune yesterday at the Sunstone Symposium; I have to admit I have a bit of a brain crush on Holly Welker).

In the heavens are parents single?

No, the thought makes reason stare,

Truth is reason, truth eternal tells me I’ve a mother there.

I am beginning to realize (and I am sure I will realize much more) that the loss of the divine feminine is the great tragedy of the rise of monotheism.  When we were all happily polytheistic, there was plenty of feminine influence in the pantheon, and I am asserting the world was a better place for it.   

I am led to conclude that the failure of monotheism in teaching a consistently moral morality could be impishly titled: MANotheism.  These gods are excessively manly; and not in a good way. 

Monotheism is the (dis)embodiment of male power dominance, and all of the problems you would expect in the absence of female influence, are reflected in that tradition.  Male (monotheistic) gods have made a mess of things.

I don’t know how to discuss this further.  I’m trying to think my way through it.  But my concluding thesis for now is this:

 

1. Because it is essentially a reflection of the concurrent historical rise of agro-society (and the male values that have been overly emphasized in that development), monotheistic tradition is largely emblematic of the worst of human nature.
2. Monotheistic tradition is the ultimate way to permanently disempower and marginalize women, and therefore must be addressed if lasting progress is to be made in re-enfranchizing half of the human race.
3. There are really only two options to fix that: dismiss divinity entirely from our lives, or re-embrace polytheism via the divine feminine.

If we need a relationship with divinity at all, we need a relationship with our Mother God.

Faith and Evidence

Having grown up under the correlated all Seeing Eye of the COB, I learned relatively early to eschew the speculative doctrines and focus on the core doctrines of the Gospel.  Kolob?  Nah.  Armageddon?  Nope.  10 tribes coming down from the North?  No way. 

For whatever reason I hunkered down with a few subjects and puzzled and puzzled till my puzzler was sore.  Faith, atonement, sacrifice… but faith more than anything.

When all you’ve got is milk, you try to turn it into meat by the sheer weight of pondering.

The Lectures on Faith

Alma 32

Ether 12

Hebrews 11

Faith was, and is, truly fascinating to me.

Here’s the quick synopsis:

Faith is frequently taught incorrectly in the Church in two ways.  We equate it with belief, which is incorrect (although not so incorrect that General Authorities of all ranks aren’t guilty of doing it ALL THE TIME).  And we say it is like a seed; also incorrect (for the record faith is the nourishment  for  the seed, not the seed itself.  The seed is the word, or whatever else is being tested).

I would instead break it down like this:  Faith is an action or disposition characterized by one or more of the following: action, loyalty, trust, or obedience.

The lectures on faith teach that faith is the motivating power by which man does anything.  (Lest we miss the significance, that’s ANYTHING.)

Alma 32 teaches that faith is as testable as a science experiment and teaches a virtuous cycle of coming to perfect knowledge through application of faith.

My mission farewell was a talk about faith and Moroni’s promise from an action perspective. 

1.       Faith is meant to be tested.

2.       Moroni’s promise is the test.

3.       My mission is to get people to take the challenge.

4.       God will do the rest.

Yadda yadda yadda.

So, here’s the problem:  Faith, we are told, will prove itself out!  You plant the seed and it grows.  In the doctrine of faith there is a causal chain that does not imagine planting the seed, not having it grow, and then trying to come up with bogus excuses that still make the seed out to be viable. (Yes, I realize that there is the convenient caveat about my infertile ground.  All I can say is, although my ground today looks pretty barren, it didn’t used to be.  There are many serious problems with that line of thinking anyway, not the least of which is it invalidates the power of Christ’s atonement.  Maybe sometime we’ll get around to that.)

To bring in a tangible example, I would have told you that the faith involved in giving a priesthood blessing was not some inner gumption, or force of belief.  Faith is manifest in putting hands on someone’s head and listening for inspiration, and then by opening one’s mouth and going out on a limb.  Action, trust…

Marital fidelity (or faithfulness) is, likewise, a manifestation of action, loyalty, trust (and sometimes obedience). 

Ok.

When I began to counsel with my bishop about my slipping testimony, one of my big issues was Alma 32.  My certainty wasn’t growing in a virtuous cycle leading to sure knowledge.  It was exactly the opposite.  I felt like everything was less and less sure; less black and white.  And from what I could tell, it was like that for most of the people I knew. 

Informal surveys told me that, in general, the people I was talking to didn’t feel like they were getting the answers or clarity that they thought they should.  They just figured they were broken and that everyone else was having all the spiritual experiences.

This was a prime cause of my growing anxiety attacks.

The Bishop asked me to look at all of this with an eye of faith.  Everyone seems to think that if I just look at all of this with an “eye of faith” it’ll all get better. 

Hmm…

Here’s my problem:  I’m not motivated to believe unless it’s TRUE.  I have no desire to build faith on false premises.  I’m not sentimental about all of this.  If the Church is TRUE, I want to know it and live accordingly.  If the Church is NOT TRUE, I want to know it and live accordingly.  I don’t do all of this for fun, dammit.

Although I don’t think people do this consciously, the thinking seems to be that where evidence breaks down, it’s God testing our faith.  He’s messing with us.

But I don’t find any evidence for that in the scriptures.  There is no presumption ANYWHERE that God will mess with you by changing the tangible world to provide evidence against the gospel.  In fact, it says the precise opposite.  Alma 30:41 “I have ALL THINGS as a testimony that these things are true.” 

I don’t know about you, but ALL THINGS doesn’t seem to leave room for the DNA of the native Americans to not match up with Semitic people.  Nor does it leave room for the Book of Abraham to be a false translation.  Nor does it leave room for absolutely no credible archeological evidence of the Book of Mormon in the Americas.  It certainly doesn’t leave any room for Joseph to be a world-class sex fiend. 

These are not trifles/details/insignificant/irrelevant/the not very useful frailties of imperfect men! 

Please don’t ask me to be intellectually dishonest and disregard highly relevant evidence because you don’t find it convenient to the narrative you like!

What happened to “All truth can be circumscribed into one great whole”?

Why would I go against the evidence?  Why would I trust the (potentially) false traditions of my fathers AGAINST the evidence that God has provided?  (And against the advice of the Book of Mormon.  It seems like one of the great teaching themes of the Book of Mormon is to NOT GET SUCKED INTO FALLING FOR THE FALSE TRADITIONS OF YOUR ANCESTORS.)  Why would I feel justified in doing that? 

I can’t.  When I think about it, I imagine passing over to the other side and standing before God, confident and pleased with my “faithfulness”, deliberately hanging on for all those years to failing proof; loading the shelf up with every discomfiting concept and quandary, beating my intellect bloody to just KEEP THE FAITH.

I imagine him giving me a disgusted look and saying, “What the hell were you thinking?  What does it take to get through to you?  I gave you every possible indication to let go of that silly theology, and you just ignored me!”

That’s not a conversation I want to have.