Joe Carter links to Matthew O'Brien's Public Discourse essay, which answers this question "yes." Recognizing that some people who are much smarter and more learned than I am think that the answer is "no," I am inclined to agree with O'Brien. It's not (as I see it) that claims about what ought or ought not to be done -- or even about what absolutely ought or ought not to be done -- are not rational or reasoned; it's that (as I see it) God's existence and providence, His creating and sustaining of the world, His gift of dignity to and plan for human persons, etc., are what make it the case that it is true -- that it is even possible for it to be true -- that some things really ought or ought not to be done. It seems to me that, if "the world is made up entirely of physical particles in fields of force," then there are no "moral absolutes"; it makes no sense, really, to talk about what meat puppets really ought or ought not to do. It's because we are not just meat puppets, but rather creatures of a loving God, that it does make sense to talk about these matters.
Alright, philosophers. The comments are open. Set me straight.
UPDATE: Sam Levine (Touro) kindly suggested to me that these two earlier MOJ posts (from 2008 and 2009) are relevant to this discussion. Sam wrote:
Some Jewish biblical commentators understand Abraham's statement in Genesis 20:11 as making a similar point about religion and self-control. In the context of the narrative, Abraham seems to imply that notwithstanding the possible virtues of Abimelech and the people of Gerar, the lack of religious belief left them (relatively) vulnerable to temptation and improper
Another update: Robert Miller, at First Things, contends that "moral absolutes" do not depend on "divine commands." He concludes:
Some actions are incapable of being ordered to our final end, and these actions are always and everywhere wrong. God absolutely prohibits such actions, but the divine legislation functions not to ground the absolute prohibition but to enforce it.
And here comes the unfrozen caveman lawyer (i.e., me) obstinately wondering whether it would make any sense, really, to talk about "final ends," and about the always-and-everywhere-wrongness of actions that are "incapable of being ordered" to them, if there were no God. If the universe were as, say, Searle describes it, then there would be no "final end" of persons (indeed, there wouldn't really be "persons") and no "moral absolutes." To say this, though, is not (at least, I think it is isn't) to embrace "divine command" theory; it is to say, though, that theism is necessary for morality to be real.
I know, I know. A lot of really learned people say I'm wrong about this, and so I guess I am. But, I suspect that I am invincibly so, because I cannot shake my attachment to what seems to me obvious: Happen-stance clumps of electrified bits of dirt don't have morally meaningful "final ends"; creatures of a loving God, however, do.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: A friend and reader helpfully sends in this quote, from Peter Atkins (a chemist): “I adopt the view that the whole of all there is can be accounted for by matter and its interactions.” As I see it, if Atkins's view were true -- that is, if it really were the case that "the whole of all there is can be accounted for by matter and its interactions", i.e., if there were no God, then it would not make much sense to talk about "moral absolutes" (or morality, for that matter).
Tuesday, December 13, 2011
The most recent column by "Spengler" (David Goldman) at the Asia Times is the preface to Goldman's new book, How Civilizations Die (and Why Islam is Dying, Too). A taste:
Our political science is uniquely ill-equipped to make sense of a global crisis whose ultimate cause is spiritual. But was not always so. From the advent of Christianity to the seventeenth-century Enlightenment, the West saw politics through the lens of faith. St Augustine's fifth-century treatise The City of God looked through the state to the underlying civil society, and understood that civil society as a congregation - a body bound together by common loves, as opposed to Cicero's state founded only on common interests.
....
In the absence of religious faith, if our culture dies, our hope of transcending mere physical existence dies with it. Individuals trapped in a dying culture live in a twilight world. They embrace death through infertility, concupiscence, and war. A dog will crawl into a hole to die. The members of sick cultures do not do anything quite so dramatic, but they cease to have children, dull their senses with alcohol and drugs, become despondent, and too frequently do away with themselves. Or they may make war on the perceived source of their humiliation.
Nate Oman has posted a thoughtful piece (see also Lisa's excellent post below), How to Judge Shari'a Contracts: A Guide to Islamic Marriage Agreements in American Courts. Here is the abstract.
This Article thus has two goals. The first is to show how the Muslim conception of marriage diverges from the Christian-influenced norms that dominate American law and society. Understanding this divergence provides a necessary background to Islamic mahr contracts. The second goal is to provide lawyers and judges with a doctrinal framework within our current law for analyzing these contracts and reaching sensible results in concrete cases.
The remainder of this Article will proceed as follows: Part II provides an introduction to Islamic law in general, and the law of marriage and divorce in particular, as well as some discussion of how these rules function in practice. Part III summarizes the way in which American courts have dealt with mahr contracts, showing how both husbands and wives seek to deploy arguments based on contract law, the law of premarital agreements, and constitutional law. Part IV provides a framework for analyzing mahr contracts. It argues that such contracts are best dealt with using traditional contract doctrines. Indeed, once the meaning of mahr contracts are properly understood, this Article argues that the common law of contracts is capable of dealing with potential problems presented by mahr contracts without any dramatic legal innovations.
Stanley Fish has an interesting column about teaching law with specific reference to learning about constitutional law and the religion clauses. He says much that I agree with and that picks up on at least some of the themes in his entertaining, Save the World on Your Own Time.
A small but, I think, important feature of the column is the emphasis on (his variety of) intentionalism or purposivism to understand legal doctrine. He writes:
Continue reading
Monday, December 12, 2011
Or puoi, figliuol, veder la corta buffa
d’i ben che son commessi a la fortuna,
per che l’umana gente si rabuffa[.]
A story here about consternation in Santa Monica, where it seems that a 60-year old tradition in which various Christian congregations assembled a nativity scene in a public park during the Christmas season has been disrupted by the institution of a neutral, generally applicable municipal lottery system. As it happened, Fortune favored the atheists. (h/t Sam Bray)
