What's God got to do with goodness?

The question of moral goodness can’t be considered without looking at religion. After all, religious leaders have been declaring themselves to be the true arbiters of goodness for thousands of years. But does God really have anything to do with human goodness?

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Goodness by any other name

Any search for goodness is probably doomed to wander through the wilds of religion at some point. Variations on political themes will undoubtedly slither through the under brush. Philosophies, moral codes, science and clashing systems of ethics can be expected to pounce more than once on the unsuspecting seeker. All those things have happened to me since I launched this quest on June 1.

Most days this feels like chaos and blood sport. I’m beginning to wonder, though, if there’s something wonderful about the fact that I first conceived of my destination as being the disarmingly vague concept of “goodness.” I could have been decided to search for God, one true morality, or the right kind of code for living.

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The stickiness of God

Happy Monday to you. In today’s Must Read, Emory University Professor Frans De Waal writes in The New York Times that human morality wasn’t born in religion. But that doesn’t mean we’ll ever be free of God.

(F)emale chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males towards each other to make up after a fight, removing weapons from their hands, and high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of community concern as yet another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we are today. On the other hand, what would happen if we were able to excise religion from society?

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On the passing of Philippa Foot

I’m just a babe when it comes to the formal study of morality, so it was with joy and sadness that I learned today of the work of Philippa Foot. The British philosopher helped establish virtue ethics, of which I’ve recently become intrigued. She also introduced the Trolley Problem, which is a cornerstone of moral psychology and philosophy these days and was much discussed in the Edge Foundation summit on moral psychology.

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We may be hard wired to be moral

Yale Psychologist Paul Bloom believes human beings are hard-wired to be moral. During the discussion of his work at the Edge Foundation conference on the New Science of Morality, Bloom clarifies that he’s more hesitant about his conclusions than he might first appear, but his work still has interesting implications. If any of this is true, then what are the mechanisms that push us to work against our hard wiring? (And, does anyone doubt that humans are not always moral?) If we’re born with a sense of morality, how do we lose it? What is this hard wiring? Is our baby sense of right and wrong specific, or is this just a general sense that these two categories exist?

Bloom provides an intro to his work in his conference bio:

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Sam Harris & the dangerous quest

I’m beginning to understand Sam Harris’ argument. He’s seeking an alternative to religion as the basis for morality, and he’s seeing morality as the core issue of our time. In a presentation and lengthy discussion at the Edge Foundation conference on The New Science of Morality, Harris explained that he wants science to take on the project of moral persuasion.

How can we persuade all of the people who are committed to silly and harmful things in the name of “morality” to change their commitments, to have different goals in life, and to lead better lives? I think that this third project is actually the most important project facing humanity at this point in time. Read More.

Morality is the problem we refuse to face

As I continue to wade through the discussions from the Edge Foundation’s conference on The New Science of Morality, I keep bumping into ideas that set off fireworks in my brain. These, by the way, are delicious, sweet fireworks. Today I’m struck by Harvard Assistant Professor Joshua Greene’s assertion that we have to understand how human beings think/feel/act morally, or face the consequences of a divided, dysfunctional, drowning world. My first reaction to Greene’s argument is that he is right, and it’s rather frightening to realize how much of human society is refusing the face the problem/issue of morality.

I’ve spent most of my working life either as a journalist or in politics. Ideally both of those fields would share the same mission of making the world a better place. However, when I look back at my career, I realize that we seldom talked in such terms. Read More.

The curse of the liberal

It’s been weeks since the Edge Foundation held its amazing conference on The New Science of Morality, and I still haven’t been able to digest all that was discussed. I couldn’t attend this select meeting, but like many other people, I’ve been eagerly catching up at the conference’s website, which features transcripts and video of presentations and discussions. The conference focused on the latest thinking in moral psychology, and to a newcomer to the topic like myself, the material is overwhelming. It’s also fascinating.

The first talk was given by University of Virginia Social Psychology Professor Jonathan Haidt, who says:

Morality is a social construction, but it is constructed out of evolved raw materials provided by five (or more) innate “psychological” foundations. In surveys and experiments I have conducted in the USA, Europe, Brazil, and India, I have consistently found that highly educated liberals generally rely upon and endorse only the first two foundations (Harm and Fairness), whereas people who are more conservative, more religious, or of lower social class usually rely upon and endorse all five foundations.

Haidt’s five foundations, in this order, are: Harm, Fairness, Ingroup, Authority and Purity. Read More.

Roitman & Lombardo Pt3: The cruelty of moral codes

JUDY: You have to be careful because it’s not that there’s an I and a you.

DIANE: Explain that.

JUDY: So, here’s my hand.

DIANE: Five fingers up.

JUDY: Right. So this finger is angry at that finger. Isn’t that stupid?

DIANE: They’re not going to get very far by fighting.

JUDY: … The point is they’re all on the same hand, so we’re all on the same planet, the same universe, so really we’re not separate. Anything I do is going to affect you. Anything you do is going to affect me. Read More.

Creating a moral society

These days I find myself frequently mulling over the concepts of morality and goodness. What makes an individual good? What makes a society moral?And how do we as individuals and communities turn the cantankerous, mean and evil aspects of life and ourselves into something right and good?

In a review of Michael Sandel's recent book Justice: What's the Right Thing To Do?, writer Vivian Gornick hones in on why I squirm when I read moral and political philosophers. They simply don't appear to be talking about real human beings. Gornick writes:

It is this—the chaos within—that is hardly ever addressed in Justice; although it is this, precisely, that is responsible for the all-important gap between practice and theory. Within that gap lies life as we actually experience it, with peace-making reason eternally in thrall to the emotional conflict that steadily undermines our ability to accord each other the required respect of acting as though others are as real to us as we are to ourselves.

Gornick's review is well worth the read, and despite my misgivings, Sandel's book looks fascinating and is now on my to-read list. But Gornick is on to something. Until we humans learn to understand, wrangle and tame our emotions, all the philosophy in the world won't save us.

Today's Must Read: What Republicans know & Democrats don't get

This is a bit long, but it is well worth reading to learn What Makes People Vote Republican.

University of Virginia Psychology Professor Jonathan Haidt explores different approaches to morality and concludes that people don't vote Republican because they're duped. They simply view the world, and morality, differently than Democratic voters.

I'm not certain I agree with all the solutions he proposes for Democrats, but Haidt's piece offers a fascinating review of the psychology of morality and voting behavior.