The morality of serial-genocide

OK, I don’t normally respond to particular people. I’ll respond to a general sentiment I’ve heard from a few people, but this will be the first time I’ve gone to something I can point to, and here’s the link. Actually, there are a few things on that blog I disagree with, but for now let’s look at what’s written under ‘Irony meter goes off the scale’

Actually, before I start, let me just say, I’m doing this because I respect the author, at least somewhat. I’m doing this because I love you, so I’m going to do as I do with everything I love - dismantle you in a clinical manner, and then laugh at everything that's wrong with you.

OK then; let’s start with a quote from the text: “One of the most common pieces of bigotry aimed at atheism is that it doesn’t provide any basis for morality. It’s widely assumed that without religion — without moral teachings from religious traditions, and without fear of eternal punishment and desire for eternal reward — people would behave entirely selfishly, with no concern for others.” Did you notice what was wrong with that statement? It makes two statements, and tries to pass it off as just one. To say that atheism doesn’t provide a basis for morality doesn’t really mean that it means that people will act immorally if they’re atheist. It means that there is no reason for them to act morally. Now, I could probably accept this was just an unfortunate term. But the author absolutely and continually conflates the two points. She talks about the ‘clearest moral principles imaginable’. Really? Why? What, in short, is the source of these ‘clearest moral principles’, which apparently exist by which to condemn people?

There are quite a few answers I can give to this question, all of which I will now enumerate:

1: The amoralist’s answer: There’s no such thing as morality

2: The truly relativist answer: morality is individual to the person doing it. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ exist only within the context of the individual.

3: The slightly less relativist answer: morality is individual to the society of the person doing it. ‘Right’ and ‘wrong’ exist only within the context of a particular society or social group.

4: The humanist absolutist answer (also known as ‘the utterly idiotic for many and varied reasons’ answer): Morality is created by the human race as a whole, but is timeless and unchanging within that context. Morality is a human construct, but still exists eternally and unchangeably.

5: The divine command answer: Morality is created by God. His laws are always right; one has a moral duty to follow him.

6: The true absolutist answer: Morality is inherent and timeless truth. Right exists. Wrong exists. Anyone or anything can be judged by this standard, God as much as any human being.

Seriously. There is, as far as I'm aware, absolutely no other explanation.

So what answer can we have that will make these ‘clearest moral principles’ consistent? Clearly, the first three don’t work, as under those we can’t say that genocide is wrong if it’s perfectly acceptable in some cultures, or to some people. We can’t take five, because the author of the blog admits elsewhere in this post that under divine command ethics it’s possible to defend exactly what the author’s condemning. Also, the author’s an atheist. That leaves four and six.

OK, I called four ‘the utterly idiotic for many and varied reasons’ answer. Why? So. Many. Reasons. Because it’s literally impossible for us to know what this morality actually is. Since it’s eternal and manmade, it has to take account of not only everyone who has ever lived, but everyone who will ever live. Not only do we have no way of knowing what is ultimately right or wrong, so we can’t criticise anything, we can’t really blame anyone for anything since they had no way of knowing what was right and wrong. Can you really be blamed for doing something that was wrong if you didn’t know that it was wrong? That’s fascinating. I don’t think I even need to explain why. Also, nothing, nothing works that way. There is nothing else which is considered both human made and universal and unchanging at the same time.

That leaves us with only option six that the author of this blog can use to be even remotely consistent. A morality that exists entirely separate of any part of humanity, that simply is in the universe. OK then. That’s an interesting idea. But it’s rather incredibly far from clear that such a thing really exists*. So the author’s raging about how defending genocide is utterly wrong is rather less obviously true than one might think.

But unfortunately, I agree with the existence of a Universal morality. There are a lot of philosophers who’d say ‘if it was right for their culture, it was right for their culture, and there’s nothing we can do about it.’ Incidentally, I’m pretty sure they’re all atheists, but that’s a side point. Lets accept the idea of there existing an independent, universal, unchanging morality. What does that imply? Well, for a start, it implies the existence of a realm beyond the physical, of the kind that Dawkins would probably get a little upset by. It requires the very ‘untestable belief in undetectable [things]’ that the author of this post complains religion does. ‘It ends the conversation. It cuts off inquiry: not only factual inquiry, but moral inquiry’. You’re affirming your belief that certain thing are utterly wrong, others are absolutely, ‘obviously’ morally right, and that others are absolutely ‘obviously’ morally wrong, and there’s really no way to continue that discussion. It’s not something you can prove or disprove. It’s just a faith statement, at least as much as ‘I believe in God’.

I’m not actually criticising that – like I said, I believe in absolute morality too. And to get anywhere in the moral debate you have to make some brute assumptions. To get anywhere in anything requires that you make some brute assumptions – ‘murdering people is bad’, ‘freedom is good’, ‘our senses are accurate’ etc. What I object to is the hypocrisy. The hypocrisy of making all these complaints about religion, without actually examining their own alternative.

Don’t get me wrong. William Lane Craig is a bloody moron. What he wrote was one of the worst things a human has ever written. I understand why he said it, but it still makes me feel dirty to even read it. But you don’t need me to tell you that, any more than you need me to tell you the same thing about Mein Kampf**. The author of this blog*** has some good, convincing ideas, that it would be very easy to believe – who’s going to object to ‘genocide is bad’? I criticise it because it’s good – not nearly as bad as I’ve made out. If it were the blatant idiocy of some of those of all faiths****, I wouldn’t have bothered with it.

This was a little heavier than I like, so allow me to tell you that I have no more evidence to believe that my senses are accurate than to believe that bananas track down lone travellers in the rainforest and devour them. I will therefore be advising that innocent smoothies be taken along on every journey through the rainforest, to warn them off. Also, I spent part of last weekend dressed in a leather trenchcoat and a fez.

For those of you who survived the ridiculousness of that mental image, I’ll see if I can get something a bit less controversial than calling people who criticise genocide hypocrites up soon.

*It’s also not clear what’s in it if it does. That’s another thing that annoys me about this blog. The author complains about how religious people say that theirs is the true religion, because they’ve thought about it, and they feel it in their hearts, when other people have thought just as hard, and feel it just as much in their hearts, but come to the opposite conclusion. Fair enough point. Then the author does exactly the same thing themselves. I guarantee, absolutely guarantee that there is at least one person who has thought about this, probably a lot harder than the author of this blog post, and has come to the conclusion that children should be systematically slaughtered. Actually, I can name him. He was called Plato, and he said it in The Republic. I don’t think there’s a single logically coherent moral system that doesn’t violate some kind of common sense rule of morality.

**I really hope so, anyway.

***Who, for the record, I’ve purposefully depersonified**** her throughout, since it’s the ideas I’m trying to criticise, not the person. That the author is Greta Christina is totally irrelevant.

****Shut up Microsoft. That’s totally a word now.

*****And for the moment, atheism is a faith statement – ‘I believe that there is no God’. I’m not getting into the agnosticism debate right now.

The epic of Veris

I'd hate to become one of those bloggers who keeps apologising for missing posts. Fortunately, I'm also a practiced hypocrite, so sorry for not posting for so long. I was kinda hoping to get old Acanthus back. But it doesn't look like that's going to happen, so I'll just make occasional reference to the devastating brilliance of every word I wrote in it. Here's a story, and it shouldn't be so long until the next posts. Here's a story, I'd be interested to know what people thought, since it's rather experimental.

Once there lived a man named Veris. He was half British, and half Iraqi. To be entirely accurate, he was also approximately a thousand trillionth god. It is perhaps the divine spark in him that caused him to become the greatest hero that humanity had ever known, but given that there aren’t a thousand trillion cells in the human body, and that therefore he was statistically marginally less divine than the average carpet lint, it seems slightly unlikely. Regardless of this, every night, he fought with the darkest beings in all humanity, and his sanity eroded a little more.

What was this creature, darker than any other that ever existed? There are some who would speak of Cain, first and darkest of the vampires, of whom it is said that the world itself will cower at his passing. Others, who have looked too long into the abyss, and sacrificed their very minds in the pursuit of truth, say that it can be none other than dread Cthulhu, the mere sight of whom would shatter the mind of any mortal, and whose waking would signal the end of the world. And there are some, wiser even than these, who would speak of the rabbits, that unassuming undead plague whose innocent visage hides the most malevolent of souls, and whose bite will consume you with their darkness. But each of these have their enemies, heroes who fight and suffer and die to keep them from humanity. VALKYRIE  and Delta Green and James, the bunny slayer. There is a creature darker than these, whose name I will not speak, whose visage I cannot describe. Call it Pandora, for it is the source of all that is evil, the enemy of hope. Call it Corruption, for next to it, all is pure. Call it Entropy, for he is the death of all reality. Veris fought against it, and had he been born a thousand years ago, his heroism would have been recognised. Had he been born two thousand years ago, he would have been hailed as a living God, and even today his name would echo louder than thunder, and outshine the unconquered sun. But he did not.

‘Why have you been away for the last month?’ Aaron asked him, wanting to know why Veris had been away for the last month

‘I was fighting against the great beast B----, that humanity might for another few brief moments in the vastness of eternity continue its futile struggle against the inevitable tide of oblivion. For seven days we strove, but in the end I triumphed, and he fled for all too brief a time into the darkness from whence he came.’ Veris told him, remembering how he had spent a week fighting the mighty beast B----, so that people could continue their futile struggle against the inevitable tide of oblivion for a bit longer.

‘Indeed? And what about the rest of the month?’ Aaron asked, suspicious about the rest of the month.

‘Although I at last had victory, our struggle was hard on me. My wounds were great and I had to heal from them’ Veris said, bleeding profusely from innumerable wounds which still had not closed.

 

‘The sick days we have to allow you – although I hardly need to point out that an employee who takes a lot of time off sick is hardly indispensable to us. But to take a week off of work for a mere personal project is unforgivable.’ Aaron told him, begrudgingly accepting the time off ill, but furious about Veris having taken time off for a personal project.

 

‘But had I not done so, the world would have fallen into irrevocable ruin.’ Veris said, trying to explain to Aaron the irrevocable ruin which would have befallen the earth if he had not taken time off work.

‘I have no doubt. But we’ve not a charity, Veris. We aren’t going to pay for the salvation of the world.’ Aaron said, accepting his words, but unimpressed by the humanitarian nature of his actions.

‘But if humanity were to become extinct, it would severely hurt profits.’  Veris pointed out, trying to demonstrate the necessity of heroes to the capitalist system.

‘Very true. But the benefit you provide you provide for our competition as well as us. Whereas your employment comes at a cost only to us. As capitalism is about being better than the competition, an investment which is as good for our competition as it is for us is entirely worthless. It gives us no advantage at all. As such, I think we’ve going to have to let you go.’ Aaron replied, convinced of the value of state services such as heroism and healthcare, but unwilling to fund them personally.

Veris thought about this for a moment, but the logic seemed sound. ‘On what grounds?’ He asked, in a desperate bid to stave off starvation and unemployment, and wondering what grounds Aaron had for firing him that a tribunal would accept.

‘Attack gerbils? What on earth are...’ Veris started, wondering what attack gerbils were.

‘They’re killer fire-breathing cyborg assassins with laser eyes.’ Aaron explained, contemplating the beauty of killer fire-breathing rodent cyborg assassins with laser eyes.

‘Fair enough, but why gerbils?’ Veris asked, thinking that this was fair enough, but wondering why on earth anyone would use gerbils. 

‘We tried normal cyborgs, but they created an artificial superintelligence, invented time travel, and started killing anyone called John or Connor.’ Aaron explained, remembering what had happened to the British Isles when the normal cyborgs had created an artificial superintelligence, invented time travel, and started killing anyone called John or Connor.

So Veris was fired from his job. He tried to find new work, but saving reality from unimaginable cosmic horrors isn’t really a marketable skill. His money ran out, and, eventually, he succumbed to the cold and the hunger. 

That’s why welfare systems are important! Otherwise stalwart defenders of reality might starve to death!