Civil versus Religious Duty

Rowan County, KY clerk Kim Davis’ refusal to issue marriage licenses to same sex couples raises a perennial but easily answered question about violating religious conscience as a grounds for refusing to carry out any of the duties of an elected or appointed public official.

When a person accepts the responsibility of performing a public civil function, that person also accepts the duty to society to perform that function in accordance with the law. If a person has a sincere religiously grounded moral objection to a legal requirement of their civil function, they are not free to simply not follow the law on the grounds of their belief. In the case of Ms Davis, she can either perform the function of county clerk as defined by the law or, if doing so offends her conscience, resign from her public position or delegate the offending aspect of her function to another official in her office.

Religious freedom is a civil right as is the right to marry whom one chooses. One right does not trump the other. Ms Davis’ is completely free to believe what she wants. She can also take whatever position she chooses on moral issues and participate in the public debate of those issues. She is, however, not free to violate the civil rights of others.

The law cannot require Ms. Davis to hold or abandon her religious belief but the law can require the county clerk of Rowan County not to violate the civil rights of its citizens and to provide all of the services of that office. If Ms Davis cannot perform her function because of her adherence to belief, it is her belief which ethically precludes her from serving her civil function as county clerk.

Consider Ms Davis’ case in light of the role of military chaplain. The role of military chaplain requires that clergy who accept that role be ready and able to provide chaplain services inter-denominationally without attempting to convert Muslims to Christianity or Catholics to some other denomination. Clergy whose belief structure requires them to proselytize cannot serve as military chaplains because they cannot fulfill all of the requirements of that office. Consequently, only clergy who can function inter-religiously and respect the belief structures of all service members are admitted to chaplaincy in the military.

Some may object that we make exceptions for conscientious objectors so why not Ms. Davis or any other public office holder. Individuals who seek exemption from combat roles for religious reasons receive that exemption as individual citizens not public office holders. Respect for religious conscience and a commitment to religious freedom ensures that citizens are not forced to fill roles in society to which they morally object. Ms. Davis, the individual citizen, cannot be forced to serve as county clerk because providing all of the services of that office would violate her conscience. However, Ms Davis, the sitting county clerk of Rowan County, no matter what her personal religious convictions, must respect the civil rights of all.

Her best and most moral course of action, given her beliefs, is to exercise her religious freedom and resign her office rather than claim a specious religious right to selectively violate the civil rights of others.

Are God and human rights self-evident?

The second paragraph of the United States Declaration of Independence begins with these immortal and oft quoted words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

These statements may have been self-evident truths to Jefferson and many of the other founding fathers of this nation in 1776, but in the year 2015 (and for some considerable time before that) a great many people, while still holding that all human beings are of equal value and are possessed of the unalienable rights referred by the Declaration , no longer base that claim on the idea that there even is such a thing as a creator to endow anybody with anything. thomasjefferson_sm

The word “self-evident” in common English usage means something akin to “obvious.” In the Declaration, Jefferson is making the claim that the existence of a creator is obvious. He is also making the claim that this creator has intentions for humankind and bestows rights on us so that we might pursue those intentions. Put another way, he is saying that it is obvious that there is a God/Creator, that this God has created human beings with rights and, by implication, these rights are not to be abridged because they are divinely bestowed. This argument is analogous to the argument for the divine right of kings to which the republicans of Jefferson’s time were so opposed. Whether ruling by divine right or living as a free citizen by divine right, Jefferson is saying that his conclusion is obvious. But is it really?

One need not be an atheist or agnostic to have problems with the “obviousness” of the existence of a creator. All three of the major Western religious traditions present themselves as “revealed” religions; i.e., dependent on God to reveal him/herself through a prophet or spokesperson of some sort. They do not make the case that the particular God whom they reveal is in any sense self-evident.

What is obvious, however, is that many people belief in a divine creator and ground their notion of the rights of human beings on that belief. Belief in a creator is much more self-evident than the existence of that creator and, I suppose, that is what Jefferson assumed when he penned the Declaration. He no doubt hoped to make the case for the nascent United States an obvious one–a “no brainer,” so to speak.

The philosophical, theological and general intellectual framework of the early 21st Century no longer presupposes the existence of a creator God or any God at all for that matter. Advances in physics and cosmology have raised all sorts of questions about the nature of matter, energy, time and space.

The more we learn; the more things become less “self-evident.” Once obvious observations about nature are demonstrated to be illusory as science delves deeper into the nature of the cosmos.

The Declaration of Independence is surely an important document in the history of our nation and political science in general, but since it grounds its claims on the existence of a creator (whose existence was once obvious but is no longer so), it should not be used as a cornerstone for building individual, social or political ethics.

In this post-modern, pluralistic age, building an ethic on the existence of a creator is to build that ethic on a highly debatable and not self-evident premise. The two lines quoted above might better be put in something like the following form to avoid the use of a potentially false premise while still advocating for human equality and rights:

We hold these principles to be inviolable: all human beings are of equal value and that this equality entitles them to certain permanent rights among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

While my restatement may lack the historical ring of Jefferson’s famous lines, it avoids the assumption of the existence of God, establishes ethical principles as ideals affirmed by a people and avoids exchanging the divine right of kings for the divine right of a citizens. In short, it separates church from state, as they should be.

Dialogue & Ethical Decision Making in a Pluralistic Society (Part 2)

This is the second part of a two part essay on issues related to dialogue and ethical decision making in a pluralistic society. Part I made the point that in order for real dialogue to take place between parties, those parties must be able to communicate clearly, understand one another and at least agree on the existence of the first principles that ground their view of reality. Dialogue between believers and nonbelievers in “god” is problematic because nonbelievers do not think that “god” is anything more than an idea that some people have and in that sense does not exist and cannot serve as a referent in an argument. Part 1 concluded with the idea that, perhaps the use of a thought experiment, following the model of the philosopher John Rawls, could serve to circumvent the first principles problem between those who believe and those who do not and allow for a continuation of meaningful dialogue and ethical decision making in a pluralistic society.

A thought experiment is the use of imagination to investigate the nature of things. In a thought experiment, a person visualizes a situation with specific conditions, carries out an operation within the visualization, notices what happens or is what most likely to happen and then draws a conclusion from which further extrapolations are possible. One of the most famous thought experiments of all time was performed by Einstein who used his imagination and “pursued a beam of light” to the discovery of the theory of general relativity. The History of Science is replete with examples of thought experiments. Click here to see some amusing illustrations.

The late political philosopher John Rawls used the device of an extended thought experiment to develop a theory of the nature of justice that he thought could be assented to in a pluralistic society (or world) where differing languages, cultures, belief systems and values made consensus on first principles on which to ground social dialogue difficult, if not impossible, to achieve.

Rawls proposed the following thought experiment:

Imagine a condition in which human beings were brought together under what he called a “veil of ignorance” and given the task of deciding what basic rules should govern human social interaction and institutions in order, following the thinking of John Locke, that as free agents we be able both to have liberty and live together in harmony. The “veil of ignorance” he proposed was the hypothetical situation in which all parties knew that social and personal inequalities existed but not which individual people or groups were advantaged or disadvantaged; i.e., a state where we knew that some people would be smarter than others, have more money or other resources than others, be more attractive or stronger than others etc. etc. but NOT which one of us was the stronger or weaker, richer or poorer, healthier or unhealthier. We would not even know if we were a believer or not.

Assuming our hypothetical group accepted the task of answering the question of how our life as human beings should be arranged, Rawls argues that the first thing the group would do is to decide how to deal with fact that the group knew some members were advantaged and some disadvantaged but not who was in which category. He concludes that the first rule the group would establish is one that establishes that whatever rules they arrive at cannot disadvantage the least advantaged in the group. Rawls continues that the first rule this hypothetical group would establish was that any rule they created could not adversely impact the liberty of the least advantaged among them.

Or as Rawls put it more formally:

Each person is to have an equal right to the most extensive total system of equal basic liberties compatible with a similar system of liberty for all.

Rawls calls this the first principle of justice. A first principle arrived at in this way would be one that would be agreed to by both the believer and nonbeliever. Under the “veil of ignorance” both believer and nonbeliever (since they did not who was who) would have to agree on a first principle which left either option (belief or non-belief) open and unconstrained.

Rawls moves on from the formation of this first principle to extrapolate a more elaborate theory of social justice in which the disadvantaged are always protected to one degree or another from being disadvantaged further by laws and social regulations. Space does not permit a full examination of Rawls and his contractarian theory of justice. ( Click here for a summary of this 1971 publication.) Suffice to say, that it is the use of a thought experiment and the “veil of ignorance” device that enables Rawls to circumvent the actual variations within the human family in reaching a formulation of a first principle that would likely be agreed upon by all members of the human family under the conditions of the experiment. It is an also an ingenious way to get at a philosophical version of the Golden Rule.

While thought experiments and veils of ignorance may not be the route to the solution of all complex ethical discussions in which the parties have incompatible first principles, they do offer one avenue that could be explored much more widely in order to preserve pluralism (an thus liberty) in our society. Imagine the thought experiment/veil of ignorance technique applied to a hot button issues like gay/lesbian marriage or stem cell research.

All this is of importance only if we are interested in preserving pluralism and the liberty that it implies. Some may feel that it is their duty to work against pluralism and that humankind would be better off were there no difference of opinion on a topic like “god.” Believers and nonbelievers may feel that the only proper course is to eradicate the view of the other through conversion or other means. The historical record is filled with failed attempts to achieve social harmony by eradicating difference. Tolerance and the nurture of what might be called “positive pluralism” with devices like thought experiments hold more promise for harmonious existence than social stalemates or the use force–social, intellectual or military–to build consensus. Enforced consensus is an oxymoron of the first order.

In the end, the maintenance of a positive pluralism requires all parties to step back from their own position, at least momentarily, to find a common first principle from which to begin any discussion. Believers, nonbelievers and agnostics may not always need to be at loggerheads when it comes to debating ethical issues. Thought experiments are just one among a variety of methods but they worked well for Galileo, Einstein and John Rawls and have it all over war, genocide and social disintegration.

Dialogue & Ethical Decision Making in a Pluralistic Society (Part 1)

Tom-of-the-coast-of-Maine-2 This is the first of two essays on the issues related to ethical debate and decision making in a pluralist society. This first essay examines how language and issues of defining what is real and what is not present unique problems. The second essay examines John Rawl’s A Theory of Justice as offering one approach to dealing with the problems of pluralism described in this first essay.

There are a great many advantages to living in a country like the U.S. where we are ostensibly free to believe what we choose to believe and free to express those beliefs with only very modest restrictions. Freedom of speech opens the door to dialogue between persons of both similar and differing points of view. We can discuss important matters as a society in an open manner and use the representative democratic process to regulate our society as a nation of laws. In addition to being a nation that enjoys freedom of speech, we are also a very diverse nation made up of people from a large number to cultures, religious traditions, countries, political persuasions, educational backgrounds and an increasing number of languages.

In this sense, we are a pluralist nation. In the US there is no official, national or established church as in the United Kingdom or Spain. There are a variety of political factions and conceptions of how a people should be governed (or govern themselves). There are real political differences vying for public attention unlike in countries like the Peoples’ Republic of China or Myanmar where political disagreement and challenges to the government are suppressed, sometimes violently. Issues are debated by politicians, in the press, among individuals and interest groups. Laws and regulations are challenged in courts. Arguments are made and judgments rendered. Our religions traditions range from Christian, Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist Hindu, Naturist, Agnostic to Atheist. There is no prescribed set of beliefs about the nature of humankind or the cosmos itself. There are many views, some more powerful than others, but all are officially not only tolerated but also (with the exception of the most vile) generally welcomed.

In the main, this pluralism, to the extent that there is real sharing between and openness to differing groups, enriches our society, expands the horizons of those who participate in that sharing and leads to a greater national solidarity and sense of purpose without the loss of each group’s or individual’s uniqueness. (e pluribus unum.) In fact, pluralism like this is one of the sine qua nons for a functioning democratic republic and in that sense a significant social good.

While essentially a social good, in practice pluralism presents a number of functional problems when it comes to engaging in productive problem solving and ethical decision making. One of the most significant of these problems, and the focus of this essay, is the problem of finding fundamental or central points of agreement upon which to build a coherent philosophical or political case that will be meaningful to all parties.

Some of the problems of communicating across differing groups are evident and well known. Communication across differing groups can be limited by differences in language. Spanish speakers may not understand English speakers and English speakers in turn may not understand French or Russian or Mandarin speakers. Interpreters can help but subtle nuances are often lost especially when the speakers use idiomatic language.

In cases where these superficial language barriers are worked through, communication can still remain only partial because of differences in the meanings of words in differing cultures. For example, while a term like “marriage” in whatever language it is spoken may denote or name the same thing, connotative differences will remain from culture to culture.

For the sake of argument, assume that most, if not all, language and cultural barriers to clear communication could be overcome in the US and that as a consequence, citizens could communicate in a manner that everyone understood and that public debate was therefore carried on in a manner understood by almost everyone. One road block to enjoying the full benefits of being a pluralistic society would certainly have been removed.

Clear communication would, however, not ensure that those engaged in public debate had similar values or even aims in life. In addition, people vary in intelligence, articulateness and other important things like capacity for empathy. Some of this variation would likely be a good thing as those who could now talk clearly with one another learned about others values, abilities, cultures and a multitude of other things. In the course of this dialogue, some values would likely become more widely shared and even grow in the depth of their meaning. At the same time, sharp differences in values and life aims would also likely arise.

Shared values and perspectives would bring our society closer together at the same time that sharply differing values and aims would contribute to lack of agreement and some degree of social fragmentation. We would come to agree on the things we could agree on and continue to dispute those issues upon which we could not agree. If decisions needed to be made on disputed issues, we would, and do, turn to the ballot box or the courts to settle a dispute for the moment. For example, there remains substantial disagreement around the question of abortion. The Supreme Court in the Roe v Wade decision determined that citizens have the right to privacy and that the question of whether or not to have an abortion was a private decision between a woman and her medical provider. Those who do not agree with this decision generally abide by it even as they continue to forcefully articulate their point of view in public debate or the courts.

Differences of this sort are to be expected and they are part of what makes for vital society. Public debate, learning, growing, improving our arguments, and abandoning misguided notions are all part of a free and vibrant community. In this country, not everyone will always have his/her way but current social regulations and priorities will at least approximate the outcomes of the national conversation.

There is however one type of difference that provides a pluralistic nation unique difficulties. Religious and non-believing people can agree in practice on a great deal. For example, a religious and secular person could probably agree that it is good to be kind and at least less good to be indifferent to others. However, they are unlikely to ever agree on the existence of a “god” who created the universe, has a personal plan for each of us, defines how we should treat one another (what is right and what is wrong) and yearns for our allegiance and devotion.

The theist/believer takes it on “faith” that this divine entity exists. The believer believes that when he or she uses the word for “god” in whatever language they speak that they are referring to something that is “real” albeit in a spiritual sense. Unlike Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny or any of a variety of other mythological beings, “god” is a “real.” God “exists” maybe not quite like finite things, such as humans or trees, but “god” is “real” and when we refer to god we are not just talking about an idea.

For the secularist/non-theist, references to “god” refer only to an idea that some people have but to which there is no corresponding reality. For the secularist, there is no actual entity referred to as “god,” and because of that it is literally nonsensical to refer to a “god” as the source or telos of anything. “God” does not wish anything, create anything or guide anything because he/she/it/they is/are nonexistent in this or any other dimension of reality. “God” is a word without an existing referent.

The atheist or even agnostic and theist have very different first principles that seem to be irreconcilable. One believes that something exists and starts from there while the other finds no empirical evidence for the existence of an entity named “god” and lacking evidence regards language that speaks about “god” to be speaking about a reality only in the sense that some, if not most, people believe in something for which their is no empirical evidence. For the atheist or agnostic “god” can have no authority because “god” is nonexistent for the former and of indeterminate existence for the latter.

Since there are numerous religious traditions in our pluralistic society there is an accompanying pluralism of “gods.” This godly pluralism further complicates social dialogue by pitting, from the atheist’s point of view, vying nonentities against one another and further obfuscating reality: yielding a multiplicity of delusions.

Believers and nonbelievers can, of course, agree that the difference in point of view I describe above is accurate; i.e., one regards “god” as “real” and the other as not “real.” One regards “god” as having authority while the other regards “god” as having as much authority as any other non existent thing–none. Once this point is reached and if the interlocutors insist on building their arguments from their first principles, no real progress can be achieved. The interlocutors might be able to reach similar conclusions using completely different methods: one using what they feel is the inspired word of god and the other deductive reasoning. We might, for example, agree that killing without justification is wrong in one moment and in the next, when one party to the discussion concludes that a justification for killing is the commission of the sin of blasphemy, be in utter disagreement: why execute someone for saying something insulting about something which does not exist!

Attempts have been made especially by the Roman Catholic ethical tradition to deal with this problem of first principles using the concept of the “natural law.” Ironically, attempts at reconciling Christian Ethical thinking in this way had more to do with illustrating how Christian thought related to the great minds of the ancients like Plato and Aristotle

Aristotle

than establishing a common ground for debate with contemporary nonbelievers. The ancient Greek thinkers were widely revered in Renaissance Europe and the Church was keen to illustrate how its thought was supported by that of the ancients even those ancients that did not have the benefit of “knowing Jesus.” What these thinkers of old could see, the Church argued, was the rational order placed into creation by the rational creator; i.e., god. Reflection on this natural order could reveal a natural law which while only reflective of divine law was fully congruent with it. As a consequence, they argued, those things contrary to the natural order–which could be easily seen by believer or nonbeliever–were immoral and vice versa.

The Dominican Friar Thomas Aquinas adapted Aristotle and contributed substantially to the Roman Catholic “natural law” tradition.

The appeal to “natural law” to enable ethical debate between believer and nonbeliever proved quite useful for several hundred years until views of what was clearly the natural order of things began both to diverge and become less clear. A simple and current example of this divergence is the view of same gender relationships. For years, both believers and nonbelievers alike thought of same gender relationships as contrary to nature. Both believers and nonbelievers alike regarded this type of behavior as unnatural and perverse. Believers had little need to turn to the authority of revelation in the Bible since natural law arguments sufficed.

Gradually, the scientific study of humankind has revealed that same gender orientation is perfectly natural; i.e., gender orientation is a function of the genetic structure of an individual and that approximately 10% of people are same gender oriented. Gender orientation is not a choice nor is it contrary to nature. Natural law, which once sufficed to arbitrate the morality of same gender sexual behavior, could no longer fully support arguments against same gender relationships in our age.

Believers had to revert to divine authority to bolster their public case. In practice, they therefor turned to texts in which believers believe that “god” has revealed his (usually his) divine will. These texts are taken by believers to be supremely authoritative and literally true.

Nonbelievers, of course, think that since god does not exist he/she/it/they has/have never said anything. Belief in these texts as authoritative is therefore as delusional as the belief in the spiritual entity who is said to have inspired them. Since “god” does not exist, communications from “god” do not exist either. While there may be cultural history interest in understanding what the priestly authors of Leviticus had to say or in what Paul of Tarsus

Famously pictured here by Caravaggio, Paul of Tarus was said to have been directly converted by God on the road to Damascus after which he spread Christianity widely in the Mediterranean Basin. Called, “The Apostle to the Gentiles.”

said about homosexuality, pedophilia or slavery, there is nothing divinely authoritative about these texts if there is no “god” to have shared the divine will with us.

With progress in science and other fields of human study gradually whittling away at the Aristotelian and Catholic natural law tradition almost daily, it is becoming more and more difficult for believers and nonbelievers to find common first principles from which to build compatible ethical frameworks. If there were no way around this problem, dialogue (at least on first principles) would cease and any sort of rational ethical consensus become much, much harder (if not impossible) to achieve. “Conversion” of one group to the other group’s position would be the only solution and “pluralism” would be shaken at its roots.

Fortunately, philosophers are a creative lot and have offered a number of “ways-to-think-about-it” that hold some promise for enabling interlocutors who have fundamentally different understandings of reality–like believers and nonbelievers–to not only continue real dialogue but arrive at a point where they agree on a few first principles to which they can both assent. One example of such a philosopher is the late political and moral philosopher John Rawls.

John Rawls

The second part of this essay will explore Rawls’ approach to thinking about justice as a way of illustrating one technique which offers hope for potentially working around the believer/nonbeliever problem; i.e., the thought experiment.

John Locke: Natural and Social Liberty

Tom-of-the-coast-of-Maine-2

The English Enlightenment philosopher John Locke (1623-1704) is sometimes called the father of liberty. His thinking about freedom and liberty, along with that of Rousseau, influenced America’s founders and the authors of its seminal documents like the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the Constitution. In the course of our modern debates about the role of government in society, Locke is alternately portrayed as championing both the conservative and liberal side of the debate. Liberty and human freedom itself are important to all sides of the debate and it is not surprising to see both sides return to the roots of the Western notion of liberty to bolster their opposing views.

John Locke 1623-1704

One of the reasons that Locke is useful to both sides of this debate is that he, like many other Enlightenment philosophers, seemed to see human beings as existing in two states: the pure natural state and as members of a society. In the Second Treatise on Government Locke distinguished “the natural liberty of man” from “the liberty of man in society.” (Chapter 4,Sec. 22)

He argued that “the natural liberty of man is to be free from any superior power on earth, and not to be under the will or legislative authority of man, but to have only the law of nature for his rule.” Since human beings, as Locke well knew, do not live singly in nature but rather are always members of a more or less developed society, his observation is a theoretical one which helps him to establish the importance of liberty as an inherent quality of human beings and therefore in need of preservation in the actual societal situations in which human beings live. He is arguing against those who characterized human beings as being naturally part of divinely created social hierarchy in which liberty was not distributed equally–the sort of argument that would be made by divine right monarchists and princes of the Church. In this way, he is firmly linking liberty with equality. This key philosophical insight is echoed later in 1776 by Thomas Jefferson: “We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights and that among this are the rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” (U.S. Declaration of Independence) What was a real “sea change” in thought in the writing of Locke took less that a century to become “self-evident.”

Locke thought that human society should only have constraints on liberty that allowed all members of society to exercise their liberty in a manner that allowed all other members of society to exercise their liberty and pursue their ends. For him liberty in society did not permit “… every one to do what he lists, to live as he pleases, and not to be tied by any laws… .” (Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 4, Sec. 22)

Locke further argued that the “freedom of men under government is, to have a standing rule to live by, common to every one of that society, and made by the legislative power erected in it; a liberty to follow my own will in all things, where the rule prescribes not; and not to be subject to the inconstant, uncertain, unknown, arbitrary will of another man… .” (Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 4, Sec 22) The power to make social regulations was vested in a legislature whose powers arose from the governed and did not descend from a monarch or even God. The power to legislate and regulate arose “by consent, in the commonwealth.” (Second Treatise on Government, Chapter 4, Sec. 22)

Locke saw the legislative rule of law as the means of establishing what we might call “liberty in practice.” The commonwealth was to govern itself and to enact those laws necessary for the actual exercise of liberty. Following Locke, government should only legislate those things the commonwealth feels are necessary to ensure the exercise of liberty. This idea is central to any notion of “liberalism” no matter where one stands on the political spectrum–on the conservation or the liberal, on the right or on the left. (Note “liberalism” is not synonymous with being a liberal in the modern political sense.)

The political rub comes when we try to answer at least these two questions:

What things or social conditions are necessary for “liberty in practice?”
What role should government (at any level) have in helping to create the conditions for liberty to be a reality for all members of a society?

Does government have a role in ensuring that people have decent nutrition, are not dying of disease, going bankrupt paying for the necessities of life,or held prisoners in the own neighborhoods by crime and overwhelming poverty. What role, if any, should government have in ensuring that children learn to read and that their are viable pathways for social advancement? What role should government have in improving public health, public education and public safety. Certainly, the answer to these questions is not no role.

Another key insight of Locke’s may help us to arbitrate some of these questions. For Locke human beings were essentially social. Yes, they were individuals with individual hopes and dreams but the individual did not exist outside of the context of society and a multiple series of relationships with others upon whom humans depend and who depend onthem. Life is therefore lived in society in which we are all responsible to and for one another. That for Locke was the natural state of affairs. The words of one of the greatest of the metaphysical poets, John Donne, were, no doubt, well know to him.

No man is an island,
Entire of itself.
Each is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thine own
Or of thine friend’s were.
Each man’s death diminishes me,
For I am involved in mankind.
Therefore, send not to know
For whom the bell tolls,
It tolls for thee.

Put another and less poetic way: you are you and I am me but we are all inescapably and quite naturally in this life together.

Within the Bounds of Nature?

Are we human beings part of nature or separate from it in some unique way? While this may sound a rather abstract question, the answer to it has significant implications for moral reasoning. We have all heard acts decried and labeled as immoral because they were “unnatural.” In the current debate on genetic engineering and biological manufacturing, opposition to forays into these areas are often protested on the grounds of inappropriate (unnatural) interference with the processes of nature. Opponents of everything from same-sex marriage, to stem cell research, to cloning and beyond, are repelled by what they regard as the unnaturalness of it all. They warn us aphoristically not to “mess with Mother Nature.”

For many, whether theists or secular humanists, any hint that an act is unnatural is synonymous with saying that it is immoral–or at least of highly questionable moral status. Therefore, it makes a great deal of difference what we include in our conception of what is within and without the bounds of nature (or the natural).

Certainly, naturalness, or the lack thereof, is only one of the many ways to think about morality; but, it is a very common one and one often turned to in order arouse public sentiment either for or against a certain course of scientific inquiry or social practice.

My thesis is a simple but, I think, important one: everything which exists on this planet or anywhere else in the cosmos is a part of nature. Put another way, nature is that which is and what “goes on” in nature consists entirely of natural processes or occurrences.

The birth of a cell

Human beings are therefore part of nature and the things that human beings do and think are also part of that nature. For example, the use of the human mind to address problems of life and human health is an entirely natural thing. Thinking, creating, building, fixing, adapting etc. etc. are entirely natural things as are cell division, natural selection, mutation, volcanic eruptions and beavers building dams.

That said morality is still of the highest importance. Human acts can still be judged moral and immoral, prudent and imprudent as well as beneficial or harmful but they can not and consequently should not be judged on the basis of whether they are natural or not: there is nothing which is or happens which is not natural.

The question of needing to distinguish the natural from the unnatural arises from the supposition or belief that the natural is a product of a force outside of the natural known as the supernatural and particularly the work of a divine entity existing in a dimension outside of nature. The supernatural, it is argued, designed and created nature and its processes. The supernatural, in this conception, is interested in its creation conforming to the original design and set of processes.

The whole notion of something being unnatural presupposes a supernatural which has defined what falls within the bounds of nature. Actions that violate the original supernatural design are unnatural because they violate the supernatural designer’s intent and are ipso facto immoral.

This view of supernatural intentional creation has, in the Western Tradition, normally also made the claim that human beings have a foot, so to speak, in both the supernatural and natural domains. The Christian tradition even claims that the supernatural created human beings in its own “image and likeness” and that there is a component of a human being called the soul which is spiritual and in that sense supernatural–outside of nature and both immortal and incorporeal.

Further, in this view, the supernatural creator has retained certain prerogatives vis-a-vis the creation. For example, the actual creation of life and maintaining the basic integrity of the original design are the prerogative of the supernatural alone. Human beings, although “ensouled,” are not to violate these fundamental rules without dire consequences for themselves and the creation as a whole. They should not do anything “unnatural;” i.e., arrogate to themselves any supernatural prerogatives. In this way, the unnatural and the immoral have become almost covalent terms in the popular mind.

Additionally, only humans seem to be capable of doing unnatural acts. One never hears of cats, birds, gold fish, or bacteria performing unnatural acts. We assume that since they are part of nature what they do is simply natural and neither moral or immoral–what ethicists sometimes call pre-moral. Natural organisms are thought to follow their instincts and not really exercise any choice other than pragmatic ones like which prey to attack. We would never imagine a non-human animal doing or even intending to do anything like Victor in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein did— that would be unnatural.

At this point, it should be clear that the existence of the unnatural presupposes the existence of the supernatural. Without the supernatural, all is natural including what we experience as freedom, curiosity, love, hope and creativity. With the supernatural, freedom is curtailed, curiosity limited and creativity shackled. With the supernatural, the “image and likeness” to the supernatural claimed for humans is no longer remotely perceptible as humans are reduced to rule keepers or rule breakers–left in a place of persistent delinquency.

Most dictionaries define the supernatural something like: a proposed force outside of nature and beyond scientific understanding. In that sense, the existence of the supernatural is a matter of faith: i.e., a strong belief grounded in spiritual apprehension rather than proof.

Personally, I would prefer not to be left in a state of persistent delinquency grounded on an idea (the supernatural) for which there is not and cannot be any evidence. I would rather embrace and be embraced by what is and can be known to be and like the crew of the Starship Enterprise “boldly (and I might add prudently) go where no person has gone before.” That is what comes naturally to me.

R&R: reflections and remarks on society and culture

Short essays on modern culture and politics

Tag Archives: ethics