The Shifting Scientific Sands of Morality
The status of moral norms is complex and there are others in this discussion more qualified than I to comment about their status in the light of present theological discourse. So let me make my comments as a scientifically informed theological amateur.
In my own thinking I have never been able—at least since college— to make sense of what I am told are called deontological ethics, namely the belief that there are moral laws—adultery is wrong—in the same sense that there are scientific laws—magnets have two poles. It has always seemed to me that one can contrive a scenario where lying, adultery, killing etc is the “right” thing to do.
Ethics makes sense to me only in a teleological context where actions and outcomes are juxtaposed and the guiding question is not “Does that action violate some moral rule?” but “Do the ends justify the means”? I would have signed on to help assassinate Hitler and I happily tell white lies all the time. The ends do often justify the means and I think it is incoherent to suggest that the means somehow justify themselves.
If ethics are teleological then right and wrong can change, and change dramatically, but there are constants we can identify within those changes. Take divorce. In an era where a divorced woman may have no way to support herself outside of prostitution, a strong moral prohibition on divorce makes sense. In an era where women have options, getting out of a bad marriage via divorce is now considered acceptable even morally preferable. In both cases, however, we can discern a common compassion for women—but one that calls for different moral judgments about divorce.
I want to comment on another type of change that overturns traditional moral norms, however, the advance of science. We can see this in highly analogous arguments about both slavery and homosexuality.
Moral justification of slavery, in ancient Greece, the Bible, and the American South was based, in part, on anthropological misunderstandings. This took many forms: Slaves were biologically adapted for that role—“born into” the slave class; black skin was unnatural—the “Mark of Cain” or the “Curse of Ham”; slaves were inferior and incapable of functioning as adults. All these pseudo-scientific beliefs are false and moral claims based on them have utterly collapsed, except in a few backwaters. But the claims were viable at one time.
Claims that homosexual activity is morally wrong rest on the same kind of pseudo-science. As is the case with slavery, the “Biblical” argument is vague and indirect. Levitical law condemns it, but at the level of tattoos or eating shellfish. New Testament claims rest on—or are at least tightly connected to—the assumption that homosexuality is both “unnatural” and “a choice.” Paul speaks of people “exchanging natural relations for those that are against nature.” This assumption involves anthropological claims about human nature. Biblical condemnation of homosexuality, by these lights, can be described, with some oversimplification, as the condemnation of “choosing to do unnatural things.” And, as a broad moral category, I suspect most of us would agree that we should refrain from “choosing to do unnatural things” (and then argue about the meaning of “unnatural.”)
The degree to which condemnation of homosexuality is based on these two pillars of pseudo-science can be seen in the response to the overturning of those wrong ideas. In 1973 the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the category “mental disorder.” This scientifically informed reclassification was met with great hostility from the evangelical community and to this day is still disparaged by Focus on the Family, the Family Research Council and other self-appointed moral referees. In the same way the “choice” dimension of homosexuality has given rise to bogus, harmful, and now scientifically discredited “pray away the gay” therapies.
If homosexual activity was simply “wrong” in some deontological sense, there would have been no need to oppose the dismantling of the pseudo-scientific anthropology on which the condemnation was based. It is wrong because it is wrong.
It seems to me that this sort of preliminary reflection on the basis of morality should precede taking stands, and motivate openness to reconsideration of traditional positions.
Is there really such a thing as "scientific morality?"
I hear Karl saying that we can establish contemporary, contextual parameters for understanding people and their behavior based on certain facts. What is right in a given situation is still far from obvious to all, but certainly it helps reduce the worst ethical judgments if we accept that homosexuality is not a choice and the best interests of members of a family are very case specific when it comes to divorce. Nevertheless, is it really "science" that is the source for this more compassionate and personalistic ethical reasoning?
The development of ethics, individuality, and ideas about freedom and conscience impacting our legal and political systems is not really a story of science leading the way. If we are now more likely than in the past to consider the individual person and their motives as well as the effects of their actions and not just the relevant principles, rules, or "norms" it is religion and philosophy we have most to thank. It is the sages of Israel and Jesus, not science, who taught people to consider others as individual persons and an extension of oneself as well as the very image of God. "Science" by contrast has no such wisdom and has tended to suggest the opposite while providing ample devices for the enslavement, torture and murder of persons regarded as chattel or pathogens not to mention the vigorous and toxic exploitation of the natural world and its non-human creatures.
Science tends to be administered institutionally on people in depersonalizing, categorical ways that resemble the stereotype of cold and bigoted religious patriarchs who make their race, gender, and sexual behavior normative for all. The change away from regarding homosexuality as a mental disorder is just one of many instances of slow progress where good science has pushed out the bad only because of the ethical motives and outcry against injustice, which has often come from religious impulses if not religious sources.
Is there really such a thing as "scientific morality?"
I hear Karl saying that we can establish contemporary, contextual parameters for understanding people and their behavior based on certain facts. What is right in a given situation is still far from obvious to all, but certainly it helps reduce the worst ethical judgments if we accept that homosexuality is not a choice and the best interests of members of a family are very case specific when it comes to divorce. Nevertheless, is it really "science" that is the source for this more compassionate and personalistic ethical reasoning?
The development of ethics, individuality, and ideas about freedom and conscience impacting our legal and political systems is not really a story of science leading the way. If we are now more likely than in the past to consider the individual person and their motives as well as the effects of their actions and not just the relevant principles, rules, or "norms" it is religion and philosophy we have most to thank. It is the sages of Israel and Jesus, not science, who taught people to consider others as individual persons and an extension of oneself as well as the very image of God. "Science" by contrast has no such wisdom and has tended to suggest the opposite while providing ample devices for the enslavement, torture and murder of persons regarded as chattel or pathogens not to mention the vigorous and toxic exploitation of the natural world and its non-human creatures.
Science tends to be administered institutionally on people in depersonalizing, categorical ways that resemble the stereotype of cold and bigoted religious patriarchs who make their race, gender, and sexual behavior normative for all. The change away from regarding homosexuality as a mental disorder is just one of many instances of slow progress where good science has pushed out the bad only because of the ethical motives and outcry against injustice, which has often come from religious impulses if not religious sources.
Is there really such a thing as "scientific morality?"
I hear Karl saying that we can establish contemporary, contextual parameters for understanding people and their behavior based on certain facts. What is right in a given situation is still far from obvious to all, but certainly it helps reduce the worst ethical judgments if we accept that homosexuality is not a choice and the best interests of members of a family are very case specific when it comes to divorce. Nevertheless, is it really "science" that is the source for this more compassionate and personalistic ethical reasoning?
The development of ethics, individuality, and ideas about freedom and conscience impacting our legal and political systems is not really a story of science leading the way. If we are now more likely than in the past to consider the individual person and their motives as well as the effects of their actions and not just the relevant principles, rules, or "norms" it is religion and philosophy we have most to thank. It is the sages of Israel and Jesus, not science, who taught people to consider others as individual persons and an extension of oneself as well as the very image of God. "Science" by contrast has no such wisdom and has tended to suggest the opposite while providing ample devices for the enslavement, torture and murder of persons regarded as chattel or pathogens not to mention the vigorous and toxic exploitation of the natural world and its non-human creatures.
Science tends to be administered institutionally on people in depersonalizing, categorical ways that resemble the stereotype of cold and bigoted religious patriarchs who make their race, gender, and sexual behavior normative for all. The change away from regarding homosexuality as a mental disorder is just one of many instances of slow progress where good science has pushed out the bad only because of the ethical motives and outcry against injustice, which has often come from religious impulses if not religious sources.
Framing moral reflection in terms of teleology rather than deontology is a marvelously succinct way to characterize what many of us evangelicals already do in so many cases when the Bible's ethics are sufficiently bizarre to seem (to us) self-evidently passé. Surely this is behind the ways we get around issues like women wearing head-coverings or being silent in church (we just generally call it 'context' or 'cultural backgrounds', but we don't appreciate that we're actually combining some historical awareness with teleological reasoning). It's exceptionally helpful to highlight the reasoning behind our moral convictions so that we can argue in a more self-aware way. Thanks, Karl.
Framing moral reflection in terms of teleology rather than deontology is a marvelously succinct way to characterize what many of us evangelicals already do in so many cases when the Bible's ethics are sufficiently bizarre to seem (to us) self-evidently passé. Surely this is behind the ways we get around issues like women wearing head-coverings or being silent in church (we just generally call it 'context' or 'cultural backgrounds', but we don't appreciate that we're actually combining some historical awareness with teleological reasoning). It's exceptionally helpful to highlight the reasoning behind our moral convictions so that we can argue in a more self-aware way. Thanks, Karl.
Framing moral reflection in terms of teleology rather than deontology is a marvelously succinct way to characterize what many of us evangelicals already do in so many cases when the Bible's ethics are sufficiently bizarre to seem (to us) self-evidently passé. Surely this is behind the ways we get around issues like women wearing head-coverings or being silent in church (we just generally call it 'context' or 'cultural backgrounds', but we don't appreciate that we're actually combining some historical awareness with teleological reasoning). It's exceptionally helpful to highlight the reasoning behind our moral convictions so that we can argue in a more self-aware way. Thanks, Karl.