Circular Reasoning 101

Circular reasoning irritates me. That is one of the key reasons I tend to reject arguments which rely upon the supernatural to justify themselves. (Even more annoying to me are claims of "proof" that the supernatural exists that rely upon invoking the supernatural in the first place)

The latest bit of idiocy to be published on Lifesite underscores my point.

Titled "Nothing Wrong With Incest If Secular Worldview Is True - Man's intuitive sense of moral law points towards a Lawgiver", I figured we were in for yet another variation on the classic biblical arguments about how 'secularists' are fundamentally lacking any kind of "moral foundation", and therefore could derive an acceptance of just about anything as a result - no matter how horrific.

Sure enough, the author does not disappoint.

After all, everyone has a philosophy by which they understand life. In addition, every person has a theology, a set of convictions relating to God(s) and His/their relation or lack thereof to the world. As G.K. Chesterton wrote, "You cannot evade the issue of God, whether you talk about pigs or the binomial theory, you are still talking about Him." Our laws are inevitably related to our convictions about the nature and destiny of man as formulated in philosophy and theology.

Actually, I fundamentally disagree with the opening assessment that one cannot avoid the discussion of the relationship of the supernatural with the world around us. But for the social construct of religion, in fact, there is no compelling reason whatsoever in my mind to have any opinion about the supernatural. In fact, if it weren't for the bleatings of the bible-beater crowd these days, I would probably ignore the subject entirely.

However, let's leave the opening assertion alone, and follow through the author's reasoning, shall we?

In discussing the incest cases he uses to seed his argument, he writes:

"The main problem is, of course, that the couple might produce unhealthy children. But if they don't have children, then I see no reason why not, in this day and age. But then, I'm a scientist, not a moralist," stated Professor Roland Littlewood.

From a secular perspective, Littlewood's moral assessment is unassailable. If, as the great neo-Darwinian narrative teaches, man is merely the accidental byproduct of blind, unguided natural processes, then there seems to be no reason for man to restrain his sexual desires. If there is no God, then there is no transcendent purpose for sexuality. Man is thus free to follow and satisfy his sexual urges as he sees fit.

No, actually Littlewood's assessment is not a moral assessment - it is an ethical assessment, and as such it is perfectly reasonable in that light. He is not assigning any kind of moral weight to the matter at all. This is one of the great distinctions that is often overlooked when the accusations the column's author makes are brought out. The "secular" viewpoint tends to speak to the ethical status of a situation, and assigns a moral value to it as a "secondary consideration"; the religious viewpoint often comes at it from the other side, assigning a moral value and then attempting to derive the ethical stance from that. Neither is necessarily correct - but the derivations are reversed.

Unlike Professor Littlewood, most people, even if they haven't had extensive philosophic or theological training, are revolted at the notion of same-sex unions, pedophilia, and incest. They have an intuitive sense of right and wrong, a "gut" sense that certain things just aren't right. Of course, this sense of right and wrong can become obscured through repeated vice or a permissive culture. Nonetheless, both educated and uneducated, religious believers and non-believers, generally agree on the impropriety of certain sexual behavior.

I love argument by assertion. Who is this "most people" that the author is talking about? Where has he derived this notion from? He might be correct in claiming that "most people he knows" share a particular viewpoint, but someone whose social context is dramatically different may have quite a different perspective. For example, while most people I know who are my age aren't interested in homosexual relationships, they are not "revolted" by them - they simply don't care one way or the other.

However, the author proceeds to invoke the supernatural to explain the relative social uniformity towards various behavioural norms that we experience:

It's to man's intuitive recognition of morality that theistic pro-lifers must appeal when dealing with those who have rejected the Judeo-Christian worldview. Theistic pro-lifers need to encourage their secular counterparts to examine the grounds for their disgust with certain acts.

The fact is that man's intuitive sense of a moral law points towards a lawgiver. Theistic pro-lifers can point towards God as the author of the binding moral law. Further, they can explain sexuality as a gift from the Creator designed with a specific purpose. Honest secularists, on the other hand, realize that they have no basis for their moral revolt, for making any statements whatsoever about what should or should not be permitted.

This is an intriguing paragraph for a couple of reasons. First off, it makes the blanket claim that because societies tend to develop common systems of moral values that there must be some kind of supernatural source for these systems of values. Like the arguments that are put forth by Michael Behe in support of so-called "Intelligent Design" theory, this is what I call "argument by credulity". The author is making the claim because they simply cannot, or will not, accept that there are other perfectly reasonable explanations.

For example, we know that societies, like organisms, respond to the stimuli of their environment. Much of the dietary laws in the Old Testament are excellent examples of such responses - prohibitions against eating pork, shellfish and other foods make a great deal of sense when one recognizes that eating any of those in an improperly prepared (or stored) state is extremely bad for someone. Today, we know how to handle those foods more reasonably, and for the most part those same proscriptions are no longer seen as significant.

Further, if one examines the evolution of societies like those found along much of coastal Asia, the proscriptions against eating shellfish do not seem to have appeared at all - or if they did exist, there doesn't seem to be a recorded history of them that I am aware of. So the uniformity of "moral law" that the author is claiming exists is questionable at best, and the variations between societal groups further calls into question the existence of a "common source" for such conventions.

The second part of the paragraph starts off with the claim that any "secularist" (read atheist) who claims to have a basis for their moral arguments is being intellectually dishonest. As I pointed out earlier, most secular (non-scriptural) moral judgments are derived through ethical evaluation rather than deriving ethics through moral evaluation.

Religious critics of this dismissively complain about this as being "relativism", and thus unfounded in any "concrete" moral structure. Of course, nothing could be further from the truth. The secular view is rooted in the social context that we all exist in, and derives much from re-evaluation of existing constructs in the light of current knowledge and understanding.

Can the "pure" secularist point to some document as an absolute foundation from which their morality springs? No, of course not, but that does not mean that there is "no foundation" for their beliefs regarding morality. Those beliefs are rooted in the social era that we all live in, and are largely influenced by the knowledge and understandings available at the time. In a sense, the "secular" worldview that the column's author is criticizing is in fact quite honest with itself - but it does not claim that there is any absolute truths - especially in the realm of the social rules that humans create for themselves.

I for one recognize that today's society is a reflection of the societies that came before it, as well as the influences of both new and old understandings of the world around us. Those who claim that scriptural law is immutable and unchanging put themselves into the awkward spot of having to explain away many scriptural laws that in modern day Canada are laughable. We no longer view women as property (I hope not!), nor do we keep slaves today and goodness knows how many other proscriptions there are that most of us quietly ignore today because they reflect a time now long past.

Those who know Him need to help others identify the moral Lawgiver Who teaches man how to properly use his precious gift of sexuality for the purpose for which it was designed.

As I pointed out earlier, arguments which rely upon the existence of a supernatural being tend to rely upon the assertion of that being's existence, followed by deriving the being's existence (and thus authority) from it. To no great surprise, that is exactly what this column's author does with his entire argument.

The result is a rather awful corruption of Rene Descarte's observation "I think, therefore I am": "I think God is, therefore God is".

For someone who claims to hold a degree in the field of Philosophy, that's a rather sad attempt at logic - one which any respectable Philosophy professor would doubtless assign an 'F' to on the paper or exam which contained it.