In my last post I pointed out an often said but little defended theistic, particularly Christian, argument: one must simply have faith in God. I asked why putting faith in anything unseen and unproven would be considered a virtue. Today I want to look at another one of these default theistic arguments that seems to be unthinkingly accepted by those who put it forward: the notion that the existence of a Creator automatically grants created entities intrinsic value.
It is one of the biggest philosophical problems theists have with the atheist worldview. If there is no Creator, how can we say life has value? If value is not objectively assigned by an outside force, what is to stop us from assigning value as we see fit, and therefore devaluing certain life and increasing the value of our own? This problem seems to be a particular favorite among the deist sorts, those who feel the need to believe in a First Cause or a Creator, but do not specifically adhere to any one sect of organized religion. It is to these loose theists or deists that I posit my own philosophical question: why does having a creator grant something objective value?
It seems obvious that a created thing would only have value if the Creator himself valued it. If I, exercising my creative capacities, sketch a picture, does that automatically mean that my picture is good or valuable, simply because it came from my hand? What if I think the drawing is terrible and I throw it in the trash. Does it still maintain some sort of value simply because it is a created object? Or is its value only contingent upon my subjective opinion of it?
Christians have an answer. They believe, based on certain cherry-picked Bible verses, that the Creator does indeed value his creation. God loves us all and thinks all of us are equally valuable, so we defer to his superior authority and accept that we have value because God says we do. But is this objective? No. It is incredibly subjective, based completely on the opinion of God, who has a personality, characteristics, and enough traits to be called an individual. Now if you believe that God is completely benevolent, then that means his opinion is bound to be good and therefore truthful, but that brings us back to Plato’s Euthyphro dilemma: does God chose good because it is independently good, or is good “good” because God chooses it? It is very difficult to break out of this cycle of questioning subjectivity. You either have to trust, based on little actual evidence, that God is good and will choose what is objectively good, or you have to accept that what God considers good is his subjective opinion that we submit to. This basically has us back to square one. (And we can only get this far by ignoring several dozen Bible verses that either explicitly state or strongly suggest that God does not value all of creation, especially since it has been damaged by sin.) We have yet to establish objective value. We are merely deferring to a higher authority, and how is that any different than deffering to the higher authority of the human law, the general consensus, or a document like the US Constitution?
This problem must be even more difficult for theists who claim not to know the nature or will of God, and even more difficult still for those who believe that God created the world but is ambivalent toward us lowly beings. If our value as created things only comes from the opinion of our Creator, then there is as good of a chance that he simply does not care about us as there is the chance that he loves us unconditionally. Yet if the will of God is unknown or unrevealed, how can we know which way God is leaning? All we can do is hazard a guess, which does not establish any truth whatsoever.
We also have to consider the possibility that God does not find us valuable. Then what? If our basis of value is wrapped up in the opinion of the Creator, and not based on more objective qualifications, then regardless of how valuable we feel personally or how much we may value other beings, we actually do not have any value at all. I wonder if theists would be willing to admit that beings have no value because God does not really care about us as quickly as they say that we have value because he does. Given all available evidence, the former scenario seems much more likely.
To me, it seems much better to find another system with which to establish value, rather than leaving it all up to the opinion of a mysterious being who refuses to make his existence known or his will understood. It is going to be a subjective system, but I believe I have shown that even if we left it up to the unknown God, we still would not achieve complete objectivity. Of course the suggestion that the value of human life be decided subjectively is a scary thought. All you have to do is consider the instances of mass murder and genocide to decide that we are incapable of handling such a great responsibility. I would hope, however, that a few bad apples would not spoil the bushel of humanity. We do not have the best track record when it comes to establishing equality and guaranteeing basic human rights for all individuals, but we are getting better at it all the time. Just consider the progress made in the United States alone in the last 150 years. The strength of our legal systems and the ever-increasing amount of tolerance displayed by each succeeding generation tells me that we are well on our way to achieving a consensus among individuals that all life is equally valuable, and that is as close to objectivity as we can ever hope to get.
Even if we were not progressing in such a promising way, I find myself wondering if adopting a religious viewpoint would help the situation at all. It is very interesting that belief in God has not correlated with true respect for the value of human life. In reality, even those who believe in a Creator God do not act as if all life has equal intrinsic value. I am sure that I do not need to mention all of the wars fought and lives lost in the name of religious dogma, but one other example stands out in my mind. Why is it that the death penalty is not only legal, but most often carried out in the states that have the highest percentages of religious believers, like Texas, Oklahoma, Florida, and Georgia? If belief in God really established the notion that all human life has value, we should see the opposite trend. Atheists should be the ones dolling out the death sentence, since we are the ones who supposedly believe that we can subjectively assign whatever value we see fit to human life, not those who claim to believe that their God created every person and values every person equally. If God loves the murderer just as much as he loves the devoted pastor, who has the right to say which person’s life is more valuable, or to say that one deserves to die while the other deserves to live? The religious seem much more comfortable making that sort of decision than the secular do.
April 7, 2009 at 2:40 pm |
“Even if we were not progressing in such a promising way, I find myself wondering if adopting a religious viewpoint would help the situation at all.”
I appreciate this disclaimer as I think the current progression of tolerance is largely the result of the current prosperity of our society. Not that prosperity is the only factor that could be at work, but I wonder what tolerance in the US would look like under the pressure of severe financial collapse. Elements of Nazi Germany? Speculative, yes, but certainly not beyond the realm of possibility.
I agree that even then the religious viewpoint would likely not help the situation at all. The same “evil” forces would be at work in people whether under the guise of religious morality or not. Religion makes a convenient excuse for squashing tolerance, but in the absence of religion people find easy excuses as well. Ultimately, there are too many examples of evil in the world, whatever one attributes it to,
April 10, 2009 at 9:16 pm |
OrDover, I completley agree with your last paragraph.
That said, I do have problems with this topic. Looking at it from an ecomic standpoint, value is always relative.
If we believe, as the writers of the Declaration of Indpendance did (though mostly deists and not theists), that a creator assigned equal value, then you have value relative to the creator.
Take the creator out of the picture, and from an economic standpoint we are most certainly not of equal value, as you and I become the assigners of value, and certainly my wife is more valuable to me (most days) than a diseased bum on the streets of Mumbai.
And that is neither right or wrong but just the way it is, I don’t know how to get around that.
April 10, 2009 at 9:40 pm |
Christopher,
The point that I was attempting to make above is that believing in a Creator who equally values every person and therefore choosing to value every person in emulation is merely deferring to a higher authority. Would a Christian love a bum from Mumbai more than their own wife? Certainly not. They might espouse Christian love, but you and I know that sort of “brotherly” love is not the same as the love that comes from a deep emotional attachment. A Christian would say that the bum is valuable because God values him. It isn’t that the Christian loves or values the bum more than anyone else.
If Christians are merely deferring to the authority of God, how is that any different than a secular person deferring to the authority of the law if they say that the bum is valuable because all humans are given equal rights and equal protection under the law, or because of a philosophical belief if they say that all humans have an equal right to life?
There are many ways to come to the same conclusion, you see. I don’t think one has proven itself any better than the others.
April 14, 2009 at 2:41 am |
No, I totally agree with your point concerning religion.
I was just saying that with religion, in theory, God determines value, giving every human the same value- an absolute.
The law cannot give an absolute, as the value of human life must be seen in relative terms. (Take abortion for example. We are all equal… unless we haven’t been born.)
So yes, I agree with you, mostly, the only difference being that Christians deffering to God gives them an absolute (again, in theory) while deferring to the law does not.
I’d prefer absolutes, but am learning to live without them.
And should we be expecting you to publish excerpts from your thesis soon?
April 16, 2009 at 12:56 am |
It occurs to me that religion (any religion, including Christianity) does not always help in assigning value.
Ideally, according to many modern Christians, all people are given the same value by God. BUT, look at the Bible. Do all people have the same value there? Obviously not. (Think Amalekites, heretics, witches, apostates, etc.)
Then we can look at Islam. You need only read the newspapers to see how uneven is the value assigned to various peoples by Allah. And that holds true whether you’re reading about contemporary terrorists, or reading the Koran itself.
Hinduism? Not a good track record. The whole caste system shows that quite clearly.
And shall we even start on Christian support for slavery, anti-Semitism, and so on? No. No need.
Of course one can decide (via one’s personal interpretation of one’s personal denomination or personal reading of one’s personal holy book) that one’s particular deity decrees total equality. But how the hell is that objective or absolute?