Welcome friends!
I’ve been thinking recently about the difference between secular humanist ethics and religious ethics, so maybe we can talk a bit about that this week.
So what is secular humanist ethics about? Well, I think the primary goal is simply to be aware of one’s own moral sense and to at least try to construct a coherent and rational ethical theory that is consistent with one’s own moral sense. What’s the point of that? Well, if one understands one’s own moral sense enough to try to work through the inevitable inconsistencies and construct a coherent system, then one is in a position to engage in a meaningful conversation with other people about ethical issues. Being able to discuss ethics from the starting point of a more-or-less coherent system of ethics not only provides one with a peaceful means of persuading other people to behave in a way one considers ethical, but it also allows one to learn things from the ethical thinking of other people. In contrast, if one has a moral sense but no real interest in constructing a coherent or consistent system of ethics, then having a meaningful discussion about ethics with other people becomes rather difficult.
So humanist ethics is primarily about expressing one’s moral sense in a coherent ethical system and engaging in a conversation with similarly rational people holding different ethical views with the aim of improving everyone’s ethical thinking. In the humanist tradition, developing an ethical system is clearly hard work and is only developed incrementally as various potential considerations are applied in various situations and the results synthesized into one’s personal ethics. In this tradition, constructing a robust ethical system can and should be a lifelong learning experience in which one continually reevaluates one’s ethical precepts in the light of new experiences and discussions.
One particularly interesting aspect of secular humanist ethics is what some people have disparagingly referred to as ethical relativism. I think this refers to the fact that although a given proposition may be demonstrated to be consistent or inconsistent with a given ethical theory using logic, evidence, and other rational means, choosing between the relative attractiveness of the outcomes of different ethical theories in different situations based on one’s moral sense presents an entirely different sort of problem. A common way of discussing this problem is to suggest there is ultimately no objectively “correct” answer to these ethical issues; it depends partially on the subjective moral sense of the person making such a judgment. This leads to all manner of confusion for people who are not used to thinking about ethics in this way. For example, ethical relativism does not mean people do not or should not have a moral sense, or they should not construct an ethical system, or they should profess to have no notion of what they think other people should do. The fact that one recognizes that other people also have a moral sense that might not correspond to one’s own does not eliminate one’s own moral sense. Indeed, ethical relativism properly considered has very little practical relevance to how people behave, except that it reminds one that other people may have different moral senses and ethical beliefs, and it suggests one way of dealing with this diversity is to engage other people in a conversation about ethics and not simply assume they have perversely determined to be evil.
Now the ethical thinking of most religious folks is entirely different. The religious conception of ethics is not about expressing one’s own moral sense in a systematic way, it’s about interpreting the laws laid down by a supernatural entity. Whether you personally agree or disagree with those laws is really beside the point from a religious viewpoint: the law is the law, and the only intellectual difficulties admitted by those committed to the religious conception of ethics involve discerning exactly what those laws say about how to act in different situations. Thus, religious discourse about ethics is typically not about how different potential outcomes appeal to one’s moral sense, or whether an ethical proposition that seems correct in one situation can handle apparent difficulties created in another situation. No, religious discourse about ethics is primarily about scrutinizing and interpreting the wording of scripture, studying ancient languages and archeology, etc. Of course, one suspects that many disagreements about religious ethics that are ostensibly about scriptural interpretation are actually about differences in the moral senses of different people, but certainly no one committed to the religious notion of ethics would care to admit it. Indeed, many religions have instructive stories in which the religious law suggests a course of action that appears to go against one’s moral sense but only because one does not or cannot understand the ultimate rationale of the law. Thus, one common aspect of religious ethics is to encourage people to distrust their own moral sense and to replace it with external laws that suggest actions they might otherwise find morally repugnant. I suppose something like this is behind the often horrific violence religiously motivated folks have tended to get involved with both historically and currently, not only in crazed religious cults, but even among some mainstream believers.
Also, it is apparent religious ethics is not at all about conversing with people with different ethical views to improve one another’s personal ethics. In the religious view, people who don’t recognize the supernatural entity in question as the ultimate arbiter of right and wrong are simply bad people by definition. Again, there may be some point to discussing the interpretation of scripture within a religion, but there is certainly no point in discussing ethics outside the religion. So adopting a religious code of ethics tends to cut people off from one another and to make people contemptuous of the moral sense and ethical beliefs of other people. The religious idea of creating a more ethical world has nothing to do with a gradual and incremental social conversation about personal ethics and everything to do with finding some way to force other people to respect the laws of whatever entity that religion supports, often merely through threats of future otherworldly violence and retribution but sometimes through all too real and current violence and retribution. This tantalizing specter of a perfect moral order generated by enforced uniformity of thought and action is what makes the religious enterprise so dangerous to human society, wherever and in whatever age it thrives.
It should be clear what we need in this twenty-first century is a modern world of thinking, conversing, self-aware, responsible adults, the sort of world in which secular ethics thrive. Unfortunately, what we sometimes seem to have instead is the perpetuation of a medieval world of supernatural laws that surpasseth the understanding and legions of sheeplike followers who believe they should never think critically about ethics and who are forever ready to fall upon one another at a moments notice on behalf of their twisted view of the common spiritual good.
