Q&A: God as the Source of Morality
God as the Source of Morality
Question
I’m in the first chapter of God Plays Dice, so if you answered this question later in the book, just tell me and I’ll keep reading! (No spoilers!) You argue that materialist atheists have no real and deep justification for morality. That made me wonder: do you have one? If you say it’s “because God said so,” how do you know that what God tells us to do is really the good thing to do? Maybe דווקא the opposite is true? If you say it’s because of reward and punishment, etc., I don’t see much difference between a person who doesn’t steal because he’s afraid of going to hell and a person who doesn’t steal because he’s afraid of going to prison. Thanks in advance!
Answer
See here on the site in the fourth notebook, part three (look under the “Miscellaneous” tab).
Discussion on Answer
I read it a long time ago. What’s the problem with memes? Sounds reasonable.
I brought up memes because I heard about a memetic model that explains the development of moral laws. It goes roughly like this: human beings are moral to some extent by nature (because they live in groups, etc.), but they had no real justification for their morality beyond a gut feeling, and so once the meme appeared that explains morality as something given to us from above, it became so popular. Leaving aside the fact that there’s no evidence for it, etc.—does a model like that sound plausible to you?
And regarding the actual question above, I couldn’t find the relevant passage (it’s hard for me to look at screens for too long :() Could you maybe point me to it more precisely or copy it here? Thanks a lot!
And where did the need for justifications come from? This is the kind of explanation that can’t be refuted, because it always comes out right. If it appeared, then apparently it needed to appear. As I explained in the book, that doesn’t mean it isn’t a correct explanation.
The relevant passage is part three. Really, all of it is devoted to this.
Okay, one more unrelated question, and sorry for going on so much. In the book you talk about a causal factor for an action as opposed to an action done for the sake of something. You gave the example of a bacterium swimming toward a crumb of food. Am I the only one to whom it seems obvious that this is also a causal factor (that caused it to move) and also a teleological factor? Exactly the same seems true to me regarding human beings, etc., so I didn’t understand why your words imply that it’s either this or that.
I didn’t understand the question. If the bacterium swims toward the food, but what causes it is the circumstances in which it operates (forces acting on it push it toward the food), that is a causal mechanism. But if it swims toward the food “because” it wants to reach the food, that is a teleological mechanism.
Just another question that popped into my head… Has the Rabbi read The Selfish Gene? Does he have an opinion on Dawkins’s memes?