I Eat Meat

A Christian apologist asks “what is the difference (according to your view of reality) between humans and other animals? And a follow up question, are you vegan?”

I know where this question comes from. Christians, and many other religious types, view humanity as categorically different from animals and assumes anyone who accepts evolution thinks they are on par with wildlife. Well, yes and no. I don’t believe man holds a special place in any mystical or supernatural way, nor do we have a unique link to the transcendent. Modern humans share a common ancestor with all animals, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t unique in several important ways.

Humans have a far greater potential for intelligence, reason, and self-awareness than animals. It’s hard to tell how far ahead of the second smartest animals we are in these regards, but it’s clear to me that we are far ahead. The apologist's question came up on a post about morality, so I will address the follow-up question in that context. I am not vegan. The moral distinction I make between killing animals and killing people, beyond the legality and public opinion of such actions, is this: humans have a far more awareness of self, of what happens to them, and of what will happen to them. Awareness for negative acts against oneself and the consequences thereof, paired with the actual sensation of pain, is suffering. I believe most animals can only feel the pain aspect, which doesn’t have to be a factor in humane deaths.

Painful deaths and torture of animals that feel pain is immoral, but the instant killing of animals that lack human-like awareness is not, at least according to my understanding of morality.

Here’s the rub. Since animals aren’t capable of language, it’s hard to tell how much awareness they perceive and how much pain they feel. There has to be a spectrum. Dolphins are likely more aware than chickens and chickens likely feel more pain than roaches. I wouldn’t eat animals I consider closer in the spectrum to humans and I try my best not to give business to companies that would painfully kill their livestock. I realize that being vegan would be more moral, but I also realize that not walking outside and potentially stepping on insects would also be more moral. And I also realize that this post could be, in part, a rationalization to justify not wanting to make a difficult lifestyle change, but I believe what I’m saying just the same. Humans are, by every account I’ve seen, at least an order of magnitude more aware than cows and chickens. I can do more to be moral, but the time spent seeking out how to help animals is better spent seeking out how to help my fellow man.

Do-It-Yourself Philosophy

Comedian Adam Carolla once said “I know everything because I know nothing.” By this he meant that his lack of parental involvement and disinterest in school led to a kind of philosophical blank slate which allows him to assess reality on reality’s terms. He claims the opposite of indoctrination in which every opinion is fully his own, made from scratch. I’m sure this is hyperbole, but I believe that he is more like he describes than the average Joe. In the same way, I came into blogging about atheism with little to no knowledge about theology, philosophy or, well, atheism.

I didn’t think this lack of knowledge was a good thing, mind you. Once I realized secular thought was a real option, my first instinct was to quickly build a knowledge base. I listened to the audio version of God Is Not Great and The God Delusion. Here’s an atheist confession for you: I didn’t like either. I’m probably not supposed to say this, but I’m not a Hitchens fan in general. I’ve since given Dawkins a second and third shot and enjoy his books on biology and evolution immensely. The Selfish Gene may be my favorite science book, but I’m still not interested in his editorializing. I generally desired the data and the consensus interpretation--the science, not opinion. For this reason, I discounted philosophy for a long while, which I saw as a field of speculation.

When I started debating religious apologists I really didn’t know what apologetics meant. I've since found this to be a cliched joke, but I actually thought they were going to tell me how sorry they were about their church’s policies. When they presented  their arguments for God, I never needed to look up how to refute them. The flaws were usually glaring when looking outside of their indoctrinated box. When in doubt, I only needed to turn their own reasoning back on itself which made any defense of my retorts a delegitimization of their original premise. Many of these theists go through “apologetics training” because almost every argument for God is the establishment of a carefully worded and memorized rule, for which their deity is the sole exception. To back up the argument they have what feels like a series of call-tree-like responses to common atheist rebuttals. The responses are seen as valid not because they came to them via their own reasoning, but because the training says they are valid. Understandably, years of Sunday School trumps any one conversation, no matter how clear the points made.

I’ve written about counter-apologetics before, but not because I want to train my readers to debunk arguments for God in a certain way. Most of my posts are the process of me working out my own thoughts. By committing them to the blog, I am forced to analyze my growing philosophy which sometimes results in editing or reinforcing my beliefs. And since apologetics is, for the most part, the aforementioned call-tree of responses, I feel like I can only cover it for so long. I don’t want to repeat myself and I don’t want to preach. If you are new to atheism, to some degree I don’t even want you to read--at least until you hash out all this for yourself.

Any single-topic world-view with as much on-line coverage as atheism is bound to create an echo chamber. It is important to not get lost in it as a consumer of words. My advice is to think for yourself. Decide on your own if the God hypothesis is consistent with your philosophy, morality, and the consensus reality of our world. Then, if you’re so inclined, blog your journey and supplement your knowledge with the material available from everyone point of view. It has helped me immensely and I’m thankful for all the fellow bloggers and commenters I’ve met along the way.

Morality Week Reflection

During Morality Week, I tried my best to explain morality from an atheist perspective. I hoped to be able to sum up morality in a tight text snippit. A typographic sound byte. The tagline for godless goodness. I think I failed.

Is this because I suck? Maybe, but I doubt it. Morality is a multilayered issue. It’s more than commandments. It’s even more than the Golden Rule, which is probably the most utilitarian moral cliff-note available. I think the best way to verbalize my view of morality is a set of “best practices” to live by. Let's break it down one last time.

Right vs. Wrong

Let’s rebrand “right” and “wrong” as “better” and “worse.” I say “better” and not “best” because the “best” thing for an individual may be at the expense of others. Morality only makes sense as a term when it's applied to the group. We are moral because we are social. We are social because others enrich our lives.

Objective vs. Subjective Morality

Morality varies across cultures. Even within the U.S., polls show there are many issues that have the population split as to their moral worth. This is evidence for subjective morality. The only "evidence" any one has ever presented for objective morality is asking a question similar to "is murder wrong?" To which I give my answer, "yes." The answer is my belief that murder is wrong. It's subjective. Your belief, which is also likely to be that murder is wrong, is subjective. The argument of common consent basically states that most people believe in God therefore God exists. This argument of common consent seems to be their basis for objective morality as well. Most people believe murder is wrong, therefore it is wrong. Unlike the argument of common consent as applied to God, I am part of the consent in regards to murder, but that only means that we should treat murder as wrong. To say it is wrong, or in fact exists at all outside of humanity's ability to conceive and act upon it, is unfounded. In addition, belief in objective morality is dangerous. The same people who don't just believe murder is wrong, but know it is wrong, also know that homosexuality and other victimless "sins" are wrong. With this supposed infallible knowledge they can enforce what are really just opinions without considering the possibility that they are wrong. Abortion clinic bombers not only know that abortion is wrong, but they know they are doing the Lord's work. To paraphrase MiB's Agent Kay, "Imagine what they'll know tomorrow."

The Argument from Moral Truth

While I don't see any evidence for objective morality, this argument is flawed to the point of uselessness even granting a universal moral truth. The argument states:

1. There exist objective moral truths. (murder is not just distasteful, but it's actually wrong.)
2. These objective moral truths are not grounded in the way the world is but, rather, in the way the world ought to be. (Consider: should white supremacists succeed, taking over the world and eliminating all who don’t meet their criteria for being existence-worthy, their ideology still would be morally wrong. It would be true, in this hideous counterfactual, that the world ought not to be the way that they have made it.)
3. The world itself—the way it is, the laws of science that explain why it is that way—cannot account for the way the world ought to be.
4. The only way to account for morality is that God established morality (from 2 and 3).
5. Therefore God exists.

Why did God make murder wrong? Why not make it right? Is there any reason for God's choice or is morality completely arbitrary? If God had a reason, then we should be able to come to the same reason. If God had no reason, then why follow pointless rules? Either God is a redundant middle man or we are still left with no reason moral truths are true. If we feel the need to explain our possible objective morality, then why are we more comfortable with a lack of a supernatural explanation then we are with a lack of a natural explanation? At least we know the natural exists! The whole argument is passing the buck.

The Bible as a source of morality.

Item 4 of the argument leads to where believers go to find God's established morality. The Bible is a popular repository of perceived goodness. Shall we start with the Old Testament that commanded people to keep slaves, slay their enemies, execute blasphemers and homosexuals? Hmm...it might be best to pick and chose which Biblical morals to follow and interpret them to be relevant to our society. The question here is, if you need the Bible to give you your morals, how do you know which morals in the Bible are the most moral? It's, of course, because we already had morality before we checked the "good book." It makes sense, if the majority of people didn't think murder was a bad thing prior to Moses, I doubt humanity would have survived long enough to get those tablets. If you believe that sort of thing.