The God Truthiness III: Abortion
dr clam has kindly put his Dawkins' posts into the one place. Thanks dr clam.
I'll look at dr clam's last post first. It's about abortion, the murder of abortion practicing doctors and suffering. dr clam's 3 points (1. Suffering of the Victim, 2. Suffering of the Victim's Friends and 3. Loss of Potential) are spot on.
dr clam begins with, "Given the historical preoccupations of this blog, I can’t very well leave Richard’s book without discussing what he has to say about abortion." But dr clam has missed that this section titled 'Faith and the Sanctity of Human Life' is used, like the preceding section 'Faith and Homosexuality', as an example to illustrate the difference in thinking between absolutionists and consequentialists. It is not intended as a defense of abortion. That said I'm left with no doubt that 'Faith and the Sanctity of Human Life' also elucidates Dawkins' personal views on and defenses of abortion. 'Faith and the Sanctity of Human Life' should instead be viewed in the context of the whole chapter "What's Wrong with Religion? Why be so Hostile?" as examples of the problems with absolutionism. The confusion of purpose may be because Dawkins doesn't illustrate these differences until spending two pages talking about the supposed differences between embryos and adults as viewed by the American Taliban.
Let's unravel the chapter's road map about absolutism and consequentialism. Of the two Dawkins approaches absolutism first by looking at the rise of the American Taliban in the 'The Dark Side of Absolutism' which is the section previous to 'Faith and Homosexuality'. 'Faith and Homosexuality' continues with absolutism but finishes with, "Attitudes to homosexuality reveal much about the sort of morality that is inspired by religious faith. An equally instructive example is abortion and the sanctity of human life" (329 italics mine). Dawkins then explores the 2nd kind of morality he's interested in - consequentialism. "A consequentialist or utilitarian is likely to approach the abortion question in a very different way, by trying to weigh up suffering" (331).
And indeed the rest of the section examines the way consequentialists might examine the problem of abortion, as various slippery slope arguments about suffering are tested. But these consequentialist arguments are used to highlight the lack of critical thinking in the absolutionist stance, which Dawkins finds to be either contradictory due to IVF, or even morally bankrupt in the case of absolutionists who murder doctors. As I said I think this section is muddied by Dawkins' own views on abortion, but the intention of the section is again made clear when the last paragraph begins, “Suffering is hard to measure, and the details might be disputed. But that doesn't affect my main point, which concerns the difference between secular consequentialists and religiously absolute moral philosophies” (336 italics mine).
Labels: Dawkins
posted by winstoninabox @ 1:25 PM
2 comments
2 Comments:
Hey hey, Dawkins' 'absolutism' is a whatsit he has invented that has nothing to do with what philosophers, theologians, Wikipedia et al would call 'absolute' morality. Both moral absolutists and moral relativists can be consequentialists, as you'll recall from our voluminous correspondence on just this subject ;) And both moral absolutists and relativists may equally well be 'absolutists' by Dawkins' definition.
The problem, which Dawkins' doesn't seem to get, is how to achieve an 'absolute morality' (as defined by theologians, philosophers, Wikipedia etc.) without God. I don't say this can't be done without God-in fact, I tried to work out how to do it without God myself once. I would love to see a serious atheistic attempt to address this problem. Dawkins' chapter is not it.
Of course, I am working from the position that moral relativism is a crock. People who, unlike me, do not despise their craven respect for authority as a weakness may think otherwise. If you dispel my Absolute Morality, you will not get a mild-mannered atheist: you will get a sociopath. Convince me, and I will become Clam, destroyer of worlds!
dr clam is right to take Dawkins (and myself) to task about absolutism and consequentialism. Dawkins' definitions of Absolutism and Consequentialism are found much earlier in Chapter 6. I shouldn't go around using them without making them clear.
Absolutists believe there are absolutes of right and wrong, imperatives whose rightness makes no reference to their consequence. Consequentialists more pragmatically hold that the morality of an action should be judged by its consequences” (266).
By those standards I look at Chapter 8 in the above post. I maintain though that dr clam's rebuttal about Dawkins' whatsits definitions don't undermine my point about his misreading of Chapter 8 in his post titled “Well, that just about wraps it up for Dawkins”
As to dr clam's problem of how to get absolute morality without God...
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