Euthyphro, Logic And The Impotence Of Moral Theology

Mark left an excellent comment on the previous thread. He said:

“for morality to be absolute, it must not be able to have been different; in other words, god’s nature from which the absolute morality flows, must necessarily be the way it is. But, if god is necessarily the way he is, then there must be laws that make this the case, and these laws must therefore precede or be higher than god. Thus god becomes essentially a middleman and is not necessary. If, on the other hand, god's nature is not necessarily the way it is, then morality is relative to his non-necessary nature, and thus not absolute.”

This is essentially the Euthyphro dilemma. The problem is that either god is not necessary for morality, or nothing is good until god commands it. Therefore, morality is relative to the tastes of god and there is no reason then why evil acts could not be considered moral if god so choosed.

To try and get around the dilemma, theists often claim that it is not a dilemma and that morality is fixed by the very nature of god. This is however nonsense. If god’s nature is fixed, he is still a god of moral relatives. He just so happens to have a particular set of moral values. He could still be evil. There is no absolute law.

Another problem is that if he can not change his mind, then he is either beholding to a law greater than himself, or he is not omnipotent. The omnipotence of god is of course logically absurd. He could not make a square circle for example. This also means that god is not necessary for the laws of logic either, as he himself must abide by a higher law.

Other things god could not do include making a being greater than himself (already defined as the greatest possible being – what ever greatness means) or make a weight so heavy that he would not be able to lift it.

Theology is just one big inconsistency after another. How can something so problematical have any value? Moral law is one of the “evidences” Christians cite for god, but it is not a tenable position – even if we assume god exists to start with. Christianity needs absolute moral laws or the concept of sin is meaningless. If the concept of sin is meaningless, then the idea of god killing himself to appease himself as punishment for our sins is just absurd – but then, there are lots of reasons to think that is absurd.

Vasopressin Receptors And Hand Baggings

This paper on the genetics of human pair bonding came out last week. The idea that genes affect behaviour is not a new one, but the extent of their influence is argued over. Usually it is evangelicals, whose world view is dependant on the absurd notion of free will and its implications for “sin”, that make loud denial noises at the thought that our choice making may not be absolutely free. Another problem they have is that if our genes affect our behaviour and personality, then the mind becomes all the more physical and ideas of a supernatural consciousness become even less likely. From studies on flies, sexual orientation can be absolutely altered by disrupting the fruitless gene, so the precedence is there.

This recent study, which is quite timely after a hand bagging incident at work because of someone having an affair, shed some light the genetics of human pair bonding. It has been known for some time that the brain “hormone” arginine vasopressin (AVP) has an association with pair bonding in Voles. There are 3 species of closely related voles; montane voles (Microtus montanus), meadow voles (Microtus pennsylvanicus), and prairie voles (Microtus ochrogaster). The first 2 are non monogamous, whereas the prairie voles are monogamous. It was found that one of the proteins that recognizes the AVP; the vasopressin 1a receptor (V1aR) was responsible for the difference. Not surprisingly, drugs that affect the activity of this gene inhibited pair bonding in prairie voles. Furthermore, it was found that it was the promoter (control region) of the gene that determined the type of social bonding behaviour that developed, and a rather elegant study that swapped the promoter between species found that non monogamous voles could be made more like the monogamous species. The difference in promoters is an extra 428 base pairs. It is thought that this might alter the amount of V1aR in the relevant brain areas (ventral forebrain). Indeed, increasing the amount of V1aR in the ventral forebrains of non monogamous meadow voles turned them monogamous.

So, what about humans? Well, it turns out that the V1aR promoters comes in several different forms. One of these forms called the 334 allele has shown a strong correlation with marital harmony in studies of twins. There was no effect with women, but in partnerships where the man carried two copies of the 334 allele, 34% of marriages experienced a serious crisis/ threat of divorce in the last year. This figure fell to 15% in men with no copies of this allele. Interestingly, men with two copies were twice as likely to cohabit rather than marry when compared to men with no copies of the allele.
Other studies have also corroborated this by showing that 334 affects RNA (and by extension protein) levels in the hippocampus of post mortem subjects. Studies in healthy volunteers have also demonstrated an association between 334 and activation of the amygdala, a part of the brain already known to be involved in pair bonding.

It would be unlikely that only one gene affects this behaviour, and not surprisingly the dopamine system has also been implicated, so our pair bonding behaviour is probably the result of the interaction of several genes.

Anyone interested in the nature nurture debate may be interested in Matt Ridley’s talk here.

Is God a Bastard?

I though I would start off with something not too controversial as I write some posts on molecular evolution. It’s actually a modified post first published on richarddawkins.net in response to claims we get our moral values from god. Any Christian reading this will, I hope concentrate on the content and not the sarcastic tone – which I hope will raise a wry smile with my other readers.
I introduce it as a primer to some biblical difficulties that I hope to respond to in a more balanced manner in later posts. In the mean time, I hope you enjoy the rant.

Richard Dawkins describes God thus "The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully." This contrasts somewhat with the cuddly Christian God; one who supposedly cares intimately about us and wants the best for us. He cares when we are hurt, ill, hungry or lonely. All he wants is for us to reach out to him so that he can help us and lead us out of the mess we have made of our lives – a self inflicted mess - caused by wilfully turning our backs on our dear gentle lord and hurting him. And if we don't, well he's going to boil us for eternity in a cauldron of septic leper juice– as the saved sing Hallelujah over us as we writhe and squeal relentlessly for all eternity, constantly begging for relief from this constant and unbearable torment – but he still loves us!

So, why is God a bastard? Firstly, God deliberately set up man to fail. I say this because, before Adam and Eve ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, they could not know that it was wrong to disobey this dictatorial and draconian god (Genesis 3:5 and 22). To make matters even worse, he put the serpent in the garden to tempt these naïve people into disobeying him (Gen 3:1-6). God even makes this evil creature in the first place (Gen 3:1). What a bastard! That shows as much parental responsibility as hiring a paedophile to baby-sit for you! Because of this situation, God condemns all mankind to die. What a thoroughly evil bastard! This is just the first of many examples of God punishing people for "sins" perpetrated by others:
Exodus 11 (very disgusting slaughter of children)
Isaiah 14:21-22 and
Deuteronomy 5:9, just for example).

Imagine the police arresting you one night because your great-grandfather was an Australian sheep fiddler or a German concentration camp guard - it is just ludicrous. Most bizarrely, he even punishes people for being evil and audacious enough to be born to unmarried parents, or because they were born in the wrong place, like Moab (Deut 23:2-3). It is truly bizarre, because he (through the birth of Jesus) is the bastard descendant of a bastard and a Moabite (Matthew 1:3-5, Gen 38, Ruth 4 and Matt. 1:18-19) – who apparently got his own mother pregnant??!!!???

Not only has God created evil, he often uses it to harm others (Lamentations 3:38, Jeremiah 26:3, 36:3, and1 Samuel 16 :14-23 to name a few). The God of truth even uses lies when it suits him (2 Chronicles 18:19-22). The bible also tells us that God hardens the hearts of those he wants to destroy, such as the Pharaoh (Ex 14:1-31) and he does this after he has bullied the Egyptians into getting his way. It didn't seem to matter that his gripe was with an individual - oh no! He just thought he would just be cruel to the whole nation instead. Then after much bum festering but holy nastiness, God basically took away Pharaohs' free will and lead him and others to destruction. What happened to mercy and forgiveness? If you are going to make Pharaoh do something, then why not just make him let the Israelites go free, without all that nastiness, plagues and the unjustifiable killing of Egypt's first born? If all this was true, you have got think Pharaoh must have been incredibly thick not to let the Israelites go. You can imagine the scene:
God "Let my people go or I shall smite you in the nuts with my boot"

Pharaoh "Nae danger ya tulip, smell yer maw ya baw bag!"

God: "Takest thou that" Boot! "now letteth my people go"

Pharaoh: "ooh yah cunt! Ma Swingers! Naw ya dobber!"

God: "Letteth them go or I'll shalt give thee piles"

Pharaoh: scratch scratch "sook ma banger ya dong"

God "OK then, I'll make it rain frogs"

Pharaoh "Ha ha ya fanny, I've got ma umbrella"

God "thou leavest me no choice. I shall createth a plague of Ainsley Harriets. Verily, that shall getteth it right up ye."

Pharaoh "aw naw, maaan, here huv them! A wis only pullin' yer plunger big man,"

The exodus probably never happened (and certainly not in Glaswegian). But that doesn't change the immoral nature of the god of the bible. Remember, this is a God who for no good reason other than because he is God, prevents people from believing in him and being saved (Romans 9:18).

The whole book of Joshua is about God-ordained acts of ethnic cleansing, intolerance and genocide. Apparently, God did not want his people contaminated with the practices of pagans. Again, this does not justify the extreme methods that God commanded, including infanticide. This means that if you are different, God does not want to forgive and enlighten you. In fact, he wants you and your babies dead. The contradiction with Jesus' hippyish New Testament theology is glaringly obvious! Have the publishers of the bible never heard of editors? Again, God's inability to be pleased (and inconsistency) is shown when he orders the Israelites to "righteously murder" the Midianites, including women and children (Numbers 31:7-18). This very act however makes the Israelites impure and unable to approach God (Num. 31:19). In other words, God says "I am the God of righteousness, who cannot abide evil. Go and carry out this evil act that I demand or I will be angry, even although this act will make you repulsive to me."

I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty depressed at this point - but there's more.

God doesn't have a problem with forcing people into cannibalism, for example (Lev. 26:29, Jer. 19:9). Neither does he have a problem with kidnapping women, nor with making them gifts to be used as sex slaves (Jud. 21:11-14). In fact, the god of the bible doesn't think too much of women at the best of times. The following makes me sick! A rapist must marry his victim (Deut 22:28-29) and pay compensation to her father! Forcing someone to live with their abuser is surely just about the worst thing you can make them do. At least I now know how to get a wife that I can use as a sex slave - thanks God! Right from the start, God has it in for women, and lays all the blame for the original sin on Eve (1Tim. 2:12-14), and women are the property of men and were created for men, because we are superior. They must be silent in church and never hold authority over men, or even teach a man (1Cor. 11:8-9, 14:34-35, Ephesians 5:22-24, Colossians 3:18, 1Tim.2:11-14). All however is not lost, as a woman can be saved through childbirth (1Tim. 2:15). The only problem is that God would rather men didn't get married (1Cor. 7:8), and for those lucky enough to get a man, child birth will be incredibly painful (Gen.3:16). Yep, God hates women, even in the New Testament!

So, what does he like then? Well, slavery for one, as long as the slaves are not Israelite (Lev. 25:44-46). Furthermore, he doesn't mind you beating them, as long as you don't kill them (Ex. 21:22-24). God likes slavery so much; he even sets different laws for their welfare to those of their Israelite masters. If an owner knocks out a slave's eye, he must set the slave free (Ex. 21:26). If he did it to another Israelite, the law requires the loss of his eye too (Ex. 21:22-24). An eye for an eye, leaves everyone blind, according to some smart-arse like Gandhi – Pagan!.

And there's more, as God likes perfectly-formed people too. Anyone deformed may not approach him (Lev. 21:16-23). He must love having someone to hate, because the bible tells us that he knits people together in the womb (Ps. 139:13-15). So I guess every now and then, he uses his special magic god powers of righteous justice to decide exactly who to make deformed, just so he can hate them. The almighty loving God is also partial to accepting the occasional human sacrifice (Num. 31:41-46, Jud. 11:29-40). In the second example, a girl (Jephthah's daughter) was sacrificed to God because of her fathers' vows. Of course, if you question God on the subject, he denies accepting human sacrifice at all, claiming the whole idea to be abhorrent to him (Jer. 19:4-6). Nice lie your holiness! The only time God actually behaves himself, is when he is worried about how he appears to others, and not because it is the right thing to do (Ex. 32:11-14 and Num. 14:15-20). In fact, the supposed sacrifice on the cross was (as many Christians will tell you) was for his own glory.

Moral god? Don't make me laugh! I'll tell you what does make me laugh however, is the story where Elisha gets God to make some bears maul and kill 42 young boys for calling him baldy (2 Kin. 2:23-24). It's a good job that they didn't call him a specky big nosed feminist and abolitionist! If they had, the loving, forgiving and slow to anger god of the bible would probably eternally curse mankind (not again!), and make us all lesbian Moabite hunch backs. That would give him a real reason to be cruel to us.