Tag Archives: Moral Standard

News

Yale University study shows that babies know right from wrong at 6 months

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Story here in the UK Daily Mail. (H/T Wes Widner, Muddling Towards Maturity)

Excerpt:

At the age of six months babies can barely sit up – let along take their first tottering steps, crawl or talk.

But, according to psychologists, they have already developed a sense of moral code – and can tell the difference between good and evil.

An astonishing series of experiments is challenging the views of many psychologists and social scientists that human beings are born as ‘blank slates’ – and that our morality is shaped by our parents and experiences.

Instead, they suggest that the difference between good and bad may be hardwired into the brain at birth.

In one experiment involving puppets, babies aged six months old showed a strong preference to ‘good’ helpful characters – and rejected unhelpful, ‘naughty’ ones.

In another, they even acted as judge and jury. When asked to take away treats from a ‘naughty’ puppet, some babies went further – and dished out their own punishment with a smack on its head.

Professor Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University in Connecticut, whose department has studied morality in babies for years, said: ‘A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life.

‘With the help of well designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life.

Muddling writes:

Is anyone reminded of Romans 2:15 “… the work of the law is written on their hearts…“?   Cf. J. Budziszewski’s Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law,  and his other book, What We Can’t Not Know.

I guess now is as good a time as any to link to the scheming unborn baby post.

Polemics

Does prominent atheist Michael Ruse think that morality is real or illusory?

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Here’s a column from the radically-leftist UK Guardian by evolutionist Michael Ruse. (H/T Evolution News)

Excerpt:

God is dead, so why should I be good? The answer is that there are no grounds whatsoever for being good. There is no celestial headmaster who is going to give you six (or six billion, billion, billion) of the best if you are bad. Morality is flimflam.

[…]Morality is just a matter of emotions, like liking ice cream and sex and hating toothache and marking student papers. But it is, and has to be, a funny kind of emotion. It has to pretend that it is not that at all! If we thought that morality was no more than liking or not liking spinach, then pretty quickly it would break down.

[…]So morality has to come across as something that is more than emotion. It has to appear to be objective, even though really it is subjective.

[…]Now you know that morality is an illusion put in place by your genes to make you a social cooperator, what’s to stop you behaving like an ancient Roman? Well, nothing in an objective sense.

So what morality is, objectively, is a bad feeling you get as a result of biological evolution and social pressure. It’s just a feeling. An illusion.

But Ruse says that you have to pretend it’s real, or else we’ll all live like barbarians. But if morality is nonsense, then what REASON is there not to act like a barbarian individually as long as you can get away with it? Let the other fools who believe in God be honest. You do what you like in order to be happy in the few years you have to live – just don’t get caught and punished for breaking the arbitrary fashions of the culture in your time and place.

On atheism, your life, the lives of all other organisms, and the life of stars that provide heat and light to planets, will end eventually die in the heat death of the universe. In the end, it will not matter what we do, the universe will still end up cold, dark and inert.

So let’s re-cap the FACTS about Ruse’s atheistic worldview.

  • Are humans worth more (objectively) than cockroaches on atheism? The answer is no.
  • Is there any way humans ought to behave (objectively) on atheism? The answer is no.
  • Is there any purpose to life (objectively) on atheism? The answer is no.
  • Is there an objective standard of right and wrong on atheism? The answer is no.
  • Is discourse on what is “right” and “wrong” meaningful on atheism? The answer is no.
  • Is there free will so people can make moral choices on atheism? The answer is no.
  • Is there any reason to sacrifice your happiness for others on atheism? The answer is no.

Atheism is the worldview of people who want to escape from morality. They pre-suppose materialism in order to 1) fit in with the educated class and/or 2) justify immoral hedonism. Later, atheists invent pious myths to put up a fig leaf of moral virtue, e.g. – vegetarianism, yoga, recycling, voting for universal health care, etc. That’s atheism. There is no intellectual content to it. It’s not based on arguments and evidence. It’s just a long-running tantrum against parental/church authority, covered over with faddish causes to whitewash the absurdity of life without God.

My posts on why atheism cannot ground morality rationally are here.

Podcasts

Sean McDowell debates James Corbett on whether morality is grounded by atheism

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Brian Auten posted the audio a few milliseconds after the debate concluded!

Here is the MP3 file.

Sean’s case is similar to the one I make, but he only has 3 minimal requirements for morality.

First, he explains the difference between objective and subjective truth claims, and points out that statements of a moral nature are meaningless unless morality is objective. Then he states 3 things that are needed in order to ground objective morality.

  1. an objective moral standard
  2. free will
  3. objective moral value of humans

The question of the foundations of morality is without a doubt the easiest issue for beginning apologists to discuss with their neighbor. If you’re new, then you need to at least listen to his opening speech. He’s an excellent speaker, and his rebuttals are very, very smooth. The citations of atheist philosophers like Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, e.g. – to show that “religious” wars had nothing to do with religion, really hurt his opponent. He seems to cite prominent atheists like Thomas Nagel, Richard Taylor, Michael Shermer, etc., constantly in order to get support for his assertions. That took preparation. I can’t believe that McDowell is this calm in a debate situation.

When I listen to Frank Turek, he seems to struggle in his rebuttals. McDowell sounds like he foreknew exactly what his opponent would say and pre-wrote responses. He even had powerpoint slides made in advance for his rebuttals! I am not making this up – Corbett even remarked on it.

For those of you who want to understand how these things work, listen to the debate. There is a period of cross-examination if you like that sort of thing. I do!

EXTRA: