And where were you educated?

by Eszter Hargittai on January 26, 2004

Last week in class I asked my students where we had all learned that it is illegal to kill people. [UPDATE 1/27/04 10:30am CST: Since the comments have gotten long and some may miss this clarification: this is not the exact wording of what I had said in class. I said something along the lines of “not supposed to kill people”. My question was not about legalities it was more general.] (Let’s set aside for the moment why this question would come up in a grad seminar on the Social Implications of Info and Communication Technologies.. the question seemed to make sense at the time.:) When I posed the question I wasn’t sure about my own answer to it so I was especially surprised when I saw that most students (of the eight in this class) had an immediate response: church.

Having grown up in Hungary where religious education in the 70s and 80s was not part of most people’s upbringing, I’ve always been fascinated by how prevalent it seems in so many Americans’ lives. I am curious whether my question would have led to similar responses by people who grew up elsewhere (or even others in the US). For me this has always been a bit of a paradigm shift. It’s also an example of why I think it’s helpful for social scientists (or anyone else for that matter) to live in a different country at some point. It really helps in understanding how much social and cultural context can matter in how people view and understand the world.

By the way, my own candidates for a response to my question would have been school, family or the media not that I recall any specific instances of learning about this particular matter. Figuring out where people learn things that seem so intrinsically obvious later is a fascinating subject. It is to me anyway which might explain why I became a sociologist.:)

{ 59 comments }

1

Ophelia Benson 01.26.04 at 5:32 pm

I’m fascinated by how prevalent religion is in many Americans’ lives too, but also horrified. I’m an American, but a secular, atheist one. I don’t think I learned anything in church (a place I did find myself in a few times in childhood, but very few) or via religion in other ways. I could be wrong, but I don’t think I did.

2

Dan Goodman 01.26.04 at 6:00 pm

I think I learned it by reading mystery novels.

3

Andrew Edwards 01.26.04 at 6:11 pm

I think probably from television.

4

Vance Maverick 01.26.04 at 6:30 pm

What kind of church are they going to? The Episcopalians taught me that killing is wrong, but I don’t remember them emphasizing that it is illegal.

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eszter 01.26.04 at 6:40 pm

Good point, Vance. I think my wording in class may have been more general along the lines of when/where/how did we learn that we’re not supposed to kill people.. or something like that. I don’t remember the exact wording but it was not about legalities per se. I should have been more precise in the original entry, apologies.

6

PanJack 01.26.04 at 6:53 pm

Those who believe they learned their ethics/morality from Christian churches often see morality as a list of things not to do (or to do). And no justification for such a rule (other than it was commanded by God) is given

Growing up in a non-christian/non-relegious household, I was taught that people were worthy of being treated with dignity and not killing someone what derived from that basic premise.

7

Mark 01.26.04 at 7:07 pm

Eszter: What class do you teach? What is the age of your students?

8

Ophelia Benson 01.26.04 at 7:21 pm

“Those who believe they learned their ethics/morality from Christian churches often see morality as a list of things not to do (or to do). And no justification for such a rule (other than it was commanded by God) is given”

Just so, and that’s the problem with religion-based morality (well one of the problems) which is why it is so perennially irritating to hear ‘relgious leaders’ referred to as if they were especially qualified to speak on moral questions. The reality is they’re especially disqualified.

9

Carlos 01.26.04 at 7:26 pm

It’d be interesting to compare the “killing is wrong” answers to the “killing is illegal” answers, though I’d hate to design that study.

Thinking on it, I wonder if there would be a third category of answers, for “killing is Not Done”.

10

maurinsky 01.26.04 at 7:32 pm

One of my earliest memories is from when my family moved to Ireland for 6 months, when I was about 3-4 years old. When we drove up to my grandmother’s house, I saw that she had chickens, and I raced after the baby chickens because I had to touch one. Well, I caught one, and I touched it a little too hard – I basically squeezed it to death in my chubby 3 year old hands. This memory is so vivid because I remember how horrible I felt when I realized that this little chicken wasn’t going to run around any more, or grow up and lay eggs. So I guess I would say I learned that God doesn’t want us to kill at church, but I learned that killing was wrong on my grandmother’s farm in Tuam.

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eszter 01.26.04 at 7:54 pm

Mark – my students are (I think) mostly in their early twenties, some perhaps in their mid- twenties and thirties. It’s a grad seminar on the Social Implications of Communication and Information Technologies. As I said in my post, I realize the connection between the question and the topic of the course is not obvious, but the Q made sense at the time.:)

OB – You remind me of how annoying I find it when people equate religiosity with morality. I sometimes get the impression that when people find out you’re not particularly religious they make a leap to concluding that you can’t be moral. But in fact, my impression is that many non-religious people are probably much more moral in their daily behaviors than many religous people.

Maurinsky – It’s interesting because your example is about animals not people (a distinction clearly more important to some than others), but it sounds like your experience taught you about both.

Carlos – “killing is wrong” could get pretty complicated when you start considering euthanasia and such.. it would be interesting to compare how many would say “killing is wrong” but would then say euthanasia is okay. (There is research about survey instruments that shows that people don’t often make the leap to diverse types of specifics when asked about generalities.)

12

Breaker 01.26.04 at 7:55 pm

Panjack is misinformed about Christianity and the Christian approach to morality – as are some who self-identify as Christians.

All Christian morality grows out of love of certain kinds.

The basic expression of love is love of God expressed in the Jewish Torah text of Deuteronomy – the Shema. In a nut shell this is the command to love God and teach your children to love God too.

Jewish tradition at the time of Christ emphasized a system of laws – religious based dos and don’ts – which to a Christian is missing the point of love (no adverse reflection on Jews, then or today, intended).

When Christ was asked by a religious lawyer as to which commandment was the greatest, this was supposed to be a trick question – the reason being the proposition that if all law comes from God, then all law must be equal in greatness and emphasis.

Christ responded by stating that the first commandment is to love God and that the second commandment, equal to the first, is to love your neighbor as yourself. Christ was then asked who is your neighbor and he responded – essentially everyone whether you like them or not.

Now, this commandment to love others more than yourself is a challenge to put aside the ultimate hubris – selfishness. It is selfishness that is charaterized as the ultimate wrong – sin – that is putting yourself ahead of or in substitution for God. I did not learn the essence of Christian love, and the source of Christian morality, until I became a Christian and submitted my selfishness to love of God and neighbor. The touble is that no Christain is very good at carrying these commandments out. That is why we must rely on the saving grace of Christ to wipe away our failures.

I learned the legality of killing in law school. Yes it is legal to kill – in self defense – in war – the state in executions – for example.

Now, as to the source of secular and religious morality, I agree with C.S. Lewis that all humans have an innate sense of right and wrong – fairness and unfairness.

You can see this on any playground with children of early age.

I would also say that my American sense of morality was sourced, to some extent, in Western movies – good guys wear white hats and bad guys wear black hats – good guys kill bad guys only when necessary to prevent a wrong and bad guys kill to support greedy gains.

13

Vance Maverick 01.26.04 at 7:56 pm

One of the consequences of going to church was that I heard the Decalogue long, long before it would have occurred to me to kill anyone. (And even longer before it would have occurred to me to commit adultery.) So church got there first more or less by chance.

Panjack and Ophelia, the justification you prefer sounds to me a lot like the Golden Rule — which was treated as pretty fundamental, too.

14

harry 01.26.04 at 8:03 pm

My question is: what kind of parents do they have, who failed to impress this basic knowledge on them, leaving it to church to do it? Wierd.
My answer to the question is, clearly, my parents.
BUT I suspect that my overall left-wing morality comes from two other sources in addition — i) primary school where we were taught that it was important to share, and that no-one deserved better treatment just because they were cleverer; and 1960’s and 70’s children’s TV in general, and Dr. Who in particular. There, I’ve said it, and it can’t be unsaid.

15

Breaker 01.26.04 at 8:11 pm

Harry – sharing regardless of “cleverness” – sounds to me like this is the source of the left’s embrace of socialism and redistribution of wealth.

16

Stu 01.26.04 at 8:28 pm

Illegal or wrong, either way, the military is going to have a problem with these church-educated people, whoever they are.

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Keith M Ellis 01.26.04 at 8:40 pm

Those who believe they learned their ethics/morality from Christian churches often see morality as a list of things not to do (or to do). And no justification for such a rule (other than it was commanded by God) is given“—panjack

I’m naturally inclined to see this as a bad thing—but then my critical instincts kick in.

Firstly, I agree with Aristotle that habituation should precede comprehension. Secondly, as we all know, there has always been a lot of dispute that moral philosophy can be rationaly justified.

Finally, assuming there is a God that provides an absolute moral standard, then it doesn’t matter whether the rule is justifiable…it just is.

There’s a reason I’m arguing what’s apparently a contrary position on this matter. I’m an atheist, while my sister who is very dear to me is an evangelical minister/missionary. She’s well aware and has to explain to others, that an atheist can be a moral person. Conversely, however, I think it is a big mistake to undervalue how important religious faith can be to forming both the context and the environment in which a morality exists.

This may come as no surpise given what I mention above; but, to me, I am more confident in the morality of actively religious people and atheists than I am of the irreligious agnostic.

18

PZ Myers 01.26.04 at 8:40 pm

My first thought on reading that anecdote was…baloney. What we have in America is a culture that rewards the pretense of religion, and kids learn early that you will win approval for giving credit to your church, whether it actually did any good or not.

I can’t remember a specific moment or teaching that taught me killing is bad. It’s a consequence of progressive socialization with multiple inputs. Any time someone tries to tell you that X caused Y, where X is one simple thing and Y is a complex and variable thing constructed over years, it should be safe to say that they are oversimplifying.

19

oli 01.26.04 at 8:44 pm

” I agree with C.S. Lewis that all humans have an innate sense of right and wrong – fairness and unfairness.

You can see this on any playground with children of early age.”

Kids in a playground show an innate sense of fairness? My first remembered notion of morality in a playground was the robotic repetition of the phrase ‘Its good to share’. This was always an excuse to snatch the football and run away.

20

Breaker 01.26.04 at 9:15 pm

PZ Meyers says:

What we have in America is a culture that rewards the pretense of religion, and kids learn early that you will win approval for giving credit to your church, whether it actually did any good or not.

This statement is utterly without support and is false. Depending on where you are located in America, this could be true – for example in small towns in the Bible belt. Yet Eszter teaches at Northwestern – a place where it is not likely to be popular to be a Christian or influenced by Christianity (I am extrapolating that “church” implies Christian influences). Other places in the United States are overtly hostile to Christians, such as Berkeley CA. Other than that I do not significantly disagree with the remainder of your comment.

Oli – I assume that you have not raised your own children.

21

Breaker 01.26.04 at 9:19 pm

PZ Meyers says:

What we have in America is a culture that rewards the pretense of religion, and kids learn early that you will win approval for giving credit to your church, whether it actually did any good or not.

This statement is utterly without support and is false. Depending on where you are located in America, this could be true – for example in small towns in the Bible belt. Yet Eszter teaches at Northwestern – a place where it is not likely to be popular to be a Christian or influenced by Christianity (I am extrapolating that “church” implies Christian influences). Other places in the United States are overtly hostile to Christians, such as Berkeley CA. Overall, a “pretense” of religion gets one nowhere in popular American society, certainly nowhere in the religion-hostile environment of our universitites. Other than that I do not significantly disagree with the remainder of your comment.

Oli – I assume that you have not raised your own children.

22

Dick Thompson 01.26.04 at 9:30 pm

One of my early and determinative memories was a Life photograph from the war in China: bodies stacked up by a railroad siding. Another was the heart-in-a-casket sequence in Disney’s Snow White (I was five). So I learned that killing people is problematical, and as Carlos suggested, Not Done in civilized circumstances.

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jeremy hunsinger 01.26.04 at 10:15 pm

killing humans isn’t illegal or necessarily wrong, that varies significantly, though varieties of killing a human are be illegal in certain circumstances, such as murder, etc.. Killing is even occasionally sanctioned by the state, religions, etc.

I’m not sure that i ever learned that killing a human was wrong or necessarily illegal, I grew up on a farm, there is alot of killing of things, what I learned was that killing or hurting anything with bad intentions or without good reason or justification was wrong. It is a more generalized rule that includes killing. And i know i learned when i was young that there are certain times when you were justified in killing another human.

I do know that I didn’t learn anything like this in church, because I know that I still don’t precisely know the 10 commandments, though i do know many variations on a few of them depending on the translations.

this might then have a significant variation depending on the cultural institutions students have available to them. I just think about the cultural religious jihad that has been CBS and it is pseudo religious based programs that have been going on since my youth and i reflect that when combined with certain other reaffirming institutions, certain messages tend to ‘stick’.

24

Arthur Wouk 01.26.04 at 10:27 pm

Yes, television.

I’m a church-goer, but I’ve never had an experience where someone said murder is wrong. That’s just sort of fundamental – one of the things that everyone knows. Which means we learn it from television, where we learn much about social norms.

The thing that churches “teach” these days seems to be forgiving yourself, not being so hard on yourself, taking it easy, giving up anxiety, etc. Murder is much to heavy a topic.

25

Sebastian Holsclaw 01.26.04 at 10:52 pm

“I agree with C.S. Lewis that all humans have an innate sense of right and wrong – fairness and unfairness.

You can see this on any playground with children of early age.”

Kids in a playground show an innate sense of fairness? My first remembered notion of morality in a playground was the robotic repetition of the phrase ‘Its good to share’. This was always an excuse to snatch the football and run away.”

That wasn’t C.S. Lewis’s point about children and fairness. I haven’t read the essay in question for years, but I believe he suggested that children on a playground have an innate and fairly refined sense of being wronged when things are not fair.

26

Breaker 01.26.04 at 11:15 pm

Sebastian: I am referring to Lewis’ “Mere Christianity”. I do not recall Lewis discussing children on a playground. That allusion is mine. In my experience, watching children play – my boy and his friends – fairness and fairplay were present prior to, and developed through, play.

As I recall, Lewis appeals to the reader’s independent sense of fairness as a God given quality to humans to begin building his Christian apologetic. I agree with Lewis that fairness is innate, hardwired, to humans. This innate characteristic can be destroyed, warped or may be lacking in some of our kind, but I believe it to be almost universal. As is sin – ie the desire to separate self from, or substitute self for, God.

Lewis then argues inductively that the innate sense of fairness must originate from some extra-human source and that the source is God. Lewis then discusses his observations of almost universal human mores and that various religions get things closer to right as the source of moral authority, but only Christianity gets things absolutely right. Like you, it’s been a while since I read the book.

27

Adam Kotsko 01.26.04 at 11:28 pm

I love discussions where, after 2000 years of tradition, one guy comes along and shares The Christian Perspective on a given issue. It’s even better when he (always he) quotes C. S. Lewis.

I am a Christian, I suppose (I go to church, pray, am enrolled in an MA program at a seminary), and I have to say that my experience was much different from everyone else’s: I never learned that murder was wrong. When I came across this post, I was floored that this was apparently a common assumption.

28

Breaker 01.27.04 at 12:01 am

Adam: Christians differ about many topics. The cabal of differences in Christian theology is one of the off-putting aspects of Christianity to non-Christians. I do not believe in litmus test Christianity, however there are basics that most Christians agree on. If you disagree, then express the terms of your disagreement. In any event, all Christians and most non-Christians would agree that taking the life of another human without legal justification by a reckless or intentional act is wrong – that’s murder and it’s wrong. This is not an assumption, it’s absolutely wrong as a matter of civil law and human morality.

29

sidereal 01.27.04 at 12:41 am

“Kids in a playground show an innate sense of fairness?”

Yes, as do primates. I’d recommend modern cognitive science over CS Lewis for the hows and whys, though.

“I’m fascinated by how prevalent religion is in many Americans’ lives too, but also horrified.”

I’m fascinated by how prevalent auto racing is in many Americans’ lives, but I can’t say it horrifies me. And it’s probably substantially less productive and redemptive than religion. Odd that religion creates such an aversive reaction in you and so many other atheists. You can’t deny that it’s an extraordinarily positive force many peoples’ lives.

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Adam Kotsko 01.27.04 at 12:49 am

Breaker,

I don’t see how a Christian can claim that we have an innate sense of right or wrong, in light of original sin. If we insist on claiming that the innate capacity exists, then we have to say in the next breath that we’re virtually incapable of acting on it — which is effectively the same thing as claiming it wasn’t there in the first place.

Also, in re: C. S. Lewis — I think there’s a difference between an argument being well-written, learned, and witty and an argument being convincing. The enterprise of apologetics seems to be dead in the water from the get-go, simply because it’s never going to make sense to believe that someone rose from the dead. It’s also remarkable that the moral consequences that Christians have drawn from the Christ-event have been… virtually indistinguishable from the moral consequences of other religions.

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Keith M Ellis 01.27.04 at 1:53 am

It’s also remarkable that the moral consequences that Christians have drawn from the Christ-event have been… virtually indistinguishable from the moral consequences of other religions.”—Adam Kotsko

I deeply disgree with this comment in many different respects. I recognize that the point you think you are making is that no religions seem to be of the baby-eating, thieving-from-neighbors, kill-ones-parents sort; but that aside (and it is disputable, too, I think), you’re wrong.

Possibly the best and most apt example of this is to contrast Judaism with Christianity, which differ greatly in their moral consequences. The doctrine of salvation greatly changes the moral calculus—not to the better, it can be argued. Alternatively, Christianity is essential mystical; and a great many traditions connect mysticism with a transformative morality that they argue is more true. These differences have real-world ramifications.

32

Breaker 01.27.04 at 2:08 am

Adam: Original sin was conveyed in connection with humankind eating of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. By doing this, humankind sought to take, or was duped into taking, on characteristics of God – discernment of good and evil. In other word, Genesis, states the very paradox as fact that you cannot reconcile. Humankind can act to do good and refrain from bad – just not all the time. No human – except one – has been perfect in the good/bad arena. To say that humans cannot be perfect is not to say that humans cannot be right some of the time or even most of the time. Yet, in God’s view, perfection is necessary to avoid the adverse consequences of God’s judgment – death.

Further, humankind attempts over and over to place God in the position of accountability for human justice. This is the paradox of Job and the paradox of the Psalms of lament, a paradox very critically discussed by the Teacher. God on the other hand just does not work things out on human terms and humans do not understand God’s ways.

Note that I do not suggest Lewis’ apologetics as convincing to non-Christians, only that I agree with some of his premises attributable to the source of moral perception in humans both Christian and non-Christian. I fully accept that only the Holy Spirit can ultimately effect a conversion to Christianity, yet Christ gives Christians the Great Commission to spread the Word of God, so we do play some part.

To accept Christ at Christ’s words, as Lewis does aptly point out, is to accept radical propositions beyond human comprehension or reason. I agree that no application of human logic can convince anyone of the resurrection. Either Christ is accepted as is, or he was a raving lunatic – as Lewis points out.

It is wholly unremarkable that the moral teachings of other religions or atheists seeking to live a moral life are similar if not the same. Again, original sin was contracted through obtaining this very capacity to discern good and evil. Conversion to Christianity does not make any human better or more moral than any non-Christian. Maturing Christians just have more of an awareness of how truly sinful they are, and continue to be. The paradox here is that Christians are expected to be “better” or more moral than non-Christians by non-Christians, but Christians are in reality observed to be no better. That’s because, Christianity alone does not make a human better, it only gives the Christian hope of a pardon from Christ if one truly believes. If one truly believes, then the person strives to be a better person in gratitude to Christ realizing the ultimate failure in the eyes of God without the redemption of Christ.

This is far a field of a secular forum, so Adam, I will not continue this discussion with you here but I will be happy to continue by email. You can go to my site to get my email address.

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David W. 01.27.04 at 3:20 am

I simply learned it was wrong to deliberately hurt other people from my mother and father before I entered kindergarden. (Having a bratty younger sister was a part of that process, BTW.) They weren’t trying to raise a precocious lawyer, but it didn’t take me long to figure out that this should be generalized to include others outside my family.

My sense of fairness was inborn, which I think requires no further explanation on my part. For those who do, see Darwin.

34

raj 01.27.04 at 3:31 am

Um, I haven’t read all the comments, but the fact is that it isn’t illegal to kill people. And in more than a few instances–war, for example–killing people has been lauded.

It is illegal to murder people, or to commit manslaughter. But that is a very different issue.

I recently ran across a comment on “thou shalt not kill” and the “community” of people–the “in group–that “thou shalt not kill.” The definition of the “in group” determines the difference between murder/manslaughter and lauded killing. It would take a bit of research to locate that comment, though.

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msg 01.27.04 at 7:08 am

Children have an innate sense of being “wronged” when they don’t get what they want. Some of them eventually graduate from that to a larger sense of fairness, imposed from without, learned from the group and the family, some don’t.

With all due respect to Ophelia Benson, whose concision and acuity are admirable, and whose secular atheism is closer to my own spiritual position than most any of the others here, these religions, and their “leaders” are the source of morality. Without them there’s only the pragmatic need for co-operative social order. The idea that there’s some “thing” called “morality” that functions like a universal physical principle comes directly from religion and nowhere else.
Methods of sharing the burdens of mundane living account for most of the rules we think of as moral code.
I have to watch my stuff too much of the time to get anything done, if stealing to acquire is no different than retail trade. If killing people is simply a matter of having the desire, the necessary force, and the opportunity, and no other parameters exist, we’re all in a very hostile jungle so filled with danger we’ll all burn-out from stress at a very young age.
We make these rules because they benefit us in the majority, most of the time. Out of that mutuality come the great documents of history.
Religions function in much the same way. Mutual assistance for individual and group survival.

Morality has a three-stage schema:

1. In the family, where a child (ideally) learns from mistakes, so that things that would be criminal or taboo, or crippling or fatal, elsewhere, are governed and redirected, and the potential consequences in the non-familial world are explained and prepared for; the possibility of virtual action and consequence, an artificial version of the unforgiving “real” played out within the context of the family in society, where the child is a vital member of the unit.There are more than a few people whose childhoods were scarred by the responsibility, such as it was, for the death of a friend or sibling, but whose guilt was absolved for lack of intent.

2. In the community, where mistakes have consequences that are part of a larger code and are, depending on the community, equally dispensed among members, impartially, with greater or less distinction of intent. Manslaughter being distinct from capital murder, though the dead stay just as dead.

And,
3. virtually ignored in “Western” Judeo-Christian societies, the world itself, the “natural” one, outside the controlling boundaries of human code and intention. In that world a mistake has consequences regardless of who or why it was made. And interestingly enough, in that world an accident has the same consequence as an intentional act, all other variables being equal. Nature doesn’t care if you meant to start the fire, if you’re poisonous to eat or just look like it, if you kill your brother because he wouldn’t feed you. In the natural world accidents can bring great rewards and terminal loss and there’s no reference to intent, ever. It doesn’t matter why you did something, at all. Nature doesn’t care if you’re “crazy” or logical or smart or dumb or mean or kind. An earthquake will undo all that. Or it won’t. Craziness can have survival value, it can also be detrimental. Meanness and kindness as well. Logic can lead easily to crippling despair.
Religion is a survival strategy for religionists, and it works very effectively to that end.

So, most “moral” positions on killing people are not about what you would think, it’s not about the death of another human so much as it’s about the intent to kill.
This is vividly apparent in the Washington sniper case. In something like three weeks, he murdered 10 people, throwing the area in which he operated into hysterical panic, and raising anxiety levels dramatically in the rest of country. In that same period a minimum of 30 people were killed on the highways of the same area; more, but not less, depending on the necessarily arbitrary boundaries. Much more if you include everywhere people were upset by the shootings. The acceptance of what were random deaths, equal in every other aspect but the intent on the part of the killer, makes it obvious the dead were not the issue, so much as the agency of their dying.

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Keith M Ellis 01.27.04 at 9:12 am

The acceptance of what were random deaths, equal in every other aspect but the intent on the part of the killer, makes it obvious the dead were not the issue, so much as the agency of their dying.—msg

This is what I say about the Holocaust as compared to other genocides. I do think that also pure numbers, when large enough, make a qualitative difference; but my sense is that the Holocaust is distinct because of the combination of the magnitude coupled with intent and that intent (or motivation, or point of view) as expressed via method.

these religions, and their “leaders” are the source of morality. Without them there’s only the pragmatic need for co-operative social order. The idea that there’s some “thing” called “morality” that functions like a universal physical principle comes directly from religion and nowhere else.—msg

Maybe and maybe not. There have been many attempts to build a materialist foundation for an absolutist morality. Whether they’ve succeeded or not is arguable. I’m just not convinced of the perils of moral relativism. I’m not convinced because, first of all, (almost) no one’s really a relativist. As a practical matter, we’re all absolutists. Secondly, I don’t really think that a strong relativist position means what absolutists think it means. That is to say, both the vulgar relativists and the absolutist critics of relativism have deeply misunderstood the physical theories that have played such a strong role in influencing our culture in this regard. Relativity denies an absolutist description of the universe as a whole and a single privileged point of view of an event; but it doesn’t at all do away with the idea that one can know something about the universe. It doesn’t do away with “truth”. More to the point, in a roundabout way, it greatly has furthered our understanding of the true nature of the universe. And since hardly anyone is experiencing the universe from a physical perspective that is divergent enough from someone else’s for these discrepancies to be apparent, as a practical matter we live in the Newtonian, non-relativistic universe. Even those NASA scientists with their Mars probes are using Newtonian, not Einsteinian, physics in plotting their trajectories. (They’re actually not truly using Newtonian physics, either, as a three-body problem is too difficult for us to completely solve. Sorry, I’m digressing.)

Similarly, I don’t think that hardly anyone experiences the moral universe under such divergent conditions that moral “relativity” is that apparent. I think whatever relativistic effects there are are swamped right now by simple ignorance. I’m pretty much arguing that a utilitarian basis for morality is as good as a metaphyiscal absolutism. Maybe not. But I have trouble with glib pronouncements that the only real basis for morality is metaphysics.

I also would like to point out that reading Plato is illuminating, since Socrates really, really doesn’t want to appeal to a metaphysics for a morality (although eventually he does), and he has quite a bit of success demonstrating the inevitability of morality without appealing to a metaphysical authority. There’s not a few Sophists in the dialogues that make essentially the argument you’re making (although often from the perspective of “might makes right” since they don’t believe there is an absolutist morality).

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Scott Martens 01.27.04 at 9:39 am

Children do not have an innate sense of right and wrong, and I’m shocked that anyone who’s ever been in a playground would think so. What they do have a very well developed sense of what they can and can’t get away with, and that is something you can see children learning almost from the moment that they’re born. As soon as some morally unacceptable practice becomes socially feasible – when conditions exist that will enable you to get away with it – young children will almost immediately give it a shot. This encompasses not only refusing to share and taking things from others, but extends to acts of considerable violence. Ultimately, they develop a sense of guilt, or some of them do anyway, that serves as a restraint in lieu of social stigma, but there is no way that guilt is innate.

In answer to the original question, I don’t think anyone ever gets told directly that killing people is wrong. They realise well before they get to the murderous stage that acts of personal transgression get punished by their peers. They find out that it’s illegal only later when at some stage in life they are exposed to the whole concept of police, courts and legal systems.

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Biff Boffo 01.27.04 at 9:43 am

Other places in the United States are overtly hostile to Christians, such as Berkeley CA.

Having attended a liberal Christian church here in lovely Berkeley for three years now, and having found it to be one of the most wonderfully accepting places I’ve ever lived in regards to my faith, I would suggest that your above statement:
A) Is less than factual.
B) Is reflective of conveinient but shallow regional stereotypes.
C) Does not match my experiences, or those of the majority of my fellowship.
D) All of the above.

Mix & match for the answer you prefer.

Thanks,
—Biff

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Chris Bertram 01.27.04 at 9:51 am

_Children do not have an innate sense of right and wrong, and I’m shocked that anyone who’s ever been in a playground would think so._

I’m puzzled why anyone should think that issue settled by observing playground behaviour. My own, highly developed, sense of right and wrong — whether innate or not — is compatible with some really “quite”:https://www.crookedtimber.org/archives/001077.html bad behaviour from time to time. (And sometimes I don’t even feel guilty.)

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Alison 01.27.04 at 10:29 am

Children do not have an innate sense of right and wrong

But can’t you remember being a child and having a sense of right and wrong? Can’t you remember as a little child making someone cry (say) and feeling sorry, feeling that you had done something wrong? I’m distinguishing this from feeling frightened that someone might hear the crying and come and tell you off. I can remember feeling that too, of course.

In fact some of my earliest memories of moral issues are dislike of Bible stories (Noah’s ark, Abraham and Isaac etc.) because they violated my infant sense of morality.

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Keith M Ellis 01.27.04 at 11:03 am

I agree that the “golden rule” easily arises from empathy, and I think that empathy is a natural human emotion. I do think that a elemental sense of morality arises in children in this manner.

But that empathy, even for adults, is normally highly selective. With children, it can be very irregular or apparently incoherent. I think a lot of the typical progression of moral development—within and outside the religious context—is the normalization of that empathy and the abstraction of its implications.

I don’t think it’s probably accurate to claim that young children are completely amoral. Rather, I suspect that their morality is capricious and solipsistic.

Not unlike that of the Judeo-Christian God. Oops…did I say that out loud or did I just think it? Well, I couldn’t resist.

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eszter 01.27.04 at 4:33 pm

FYI I added an update to the original post:
[UPDATE 1/27/04 10:30am CST: Since the comments have gotten long and some may miss this clarification: this is not the exact wording of what I had said in class. I said something along the lines of “not supposed to kill people”. My question was not about legalities it was more general.]

I appreciate the interesting comments. I realize there are contexts in which it is not illegal to kill people. The rights and wrongs of killing and various deaths isn’t really the focus of this class nor was it the point of my question to the class. The context was more about where/when/how we learn about some things that we are generally expected to know.

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Ophelia Benson 01.27.04 at 5:09 pm

Yes, that’s what I took the question to be about. When and where do we learn what we learn. I don’t remember where I learned any rules against killing. I don’t think it was at church, as I said, but I also don’t remember learning it anywhere else.

I wonder if those people who said they learned it at church were really just assuming they learned it there, rather than actually remembering that they did. Church is where you’re supposed to learn such things, so that must be where they learned it.

A lot of our memories are like that. Memory is tricky stuff.

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emjaybee 01.27.04 at 5:16 pm

But you know, I think I started learning about killing (and other moral issues) even before I could comprehend church, from fairy tales or folk tales. I think they are being overlooked in this discussion, but they play a pretty big role in many children’s early lives.

The evil characters in these tales usually want to kill the protagonist (ala Snow White) or oppress them (Cinderella). Or else, you get a protagonist who breaks a rule and must pay for it, as in the “animal husband” stories like Beauty and the Beast, East of the Sun West of the Moon, etc. Which are also connected to Cupid and Psyche, of course….

…leading to Greek myths, which I also consumed at that time. Although the Olympian politics could get a bit hard for a kid to understand. I do remember being a bit confused by the idea of “hubris”.

I suppose this all counts as socialization inside the home, but it’s interesting that it’s such an ancient form of it.

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Ophelia Benson 01.27.04 at 8:14 pm

Learning about killing, yes. But not explicitly that it’s wrong. That’s part of the background, part of the web, an assumption, but you don’t really learn it. What you learn is more that the protagonist doesn’t want to be killed – at least that’s how it seems to me. Now since we all identify with the protagonist, we all don’t want to be killed, so we’re glad that the killer is foiled and punished (sort of glad, though we don’t all rejoice at the torture aspect, Bettelheim to the contrary notwithstanding). So in that sense we learn that killing is wrong in that sort of primitive, I don’t want them to do it to me, way, which morality probably does boil down to. I’m Gretel, I’m afraid of the witch and her oven, I don’t want to be baked, so baking people is wrong.

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zizka 01.27.04 at 8:52 pm

Killing people is wrong? Damn. I must have been sick that day.

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msg 01.27.04 at 10:43 pm

I’m Hansel,with nothing to lose,sticking my bony finger out of the cage of forced education.
How many deaths were there a week on TV? I heard men die on the radio, watched them fallen from their horses to the dirt, bloodless and still, at the matinee every Saturday. Old enough war and murder mystery were constant themes in the entertainment cycle, and mortal danger a necessary component of play at home at school in movies and TV, and there was death in the more accurate world of Grimm’s and Andersen’s.
But death needs to be learned doesn’t it? Before you can learn what killing is? To then learn that killing is wrong. Isn’t that the process? Though we get the clues and remonstrations, the bits and pieces of the puzzle don’t come in order. I learned about death, as something real and permanent, at 7 when my grandmother died.
But by then I’d seen people die in films and TV dramas, read it, had it read it to me. The fifth commandment had been a memorized part of Sunday school for at least two years.
I’m trying to keep this brief, I think most of us take in what we think are verities almost osmotically, especially early simple truths, and believe everybody else does too.
Children with a fundamental sex education, that was delivered in a natural progression of curiosity and patient explanation, are shocked to find contemporaries in adolescence who know virtually nothing.
I learned, as I said, “Thou Shalt Not Kill”, meaning whatever that was that that came from would hurt you forever if you did what that was, but then I didn’t really learn what death, human death, was, until two years later.

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Sam 01.28.04 at 4:47 am

Well, it may be foolhardy to wander into a discussion already so involved, but I’ll offer this up: I think this all turns on what exactly you mean by wrong.

I think I probably appreciated that killing is wrong in the sense that I’d rather not have it done to me as soon as I could form the requisite thoughts. I think I had an innate sense of killing’s wrongness as a matter of equitable treatment equally innately, based on the kind of built-in fair-play rules discussed above.

But I think I learned through church, or through religious instruction (formally or at home), or through reading the Bible, that killing is wrong in the sense that it violates the moral order and offends God. (Of course, believing this presupposes believing in a God who can and will take offense at certain human acts and a moral order which undergirds created reality.)

Now, I don’t think I’ve exhuasted the potential meanings of wrong, but I think the ones I’ve listed are enough to demonstrate that those of us responding to this question are already working from several different perspectives.

Wrong is an innately moral concept, and in that sense I think we learn that a thing is wrong when we learn the moral system which defines what wrong is, even if a prior or parallel moral system contains what is, formally, the same proposition of wrongness.

I also have to say, coming from the perspective of a religious morality, that some of what’s been said above discounting religiously grounded moral systems is rather reductive and limited. I certainly can’t claim to understand fully the asserted coherence of an atheistic system of morality, but that doesn’t lead me to conclude that it’s arbitrary. I’d invite those posters who don’t personally believe in a religious (specifically a Christian) grounding of morality, to consider that there’s a lot more sophistication in the internals of the system than may have been apparent in your encounters with it.

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Ophelia Benson 01.28.04 at 6:42 pm

Sam,

Sure, I can easily accept that religious views of morality can be highly sophisticated. But does the sophistication rely on the religion? Or are the two independent. If one removed the deity from the moral reasoning in question, would the sophisticated elements go with it, or would they remain valid or persuasive?

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Sam 01.28.04 at 7:20 pm

Ophelia,

Good question. I’m going to answer from a Catholic perspective, since that’s the one I have, and I can’t pretend to understand some other system well enough to speak from it.

And from a Catholic perspective, the deity is necessary to make the moral system we have internally coherent. Some of what I’m calling the “sophisticated elements” wouldn’t survive without a deity and, moreover, the particular deity believed in by Catholics.

Two examples:
(1) Moral precepts derived from natural law require for their consistency that there be a creator, that the creator be intelligent (because the creator must have designed the creation), and that the creator be good (so that we can trust the moral precepts revealed in the design).

(2) Moral imperatives to virtue — basically anything that exceeds “Golden Rule” morality, and, for Catholics (and most if not all Christians), including the obligation to charity, the command to love one’s neighbor as one’s self, and exercise particular care for the poor and oppressed are sourced in a God who loves each and every human being unconditionally and calls us to aspire to that same love. And the moral attitude associated with the manner of practicing virtue is sourced explicitly in Christ.

As to the second part of the question:
Would the “sophisticated elements” remain valid and persuasive absent the deity?

As is evident from above, no — they wouldn’t. But that’s not a particularly damning indictment, as far as I’m concerned, because I’m not aware of any interesting arguments which are persuasive once one has falsified the axioms relied on by the reasoning.

And to bring all this back down to earth:
– You don’t need God/religion to judge that killing [murder] is wrong.
– You do need God/religion to believe that killing [murder] is wrong in certain meanings of the word wrong.
– But even if you do have God/religion in your moral system, that doesn’t mean that you’ve eliminated, or judged unpersuasive, all the secular reasons for reaching equivalent judgment, nor that having God in the system means that you’re reduced to a command morality with no deeper structure.

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Ophelia Benson 01.28.04 at 10:01 pm

Thanks for the answer, Sam.

Well of course one issue is obvious right away, as I’m sure you’re aware. A system that depends for internal coherence on believing that the creator that designed the world we live in is good – has some terrible moral problems.

“nor that having God in the system means that you’re reduced to a command morality with no deeper structure.”

Fair enough, but if one can get to the same conclusions with secular reasoning, then the deity becomes superfluous to the morality. People who are morally repelled by a deity who would design and create cancer, parasitic worms, sickle cell anemia, predators – evolution in general, in fact – tend to prefer a secular morality.

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msg 01.28.04 at 10:07 pm

Morality is goal-directed.
Things are wrong or not because of their relation to some other thing, external to the action that’s being judged.
Nothing is just wrong. It’s wrong because.
Because it harms or threatens to harm. Because it’s counter to the good of society, individual liberty, the salvation of all our souls, the continued existence of mammalian life, etc.
The goal of religious morality is placed in the hands of a deity or, in a more selfish version, the personal benefit of the individual after death.
The goal of secular morality is a muddle of conflicting definitions, much like democracy and other human institutions. But every single moral system we know has that timeline.
The weakness of secular morality is that extending the timeline eventually leads to the infinite, limitless by definition, and thus to vague and hard-to-define places.
The strength of religious, or metaphysical, morality is that by extension it leads directly to the unprovable presence of God, a kind of limited infinite.
That current religious teaching is solely for the benefit of its institutions, that the goal of present religious morality is no more than the physical survival of religionists, doesn’t change the logical structure of their arguments.
A game we were taught in early religion classes was to keep asking why something is the way it is, starting from any point. It leads to God, they said.
Morality is the same. Why is it wrong to steal? Why should we be decent to each other? And what if I don’t care whether that makes it nicer for all of us?
There is no secular argument against the sociopath, just force and cunning and good luck, the enforcement of public morality. Whereas the religious argument against the sociopath is that he’s evil, and therefore outside the bounds of decency and reciprocity, and therefore subject to force and cunning, and the bestowal on the enforcers of good luck, or grace, by a partisan deity. Cops know this better than priests.
The scale is great enough there’s an overlap between the secular and the metaphysical, up to a point. We’re at that point. Religious morality and secular morality are at a fork in the road, where at one time they ran parallel.
The conflicting impulses, toward one goal or the other, won’t be reconciled by discussion or by persuasion. Like all biological conflicts, they’ll be decided by a competition in which anything goes.
In other words, by a completely a-moral, or more accurately non-moral, contest, in which the tautology of the ‘best man’ having won will again play out. Because the winner gets to say who’s best.

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Sam 01.28.04 at 10:41 pm

Ophelia,

Second piece first:
I agree (generally) that if moral conclusions can be reached without appeal to a deity then said deity becomes superfluous — with regard to providing a grounding for morality, at least.

Of course, I also maintain that there are examples (such as the two I gave above) that demonstrate moral reasoning which of necessity can’t have the deity left out; and that “to provide a grounding for morality” isn’t the primary reason most believers believe in God anyway.

And in any system, you always have the problem of agreeing on axioms — whether the axioms call upon a deity or not.

Back to the first part — the Christian account always starts from being situated in a broken world (the brokenness, of course, originating in sin). So the repulsion occasioned by cancer, sickle cell anemia, etc. is not evidence that the Creator is not good, but rather evidence that we still apprehend the Creator’s primal good present behind the evil or brokenness.

Otherwise you have to explain why we feel such innate revulsion at so many things that are common in the world.

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msg 01.28.04 at 11:22 pm

Sam-
At the risk of intruding on what seems to have become a private comversation, “innate” has a very specific meaning.
It does not mean, as you seem to think by your use of it, “irrefutable” or foundational.
It means there from birth. From nativity. Born with it. Unlearned.
Proving the existence of moral revulsion as “innate”, rather than learned pre-verbally, might be just a little harder than simply saying it.

To a woman whose child has just been eaten by one, the tiger is evil; to the tiger mother feeding her cubs, the human child was no more than food.
Our human view of nature “red in tooth and claw” is partisan. We have, as a species, under the banner of “dominion”, driven every other major predator on earth to its knees, or to extinction.
Your “Creator” was created to justify that partisan view. That creation has necessitated a steadily more schizoid relationship with the natural world, leading to a desperate antagonism that now bids well to become fatal, to horrifying numbers of other species as well as to our own.
Those of us who do not subscribe to a tale of divine afterlife mourn that dying.
Anyone who speaks for God must answer for that as well as for the presence of cancer and fleas.
This would be my main, not innate, but deeply felt, point.

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ophelia benson 01.29.04 at 12:30 am

MSG, it’s not a private conversation at all. I just use names when I’m answering a specific post (when I remember) to avoid confusion, that’s all.

(So, Sam)

Sure, why questions may well lead back to a deity. But 1. then one can still ask why the deity, and 2. why questions may just not have an answer. The fact that a question can be asked doesn’t mean it has an answer.

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Sam 01.29.04 at 4:57 am

MSG,

I’m with Ophelia — it’s not meant to be a private conversation at all.

A couple of responses:
-I’m not claiming to speak for God; I’m just trying to offer an explanation for why I believe in God with reference to a reflection on moral systems and our learning of them.

I’m also with you on the meaning of “innate”, and was using it deliberately. I meant it in the sense of “unlearned”. I’m well aware that that’s a hard assertion to prove; the counter-position that such revulsion is learned is equally hard to prove. (cf all the posts above about the sense of fairness — an innate moral sense as evidence of conscience which was designed by a Creator is among the classic arguments for the Christian world view, with one of the most famous versions being C.S. Lewis’ in Mere Christianity.) I have concluded, based on my experience and reflection, that a moral sense rooted in a divinely-designed conscience (thus innate) is, on balance, the more complete and compelling explanation. (Of course, the presence of an innate conscience does not preclude the learned development and evolution of it.) Others obviously disagree.

If you’d like to take your examples in greater detail, I’d be happy to continue to talk about it, either here or in email (delete the -dot- in my address which is there for spam-armoring).

Ophelia, I agree with you on intellectual grounds about the nature of the questions. Reason alone can never justify religious faith. I’d offer that the questions that don’t have (reasoned) answers sometimes elicit a response from us that is deeper than reason.

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msg 01.29.04 at 7:09 am

Reason knows no depth. Mechanical thinking maybe, heartless logic definitely, but real reason excludes nothing, examines everything, and does not lie.

Moral revulsion in fr’instances:

A 27 year-old man wanting to court a fourteen year-old girl.

A live dog being held down and pricked with needles, after its skin has been peeled back to expose the muscle, just to see what happens.

The illusionary image of a healthy and sexually receptive young woman being used as a mask by a group of relatively unhealthy middle-aged men, to trick other men into voluntarily surrendering the fruits of their labor.

A member of a religious cult using access to a classroom to take advantage of the natural credulity of children who have been forced to submit to a program of regimentation and subliminal mind control.

An incapacitated cripple using wealth and political power to enslave stronger but more primitive people, disguising that enslavement by first destroying their homelands, thus forcing them to become slaves or starve.

A child flying in a magic suit of armor, crashing into a bridge abutment because she was unprepared for flying and had been raised in an environment void of real danger, so that she knew almost nothing about mortality.
A kingdom of immeasurable wealth filled with children who fly everywhere like that, in which the greatest cause of death for children is such flight, where that fact has been suppressed and concealed for decades, because the truth of it threatens the power of the men who run that kingdom.

The first example was commonplace a hundred years ago, and even more so further back in time. The rest are happening right now and right here, though some of the participants might describe them a little differently.

I’ll ask you to admit that there are people, a substantial number in the US today, who “know” that homosexuality is a revolting practice. That they know this because of the nauseated feeling they get when they have to think about it.
And I’ll ask you to admit further that for most of them it’s unquestionably “innate”; they weren’t taught this, they were born knowing it.
That same illusion/delusion is operating in all seemingly intrinsic moral constructs. It’s naive to think otherwise. The racist outrage at integration in the 1960’s South was fueled by that same nauseated sense of violated moral rightness.
I’ve seen kids from homes that were savage and brutal places, ruled solely by power. Their “morality” is right out of that early template. That they themselves will be labeled and branded as evil or unfit just compounds the tragedy of their lives.

We learn more than we know, far more than what we’re taught.

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Keith M Ellis 01.29.04 at 8:37 am

You assume so much, msg.

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Cleve Blakemore 02.02.04 at 2:15 am

You poor eggheads are plain evidence of the incredible cognitive wasteland that occupies the IQ range between 110 and 140.

Not a single one of you understands yourselves well enough to use biological game theory to comprehend how much of your behaviour is unconscious, instinctive and innate.

The inhibition against killing is particularly strong in the amity/enmity balance in people descended from colder climates where human life was too precious to spend frivolously and group cooporation was high in survival value. The inhibition weakens biologically the closer you move to the equator in ancestry.

Religion is a convenient codification of the inhibitory potentials present at birth, like language itself is a codification of the verbal potential in the infant brain. It permits gene expression to flow into a nice smooth channel with a tradition and an end goal.

I say confidently, none of you has “learned” anything since the day your were born, particularly as to your own nature or the origins of your drives. Your strange crypto marxist drivel is proof only that you have never, ever really understood anything, beginning with yourselves and extending to the entire universe around you in one big goofy primate fog of misunderstandings.

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