Who Says?

If the universe itself (as an entity distinct from ourselves) has little or nothing to say, where does that leave us? Who gets to decide the "right" and "wrong" of things if God hasn't got much to say?

The overly-easy answer is to say "no one"-- that there is no such creature as morality. This is the "obviously wrong" answer my philosophy professors always used to get into a snit about me playing devil's advocate for (and the one I presume people are thinking of when some pollster asks them whether atheists can be good people). It's the only moral code I've ever heard of whose logic is wholly consistent and universally applicable. Admittedly, that's because it has the same effect in moral logic problems as multiplying by zero has in mathematics: the product is always the same.

... Though frankly it seems to me that the lesson here is not to try to make a logic problem out of morality.

The better answer, and more in keeping with the fact that human beings do seem to have an innate moral capacity, is to take a step back and stop looking to the heavens for answers that will only ever come from the little bits of the universe walking around on two legs down here: the ape that stood up. Current thought on the subject analogizes the human moral capacity with our capacity for language: it's innate (absent a disability), but programmable. It's a biological "slot" that gets filled through cultural instruction and experience.

That this "slot" appears to exist should tell us something about the nature of human morality. Evolution doesn't work on the basis of celestial right and wrong; just go ask a tarantula hawk about the morality of using live tarantulas as larders for its babies (a process that makes gavage look positively humane). Evolution functions on the basis of what works. So, if our moral capacity is an evolved trait, that suggests that morality isn't about pleasing any god you care to name so much as it is about how we survive. We're social animals, so it's necessary for us to be able to function effectively as a group as well as looking out for our own personal genes. It doesn't take a great deal of imagination to see how a group of proto-humans with no innate compunctions about stealing from, cheating, and murdering each other would have trouble surviving to reproduce.

In essence, morality is about not doing ourselves in.

So, if the universe "communicates" through consequences and the key consequence of immorality appears to be a tendency not to survive as well, why do I say that the universe is silent?

Although our moral capacity appears to be innate, there is still a lot of room for us to develop different culturally and/or legally-enforced codes and weigh moral qualities differently. Few, if any, modern societies regard outright theft, treachery, or murder as morally right, at least when applied within that group's own bounds (groups of religious extremists, and I'm not only talking about extremist Muslims, here, apparently just sharply limit the circle of people they identify themselves with). However, those same societies differ greatly on subjects such as who should pay how much for public projects; whether intentionally "standing out from the crowd" is a celebration of individual identity or an unseemly, even arrogant display; and whether man's best friend is best served high-grade kibble or served in a fortifying autumn stew.

I say the universe is silent because, when it comes to a great many of the questions we disagree on, it is. Human societies have the privilege, and the burden, of finding their own answers to these questions. Some may have good consequences, some bad; most will serve up a blend of both. No one will be right about everything, all the time; the world doesn't work like that.

I say the universe is silent, also, because in the process of working through our issues, of finding a balance of policies and ideas that serves our purposes in our increasingly complicated world, it is essential, absolutely vital, that we resist the temptation to assert the mandate of heaven.

We are beings of subjective viewpoint; we cannot be otherwise. We absorb information through our senses, but we process it in the context of our own inner universes. Beliefs as to what God wants create their own reality. They require no evidence beyond the foundational documents of the faith, and they reshape the believer's understanding of the universe until that which contradicts the belief is automatically a misunderstanding, an error, or even a deliberate deception.

I am not saying that religions that look to an outside source for moral guidance are "bad." I am saying that they filter the believer's perceptions, sometimes to the point where the believer and the secular world occupy, in effect, different universes that just happen to overlap. From a practical, secular perspective, the results are problematic.

Even if God exists, His desires are obscure unless you are lucky enough to have the exact "right" god-- and of course, all believers consider their own god to be the right one.

The American founders had the right idea when they separated church and state. Human culture and human law are worldly artifacts to be arranged in accordance (we hope) with the function of this world. The alternative is to craft our lives in accordance with a vision of the universe at least partially detached from the one we have to live in, and damn the consequences.