Protesting the Abolition of Man
September 4, 2019
Earlier this year, Dennis Danielson gave the 22nd annual Weston Lecture at Augustine College in Ottawa, entitled Against the Ongoing Abolition of Man (video here).
Dennis Danielson is an intellectual historian who has written about literature, religion, and the history of science. He studied English Literature at Oxford and Stanford before teaching at the University of Ottawa and at UBC from 1986 to 2017.
His most recent book is entitled The Tao of Right and Wrong, of course invoking C.S. Lewis’ use of the Tao in the Abolition of Man. This book is a rejection of moral nihilism, and a recognition of the life-affirming moral realism founded in the Tao.
I will offer some thoughts on the lecture;
as is always the case with videos, I will likely not capture exact
statements, but hopefully I stay true to intent.
Danielson has done a form of a re-write of
Lewis’s classic work, offering what he calls a case for moral
realism. He writes of the trans-cultural or super cultural meanings of
right and wrong. By this he means, right and wrongs as recognized
across most major cultural traditions around the world. This idea
conforms nicely with Lewis’s work – as Lewis identifies in the Appendix of his book. It also is seen in the Golden Rule, versions of which are to be found throughout history and in many traditions.
What is the proposition that we must
oppose? Lewis called it subjectivism, others describe it as relativism
or even more broadly, naturalism. Danielson cites a book by Sean
Carroll, a theoretical physicist at the California Institute of
Technology: The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself. Danielson notes that this is exactly the kind of thing we must fight against.
Carroll declares that meaning, morality and
purpose are not built into the architecture of the universe; they
emerge as ways of talking about our human scale environment. Science
doesn’t care how we ought to behave, because the source of these values
isn’t the outside world; it is inside us. Carroll uses the term
“science” as he must: artificially limited to physical science – hence
providing the necessary presupposition for “proving” naturalism.
Carroll rejects what he calls “folk
ontology” – according to which meaning might be given by God. In its
stead, Carroll offers “poetic naturalism,” rejecting all other
possibilities and asks us to view meaning in the same way human beings
view other concepts that we invent.
When it comes to deep meaning and
principles of right and wrong, such philosophical naturalism demands a
search for something social, psychological, physical, etc. In other
words, it treats moral principles not truly as principles. But
principles are things that, by definition, come first.
One is reminded here of C.S. Lewis in The Abolition of Man:
You cannot go on ‘seeing through’ things for ever. The whole point of seeing through something is to see something through it. But a wholly transparent world is an invisible world. To ‘see though’ all things is the same as not to see.
Danielson cites another such book, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind,
by Yuval Noah Harari. Much of it is quite similar to the arguments
presented by Carroll. But one thing of note: per Harari, there is no
such thing as a human soul because scientists have examined the human
body and found no such thing.
This lack of scientific support is based on
premises and presuppositions that guarantee a lack of scientific
support; it is not based on evidence and a careful chain of
reasoning. Naturalists deny and cannot explain ends or purposes
inherent in human beings, yet every single one of us – including
physicists and anthropologists – have aims and goals. The very fabric
of our lives is teleological – purpose driven. Therefore, a failure to
account for the strong sense of purpose driven lives undermines the
naturalists.
Why is it that humans carry a different
ethical compass than do apes or lions? Much of what occurs as normal
behavior in the (non-human) animal kingdom, we look at as sins if done
by humans (or just immoral to you atheists). What can explain
this? Random atom smashing that benefitted (or cursed, depending on how
you look at it) humans? But then why are similar views held among
virtually all of humanity? This doesn’t seem random.
Lions and geladas. Danielson notes that
there is a lot of infanticide going on in such species, especially when
the king is taken down, as his children go with him. Why is it, when we
see such behaviors in non-human animals, we don’t think in terms of
good or bad and we accept that this is just the way it is? Why do we
not accept the same for humans? Clearly the “is” of nature is quite
different than the “ought” that humans accept. (Then again, with
abortion as acceptable as it is today in the human world…well, never
mind.)
Thomas Henry Huxley was known as “Darwin’s
Bulldog” for his advocacy of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Regarding
human origins as coming out of what he called “the cosmic process,”
Huxley had some thoughts on this matter. At some point in this
evolutionary process, the conscience of man revolted against the moral
indifference of nature. Thus, there is a sharp clash between the “is”
of nature and the “ought” that we apply to human beings.
Given such a clash, it seems somewhat
futile to regard that “ought” as arising from the somewhat empirical
“is.” As Huxley observes, cosmic nature is no school of virtue. Huxley
notes that evolution alone is incompetent to furnish any adequate
reason to offer why what we consider “good” is preferable to what we
call “evil.”
The Abolition of Man
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It isn’t empirical science that is to blame
for not being able to explain this gap – albeit those experts in
empirical science are the ones drawing attention to their own
shortcomings on the matter; it is the false assumption that if empirical
science cannot explain it, then nothing else can.
Danielson goes on to describe the standard
curricula in even elementary schools, teaching children that moral
judgements are relativistic. This is done subtly. For example,
students are prompted to distinguish fact from opinion. A fact is a
statement that can be proven.
Opinions are statements that can’t be
proven. Anything hinting at a moral judgement is considered opinion, as
“good,” “bad”, and “should” can’t be proven. But the curricula is not
so blunt and direct. Instead, it offers statements like “dogs make
better pets than cats,” or “chocolate ice cream is better than
vanilla.” These are opinions.
Thus, children are being educated via
comparative statements of pets and ice cream to unconsciously accept one
side of a controversy that they have never been taught to even consider
as a controversy at all. Hence, they accept principles that are
inherently toxic to human flourishing and even a human future.
Thus far, Danielson has not at all appealed
to Christianity – just as Lewis does not in his Abolition of Man. Yet
toward the end of the lecture, he offers a homework assignment: re-read
Romans chapters 1 – 3. In the absence of moral realism, what sense do
those chapters make? What do they say to a culture, to a society, to
youth soaked in a philosophical materialism and naturalism that today
dominate the public square and choke off both Christians and
non-Christians, or to treat good and evil as nothing more than
biologically, culturally, and socially constructed entities?
What is found in these chapters? Here is a sampling from chapter 1:
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness, 19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
As is evident throughout all the major cultures and traditions of the world, throughout history at least since the Axial Age, man has been searching for God and man has come to accept some version of the Golden Rule. It has been made plain to all men.
28 Furthermore, just as they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge of God, so God gave them over to a depraved mind, so that they do what ought not to be done. 29 They have become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice.
Absent God – or, for the atheists and
agnostics in the audience, absent a transcendent and objective moral
order – there is no basis upon which to label something wicked, evil,
greedy or depraved. We apply no such labels to the non-human animals;
there is no reason to apply these to human animals. Evolution, as
Huxley offers, cannot explain it.
32 Although they know God’s righteous decree that those who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
It is certainly true in Western society
today: we know the good, yet do the evil and approve of those who do the
evil. And Western society is suffering a meaning crisis because of
this.
Conclusion
Why is an assertion of moral realism
necessary? Or as Lewis put it, a preparation for the Gospel? Danielson
asks: Without an assumption of moral realism, what is the
Gospel? Danielson says that he thinks he knows what the Gospel is, and
he is convinced that naturalism and relativism are not Good News.
I will suggest: without moral realism – or
objective moral values – we are left with the whims of society. And as
we look around us today, tell me: what makes “anything goes” a lie when
it comes to acceptable behavior?
I say nothing. Every day we are confronted
with more depravities, which by tomorrow we come to accept as
normal. Every day we are stepped on further by the boot of the state,
with no argument available to us from Natural Law or any other solid
philosophical foundation.
When every evil becomes acceptable and when the state’s boot has no hindrance to your face…tell me: what chance do we have to move toward liberty?
Reprinted with permission from Bionic Mosquito.
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