Conservative-but-sane writer Ross Douthat has an interesting recent column which tackles a question that I’ve wrestled with often: why be good?

The column is actually a response to an article that scientist/atheist Jerry Coyne wrote in response to a previous column Douthat penned espousing a traditional Christian world view. I’ve read some of Coyne’s blog and he seems like an interesting guy from whom I’d like to read more, but I think he’s wrong in this battle with Douthat.

Coyne argues two points: One is that the universe is an empty place with no God or higher being or whatever you want to call it. (This point I basically agree with.) He then argues that we can still have meaning in our lives. He says:

Most of the universe is cold, bleak, airless, and uninhabitable. In fact, such a cosmology harmonizes far better with a secular moral picture than a religious one. Secularists see a universe without apparent purpose and realize that we must forge our own purposes and ethics, not derive them from a God for which there’s no evidence.

Yes, secularism does propose a physical and purposeless universe, and many (but not all) of us accept the notion that our sense of self is a neuronal illusion. But although the universe is purposeless, our lives aren’t. This conflation of a purposeless universe (i.e., one not created by a transcendent being for a specific reason) with purposeless human lives is a trick that the faithful use to make atheism seem dark and nihilistic. But we make our own purposes, and they’re real. Right now my purpose is to write this piece, and then I’ll work on a book I’m writing, and later I’ll have dinner with a friend. Soon I’ll go to Poland to visit more friends. Maybe later I’ll read a nice book and learn something. Soon I’ll be teaching biology to graduate students. Those are real purposes, not the illusory purposes to which Douthat wants us to devote our only life.

I’d argue that Coyne is conflating the terms “intent” with “purpose.” You might reasonably say, “I intend to eat this hamburger,” but it would sound funny to say, “My purpose is to eat this hamburger.” What’s the difference between the two words? Well, all language is at its core vague, but there’s a moral aspect to purpose. It’s not just something you intend to do, it’s something you should do. (According to… God, the universe, who knows…?) Coyne is applying the word purpose to activities that have no moral realm (dining, teaching, traveling.) According to that logic a serial killer could comfortably say, “My purpose is to rape and torture these teenage girls for several days in this bunker. Then I’ll have a donut.”

Later, Douthat quotes more of Coyne.

As for where altruism comes from, who knows? My own suspicions are that it’s partly genetic and partly cultural, but what’s important is that we feel it and can justify it. I can justify it on several grounds, including that altruism makes for a more harmonious society, helps those in need, and, as a selfish motive, that being altruistic gains you more respect. None of this justification has anything to do with God.

In effect, Coyne is answering the question “why be good?” But his response is so lame I suspect it would be laughed out of an entry level philosophy classroom. Why should we help each other? Because it creates a harmonious society. What’s a harmonious society? It’s a society where people help each other. Thanks, Brainiac.

The point that altruism should be motivated by the drive for respect is easily dismantled by Douthat.

…that only holds so long as the altruistic choice comes at a relatively low cost: If you’re a white Southerner debating whether to speak out against a lynching party or a Dutch family contemplating whether to hide your Jewish neighbors from the SS, the respect factor isn’t really in play — as, indeed, it rarely is in any moral dilemma worthy of the name. (And of course, depending on your ideas about harmony and stability, Coyne’s “harmonious society” argument might also seem like a case against opposing Jim Crow or anti-Semitism — because why rock the boat on behalf of a persecuted minority when stability and order are the greater goods?)

In essence I think both Coyne and Douthat are half right. I think Coyne is correct that there is no God and essentially no meaning to the universe. I think he’s wrong that we can magically manufacture meaning or purpose out of thin air. I think Douthat is wrong with his Christian worldview, but he’s right that secular naturalism (or whatever it’s called) has no means to demand moral actions; indeed, it dispenses with the notion of morality at all.

Maybe these issues will eventually be hashed out, but Coyne’s attempt is quite weak.

Thus I have spoken.

As everyone knows I’ve spent quite a bit of time over the past four years reading about neuroscience and psychology. Occasionally I’ll see some comment made about how some buddhist monk in 2300 B.C or a Christian philosopher in 1200 A.D. made an observation that is now supported by science. I would often think, “Wow, that’s pretty impressive. Even though these guys didn’t have the advantages of the modern era—M.R.I.s and peer reviewed research etc.—they were able to get to some core truths about the nature of existence.”

I now wonder if I have this backwards. I’m presuming modern humans have the advantage and people in the past were disadvantaged. But, frankly, if you lived in 2300 B.C. and your day consisted of catching some fish and then staring at clouds for 6 hours, how could you not make knowledgeable observations about existence? And, if you live in our era with the endless onslaught of meaningless bullshit, how can you really have the time to simply exist?

I’m aware that not everyone in the past sat around staring at clouds all day – there were wars, pestilence, starvation etc. But some folks did, for decades perhaps. And they probably led richer lives (if you’ll allow me a value judgement) than we do now.

I’ve mentioned that I often find myself musing on an original thought only to find, after a month or so, that someone grabs attention by publishing the same idea, usually in some sort of “respected” journal or web site. A lesser man might be upset with the psychic theft of his ideas, but not me. I’m happy to provide my musings for the good of mankind.

Not long ago I was thinking about how we define the notion of life. For instance, we define a grasshopper as alive and a rock as not. But, the more you reduce living things to their tiny components, the more they appear similar to non-living things. All of us—living and dead—are made up of molecules which themselves are made up of atoms which can be broken down to quantum particles. If we are all made up of essentially the same stuff, why are some things alive and some dead?

You might say, “because living things move,” but of course so do remote controlled cars. And some non-living things don’t move for eons.

In a blog entitled “Why Life Does Not Really Exist” science writer Ferris Jabr takes this ball and runs with it, doing a much better job with the topic than I could. Ultimately here arrives here:

Why is defining life so frustratingly difficult? Why have scientists and philosophers failed for centuries to find a specific physical property or set of properties that clearly separates the living from the inanimate? Because such a property does not exist. Life is a concept that we invented. On the most fundamental level, all matter that exists is an arrangement of atoms and their constituent particles. These arrangements fall onto an immense spectrum of complexity, from a single hydrogen atom to something as intricate as a brain. In trying to define life, we have drawn a line at an arbitrary level of complexity and declared that everything above that border is alive and everything below it is not. In truth, this division does not exist outside the mind. There is no threshold at which a collection of atoms suddenly becomes alive, no categorical distinction between the living and inanimate, no Frankensteinian spark. We have failed to define life because there was never anything to define in the first place.

My sentiments exactly! But Jabr then fails to explore the dark questions this raises. Modern ethics and morality are all based on the assumption that life is something… a vital force, a soul, whatever. How do we then accommodate our moral concepts with the view that life is not real. Why is it wrong for me to roll a steamroller over a baby (e.g. a collection of molecules) but not a log (e.g. a collection of molecules)? These sorts of questions are, I think, going to be the difficult problems of the coming centuries.

You could accuse me of being willfully ignorant here. I don’t, of course, go through life equating people with rocks and logs. But I do ask why I don’t. Is the distinction an essentially meaningless (though, from an evolutionary perspective, useful) one built into the human mind? Or is there a real qualitative difference between the living and non-living?

HAPPY MONDAY!

For years I’ve suffered from a problem my Dad has mentioned struggling with. I wake up in the morning and in that half asleep state worry about all my problems. This doesn’t happen every morning, but occasionally. Lately, when I find myself doing this I try to refocus my brain on something positive or at least neutral. I often think of animals because I like them. For instance this morning I found myself visualizing an owl. He had that strange expression owls often wear and I could see him flying around in a forest.

It struck me that maybe this process is similar to the whole Indian Totem animal thing. My understanding is that Indians would meditate (perhaps after consuming peyote or something) on a particular animal and, in some sense, become that animal. I don’t think anything mystical is going on there but I could see the whole process providing a focused sense of energy.

Cats are also good subjects to focus on.