Magic Morality Addendum

It occurs to me more frequently than you might think that a lot of what I write seems fine in theory, and perhaps even interesting to read on paper, but holds no bearing in the real world, where things are as they always have been, and everyone is more or less fine with that. I mean, why even bother trying to work out ethical problems in the first place? People seem to have a good idea of what's right and wrong, and complicated hypothetical situations are only distractions or contrived examples of odd imperfections in an otherwise workable system. Right? Wrong. Sadly, I don't write only for the fun of it, I write because the system is badly broken and I see evidence of this on a daily basis, and I believe other people do, too. Because this has become quite galling to me since I posted Chapter 2, I've decided to offer up some real-life examples of how badly and how often our unwritten moral frame or worldview fails in the hope that any of you who were less than convinced by my theoretical objections to 'magic morality' will be more convinced by practical demonstrations.

First, something a little less public. In my last philosophy tutorial, we were discussing Rowe's evidential argument from evil, which is one of the more influential arguments about God since its publication over 30 years ago. Most of the group was satisfied that, though it might not be terrible strong or difficult to work around, it was still the best argument we'd studied this semester on the topic (not that that says much). There was one person who vocally disagreed, and he said that according to his notion of God, there was nothing in the argument terribly damning. For those of you not familiar with the argument, it's very simple and goes like this: There are instances of intense and unnecessary suffering in the world that do not give rise to a greater good nor prevent a greater evil, and yet God, who is supposed to be omnipotent, omniscient and omnibenevolent, does not prevent them. If He existed, He most certainly would do so, and so we should surmise He does not exist. An example given is of a fawn who is trapped in a forest which has been set on fire by a lightning strike. It is badly burned and lies in agony for a number of days before finally succumbing. I will not go into a detailed analysis of the argument and its strengths or flaws; I don't want to get side-tracked after all. The point is how he justified his claim. Now I am putting words in his mouth here, but this is how I interpreted his description of his God: "God's domain is a moral one, as it always has been. He is interested and indeed, should be interested, exclusively in the moral for that is His domain. Certainly, "bad" things happen to people and other creatures and one of those "bad" things is our notion of suffering, but where there is pleasure there must also be pain and we cannot hold God responsible for this, or any other, feature of the natural world."

Now in my opinion, this young man came so close and yet remained so far from a reasonable position. I agree that in and of itself there is nothing morally wrong with suffering, or indeed any other state of being. However, I do take severe umbrage to his notion of God, which, had I been otherwise inclined, I might have even found somewhat offensive. What do you take the "moral" domain to be? How much you give to charity? How often you pray? Whether or not you've ever put your penis where it doesn't belong? How very peculiarly narrow. It would seem to me that a God of any stripe which is indifferent to intense and apparently unnecessary pain is in fact quite cruel, even if we say that God is not responsible for the nervous system of the fawn or the starting of the fire. Not just cruel, in fact, but severely morally deficient. A being worthy of revulsion, if you will. Can you imagine my saying that I am a perfectly morally good and all-loving being while beside me an animal lies wailing in desperate pain? My saving (or even mercy killing) it does not impinge upon free will, it does not unduly interfere in the way of the world. The fawn is alone, whether it dies alone now or in a few days is irrelevant. It seems to me that the only way someone could justify holding such a position is if you held up some sort of moral divide, and the pain of an animal lay on the non-moral side, but why should it? Doesn't that seem entirely arbitrary? Why should it not be a moral matter? It seems to me to lie very definitely within the "moral" sphere, and I can see no particular reason why it should not.

But that is just one person, you might say, who made one silly remark in the heat of debate. That doesn't prove my point at all; the system is still workable, it still makes sense. Well, allow me offer another, more public example. Many Australians will be at least passingly familiar with the proposed Internet filter that, barring rejection by the Senate, the current Government would pass into law. Now, the purpose of the filter is to block out all illegal websites, especially those of an exploitative nature, much like a nation-wide firewall. Many objections have been levelled against the filter, varying from free-speech concerns to claims that Internet speeds will be slashed as a result, with many other objections in between. Again, I will not delve deeply into the debate in this post for fear of becoming side-tracked. The point is that the Government frequently retorts these objections with the claim that the filter is a moral necessity. It is morally wrong for people to view websites of a paedophilic nature and so it is a moral imperative to block them from view. This, I think, is supposed to be a debate-ender. After all, if it's a moral matter, surely there can be no real reason not to support it. This betrays two important and related features of magic morality which I mentioned in Chapter 2.

The first feature is that moral matters are different to non-moral matters. There's no doubting that denying people access to websites which benefit from the sexual exploitation is a moral action, and indeed it is deeply so. But let's remember that this proposed filter will, either directly or indirectly, affect millions of people. I'm not asking why this isn't a matter of equivalent moral import, I'm asking why it apparently isn't a matter of any moral import. The second feature is that moral matters are superior to non-moral matters. If I demanded to know why 3 is suddenly supposed to equal 2 and you responded that 3-2 equality was a moral imperative, I, and I think most people, would quite rightly think you had given a non-answer. If I demanded to know why the Internet should have a filter on it which would probably not even decrease the availability of child porn and you responded that it was a moral imperative, I would still think it was a non-answer, although it seems as though this time, for some reason, I fall into the minority. Why? To my mind there is no good reason.

The idea of morality as it currently exists in society is jumbled and incoherent. The fact that the very word "moral" can elevate a mundane problem to a matter of high interest is a direct result of this chronically damaged view. Now here I have presented two real-life cases where the current attitude towards morality has caused people to respond in a likewise jumbled and incoherent manner, logically at least. Certainly my analysis has been shallow and I admit that the two examples I have given are not entirely perfect, but they are two amongst many that have come up in the few days since I posted Chapter 2. Had I the time and the will to suicide in the most painful way possible, I would document them all. Now, in these two posts I think I have demonstrated that magic morality doesn't work and identified the need for a replacement, but I have not explained why this is the case and I haven't offered a replacement itself. These two matters are for Chapter 3, which is coming soon. I hope you are looking forward to probing the matter a little more deeply with me then.