Where Do Darwinist Atheists Get Their Moral Values?

http://atheismisdead.blogspot.com/2008/04/new-atheists-make-huge-mistake.html


Wednesday, April 23, 2008

New atheists make a huge ethical mistake

It seems quite popular now for new atheists to insist that one cannot
jump from 'is' to 'ought'. For example, if a professional historian
claims that what Hitler did was influenced by underlying Darwinian
principles, the atheist will be quick to point out that those
"Darwinian principles" are merely descriptive, i.e. they only tell us
what is the case. But, we are assured by the atheist, the same
principles do not imply anything prescriptive, i.e. they don't tell us
what ought to be the case. So Richard Dawkins:

I have often said before, as a scientist I am a passionate Darwinian.
But as a citizen and a human being, I want to construct a society
which is about as un-Darwinian as we can make it. I approve of looking
after the poor (very un-Darwinian). I approve of universal medical
care (very un-Darwinian). It is one of the classic philosophical
fallacies to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'.

On this point, theists should wholeheartedly agree with atheists. You
cannot infer an 'ought' from an 'is'. And this is precisely one of the
troubling metaethical problems for atheistic morality.

Assume (per impossibile) that atheistic naturalism is true. Assume,
furthermore, that one can't infer an 'ought' from an 'is'. (Richard
Dawkins and many other atheists should grant both of these
assumptions.) Given our second assumption, there is no description of
anything in the natural world from which we can infer an 'ought'. And
given our first assumption, there is nothing that exists over and
above the natural world; the natural world is all that there is. It
follows logically that, for any action you care to pick, there's no
description of anything in the natural world from which we can infer
that one ought to refrain from performing that action. Add a further
uncontroversial assumption: an action is permissible if and only if
it's not the case that one ought to refrain from performing that
action. (This is just the standard inferential scheme for formal
deontic logic.) We've conformed to standard principles and inference
rules of logic and we've started out with assumptions that atheists
have conceded in print. And yet we reach the absurd conclusion:
therefore, for any action you care to pick, it's permissible to
perform that action. If you'd like, you can take this as the meat
behind the slogan 'if atheism is true, all things are permitted'. For
example if atheism is true, every action Hitler performed was
permissible. Many atheists don't like this consequence of their
worldview. But they cannot escape it and insist that they are being
logical at the same time.

Now, we all know that at least some actions are really not permissible
(for example, racist actions). Since the conclusion of the argument
denies this, there must be a problem somewhere in the argument. Could
the argument be invalid? No. The argument has not violated a single
rule of logic and all inferences were made explicit. Thus we are
forced to deny the truth of one of the assumptions we started out
with. That means we either deny atheistic naturalism or (the more
intuitively appealing) principle that one can't infer 'ought' from
'is'. I know which one I'd deny.