No to this makeover

October 7, 2009

Dear Sir,

I recently read an article about Bermuda needing an image makeover before it can draw gay visitors. Do I need to refresh anyone's mind about Sodom and Gomorrah being hailed with brimstone and fire? There was no place for homosexuals and drag queens to hide from God's wrath!

There was a statement made by Ed Salvato, editor of Out Traveler (gay travel magazine): "It isn't too late for Bermuda to cash in on the so-called pink dollar and welcome gay and lesbian visitors to the island in the face of dwindling tourism arrivals and a bleak economy." Bermuda has been labelled as a "homophobic island" by UK gay title Pink News when Rosie O'Donnell's gay family cruise bypassed Bermuda in 2007. It should have stated that Bermuda is a God-fearing island with worldly problems brought on by the majority of the population.

I've also read about Andra Simons moving to the UK because he couldn't take the criticism from family members and friends while living on the island. Above his story there was a separate article that read, "Bermuda's gays plan pride parade on island!" I stopped attending the May 24 Parade due to the drag queen prancing around on the parade route while the he/she sprinkled magic dust in the air. I have absolutely no tolerance for these individuals and now they are planning a march of their own!

DESAI MARDEL JONES

Sandys

Where naturalism errs

October 4, 2009

Dear Sir,

It seems that the Almighty is coming under another wave of attacks from popular authors such as Richard Dawkins, Robert Wright and "novelist" Dan Brown. Karen Armstrong's recent "Case for God" is reliably erudite but it offers no rebuttal since in her view God should best be viewed as a symbol of pluralistic humanity. Dawkins has cannily responded to Armstrong's book by declaring she is really an atheist, just of a different variety.

Whilst I agree with Dawkins about Armstrong, I would like however to offer a few thoughts on naturalism and materialism as they comprise the philosophical foundations for his atheistic worldview.

Naturalism holds that all matter and energy in the physical universe is all that has or ever will exist. Naturalism excludes the existence of any non-material reality, including God, from the realm of discoverable knowledge through science.

This only limits what science can achieve; it does not necessarily exclude the existence of a non-material reality. However, an overwhelming majority of naturalists are also materialists. Materialism categorically denies the existence of any non-material, spiritual reality.

Naturalism views man as a complex interrelation of chemical and physical processes. No human soul exists, nor is there an afterlife.

We are nothing more than collections of molecules whose capacities for intelligence, self-awareness and introspection, as well as apprehension of beauty, truth and virtue are merely the accidental outcome of a blind, purposeless, undirected process of biological evolution.

If human beings are just the purposeless, accidental process of "goo to you by way of the zoo", what then can be said about morality? In the absence of a transcendent moral realm of objective moral values, it follows that human moral values are merely social conventions without a logically sufficient foundation for moral obligation and human dignity. By "objective" moral values, I am referring to moral values that are true such that they are capable of imposing valid and binding obligations on the individual regardless of whether or not he believes in their truth value. On naturalism, morality is reduced to a collection of cultural and socio-biological pressures converging on the individual. As atheist biologist Michael Ruse writes, "morality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes".

If objective moral values do not exist and morality is merely a social illusion, then if one chooses to reject such an illusion, the worst that can be said of him is that he is being anti-social. There is no philosophically justifiable way on a subjective view of morality to say that something like rape is actually wrong or that the Holocaust is an objective evil. Moral motivation to abide by the tenets of an "illusion" is thus easily undermined.

Let me stress that this is not an argument that a naturalistic worldview makes you a bad person. I am not making the argument that you have to believe in God or objective moral values in order to act morally. However, if morality is merely subjective, then moral standards such as "The Golden Rule" or "do no harm" are applicable only to the person who chooses that standard. But no subjective basis for a moral standard that makes a virtue of things like tolerance and equality can be deemed "better" or "worse" than a chosen alternative standard that instead upholds qualities like dishonesty and bigotry as virtues.

I am sure you agree that tolerance is "better" than bigotry. But to agree that one set of values is better than another set of values is to appeal to some immaterially existing standard of objectivity, whereby the goodness of a virtue is rooted in something transcendent to the virtue. But this immaterial transcendence is the very thing that naturalism and materialism deny.

In a naturalistic view of morality, the difference between right and wrong is determined solely by whoever has the means and will to impose their preferences upon a society. Historically, this is achieved either by coercing the population into accepting their standard via systematic indoctrination using cultural mediums like the news media, Hollywood and the university; or imposing it by force as in the case of Stalinist Russia.

Thus, whilst it would be fallacious to say that a naturalistic worldview "caused" Pol Pot's killing fields or Stalin's gulag, it does follow however that a naturalistic worldview enables such atrocities to occur by denying the existence of any objective duties and obligations capable of saying that they are actually wrong. We can only say that we think that what they did was wrong because we prefer a different moral standard from the ones they adopted.

And yet so often I find examples of naturalists speaking as though objective moral values do exist, particularly when they are criticising Christian morality. Christopher Hitchens, for example, will deny the existence of all possible Gods, almost solely on the basis of his moral outrage against the so-called tyrannical God of the Bible. In doing so, not only is he contradicting the internal logic of the materialist presupposition that all morals are an illusion, but he is also appealing to a moral standard that he thinks is objectively "better" than the Biblical standard. We have seen however, that a naturalist worldview does not support the ability to make such a claim.

Not only are moral values an illusion on naturalism, but we are, in fact, slaves to our genes. The 17th Century great modern atheist Thomas Hobbes proclaimed that since everything was made up of matter, human beings have no free will because all our ideas, desires and actions are simply material reactions. This is the inner logic of materialism and its adoption by mainstream science leads to the denial of moral responsibility. Dr. Benjamin Wiker reasons that: "The assertion of complete materialist determinism necessarily means that one's actions are the result of physical processes that follow laws, and that means, in turn that a human being is no more responsible for its actions than are hydrogen atoms, rocks, or trees."

The outlook for a rationally defensible basis for morality upon a naturalist worldview is bleak, given that many advocates now openly deny moral responsibility. Thus, we are treated with greater regularity to articles such as one which appeared in a recent edition of Discovery magazine, asserting that science has successfully reduced the "Seven Deadly Sins" to chemical reactions over which the individual has no control and therefore cannot be found morally responsible.

Whilst acknowledging a lack of moral responsibility challenges the rationale for punishing anti-social behaviour, historically it has also provided a ready excuse to commit mass murder in an effort to rid society of those who were deemed genetically "unfit" to procreate.

Contrary then to the assertions of Dawkins and others, a naturalistic worldview cannot provide a philosophically justifiable foundation for moral duties and obligations. In order to avoid the insanity of moral chaos, the naturalist is forced to live an irrational life of make-believe values and freedoms, denying with wishful thinking what he knows to be true about the nihilistic nature of reality.

This is part of a larger article that I've written which you can access at www.psalmtrees.org

STEPHEN NOTMAN

Paget