Hitchens' Morality Challenge

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We are talking about actions which can only possibly have religious motivations. The currently debated example is torture- is torture an act that is only ever carried out due to religious beliefs? Or is it something that both religious and non-religious people have done in the past, but for different reasons?

There was recently a study carried out by my university that I'll share here. NB: this is a secular source.


Note that all of those are stated as established facts, since that has been observed in prior studies and it is not necessary to demonstrate it yet again. By these measures, it appears that religious people are indeed more moral than atheists. LINK.

I also think you misunderstood my argument. I do not draw from that any general conclusions about your reasoning ability and reading comprehension. Could we stick to that?

Um... "X action done out of religious reasons" is exactly what you are arguing, unless you simply were not expressing yourself clearly over the past 5 or so pages of consistent posts from you, all saying the exact same thing and all falling into the form of "X action done out of religious reasons." Your argument was in exactly that form, let X=torturing someone, and let "trying to save their souls" serve as an example of "religious reasons," since there are no non-religious reasons for trying to save someone's soul. I don't see where you are seeing any relevant difference here.

Oh, wow, religious belief can influence someone's decisions! I never thought of that! But that's not what the question was. Hitchens' challenge was whether there was any particular action, moral or immoral, that could only be taken by a religious person. The relative probability is irrelevant to the question, though I could argue that religious people are more likely to make the "moral" decision in many circumstances.

I note that no one ever attempted to address AG's moral nihilism. I'm not going to try, anyone else want a stab at it?

OK. In both your scenario and mine, someone may act differently because they assign less importance to events in this life, in the expectation of compensation in the afterlife, either for oneself or others. Have I got that right?

The difference I see is I was looking for a general motive that could only be religious, not a general motive where religion is an irrelevant detail. Heresy trials and ideological purges are both examples of either consolidating power, or of protecting the rest of the population from a harmful belief, depending on how charitable your interpretation is. In both cases, the detailed content of the ideology (I include religions here) is irrelevant. You could have either motive no matter what your ideology. I was looking for a case where the basic difference between religious and nonreligious ideologies is relevant. That basic difference is belief in the supernatural, and in most religions, a belief in an afterlife.


I tried once, I think last year. From his objections to my arguments I concluded he was asking for proof that moral obligations are a necessary part of the universe. It wouldn't be enough to demonstrate that any social species would evolve feelings of moral obligation, he seems to want proof that the moral obligations themselves are part of the fabric of the universe. I don't think it's possible to meet that criterion.

...which is still "X action based on religious motives," and you have failed to demonstrate otherwise.


Which is why I'm not touching it with a 29-and-a-half-foot pole.

Well, if we're talking "moral actions", we need to qualify what we mean by "moral". Perhaps we might judge the action based not on its consequences but by the mindset it was undertaken with (e.g., the "good will"). Thus we might reason the action was bad because it was undertaken with religious motives. Since maybe we can't think of any kind of motivating factor which can exist for an atheist but not for a religious individual (morality, conviction, etc - it's all there) we thus may reason that here is a possible source of wrong that is accessible only to the religious individual while no such thing can exist for an atheistic individual.

However, the obvious counterexample might be to find a possible motivating ideology which only an atheist has access to; for example, moral nihilism, or a lack of belief in consequences for an action. The only way I see to distinguish these from the religious case is to say that "religion we know is false" but the latter two may or may not be; but then our judgment is predicated on an a posteriori evaluation of the veracity of the motivating factors which may not be accessible to the religious individual, and hence I'm less than impressed that this makes sense with a mindset or will or whathaveyou based evaluation of the morality of the actions.

Moral obligations are maybe part of the apparatus which humans use like other animals use instinct, with a "lifespan" of "absolute value" depending on how long it takes to achieve the goal they were created for.

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OK, but to even begin to debate the question on those grounds we first have to debate morality. Are we going to accept utilitarianism? Will we take a deontological stance? Divine command theory, whereby the religious win by default? Moral nihilism, as promotes by AG? Will we attempt for some type of evolutionary morality? This is why the whole question is absurd.

I think that there may be actions that a person could only take if they believed in god, but the actions would vary from person to person.

That is, what might be impossible for someone to do when not a believer might become possible for them as a believer. Thus the answer would be yes, about each person, but no about any particular action.


Morals are tools conjured up by ( conscious and/or unconscious ) human cognitive capacities in response to situations in which a community finds itself.

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When it comes to issues about morality and ethics, I would say that existentialism makes a lot more sense than nihilism.

Possibly. The only possible counterargument I can think of is to take Satanism as an example of a morally nihilist religion, but I don't know enough about Satanism to know whether that is defensible. Is a morally nihilistic religion possible? I guess a religion in which the deity takes no interest in the actions of mortals is possible, but unlikely. It would be unsatisfying to believe firmly in a god who takes no interest. If we say that it is an essential element of religion that either there is a god or gods with a personal interest in the actions of mere mortals, or a supernatural process that makes sure actions have consequences (karma in Buddhism), we have a motivation only accessible to atheists.


Not automatically. In my example, if the inquisitor was right that the suffering he imposes now prevents greater suffering later in the afterlife, it would be less clear whether the inquisitor's actions are immoral. I leave aside the question of the victim's consent, because a doctor may hurt a child during medical treatment without the child's consent, and most people wouldn't consider that immoral if the doctor is right that there is a net benefit in the end. Things get sticky if the doctor is mistaken, and even stickier if the doctor should have known. Like you wrote:

If the inquisitor claims good intentions, the only counterargument I can see is that the benefits an honest inquisitor would aim for are unverifiable, but the expected benefits a doctor would aim for can be clinically tested.

A question that follows is whether I have a moral duty to examine and test my beliefs before I act on them. If I do have that duty, can I justify actions that cause verifiable harm by claiming unverifiable benefits, or is that in itself wrong?

For an example for the first part of the question, the police officers who beat up Rodney King said they believed he was on a drug that made people faster, stronger and less sensitive to pain than normal. (Adrenalin does some of that, but I never heard of it being used as a recreational drug.) If the officers genuinely but falsely believed that this recreational drug existed and King had taken it, would this excuse their actions? If we say a false belief can be an excuse, does that depend on how plausible the belief is and how much effort the believer has made to examine the belief?

In the medical example, courts may hold a doctor to be negligent if the doctor should have known better. In medical practice, there is a duty to be well informed, but the limits of human brains limit how well informed someone can be in practice.

PS The distinction on which I based my original argument turns out to be a lot more complicated than I thought. Thanks to Orwell, twoshots and Shiggily for making me examine my assumptions.

The word "moral" in the original question is meaningless; it might as well be the word " cosy". I think Orwell's rewording of the question was very helpful in making that clear.

To which it becomes immediately obvious that the only possible answer is that there is no particular action which could only ever be taken by a religious person, but that each person individually might only be capable of certain actions, ( different according to the individual/place/time etc ), as a believer.

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Well, basically I want you to prove moral realism: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_realism

Which states the following:

1. Ethical sentences express propositions.
2. Some such propositions are true.
3. Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of human opinion.

The problem is premise 3 as 3 does not work in with reductionism at all, and is questionable in regards to naturalism. However, if moral realism is false, then I would argue that morality is false, as I would argue that morality cannot exist without premises 1 and 2, and that 2 relies somewhat upon 3, Divine Command theory is perhaps the only notable exception.

So, really, I'd say my stance on morality is the only workable one, and believe that morality is ultimately part of a religious-ish framework, where objective features can be supernatural, and where these mystical things belong.


Because my ethics r teh win!! !

And your stubbornness too. Though the last thread is starting to cool down a bit.

I'd say that there is little necessary conflict. Nihilism denies ethics, but existentialism analyzes ethics and what they must mean. As such, there are existentialists clash with ethics, such as Nietzsche and Stirner, and one could take some parts of their works as part of an argument against ethics, but there are those who affirm ethics such as the religious existentialists. In any case, existentialism is more spiritual, while nihilism is more analytical, and both have an intimate relation with each other.