Atheism Central for Secondary Schools

The universe is morally neutral (see Where do you think evil comes from?). It has no preference for any outcome affecting people over any other. If the earth is destroyed by some cosmic event tomorrow it will make no difference at all in the larger scheme of things - although, of course, it would make a difference to us!

By contrast, people view the universe subjectively. We perceive the universe in a variety of ways - both individually as a result of their own experiences and genetic disposition - and as members of their cultural group or historical tradition. Any decisions they make are based on this subjective viewpoint. Rationalism is only one approach taken to decision-making - although, notably, it is normally involves a significant part of the process - but one always based on a subjective premise.

All human decision-making shares a fundamental starting-point. No person is capable of making a decision which does not conform to his/her perception of what is 'good' at the time the decision is made. Because it often involves compromise, this decision can also be the cause of regret at that time or at a later time. Also, especially when important decisions are made we can often be left with a feeling of anxiety because we know that mistakes are easily made.

Everything depends on the perception of what is 'good.' For many people what is socially 'bad' is seen as 'good' and indeed 'You're bad' is often a term of praise. However bizarre a decision may appear to us the person making it wants to make it and does so for a perceived 'good.' So, because people perceive the world differently they will judge different things to be 'good' according to different principles.

However, we do not stop and think every time we do something. We do not constantly review the basis upon which we make routine decisions but instead develop a 'rule of thumb' approach which we have as a result of training, experience or thought. Some criticize using rules of thumb to make moral decisions but they do not take into account the complexity of the task at hand. Edward DeBono, who developed the idea of lateral thinking, pointed out the difficulty of ignoring rule of thumb. He said that if we wear eleven articles of clothing and take a minute on put on each one it would take us 72 years to test all possible combinations! Without a rule of thumb as to how to dress ourselves we would encounter real problems - the same applies to the rest of our lives.

Instrumental versus Moral

Some decisions may be seen as apparently instrumental, for example, whether to use a size 10 or size 12 screw when building something of wood. Other decisions may be described as moral, such as a decision to impose the death penalty. Since all decisions have a subjective base, however instrumental they are, it is not possible clearly to identify which decisions are instrumental, and which are moral.

Everyday decisions take on a moral perspective - what length to wear a skirt is at once instrumental and moral, what shape doorknob to use is both instrumental and moral. The length of a skirt is connected with a social message the wearer wishes to convey, just as is the style of doorknob and the price we are willing to pay for it. A decision to use pine instead of mahogany to build a piece of furniture would be regarded as instrumental if the decision was based on the properties of the woods -strength, weight, ease of cutting. But the same decision would be seen as moral if the choice was made to conserve the environment on ideological grounds. If the desire to conserve the environment was purely utilitarian the decision would revert to being an instrumental one. All instrumental decisions have some underlying subjective goal i.e., a moral goals and all moral decisions have an underlying instrumental purpose - they wish to effect some change or maintain some condition in the world. All we can say is that some decisions are more instrumental and some are more moral.

But since we frequently identify certain decisions as being clearly moral ones it is worthwhile defining what is involved in these special cases:

It is apparent to us that the decision cannot be taken using an 'off-the-shelf' or 'rule of thumb' approach. It involves features that give us cause to move with caution. We may discover holes, contradictions or inconsistencies in our rules of thumb - often as a result of being presented with a novel situation or because we are confused. Importantly, in many cases the shift in our perception may result from advances in scientific understanding.

In more detail:

A solution offered us goes against the grain of our usual perceptions or breaks our usual rules of thumb. For example, we may find it difficult to consent to switch off a life support machine even when we accept our relative is dead because our everyday perceptions appear to show that he is alive.

The decision often involves some issue of survival or physical or psychological well-being involving others. This is because we are only too well aware of our own preferences so that we need to consciously reflect on what is good for others when this is likely to be different.

Although it is often the case that our moral decisions involve ourselves alone we are less aware of making a moral decision when this does not involve others. This is for a variety of reasons:

1. It is relatively easy for us to decide what is good for us alone.
2. We suffer potential social disapproval if we make a bad decision involving others.
3. We tend to think that we can do what we like if it doesn't harm others. This is ultimately true (although probably in a relatively small number of cases) but it doesn't stop the decisions we make from being moral decisions. That we can do what we like as long as it benefits others is more widely accepted but a potentially much more dangerous notion.
4. We forgive ourselves easily if we get things wrong - or justify our mistakes to ourselves in a forgiving way. We may even deny the existence of a mistake .

The decision may affect the world of inanimate things for which we have a special affinity. We have notions of beauty and harmony, for example, that tell us that it is wrong needlessly to reduce a landscape to a wilderness - or that if we have done such a thing for some other purpose, we should rectify the damage done. These notions would seem to have an instrumental purpose developed in the course of human evolution since we have always been intimately connected with our environment. We charge that environment with an emotional content (although it is not the environment which is emotional - it is us). A typical way of doing this is to personify it i.e., define it in terms that we can understand easily, and the most typical personification of the environment in which we live is to define it as 'god.'

We have a variety of choices available to us. Often, all of the available choices are seen as bad in some way. In this situation we find a special need to focus our thoughts to weigh up the relative merits of various countervailing perceptions. Our objective when making a moral decision is to determine a course of action with clarity. If we cannot we may take no action or find that we are forced to take a risk. We may decide that only one choice is reasonably available for us or arrive at a compromise of some kind. Once we are convinced that we have achieved an optimal solution it then becomes easy to take the action the decision requires of us.

We shall look at some examples:

If we find ourselves confronted with a drowning man we must make a moral decision. We have a variety of competing 'goods' to weigh up. Staying alive is 'good' and we risk our lives if we jump in to try to save the man - especially if the sea is cold and rough or he is panicking. Saving the man is 'good' and if the man is a close relative, for example, saving him is usually perceived as 'more good' (there are thought to be identifiable genetic reasons for this). Against these factors must be weighed our own swimming ability and life-saving skills and any social benefits or disadvantages that might arise from trying to save or not trying to save the man. Whichever choice we make - to jump in and attempt to save the man or not - we have made moral decision.

At the other extreme we make many trivial decisions. However, even deciding to drink a cup of tea at a particular moment involves weighing up various possibilities (we do not usually give special status to such things because we are very familiar with the decision-making process and the factors involved). We need to estimate the danger of burning our lips or spilling the tea against the advantages of drinking the tea at that precise moment. These advantages might be physical - we are thirsty, we like tea - or there might be other advantages, for example, we might wish to be companionable in a social context. Though we usually do not trouble ourselves consciously with issues of right and wrong in these circumstances they still apply. But because we use a well-worn rule of thumb we do not consider ourselves to be making a moral decision.

Sometimes we need to be reminded that a moral decision is involved. A decision to wear or not to wear a motor cycle helmet can be seen to involve considerable moral consequences. On one side we have the sense of freedom,comfort and exhilaration that goes with not wearing a helmet. On the other side we have the greater risk of personal injury and the cost of treating that injury and dealing with its consequences that can greatly affect other lives. If we become vegetable, for example, other sick people will be deprived of resources need to tend to their medical care. However, it may need much experience and understanding of the world to fully appreciate the full moral significance of such a decision.

There are many other decisions that involve us in careful consideration of the facts which are not overtly moral decisions but closer examination will show them to be based on a firmly established 'rule of thumb.' For example, we may spend a long time making a business decision but it ultimately rests on a 'rule of thumb' moral principle to the effect that it is reasonable to base such decisions on the profit-motive. Also, a businessman may accept the need to spend a long time away from his family because it is a 'rule of thumb' that he should prioritise breadwinning. In both cases the decisions taken concern the well-being of other people.

Religious teachings often involve a call for religion to enter every part of the believer's life. Decisions which many would regard as being very instrumental are given a strong moral significance. In some cases even the acts of eating or dressing, for example, may involve an overtly religious behavior designed to keep adherents on the straight and narrow. Disobeying the rules governing this religious behaviour (and hence obeying them too) has a strong moral significance. What material to use to make a shirt, for example, is of great moral significance to an Orthodox Jew. Often this is merely to strengthen the element of 'brainwashing' inherent in all belief-systems not derived from rational thought. It is also the case that this reflects an understanding that there is no dividing-line between moral decisions and other decisions. In particular - and most threateningly - there is no dividing line between moral decisions and political decisions. This is true but there is much to fear if religious dogmas - rather than secular rational processes - are allowed to determine the governance of nations.

Empathy

A key element in our capacity to make moral decisions is our ability to empathise with elements in the world around us. As discussed above, we tend to empathise with elements in the natural world by personifying them. We see other people, not as objects, but as functioning 'others' just like ourselves. This is of great instrumental benefit to us because unless we can empathize with other living things we are unable to begin to interpret their behaviour - we would be autistic, in effect. Empathy is a vital survival skill - even though this empathy may only extend to working out how to kill as enemy (as a variation on it takes a thief to catch a thief - it takes a knowledge of personal suffering even to know how to inflict revenge).

A problem with empathy is that it can flip suddenly from love to hate. This also has survival value in conflict situations. If we move too slowly from one state to the other we might easily fall victim to those who move faster.

It is possible for us to lack, or have varying degrees of personal empathy. In the same way that we construct a view of the world outside us with varying degrees of order or disorder we also construct a view of how we ourselves function. Sometimes, for a variety of reasons, this may be grossly inadequate and result in an inability to arrive at decisions which others would regard as clearly immoral (e.g., sexual abuse of children).

It is when our ability to empathise is undeveloped that we may fail in our capacity for satisfactory moral judgment. We may then fail to give due weight to the problems of the mentally ill - or the starving in Africa. Young people may often lack the personal development required to make satisfactory moral decisions - something which may help to explain the awful crimes sometimes carried out by the young but also the ease with which they can be trained to commit crimes. Their failure to understand the meaning of death, for example, can be used to their disadvantage by others who would exploit them. During the Iran-Iraq war young boys were sent out on to the battlefield to explode mines with their footsteps in the name of Allah and told they would go straight to heaven. They were given plastic keys to the kingdom of heaven to wear around their necks.

We must all lack empathy to some extent because we cannot experience everything. Only parents can read about the murder of a small child and feel what it might be like for the parents who have lost their child, and only those who have lost a child can be felt qualified to give advice. (Rationality can help overcome limitations of empathy - a social worker, for example, might nevertheless be able to help such parents, but would improve with more experience of handling victims). Classically, Catholic priests, who are celibate, have often been criticized for giving advice to married couples because they cannot reasonably empathise with their problems (although the previous qualification also applies here). For this reason ex drug addicts are often employed to work with addicts. Their ability to empathise gives them credibility.

Conscience

The idea that we have a conscience is a constructed view of the way we function (see above). The idea of conscience is that it is possible consciously to choose an immoral alternative in a given situation i.e., it is possible purposefully to choose to do the wrong thing. The idea is not adequate because, as I have tried to demonstrate above, all decisions are moral decisions and we cannot choose to do what we think is wrong - at least at the time we do it.

The real value of the idea of conscience is to define when a person is making a decision which disagrees with norms taught him by a religious group - or coming from the society around him. When a person 'knows he is doing wrong' it is because he knows that the society of which he is a part would disagree with him. The idea of conscience can then be used to train children and adults to pay greater attention to the norms suggested to them by the trainer. In other words it is a mind game used to substitute for an explanation of why it is wrong to do such-and-such a thing or to reinforce this explanation.

Conscience may also operate when a person is forced to do a normally wrong action for some greater good, for example, when a sailor is forced to close a watertight bulkhead to prevent the ship from sinking, in the knowledge he is condemning men other the other side of the bulkhead to certain death. This example is a favourite of movie makers because of the drama and heroism it can invoke (though dealt with in an unusually clinical way on Star Trek Voyager [TV] - trekkers will know which one!). Although the sailor does the right thing by closing the bulkhead the problem of uncertainty (could he have waited a bit longer? - was there another solution?) may plague his 'conscience.'

Conclusion

Much time has been spent defining the nature of moral decisions because the answer to the question depends on the definition given. All decisions are ultimately moral decisions (because they have a subjective origin) and we face myriad problems of diverse kinds when it comes to making them. We will deal with the problems that face us with differing degrees of efficiency depending on a wide variety of factors including training, knowledge, understanding, and experience. Our ability to empathise is a key element in our capacity for decision-making hence the saying:

'To understand is to forgive.'