Thanksgiving

Another Thanksgiving come and gone. I spent the day feasting with family and friends. The air was filled with delicious smells, laughter, and the warmth of hearts sharing their love. It was a really nice day, and I couldn’t have asked for better. I want to pause here a moment and talk about this holiday’s buzzword: gratitude.

Back when I was a believer, I made a habit of thanking God before every meal. I had a standard prayer that I’d rattle off under my breath, something along the lines of, “Dear Lord, thank you for bringing me here to enjoy this meal. Please bless my family and friends, especially those in most need of your help.” I felt that this covered the bases pretty well; get some thankfulness in there, and also pitch in a word for those close to me. It was nice. It felt like a good thing to be in the habit of doing.

But what did being grateful to God really mean to me? The feeling was rooted in my understanding of God’s role in my life, which I didn’t exactly hammer down with any great clarity at the time. It went something like this: God created me. He also created this food, and the reason He did that was so I’d have something to eat. He has been guiding me through my life, encouraging me to make certain choices, and those choices have led me here. And I’m happy here. So I should thank God for His assistance in reaching this place.

Thanking God was, for me, a lot like thanking one’s parents for dinner. They “made” you, they put the food in front of you, and they guided you through life thus far. It’s an easy comparison to make, really.

And all of this is probably pretty obvious or generic; I imagine this is how most believers understand their relationship with God.

I wonder now, looking back, why I didn’t ask more questions about this. Actually, no, I don’t wonder. I know why. I was taught not to ask questions. But if I had asked questions, I would’ve quickly found some problems.

First of all, there are the big questions that the situation calls for: how exactly does God “guide” me anywhere? How does he encourage me to make certain choices, while still allowing my will to be free (and more importantly, the wills of the people in my life who are asking me to make the choices in question)? If God has my life all mapped out in his head, do my “choices” even really matter? Could I have ended up anywhere other than where I was just then, sitting at the table with the plate in front of me?

If we put all that stuff aside and just run with it, a second worry comes up: why thank God? Not just for the food, but for anything? Let me explain with an analogy: say I release you into some kind of gigantic maze, like the ones scientists use on rodents, and observe you from above, to see how you navigate it. I’ve spent lots of time making sure this maze is deviously complicated; there are dead-ends and roadblocks everywhere. Now, I’ve also set little pieces of “cheese” along the way for you (whatever reward “cheese” is depends on the person, I suppose). And as you stagger through this test, wondering where you’re supposed to go and why the hell you’ve ended up in such horrendous situation anyway, you come upon these pieces of cheese. Would you be grateful to me, the test maker (by the way, I’ve also left a bundle of old notes about me, the scientist, written by previous maze-runners. I haven’t actually shown myself to you or anything crazy like that)? Would you express your thankfulness to me for the bountiful rewards I’ve seen fit to give you?

I wouldn’t. You can’t buy my love, God. You can’t just give me stuff and expect me to do whatever you ask. I thought that was what free will was all about? Being able to choose whether or not to love God? The problem here is this: if God is going to put all these material rewards in front of me and then wiggle his eyebrows knowingly and go, “Eh? Eh?”, then you can count me right out of that nonsense. Even the promise of an immaterial reward is just that, a promise. Until I see the pay dirt, I don’t have much of a reason to be swayed by such a reward.

I’ll try to sum this up: I don’t see much reason to thank God for his “gifts”, because they come with a hidden agenda. There is, to borrow the old adage, no such thing as a free lunch. If I cram in a mouthful of the delicious apple pie in front of me, I’m in essence saying, “Ok God, I’ll bite. I’ll accept your gifts, and with them the knowledge that you put them there so that I might believe in you.”

Don’t you see? God has a monopoly on the situation! Where else am I going to go? If I want to turn down his gifts and strike out on my own, I don’t have any other options.

The reason I exist is because God made me; therefore, I begin the game indebted to him. Again I go back to the maze analogy (apt, I think, because a lot of people view this life as a “test”): sure, while trapped in the maze, I might be enjoying these rewards the scientist left for me, but I’m stuck in the maze because of the scientist! I didn’t have any option but to be here! So to be grateful to him for trapping me in a labyrinth and then throwing down treats is a bit… silly. Maybe if I’d been given the option of not being in the maze, then I could see saying “thanks”. But I didn’t get to make that choice. So these “gifts” are permanently tainted by the fact that they’re only put there to placate me and coerce me to follow God’s will.

A kidnapper might be nice and give you candy, but he's still a kidnapper.

All right, enough about this. Thank goodness none of it is true: God didn’t give me my meals because there isn’t a God. Phew.

Thanksgiving is, now, an even better holiday for me. Why? Because instead of thanking some invisible man with a beard for the mountains of grub, I can give my gratitude to those who truly deserve it: my family and friends. I can thank them for being a part this brief, fleeting experience we call living. I can be happy that my brain has produced an epiphenomenon called “me”, and thus I’m able to think about how much I enjoy turkey and stuffing. I can just be glad to be alive now, at this very exciting juncture in human history, instead of a thousand years ago or five hundred years ago or any of the other really nasty time periods prior to the present.

Most of all, I can give thanks for the goodness in the hearts of my fellow human beings. That’s what I was most grateful for this Thanksgiving: the beauty and compassion of everyone around me.

Hope you had a wonderful Turkey Day. I certainly did.

Moral Relativism, or Why Everything Isn't OK

I discovered something interesting tonight, and it has me thinking more than usual. Which is saying a lot, since I spend quite a bit of time thinking. I learned—via a somewhat heated discussion over and after dinner—that my father is a moral relativist, or at least comes across as such (whether he’d stick by his guns under pressure is a question I’m not currently qualified to answer). Now, by this I mean the following: he believes that what is right and wrong is relative to the culture and society of the people who perform the action. Moreover, his explanation suggested that he saw right and wrong being contingent upon the beliefs of the actor. What’s right for me may not be right for you. Morality is subjective. There is no objective right or wrong. If I perform an action that I believe is morally right, then it is morally right.

Just to be sure I understood him, I asked him point blank: “So it’s 1785. Is slavery wrong?” He said it wasn’t wrong then, but when we look back with current understanding, we see it as a morally impermissible action. Or rather, some of us do. Because I’m sure there are still people out there in the world who advocate slavery. And according to my father’s theory, they’re right. According to his moral relativism, insofar as I understand it, for such advocates to enslave other people is not only morally permissible; it’s a good thing to do. A right thing to do.

In having this conversation with him (the rest of my family watched as our minds clashed), I realized that I couldn't exactly explain what I felt was wrong with the theory. Every point I made was rebutted in a way that, while logically consistent and rigorous, still felt somehow off to me. Moral relativism is a theory that doesn’t require any sort of deity’s intervention, and that’s something I can most certainly get behind. But on the whole I feel it to be untenable, for reasons that I find myself unable to adequately explain. Perhaps if I raise some of the objections I’ve been contemplating, I’ll discover more about why I feel that this theory isn’t worth grabbing hold of.

If I were to dive back into this debate with my dad (and I intend to, once I’ve formulated my thoughts a bit more), I would want him to answer some questions for me. They are as follows:

1) “Under your theory (your form of moral relativism), what’s right and wrong are determined by the actors themselves. So if I commit some action that I believe is right, are you justified in telling me that it’s wrong to commit that action?”

Under your theory, dad (and I’m sorry that I have to bring this into it, but it’s the best example I can think of), Hitler was a saint. Hitler did exactly what he believed was right. According to your system, what he did was right... for him. Oh sure, you don’t think it was right. You’d tell him he was doing something bad, something wrong, something that shouldn’t be done. But how can you justify that position? Certainly, the action is wrong for you to commit, because you believe it to be a wrong action. But Hitler doesn’t. So what right do you have to say anything about his action?

2) “If I am presented with a moral dilemma that I have not encountered before, how does your theory assist me in determining the correct course of action? In other words, when I’m faced with an ethical problem, what criteria do I use to determine the morally right decision?”

If there are no such criteria, then the moral theory provides no way for its proponents to determine right action, except the following axiom: “Do what you believe is right, and it will be the right thing to do.” What if I don’t know what I want to do? What if, in looking at a situation, I find both actions to be equally offensive, or desirable? How am I to make any kind of judgment call about what I should do in those circumstances?

3) “If moral action is determined by the actor, then how can we ever say, ‘He did the right thing,’ and have that statement actually be meaningful?”

My father talked at length about how people needed to have “constructs” in order to get through their lives, and I agreed with him there. His point was that everyone needs to have some kind of “belief system” about the world. I’m cool with that. I have a “belief system”, based on reason, empiricism, and evidence, but like anything it’s subject to my own biases (which I attempt to remove as much as possible). Anyway, I’m getting off track: the thrust of this question has to do with comparisons. If Smith commits an action that Smith believes is right, then he’s done the right thing (under your theory). If Jones commits the same action, but Jones believes it’s the wrong thing to do, then Jones has done something wrong. So the same action can, depending upon the actor, have different moral value? What this means is that, in essence, I cannot praise someone for doing the right thing or scold someone for doing the wrong thing, because what’s right and wrong are all based on what they think is right and wrong. So there are, in Catholic terms, no saints or sinners. Everyone does what they think is right, and that’s all there is to it. No one deserves a pat on the back or a slap across the knuckles.

4) “According to your theory, what’s right and wrong in a society are largely determined by the majority or a vocal minority. If this is the case, then isn’t this a glorified version of ‘might makes right’?”

This objection is based more on emotion than the others, but I feel it’s worth mentioning. The example I used in our discussion was gay marriage. According to this theory, if the majority of people in this country believe gay marriage is wrong, then it’s wrong. But moreover, if a minority of people believe it’s wrong, and they just happen to have the necessary power to change the laws and minds of those around them, then it’s still wrong. I guess what I’m getting at here is this: it doesn’t seem correct to me that the strongest group in a society gets to determine what is morally permissible or impermissible for that society. Moreover, it doesn't seem correct to say that actions committed by other cultures—the example I used was female circumcision, a horrific practice still performed in many African nations—are morally right because the majority of the culture believes that the action is right.

I think all in all, I have a problem with the following scenario: Say that, hypothetically, a man comes in to see my father at work. “Hello sir,” he says. “I have unfortunate news. It is my belief that people in your line of work are moral monsters who don’t deserve to live. Thus, I have a moral obligation to kill you.” The man pulls a gun and shoots my father dead. Questions: Would I be mad about this? Yes! Would I want to do something about it? Of course! Would I be correct in saying that the man did something wrong by killing my father in cold blood? No, I would not. After all, the man did what he thought was right, and thus, according to my father’s theory, he committed a morally permissible action. I can clamor for revenge or justice all I want, but in no way do I have any sort of moral justification for doing so.

That just seems wrong to me! Of course I would be morally justified in seeking justice or revenge against my father’s murderer. I don’t see how it could possibly be any other way. My father’s moral relativist stance leads, I feel, directly into chaos, for after all, if whatever I believe is the right thing to do—no matter how twisted, sadistic, or malicious my thoughts may be—is the right thing to do, then everything becomes morally permissible, and I would be morally justified in committing any action whatsoever. When all of morality is subjective, it really doesn’t even make sense to say that an action is “right” or “wrong”. I can just do as I please, and the only argument anyone can use against me is, “I don’t like that, so don’t do it.” Were someone to call me any name in some way related to morality—“evil” springs to mind—I could immediately counter with, “I’m not evil. This is the right thing to do.” And I would be completely justified in saying this.

Moral relativism of the kind my father seems to ascribe to is untenable because it, in essence, annihilates right and wrong, and instead replaces them with an “anything goes” system, under which anyone can be justified in doing anything they want. As much as I am against the idea of moral absolutism—the view that certain actions are always wrong, no matter what—I can’t help but feel that this view put forth by my old man is a bit too far in the opposite direction. Certainly I don’t want a system where every action has a moral value that cannot be altered no matter the circumstances, but at the same time I don’t want a system where no action has that status. Like most things in life, moderation appears to be the key to morality.