Southern Bread

I’ve been reading Orson Scott Card’s Speaker for the Dead and I’ve been bothered by the seemingly impartial, amoral main character. Humans are moral creatures. I don’t think this is even casually debatable. We have a sense of right and wrong in most every action we undertake. It’s almost impossible to conceive of something without it’s rightness or wrongness being implicitly contained in the thinking of the thing. Again, this is not even casually debatable. We know this intuitively. And with that being said, morality will be a necessary component to any conceptualization of the world, or reality in general. Trying to formulate a coherent view of reality without any moral components or factors is simply not possible. Even Card’s main character resorts to saying things like “how dare you” on occasion. Oops!

Of course, Card may not have even meant his character to be purely amoral. But that’s a goal that I think many atheist’s idealize. They romanticize about being a benevolently impartial observer that makes no moral judgements on others. That’s a pipe dread. Every world-view has a moral code that’s based on some progression of ethical imperitives. For instance, hinduism’s highest moral imperitive is non-exclusivity (or pluralism). Islam is just the opposite, holding Islam’s exclusivity as it’s highest virtue. Liberalism is no exception, and basically just repackages the “moral” outline of secular humanism into a politicized form of morality. As all of the non-theistic worldviews are apt to do, it has replaced transcendent moral standards with a form of enlightened self-interest. As long as it makes you happy and doesn’t hinder anyone elses happiness in the process then it’s morally acceptable. That standard is obviously flawed though. More on that later.

Like J.P. Moreland has said before. It’s easy to feign amorality until somebody steals your radio.