|
The
Atheist Devotional: Timeless Meditations for
the Godless by M. Moore
Copyright ã 2008 M. Previous: Reading Number 19: Quentin Smith Proves Something or Other
-Reading Number Twenty -
Peter Singer: Doing Away with Humanity
Excerpted from: Singer, Writings on an Ethical Life*
Like Bertrand Russell, Nietzsche and Quentin Smith, whom we’ve already looked at, Peter Singer is a philosopher, a very prominent and influential one. But he’s not concerned with disproving God’s existence. He takes atheism for granted. His concern is with the question of what ethics we should live by as atheists. Some of the chapter titles from his anthology Writings on an Ethical Life give us an idea what his atheist ethics looks like, for example “All Animals are Equal...” and “Justifying Infanticide.” Interested? Read on.
[From “About Ethics”] [E]thics is not something intelligible only in the context of religion. I shall treat ethics as entirely independent of religion.
This is one of the ground rules Singer sets up for his inquiry into ethics. And how does he justify it? Well...
Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of “good” is nothing other than “what God approves.” Plato refuted a similar claim more than two thousand years ago...
You guessed it. We’re back to the Euthyphro Dilemma, which we looked at in one of our earlier readings from Bertrand Russell. After laying out the dilemma, Singer goes on to say:
...Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but...what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved of by God?
In contrast to Russell, though, Singer shows an awareness of the theist response to the Euthyphro dilemma, namely that God has a nature, and acts according to his nature. Thus “good” means “what is in accordance with God’s moral nature.” And the dilemma disappears. (“But,” someone may persist, “what if God’s nature were such that he approved torture? Would that make it right?” Again, the question is nonsensical. It’s like asking, “What if two plus two equaled five?”) However, instead of providing a serious rebuttal, Singer chooses to caricature the theistic response as “God is approved of by God.” Well, that’s probably the best tactic to take ...especially when you have nothing adequate in the way of a serious rebuttal. After removing any religious foundation for ethics, Singer goes on to define ethics as a universal point of view that takes others’ interests (desires) into account in addition to one’s own. And even though there is no objective basis for ethics outside of ourselves, the concept of ethics is meaningful, because we can at least discuss ethics with one another and reason with one another about it. (“Based on what?” you might ask. Don’t.) Anyway, ethics are not merely based on subjective feelings, according to Singer. So then. We can define ethics and we can talk about it. But we have no real foundation for ethics, nothing that tells us why we should be ethical—except that we might feel like being ethical (at some times, though not at others), or we might (sometimes) find it in our own self-interest to be ethical. Well, so much for the atheist basis for ethics. Or perhaps we should say the atheist non-basis for ethics... Anyway, let’s move on to Singer’s main preoccupation: animal rights.
[From “All Animals are Equal,” originally a chapter in Singer’s book Animal Liberation] ...Speciesism...is a prejudice or attitude of bias in favor of the interests of members of one’s own species and against those of members of other species.
Yes, Singer believes in the equality of all species (of animals; plant liberation is apparently not yet a movement whose time has come). But it’s an equality of interests, not an equality of rights. So he still leaves room for an adult human to have more rights than, say, a cockroach, because the adult human has more self-awareness, desires for the future, etc. But what about a human infant?
...The only thing that distinguishes the [human] infant from the animal, in the eyes of those who claim it has a “right to life,” is that it is, biologically, a member of the species Homo sapiens, whereas chimpanzees, dogs, and pigs are not. But to use this difference as the basis for granting a right to life to the infant and not to the other animals is, of course, pure speciesism. It is exactly the kind of arbitrary difference that the most crude and overt kind of racist uses in attempting to justify racial discrimination.
Speciesism. Yep, Singer and the animal rights people have their own label for any apposition to their agenda. And they’re ready to milk it for all it’s worth. After all, name-calling is probably the most powerful tool in an atheist’s arsenal for attempting to impose his own morality on the rest of society (come on, admit it—we all want to do that, not just those “Christian right” types). We atheists can’t appeal to some objective standard of right and wrong. Instead we have to depend on name-calling and raw social pressure. Once you’ve got your label (“speciesism”) the next step is to piggyback it onto the civil rights movement. It’s a standard ploy, and quite effective. So Singer associates the speciesist with “the most crude and overt type of racist.” But what is his basis for claiming that speciesism is like racism?
[From "Bridging the Gap"] ...Traditionally Western civilization has accepted the belief that God created humans in his image, with an immortal soul, and gave them dominion over the animals. “Then, in 1838, a young scientist wrote in his notebook:
Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and, I believe, true to consider him created from animals.
That young scientist was, of course, Charles Darwin...he undermined the foundations of the entire Western way of thinking on the place of our species in the universe...We began to see the differences between us and the nonhuman animals as differences of degree, not of kind.”
So the influence of our buddy Darwin is still with us! (By the way, notice how Darwin uses the words “arrogance” and “humble.” It’s a good lesson in atheist rhetoric. When it suits your mood, claim that your position as an atheist is “humble” and your opponent is “arrogant.” However, when it’s convenient to argue the opposite, then do as we saw Bertrand Russell do earlier, and portray your opponent as too humble—lacking in dignity and self-respect. Remember—flexibility.) Singer uses evolution to argue that animals should be given equal treatment with humans, since humans are nothing more than animals themselves. Notice, however, that in fact there’s absolutely nothing in the idea of evolution that mandates that conclusion. We could just as easily argue the opposite: that in our observation, no nonhuman kind of animal acts as if it thinks other species should be given equality with itself. Most animals as a rule care nothing about the death or suffering of species other than their own. So why should we humans act any different, since we’re just another kind of animal? Like all atheist ethics, then, Singer’s ethical interpretations of evolution are purely arbitrary. He has no basis in objective reality to justify his ethics. But one thing he does have is rhetorical attempts to make animal liberation seem forward-looking and progressive:
“...We should always be wary of talking of ‘the last remaining form of discrimination.’”
“...A liberation movement demands an expansion of our moral horizons.”
“...What one generation finds ridiculous, the next accepts; and the third shudders when it looks back on what the first did.”
So okay. Even though animal liberation and the equality of all species sound pretty far out there, most of us can at least agree with Singer as far as opposing unnecessary cruelty to animals and that sort of thing. However, Singer’s ethical philosophy goes beyond animal liberation to embrace some far more radical ideas, as we’ll see in our next reading.
* “Excerpts” are paraphrased, except for “words in quotation marks and italics,” which are direct quotations from the excerpted work.
|