Morality without a Foundation

I remember lecturing at Ohio State University, one of the largest universities in this country. I was minutes away from beginning my lecture, and my host was driving me past a new building called the Wexner Center for the Performing Arts.
He said, “This is America’s first postmodern building.”
I was startled for a moment and I said, “What is a postmodern building?”
He said, “Well, the architect said that he designed this building with no design in mind. When the architect was asked, ‘Why?’ he said, ‘If life itself is capricious, why should our buildings have any design and any meaning?’ So he has pillars that have no purpose. He has stairways that go nowhere. He has a senseless building built and somebody has paid for it.”
I said, “So his argument was that if life has no purpose and design, why should the building have any design?”
He said, “That is correct.”
I said, “Did he do the same with the foundation?”
All of a sudden there was silence.
You see, you and I can fool with the infrastructure as much as we would like, but we dare not fool with the foundation because it will call our bluff in a hurry.            

--Ravi Zacharias

This is an amusing anecdote and may well have been an actual conversation, but it highlights a very true and VERY serious issue...  If one takes away the foundation of a structure, it will ultimately crumble.  It might not be overnight, but it will happen.
This can be said of morality as well. If we deny the existence of God, it is impossible to justify morality in an atheistic world.  Let's be clear, I'm not saying an atheist can not BE moral, or hold moral values, I'm saying that without God one cannot JUSTIFY morality.

Again, I'm NOT saying an atheist cannot have morality, but that without an objective standard of morality, any moral code in a society will eventually give way.  Nietzsche describes this in his Parable of the Madman.  In this parable he describes a madman who is ranting about the death of God at one point saying "God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him." Later in the same parable he says this about the death of God:

"I have come too early," he said then; "my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars---and yet they have done it themselves."

In other words, the implications of godlessness won't necessarily be immediately apparent. It will take time for the eventual implications to become apparent, but it will happen.  I will contend we are starting to see the cracks in our society's moral structure today as we've removed God from our sense of morality...

The most common atheistic response I have heard for the justification of morality is that it is a survival mechanism that we evolved. You can say this, but it doesn't make it in any way objective.  What if the person in question does not intend to survive?  Are they now justified in taking the lives of others?  Does life only have value because we want to survive and reproduce?  If that's the case, one could easily begin to make the case for eugenics.  By eliminating the weak or those who cannot reproduce, we can free up resources for the strong and produce stronger offspring.  It sounds like a leap, but it is the ultimate end we arrive at if our only value is that of survival.  And what of cannibalism? Are cannibal tribes now justified in what they do because they evolved a different moral code than ours?  Would it be wrong to destroy societies that have a different moral code in order to preserve the one we've evolved?  If morality is just a survival mechanism, then the ends ultimately justify the means.

Beyond that, if human thought is just a series of chemical reactions in the brain, then we have no reason we can call these reactions moral or immoral.  If the universe is a closed system acted on by only by natural laws, then our choices are merely illusions and are actually made by the chemicals and laws themselves.  However complex or free our choices may seem, they are completely deterministic and ruled by physics and chemistry.  We cannot make value judgments on chemistry. Chemistry isn't right or wrong, it just is...

Whether or not we go this far when teaching it, this kind of morality is implicit when we present our children a world without a God. If our only reasoning for moral behavior is "because I said so" or "Santa won't bring you presents," then our children will eventually outgrow the morality we impose on them.  They are smart enough to make the inference that the absence of God means all morality is arbitrary.  By the time they reach high school (and usually much earlier than this), devoid of any real objective values, they build their own societies, cliques, with their own subjective values.  Those who don't fit into those cliques are treated as having no inherent value and are relentlessly bullied.  Those that are bullied have no objective values instilled in them either and now are forced to decide if they should trust the system that has failed this far in protecting them and we see these students take matters into their own hands.  I ultimately blame godlessness in society for the violence we see in schools today.  The students making hit lists, the school shootings and even, in many cases, the suicides.

And, if there is no God, who are we to say these actions are wrong?  If students form cliques and bully, it is merely the tribal morality that they have evolved in a moral vacuum once they realized there wasn't a man in a big red suit who was rewarding them for good behavior and that their teachers and administrators are fallible.  And the students that responded by violence or suicide?  It was merely the response to stimuli.  Maybe we could have fixed this response with medication that altered their chemistry, but it was all just chemistry, right?  Can you put a moral value judgment on chemistry?

I don't want to get too political about this. I'm not going to take a hard stance on the gun control question.  In the end, I do support the 2nd Amendment.  Are there common sense restrictions we could place on the purchase of firearms?  Maybe.  Will it stop the violence?  Probably not.  There are online guides for making homemade explosives from household cleaners.  If a student is so bent on violence, couldn't they just build a bomb?  I'm not saying we should sit back and do nothing...  I'm saying the problem is deeper than any legislation could reach.  This violence is the eventual result of a godless society.  Without God, who's to even say human life has any value at all?

I don't have a political prescription for this, but I've said for years that politics can't save us. That is the job of Christ. I know the part I need to play as a father.  I need to instill objective morality into my children and make sure they understand that the Creator of the universe is also the author of morality.  I need to make sure they see me valuing my faith, since my words will be empty if not backed by action.  This means doing the right thing even when I don't think they are looking.  This means not classifying certain immoral behaviors as "adult" since that lets children know that they can redefine morality as an adult.  This means requiring church attendance...  I may get some push-back on this but I hear many people say they don't want to force their beliefs on their children, and I wonder:  If your kids see that you don't require they attend church, but do require they attend school, what message does this send them about our priorities?  Do we value success and academic development over moral and spiritual development?  Do we encourage Bible study the way we encourage homework?

Ultimately, I mourn when I see the decay of our culture's morality, especially when it takes the form of mass murder.  I've seen comments and memes that it's because God isn't allowed in schools, but I'm not even sure it's the schools' place to instill morality...  Parents need to instill morality into their children and there MUST be an objective standard for it... Without God, our moral code is like a building with no foundation.  It may have the structure we desire, but it will ultimately crumble under pressure.  Jesus presents a parable about this.  It's found in Matthew 7:24-27:

“Therefore everyone who hears these words of Mine and acts on them, may be compared to a wise man who built his house on the rock.  And the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded on the rock.  Everyone who hears these words of Mine and does not act on them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand.  The rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew and slammed against that house; and it fell—and great was its fall.”

I can't tell everyone they need to be Christians or even theists.  I would love it if everyone shared my belief in the loving and gracious God who sent his perfect Son to take away the sins of the world, but I cannot be responsible for anything beyond that which God has given me.  My responsibility is to share and defend my faith and to raise my family with the moral code that was put in place by the Author of Life.  Just as Joshua said in his final recorded speech to the people of Israel:

“Now, therefore, fear the Lord and serve Him in sincerity and truth; and put away the gods which your fathers served beyond the River and in Egypt, and serve the Lord. If it is disagreeable in your sight to serve the Lord, choose for yourselves today whom you will serve: whether the gods which your fathers served which were beyond the River, or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.”  

Joshua 24:15-16 

The Multiverse, Fine-Tuning, and Logical Fallacies...

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"The multiverse is an example of a theory that says something definite (there are other regions of space far away where conditions are very different), but in such a way that this prediction cannot be directly tested, now or at any time in the future"

--Sean Carroll, Beyond Falsifiability: Normal Science in a Multiverse

Sean Carroll's paper, quoted above, tries to justify the multiverse theory as scientific although it is un-testable... In my mind, it is a multiverse of the gaps;  a classic example of the Inverse Gambler's Fallacy.

Fair warning, I'm not using any standard style for my citations, but this is a blog...  I'm still citing everything and giving the information needed to find them.

What is the Multiverse?

When many of you hear multiverse, you may think of parallel universes nearly identical to ours like we see in comic books.  That's not exactly what the multiverse is.  Strictly speaking, the multiverse does not have to be about "Parallel Universes" at all.  It refers to many distinct universes with different starting conditions.  Descriptions range from universes that lie parallel to ours to separate bubble universes. 

Different starting conditions is key to the whole thing.  The theory did not arise from empirical evidence or even just fanciful thinking... It was a response to the cosmological issue of appearance of fine tuning in our universe... 

Why a Multiverse?

The issue of fine tuning goes beyond the issue of apparent design.  People often point to something like the eye and compare it to a camera when discussing Intelligent Design (My personal preference is comparing DNA to a complex computer program, but even that doesn't carry as much weight as fine tuning.)  

The issue of fine tuning is that there are many constants in our universe that, if altered only slightly would make the universe prohibit life or even cause the universe to collapse back in on itself.  In the words of Stephen Hawking:

"Today we can create computer models that tell us how the rate of the triple alpha reaction depends on the strength of the fundamental forces of nature.  Such calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5 percent in strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Change those rules of our universe just a bit, and the conditions of our existence disappear!

By examining the model universes we generate when the theories of physics are altered in certain ways, one can study the effect of changes to physical law in a methodical manner.  It turns out that it is not only the strengths of the strong nuclear force and the electromagnetic force that are made to order for our existence.  Most of the fundamental constants in our theories appear fine-tuned in the sense that if they were altered only modest amounts, the universe would be qualitatively different, and in many cases unsuitable for the development of life."

--Stephen Hawking, The Grand Design, Page 159

I could bore you all day with examples of apparent fine tuning in the universe (Some day I may write a blog just dedicated to the many examples of this just because I'm a math geek this is the kind of thing I find interesting), but for the purpose of this entry let's just suffice to say that the numbers present a problem that science has sought to answer.  Basically, it's so improbable that the universe would end up with constants that would support the the universe itself much less life in the universe that those dedicated to a naturalistic viewpoint that science can solve all of life's mysteries have been forced to explain how we won the physics lottery that we did.

I have heard 2 basic answers to this problem.  The first answer is that the universe, by law, will simply always be produced with these constants still leaving the question of the design behind this law.  The second answer assumes that there are many universes and we just happen to be in one that had the correct starting conditions to support life...

Problems with the Multiverse

Aside from the fact that it is absolutely not testable or empirical in any way, there are two major problems with the multiverse.  Firstly, it only complicates the question of origin and secondly, it is a logical fallacy.

Scientists have spent a good deal of time trying to determine the origins of the universe.  Billions have been spent building particle accelerators to study the initial conditions of the universe.  We have trouble even understanding the beginning of just one universe where we can actually test and observe, but now we are complicating it by saying there are potentially infinite numbers of universes being generated by a cause that is outside space and time as we know it.  (Funny enough, this multiverse generator sounds a lot like a God to me. Potentially, an impersonal one, but a powerful force outside of space and time nonetheless.)  This isn't a naturalistic solution to the problem, this just multiplies the problem infinitely and forces us to admit a powerful creative force outside of space and time.

The reason this is fallacious is because it falls into the category of Inverse Gambler's Fallacy.  Let me explain:

The Gambler's Fallacy comes from assuming that independent trials affect one another. For example, if you are flipping a fair coin waiting for heads, but it keeps coming up tails, it is a gambler's fallacy to assume that the next flip is more likely to come up heads because of the streak.  The fact is that while the streak itself is becoming less probable, each individual coin flip has a 50% chance of coming up heads regardless of what came before it.

The Inverse Gambler's fallacy is from the other end. Believing that an observed independent outcome is evidence of prior trials. Imagine that a gambler walks into a room and sees someone roll a pair of dice and they come up as snake eyes (Both 1s for those of you not familiar with the term).  Seeing as this is a relatively rare occurrence (1 in 36), the gambler might assume this person rolled multiple times before getting this result.  Likewise, one might see a person on the news who won the lottery and assume that person must play every week.  Either way it's a fallacy.  The empirical evidence of one outcome, however unlikely it is, is not evidence of prior trials.

The multiverse is the application of this latter fallacy to the physics lottery I mentioned earlier.  So if someone wants to be logically sound, the multiverse hypothesis needs to be ignored until such a time as there is any empirical or testable evidence for it within this universe (Which Carroll admitted in the opening quote will never happen).  Even calling it a "theory" undermines the meaning of the word.

 Why Does it Matter?

If you know me or have read any of my other posts, you probably understand that I am a Christian and as such a theist.  I'm not necessarily saying that the appearance of fine-tuning is proof of God.  Honestly, I don't think any single argument for the existence of God is proof in and of itself.  Anything short of a prophetic vision or personal interaction with the risen Christ is merely indirect evidence of God. To quote J. Warner Wallace:

"The strength of the case isn't dependent on any single item of evidence but instead is assembled from the cumulative set of facts,"

--J. Warner Wallace, God's Crime Scene Page 197

Wallace is making the point, which he makes repeatedly, that cases are rarely won based on a smoking gun; especially the cold-cases that he worked for many years.  He points out that cases are won based on cumulative circumstantial evidence.  Throughout the book, God's Crime Scene, he presents a series of circumstantial evidences for God's existence.

If we wish to be logically sound, we cannot invent a multiverse just to handle the appearance of fine-tuning in our Universe.  The only logically honest thing we can say about the improbability of our universe is that we have one universe that meets the conditions necessary to produce life and that it is improbable that this universe existsd.  Based on just that fact, it would be a god of the gaps argument for me to assume this was proof of God in and of itself; however, a larger case can be made for God's existence.  From this example we can make one possible inference of fine tuning, but beyond that, we can look at irreducible complexity in certain aspects of living organisms, the improbability of bio-genesis itself, the appearance of at least some level of objective morality, the appearance of free will (which cannot exist in a purely naturalistic universe), etc.  There are plenty of positive scientific and philosophical evidences pointing toward God.  None of them a smoking gun, but I'm not sure we need one.  I firmly believe, like Wallace, that a strong circumstantial case for theism can be made without resorting to a "god of the gaps." 

Many atheists will point out that science has filled a lot of the "gaps" that were formerly explained only by God.  That assumes all theists see God in this way or at least see God and Science as opponents, but I think they fundamentally misunderstand the role of science.  It is empirical.  It can tell us what is.  With some interpretation, we may use it to tell us what was, or project what will be, but it deals simply with the question of mechanism and does not and cannot rule out an intelligent creator.  Dr. John Lennox uses the example of a Model T when he discusses this in some of his lectures.  He makes the point that a mechanic can understand all there is do know about how a Model T works, but knowing every bit of its mechanism does not undermine the existence of Henry Ford.

Final Thoughts

I, for one, have never seen science and religion as being at odds.  Many of the pioneers of science believed in a creator and saw their effort as a way to understand God through the discovery of the natural world. When "Science" becomes politicized or driven by philosophical naturalism, I begin to question the inferences of scientists, but science itself cannot lie to us.  It is merely a method of discovery whether we draw the correct inferences or not.  That said, the Multiverse is not science.  It is purely rooted in the philosophy of naturalism and cannot be tested through scientific means.