Mr. Hitchens on morality

http://www.smh.com.au/national/heathens-above-gods-harshest-critic-smokes-in-the-shower-20091001-ger1.html?skin=text-only

The famous journalist, author and neo-atheist Mr. Christopher Hitchens said the following, among other things, when he spoke to The Sydney Morning Herald for a story in today’s issue:

''Most [believers] believe that without religion their children, and even they, would not know right from wrong. I have two arguments to which no answer has yet been received. One: Name me a moral kindness or action that they can do because of their belief but that I can't. Two: Can you think of one evil action done by a religion person? You can, and you can think of another, and another.''
[square-bracketed interpolation in the original]

There are three things to say about this. The first is in regard to his point one: it misses the mark, because there is no question that the unregenerate can (albeit usually with difficulty) perform acts of “moral kindness”, as Mr. Hitchens calls it. See, for instance, St. Robert Bellarmine, Doctor of the Church, writing in his magnificent Treatise on Civil Government:

… But this justification from sin is said to be a certain liberty, for he who is in sin cannot, until he is freed by grace, will that good which is ordained for eternal life; he has, indeed, free will, since he can choose one evil from among many, and he can even choose moral good, but he cannot choose salutary good unless he at least begins to be freed by the ... grace of God, since he is held captive by the Devil according to his will, as it is written. [Tim. II.]
[http://catholicism.org/oldsite/de-laicis10.html]

So infidels can choose moral good—that is, they can choose to perform acts which suit human nature—but this choice avails them nothing towards salvation, which one can only merit in union with Our Lord’s Passion.

The second thing to say is that Mr. Hitchens’s second point is also ill-conceived, because the contention which Mr. Hitchens is supposed to be refuting is that the irreligious cannot behave morally; whether or not the religious will necessarily behave morally is another matter. Furthermore, abuse does not detract from use: that religious folk do evil in defiance of the tenets of their respective religions does nothing to detract from the fact that the ‘ought’ of moral obligation can issue only from the will of a superior, usually enacted in law.

And that brings us to the third thing, and the most important thing, which needs to be said here. Now Mr. Hitchens says that

''Most [believers] believe that without religion their children, and even they, would not know right from wrong.

Perhaps he is right, and most believers think that without religion (however Mr. Hitchens defines that term) one is incapable of telling right from wrong, though I haven’t seen any data to support this contention. What matters, though, is not whether believers subjectively think that one cannot know right from wrong without religion, but whether, objectively, one can know right from wrong without religion. And one can indeed know right from wrong without being religious; one knows it by an intellectual consideration of the respective natures and ends of things. But the problem for Mr. Hitchens is not knowing what good is but, rather, knowing whether one ought to do good. And, as they say, one cannot derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. An ‘is’ imposes itself by the force of reason, but the ‘ought’ of unconditional obligation can only be imposed by the will of a superior. (I say “unconditional” because one can impose on oneself a conditional obligation—if I want to be good then I should do such-and-such—but a purely self-imposed obligation is not a true and proper obligation, and can be revoked at will.) An obligation obviously cannot be imposed by an inferior, and nor can it be imposed by oneself or one equal in authority to oneself, for reasons just mentioned. Without some being with authority over man who (the authority-figure) can impose upon him (man) the obligation to do good and avoid evil, we just have people following their tastes and preferences—those who have a taste for good do good, those who have a taste for evil do evil, and the two sides can only agree to disagree. (Now an atheist might retort: so only a superior can impose true and proper obligations. Well and good. But why would the superior necessarily impose an obligation to do good? If his authority is absolute, then is he not free to bind his subordinates to do evil if he so wills? The answer to this objection is: not if the superior is good by nature and all-perfect, in which case he would never abuse his freedom and authority by obliging his subjects to do evil.)

The Herald article was in connection with the so-called Festival of Dangerous Ideas, which begins tomorrow and whose opening address will be given by Mr. Hitchens. It will be interesting to see what he has to say. I would be fascinated to see how he elaborates on his moral philosophy.

Reginaldvs Cantvar
Feast of The Holy Guardian Angels, A.D. 2009