Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

A Question or a Koan?

By

In all seriousness here is a question that has been bothering me for… well, nearly eight years now:

“If one stole a thing of great value and had no expectation of being caught or punished, why would one ever consider returning it?”

The reason behind the question is transparent of course. But honestly I’ve been asking that question for years to all sorts of people and I have yet to get a reasonable answer. That kind of scares me. It should scare everyone.

x-posted at Pigeons Don't Lurk

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  1. …  Regret over harm caused.  This actually happening is unlikely IMO because to have stolen the thing in the first place demonstrates a preexisting lack of empathy toward the wronged party.  If, in the course of the aftermath the guilty party were to develop more empathy toward the wronged party it could then be conceivable for the guilty party to experience regret.  The problem is it would probably be hypothetically easy to merely walk away and never delve into the harm caused, thus quite easily insulating the guilty party from developing empathy toward the wronged party.

  2. Not returning something you stole would mean you could never really achieve penance for the sin.  The police might never catch you, but there’s no hiding from The Almighty.

      • He talks a lot about England being a secular society, but it didn’t crack the top ten. Plus, of course, correlation does not mean causation. Are England’s poverty, literacy, and education rates the same as the United States’? Sweden, for instance, is ususally cited as having a particularly low poverty rate, which may account for a low crime rate independent of the religiousness of the population.

        • … causation, nor did the researchers in question.

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          p>The idea that belief in God has bearing in one’s morality, however, does indicate causation.  Given such a causation, we would expect societies that are relatively non-religious to be dens of crime and such.  In practice, we find the opposite.  One must conclude that either a) religion doesn’t have a positive effect on a society’s morality or b) there are other factors influencing morality that are far stronger than religion for which religious causation was inadequate to overcome.

    • In a central chapter in St. Augustine’s Confessions, the narrator describes how he stole pears from a neighbors pear tree. Later realizing his sin, he offers God profuse apologies and realizes his abject sinfulness in not acting as God would have wanted.

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      p>Strikingly absent is any mention of the neighbor.

      <

      p>This anecdote from the Bishop of Hippo has always struck me as a key metaphor about the moral dangers of religion. If the key calculus of what is right or wrong is in one’s relationship to a supernatural being, then one is easily tempted to wrong one’s neighbor. In St. Augustine’s case, this is particularly so as the Confessions are full of him putting words into God’s mouth or telling God who God is or is not. Though more modest, modern believers do this too — if only by making the choice of, say, Roman Catholicism over Eastern Orthodoxy. Augustine’s case shows that no only is the relationship to God the wrong yardstick for morality and ethics, but it is a rather fungible yardstick, too, as one’s theology suffers change or modification.

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      p>Somewhere in the dialogs, Plato, I believe, made the above argument more succinctly.

      • … idea of morality as divine rules from on high has always struck me as ‘cart before horse’.  What do I mean by that?  Assume first that morals are objective.  Suppose I tell you to go through the desert and there you will find papers with the God’s edicts.  Suppose in the desert you find and collect many papers with edicts such as ‘don’t kill your brother’ and ‘don’t steal from your brother’,… you might conclude that these sound like good crystallizations of moral rules and conclude that they are indeed from God.  Suppose there were other papers that said things like ‘murder your mother’ and ‘steal from your friends’,… you might conclude that these are not the papers that hold God’s edicts and reject them from the pile you are collecting.  

        <

        p>So… either you use your ethical intuitions to judge what God wants or you don’t.  To use your intuitions is actually to cut God out of your ethical thought look altogether.  To truly take ‘God’s’ desire as moral, one must know what they are.  For most religious moral adherents this ‘knowing’ takes the form of faith in an authority, usually a celebrant or a book. In practice, however, most of us still use our instincts to ‘override’ the authority in question.  This is why Christians don’t, in general, abide by slavery although the Bible clearly does (the list of things ethically problematic in that particular ‘authority’ is long and distinguished).  It seems almost impossible to ‘learn’ morality from an authority without our own pesky ethical intuitions getting in the way.

        • That, with the stage machinery of camels, edicts, and desserts, is Plato’s argument, though more colorfully stated.

        • To use your intuitions is actually to cut God out of your ethical thought look altogether.

          <

          p>But where do our intuitions come from?  Assuming an omnipotent God, can they come anywhere else but from God?  I think one of the problems of agnostics and athiests have is not appreciating the omnipotence of God.  They take on a strawman, the personal “old man on a cloud” God that they think is what everyone believes in, when that has always been just a useful conception.

          <

          p>I’ve always been struck that the moral edicts of the Commandments are all merely descriptions of the way we usually act.  People usually do not kill and steal, so, the edict describes the probable action – “you should not steal”.  Morality is both a description about how people are expected to act, and a prescription about how we are expected to act.  The idea is to do what you are expected to, and that will reinforce expectations in general.  Good is meeting expectations.  The more our expectations are met, the more real reality is, the more matter matters.  

          <

          p>In this case, I’m not sure one would be expected to give the stolen thing back, so most people would probably keep it hidden until they die, unless it is taking up too much space in the basement and they are living in fear of being discovered.  They might decide to destroy it rather than have it discovered after their deaths, so as not to sully their reputation or hurt their children.  But most people wouldn’t have stolen it in the first place, or maybe they would have, if they felt they’d get away with it.  Doing what we think most people would do is acting morally, and reinforces expectations and morality.

          • Why aren’t they instinctual? Or learned?

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            p>Evolutionary biology is providing an account of this and the territory of the God of the Gaps retreats before it.

            • That territory of the God of the Gaps is a strawman.  It was coined precisely to rebuke people who thought God and scientific knowledge were in conflict, it was never an opinion held by anyone serious.  From Wikipedia:

              The term goes back to Henry Drummond, a 19th century evangelical lecturer, from his Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man. He chastises those Christians who point to the things that science can not yet explain – “gaps which they will fill up with God” – and urges them to embrace all nature as God’s, as the work of “… an immanent God, which is the God of Evolution, is infinitely grander than the occasional wonder-worker, who is the God of an old theology.”

              <

              p>So the God of everything would certainly be responsible for instincts and learning and teaching, and everything.  It may seem to make it a moot point, and indeed “moot” is precisely what it makes God, but this is how progressives should deal with God and evangicals, rather than mocking their own conception of an impotent retreating God.

          • … from God, then people need to let up on the “atheists can’t be moral” stuff because their instincts appear as good as or better than the religious.

            • It’s another strawman, no one says atheists can’t be moral.  They might say that atheism leads to loss of morality, but not necessarily in the atheist himself.

              • … on the same allegedly ‘God given’ intuitions that religious people do and get better results, then ‘loss of morality’ isn’t even on the table either.

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                p>Indeed, since they seem to get better results, we’d probably be all better off if we imported secularists from other countries to teach morality and deprogram all this ‘fear of God’ morality out of the religious culture.  If necessary, we can placate them that they can always assume that God is the source of ethical intuitions just so they can feel good that God plays a role in there somewhere.

              • But the tactic is to find the most extreme statement, and then assume that all religious people espouse such views, and then denounce them for either (i) having that view, or (ii) failing to satisfactorily denounce it.  Then you have to avoid spraining your arm as you pat yourself on the back for your internet prowess.

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                p>Works the same if you tar Olympia Snow with Ann Coulter, or John Kerry with Michael Moore.

                <

                p>It is always easier to win an argument if the other side is extremist in all things.

                • You claimed to be wounded by some hypothetical person saying “athesists cannot be moral.”  they denied this, and accused you of presenting a straw man.  I chided they, telling him that some do indeed maintain this very position, which I indicated that I find to be extreme.  I then pointed out that a fun all-heat-no-light tactic of political debate is to ascribe an extreme position to all of your opponents, regardless of whether they indeed hold that position, which in this thread you have done.

                  <

                  p>Then you for whatever reason pretend that I’m saying that no one says that “atheists can’t be moral” and rebut this by providing a string of links to people writing that atheism makes societies less moral, which is a thoroughly different proposition than the one you originally posited.  The closest you get is the “Professor” Mike Adams editorial questioning whether divorce is godly, and encouraging other to go to church, presumably to eradicate the scourge of divorce and maybe feminism to boot.  I don’t think I’m remiss in labeling the good professor a little extreme.

                  <

                  p>Which brings us back to the top of the circle, doesn’t it?

                • … intimating that when a group I belong to is insulted that it is somehow irrational to take offense  What planet are you from?  It’s only a straw man if a) I implied conclusions other than what can be concluded from the example of claims of atheist immorality and 2) if the example is indeed an extreme viewpoint.

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                  p>I never claimed that anyone here insulted atheists.  I claimed that it does happen.  I never claimed that you said that ‘no one’ says anything (what was that about comprehension?)  It seemed to me that you derided even bringing it up as some kind of underhanded tactic to cherry pick extreme viewpoints.  I cited some mainstream examples to show that it wasn’t as extreme as you intimate.  Michael Gershon of the Washington Post not mainstream enough for you?  How about bestselling author Dinesh D’Souza?  What’s to comprehend?

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                  p>BTW… when I put up Gershon and you claim the best I did was Adams… isn’t that a straw man there?

          • … ‘ethical intuitions’ from God subverts the original root of this thread branch.

            <

            p>”Not returning something you stole would mean you could never really achieve penance for the sin.  The police might never catch you, but there’s no hiding from The Almighty.”

            <

            p>Fear of God isn’t an ethical intuition, it’s a Pavlovian response.  Sneaking God in there as the source of ‘ethical intuitions’ puts God in the passive role.  Our ethical intuitions become the primary actor while God takes a back seat.  

      • is a person’s relationship with God or Christ.  

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        p>

        If the key calculus of what is right or wrong is in one’s relationship to a supernatural being, then one is easily tempted to wrong one’s neighbor.

        <

        p>This isn’t true.  My relationship with God is based very much upon my actions.  If my actions contradict the edicts of the Ten Commandments or other religious law, one of which is “thou shalt not steal”, then this damages my relationship with God.  

        <

        p>I would remind you, KBusch, that a lot of the Old Testament was tackled by Jesus in the New Testament.  Many of the old Jewish ways were let go with the birth of Christianity.  The biggest change was the 11th Commandment.  Love thy neighbor as you love thyself.  It’s common knowledge that over the centuries the Catholic Church did away with much of Mosaic Law.  Not to say that those laws never should have existed, but that Canon Law is the evolution of it.  

        • Why then didn’t St. Augustine feel compelled to make things right with the neighbor, then? He devotes his whole book to the proposition that “the most important part of Christianity is a person’s relationship with God or Christ.”

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          p>That’s my point. St. Augustine is no minor Christian figure, either.

          <

          p>Further, the Inquisition provides an excellent example of how fealty to a supernatural being — rather than practical, American, Dewey-inspired utilitarianism — tempts one into morally regressive behavior.

          <

          p>If you argue that the Church would no longer support an Inquisition, I will point to my fungible yardstick comment and say “I told you so.”

          • The idea of utilitarianism without God doesn’t work.  It’s an idea that looks good on paper but doesn’t add up in practice, much like communism.  Human nature is look out for number one.  Without knowledge that God will punish sinners in the afterlife, why should I give a rats ass about you?  If we’re all going to go poof and disappear when we die, why not rape this planet for everything it’s worth and make sure that myself and my descendants have everything they want?  Because of you?  Who the hell are you?  

            <

            p>You are my neighbor.  To wrong you would be a sin and go against divine edict.  

              • The conductors of the inquisition were power-obsessed men who perverted religion much like extremist Muslims.  Their sin was pride.  I’m confidant they are currently experiencing existence in the complete absence of God.

                • It was what MEN once dictated at the time.  God is not man even though we were created in His likeness.  

                • Unless you’re hearing voices or you no longer hold to the Apostolic Succession, you’ve got a problem. What you’re urging is incoherent and I might as well worry about what my tape dispenser dictates.

                • Everything is not either all good or all evil.

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                  p>The Church is an institution that aspires to attain perfect Christian charity, but, human nature being what it is, does not.  It is not unlike our own government, which aspires always to acheive the vision of equality so eloquently described by Jefferson, but fails.  Does this mean the American experiment must be abandoned?  No, it means it must be improved.

                • … you’re missing the point.  The source of ‘stuff’ is God, especially when we don’t know alot about it.  Religious people are inspired by God, except when they aren’t.  That way we can blame the evil they do on ‘not-God’, just like we can Bible people can say that slavery is bad even though the Bible clearly disagrees.

                  <

                  p>See. 😉  Cognitive dissonance can be fun.  Have your cake and eat it too. 😉  

                • to simple-minded self-righteous modern American Christians, to credit God for evil things.  God is “good”.  But real theologians of every stripe credit God for famines and floods and locusts and everything.  Allahu Akbar.  

                • I think in this instance you must distinguish between religion and the religious institution which is assembled and governed by people, and like every other institution assembled and governed by people, is subject to corruption and perversion for material ends.  So it was with the Inquistions.

      • for much bad theology in the Christian Church.  Manicheanism, which, in its lesser known wordly-self-is-evil aspect(as opposed to everything-is-either-all-good-or-all-evil aspect)is a source of the Church’s misguided views about sex and sexuality through the ages.

        <

        p>In my own view, my relationship with God is inseperable from my relationship with neighbor:  Augustine sinned against God because he sinned against the neighbor.  Separation of the two is, in my view, an ancient error.  Seeking forgiveness from God without seeking forgiveness from the neighbor is a futile and empty gesture, and the Gospels tell us as much.  I do not understand the allure of the ancient, ascetic monasticism, as conceived by St. Anthony, because to me, when one removes oneself from the community one removes oneself from God.

        <

        p>There is a passage in The Brothers Karamozov in which the concept I am trying to convey is analayzed.  The elder Zosima is addressing a woman who is distressed by her own lack of faith, and he directs her to commit herself to active love.  Active love is built on the concept of loving thy neighbor as thyself, in which the neighbor is best personified by someone that you do not know and who does not know you.  In other words, it is thoroughly anonymous, as if you were always in the frame of mind you are in during a blizzard traffic jam, ready to pitch in to help any and all passers by.

        <

        p>In my view, the closest people can get to the divine is exactly in this way, through their relationships with others.  So, in the thread above, the charity worker who paternalistically says (apparently to the humilitaion of someone) “I do this for you” is no less wrong than the person who says “I do this for God.”  The true Christian response is that “I do this because you are my brother.”

  3. And their lickspittles on Hardball, Fox News, and the WaPo Editorial page think they own it, too.

    <

    p>They will not give it back.

    <

    p>It must be taken.

    <

    p>So let’s take it.  It’s not like it really belonged to them, and it’s not like they were doing any good with it.

  5. …I presume your question was precipitated by the thefts at the Gardner Museum.

    <

    p>“If one stole a thing of great value and had no expectation of being caught or punished, why would one ever consider returning it?”

    <

    p>Actually, the recipient(s) of the booty might not want to come forward for reasonable fear that they would be arrested for being at least accomplices after the fact, if not co-conspirators.

  6. You cannot get from “is” to “should”.

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    p>Moral philosophy generally seems to be subject to two tests: (1) is it coherent? (2) does it match our intuitions about right and wrong?

    <

    p>Lately, there’s been a genetic/evolutionary turn in such investigations. Altruism appears to have conferred a significant survival advantage on our species.

    <

    p>I recall reading in one of Jared Diamond’s books (possibly Collapse) that older people were often very useful repositories of past knowledge. The climate changes gradually and knowing what to do should the weather become colder or dryer can save lives. Having an elder who remembers what was done enables that. Without altruism, a hunting-gathering clan is unlikely to even have elders — and thus, is likely to experience population loss.

    • …I suspect that if you go rooting around in the talkorigins.org web site you would find a number of references to the fact that altruism is an evolutional advantage in a social species.

      <

      p>The well-known biologist Jean Mayr of Tufts Univ. made the same point in an article in the July 2002 issue of Scientific American.

      • When it first came out I read Frans de Waal’s Good Natured:  the Origins of Right and Wrong in Humans and other Animals.  I enjoyed this book immensely, and appreciated the extensive documentation of studies in the appendix.

        <

        p>Later I recall Frans de Waal being interviewed after there was a lot of media attention around a gorilla who swiftly and carefully came to the rescue of a little boy who had fallen into her enclosure.  With good reason, he wasn’t the least bit surprised by her behavior.

        • …I have also read that the idea of social justice (fairness) has also been observed among the great apes.

    • Now all of you atheist utilitarian liberals can just off all of those old people, solving the health care crisis, unemployment, and global warming with one shot.

      <

      p>/sarcasm

      • I’m not sure that utilitarianism “solves” the problem of moral philosophy. I just think it’s a better approach than trying to divine the meaning of my tape dispenser, decipher the self-contradictory ancient anthologies, or obey fallible human institutions blindly.

        <

        p>Anyway, my tape dispenser reminds me that those old people are precious unto it.

  7. jje: If you are interested in this question, you may want to read Plato’s Republic.  The character Glaucon presents the argument you have made:

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    p>

    Suppose now that there were two such magic rings [that make people invisible], and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands off what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a god among men. Then the actions of the just would be as the actions of the unjust; they would both come at last to the same point.

    <

    p>Socrates gives Plato’s answer.

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