In the end, Raymond Ingles confuses the expression of a so-called public “morality” with the content of a God-given universal moral code, and equates rational action to further an individual’s wants, needs and desires with the intrinsic moral content of human behavior.

 
1. Introduction

I appreciate the opportunity Raymond Ingles gave me to read an early draft of his paper and offer a rejoinder to his comments.  Any references I make will be to that version of his essay in the event that he has fine-tuned some of the concepts or language choices he used before submitting his final draft, and my direct quotes of him read differently than his published paper.

This entire conversation is an outgrowth of an email I received from Mr. Ingles on a related subject, where he asked me a series of questions after reading my essay on “The Politics of Science and Religion.”  The basic issues dividing us seemed more appropriate to the essay I wrote on moral relativism, “What Kind of Car Would Jesus Drive to Take His Girlfriend to an Abortion Clinic?”  I offered him an opportunity to continue this debate in a public forum, much like my previous debate with James Carmine, and therefore he produced his paper to which I am now responding.

2.  My original position

Before getting into the details of Mr. Ingles' analysis, let me begin with a brief overview of the salient parts of my moral relativism paper.  A full explanation of each of these points is offered in “What Kind of Car Would Jesus Drive to Take His Girlfriend to an Abortion Clinic?,” and further elaborated in the Jackson-Carmine debate on moral values.

My central position is that a Universal Moral Code (a) exists, (b) can be expressed in principle as “it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life,”¹ and (c) from this general statement, we can give specific, universal examples about the content of the moral code.  I used the violent rape and murder of a five-year-old child to illustrate both harm and pure innocence,² and to demonstrate the universal moral repulsion this act brings to people regardless of where they live, or when they lived.  It is as true today anywhere in the world as it was a thousand years ago, and will be a thousand years in the future.

Because of this, I further contend that the UMC is not a product of shared education, societal influences, or the result of human genetics, but rather is a value judgment that is ingrained into every human being as a constituent part of them at the moment of conception.  It is “instinctive” in the way it reveals itself.  But the content of the value(s) it expresses is not due to simple “instinct.” 

3.  Rationalizing immorality by denying an individual’s humanity

The fact that we all possess the Universal Moral Code doesn’t mean that human beings are incapable of acting brutally and immorally.  They can, and do more often than we all wish.  The only difference is that it is “easier” to rationalize injurious action against an adult than a child.³  This doesn’t make the act less immoral, just more commonplace.

Atrocities against pure innocence (i.e. the example of a five-year-old child) are more rare because they are more difficult to rationalize.  To harm pure innocence, one must first explain away the individual’s innocence or humanity.  Blowing up a school bus full of children and/or electively aborting an otherwise healthy developing child always requires the perpetrator to first deny the individual’s humanity, or somehow assign that person non-innocent status.  Infidels (and Muslim heretics or apostates) are not human beings the same way the true followers of the true version of Islam are, so killing them is no more immoral than killing any criminal or animal.  Their denial of the one true faith has taken this innocence away, so killing non-believers and heretics/apostates, they rationalize, does not violate the Universal Moral Code.  When a Jew is targeted, there’s an extra bonus involved.  Not only is a non-believer (ergo non-innocent person) killed, a sub-human species is eradicated as well.⁴

Some of this same rationalized logic is found in the decision to abort an otherwise healthy child.  For those who terminate a developing child when the life of the mother isn’t at stake, the fetus they just killed isn’t really a baby, but merely a clump of tissue that is less than fully human.  Innocence is not an issue because tumors, cysts, and other clumps of bio-matter have no soul, or any inherent right to life.  We kill millions of cows every year without any moral twinge, so aborting a “thing” that happens to be growing inside its female host, the rationalization goes, is not a moral issue.⁵  It’s only a moral problem if that thing you just killed happens to be human.  This is why a woman aborting her child will speak of it only in neutral, antiseptic terms, and vehemently resist any effort to call it a dead baby.

4.  The constant nature of the Universal Moral Code

Why is it that every society, in every age, acts this same way when it comes to the practice of morality?  Why is it that every society, in every period of time, finds the deliberate harming of an innocent child morally repugnant?  Why must the humanity or innocence of any human life (child or adult) be denied before an immoral act can be committed?

Consider the testimony of a prison guard who escaped from North Korea, whose story was related by the recent National Geographic documentary Inside North Korea.  A special camp exists where the extended families of political prisoners are sent for life.  There they are subjected to unspeakable brutality, over and above the normal population control techniques of the North Korean government.  This brutality is not the result of random actions of rogue guards, but instead is an official policy of the camp.  The camp isn’t just punishment for an alleged crime.  It is retribution against an entire family for one member’s supposed “misdeeds.”

What allows children as young as one- and two-years-old to be starved and mistreated, along with their parents, for the “crimes” of a distant relative?  As the defector explained, guards are specifically instructed “not to consider the people as human beings,” and to punish all members of an extended family for the alleged crimes against the state of one of its members.  It is their less-than-human, and non-innocent status that makes such brutality acceptable; otherwise even the most sadistic human beings would not be able to muster the necessary brutality to carry through their orders.

This dehumanization of people is nothing new.  The SS in Nazi Germany found that many of its death camp operators were suffering severe emotional trauma when faced with killing young Jewish children.  This trauma was reduced only after Adolf Eichmann explained to these otherwise stalwart SS that killing Jewish children was perfectly acceptable because Jews, as a race, were parasites, and it made no sense to kill only the old and let the young survive to replace them.  Extermination of a subhuman species is not possible unless you cut it off at its source.  Moreover, as parasites on society, Jews shared a collective “guilt” that justified/rationalized such drastic action against them.  Only these rationalized assurances, built on the foundation that Jewish children were part of a subhuman species — and furthermore, were guilty of crimes deserving death because they belonged to an inherently wicked race — allowed the SS to continue the killing of over 6 million innocent men, women and children.

Redefining individuals (or groups of individuals) as non-human, or assigning individual or collective guilt for some imagined crime to rationalize a killing that would otherwise be seen as morally indefensible, is a standard theme in history.  It’s the rationalization that allows the action; without which no killing would take place.

Even in primitive societies, people didn’t go around killing little children as frequently as they killed chickens, pigs, goats or wild game. In fact, they didn’t go around killing them at all, unless it was their enemies’ children (who were seen as “less than human” and/or shared in their parents' or race’s collective guilt, and thus were killed along with the adults), or the child was physically deformed (and therefore considered to be less than a true human), or the wrong sex (as in China today where girls are not valued equally with human males), or were killed in ritual sacrifice — where instead of devaluing the child, he/she was elevated to the status of a demigod who, through their innocent/pure/untainted life, had a special ability to commune with the gods.

In this last example, a child’s humanity isn’t redefined to deny it, but rather it is redefined to make him more than human.  These societies didn’t sacrifice ordinary children, but instead a child of “high value” whose humanity was re-defined to make him/her an extra-human emissary to the gods.  This allowed the child to be treated by a different set of moral rules — or so the rationalization went.  He/she wasn’t being killed because they were not seen as anything different from a common barnyard animal.  The young boy or girl, because of their presumed special purity and innocence, was being ritually sacrificed to carry a message to the gods.  The child, therefore, was no longer an ordinary human being, but instead a spiritual vessel capable of carrying a message to the gods.  By contrast, the sacrifice of captured prisoners and criminals was not to celebrate their innocence, but to show respect and pay homage to the gods.  These individuals had their humanity stripped away, and were just an extension of sheep, goats, or other sacrificial animals who served a similar purpose.

Therefore, even in a society where ritual sacrifice is practiced, it still requires an invoking of the Universal Moral Code to explain away or rationalize this action by altering the individual’s normal human status, or by explaining away a person’s innocence that would prevent such an action. Of course, this rationalized distinction is of little comfort to the now just-as-dead child, but, significantly, it is of great comfort to the hundreds, if not thousands, of other tribal children who can go to sleep that night knowing that their beating hearts will still be inside their bodies when the sun rises the next morning.  And it provides similar comfort as well to the average adult, who doesn’t fear being snatched from the street because the High Priest is running short of prisoners to sacrifice.

It is the very fact that ritual sacrifice was an exception (initiated only by the leaders of society), rather than a standard, society-wide practice, that makes it different from other killing.  If you were having a tough time with your crops you couldn’t just round up a stray kid and kill the little tyke yourself to please the gods, anymore than you could go out and rape the neighbor’s child (or even one of your own) just because you had a fetish for little children.

If rape is too strong an image to consider, then consider that so-called “consensual sex” with a young boy or girl was also a big moral taboo across time and cultures.  How do we know this?  We know it precisely because, to cite the most egregious example, pedophilia was a somewhat common practice in ancient Rome . . . that is, exclusively with children who were slaves.

Slaves of all ages could be acquired for any purpose and made to perform any acts, because they weren’t considered “human” in the way free citizens of Rome were.  This distinction wasn’t just because slaves looked or acted differently from traditional Romans.  Many societies that allowed slavery also interacted with people of different tribes or nations.  While a foreigner may have been looked down upon or been held in low regard, or even seen as culturally inferior, this didn’t automatically translate into viewing everyone outside your clan as humanly inferior — therefore making it morally acceptable to treat them no differently than animals.  But a slave, regardless of their appearance or other considerations, was a simple commodity with no rights or equal status to those of fully recognized human beings.

Therefore, what a Roman noble did with a five-year-old slave was not viewed or judged the same way as what he did with a five-year-old “free” child.  The same act was viewed as a morally-neutral exercise involving one’s own personal property when slavery was involved, but as morally reprehensible act — even if it was supposedly “consensual” — when a non-slave was involved. 

And yet, even with this rationalization, a universal notion of morally was so ingrained in all humans that when Tiberius Caesar indulged in open, excessive pedophilia with pre-pubescent slaves, it was enough to galvanize the Roman Senate against him for his overt “immorality.”  Not even the fiction that slaves were not fully human was enough to excuse his horrific excesses which forced this innate moral issue to the forefront, much the same way the internal contradictions of slavery in 19th century America were exposed by its own rationalizations (see my original essay).  Immoral rationalizations ultimately cannot stand the test of time, because of the very fact that they reflect universally immoral behavior.

5. Where does the Universal Moral Code come from?

So we ask the question: where does this universal, moral-based aversion to deliberately harming an innocent human life come from?  Is it culturally-based?  No; different cultures share the same moral code.  Does it automatically arise as people live in “more civilized” societies?  The Nazis were clearly more civilized than, say, 6th century Europe, and Osama Bin Laden was a well-traveled, educated man.  Clearly civilizing influences are not, in themselves, civilizing enough to give content and substance to the universal moral code.  Does it come from human consensus then?  If so, the United Nations would be the fountain of modern-day morality. 

This is the big question. What give the universal moral code its specific content?  Why does everyone believe that it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life?  For this we have to look at specific examples, instead of merely discussing abstract principles.

6. Slavery

Why is slavery, for example, seen as immoral — unless the humanity of the slave is first “explained away?”

A free man may become an indentured servant to satisfy a debt, and in doing so mimic the life of a slave.  But even bonded servitude has its “rules” that recognized the humanity of that individual and thus set limits on a master’s behavior.⁶  True slaves are merely property, and will always be property unless a Master plays god and grants them free (human) status.  The only “rules” concerning property are those of one's own self-interest in preserving that property.  You feed and shelter a horse because otherwise it will die.  But if it does die from your neglect, while the state may (or may not) punish you for cruelty, it will not imprison you for murder; just as killing one’s own slave in 1864 would not have resulted in a charge of murder against the individual committing that act.

7.  Abortion and Terrorism

Whether it’s aborting a healthy baby when its mother’s life is not at stake, raping and killing a young child, or blowing up a school bus full of Jewish children, the perpetrators of this act must first define away that individual’s humanity and/or innocence.  Only by doing this can they rationalize their actions, because otherwise it would be a clear violation of the Universal Moral Code. 

I stress this because a key point raised by Mr. Ingles in supposedly refuting what I say, is:

As to terrorism, I agree that it is also immoral. But I think Dr. Jackson engages in a bit of sleight-of-hand when he conflates terrorism and abortion as arising from identical mindsets. Justifications for abortion tend to deny humanity to the developing fetus; but as he acknowledges, Islamic terrorists don't claim their victims are not human, they claim they are not innocent. Of course they dehumanize their enemies as much as possible to help psych themselves up for violence, but this is hardly unique to terrorist. Even our own troops have done this ('gooks', 'hajis'); it's a human coping mechanism, though a dangerous one. [Note: Mr. Ingles is not comparing U.S. troops to terrorists, just drawing implications from what he sees as supposedly parallel actions].

This logic, I contend, is moral relativism on at least two levels. 

Taking his last sentence first, calling the Kaiser a “Heinie,” The Japanese “Nips,” the North Vietnamese “gooks,” or the Islamo-fascists an equally unkind name during wartime does indeed ridicule the enemy, and may even desensitize U.S. troops.  This, however, is a far cry from believing that calling Germans “Krauts” during WWII meant that U.S. soldiers believed they could exterminate all Germans the way the SS killed all Jews.  Psyching oneself “up for violence” to carry through with your legitimate duties in wartime does not automatically translate into believing that the soldiers you fight, and the civilians they defend, are criminal or sub-human scum who can be slaughtered at will. “Desensitizing” is not the same thing as “dehumanizing” any more than spanking a child to correct their misbehavior is the same thing as breaking their ribs or beating their heads into a wall.

Contrast this, though, with, the professed attitude of Islamo-fascist terrorists.  There is no distinction in their minds between non-human status and non-innocent status.  They are two sides of the same coin, as I explained at length in my original essay.

So what is the trigger mechanism that allows a homicide bomber about to blow up a school bus full of Jewish children to also feel innate revulsion at the harming of innocent life?  It’s not a different core moral code.  The terrorist’s moral code is identical to ours, despite what we think about his actions.  The trigger mechanism is actually his society, the civilization that gives him his cultural and political reference points.  The fact that he finds no problem killing Jewish children is a result of his society and culture working to suppress the moral code that equates Jewish children with other innocent life, and allows him to think of them as animals instead.  Pack the bus with a bunch of little Ayatollahs instead of Jewish scum, and his response is completely different.  He’d ditch the bomb and invite them to his house for lemonade and cookies.⁷

Innocence worth protecting under the universal moral code, to an Islamo-fascist, is only attached to human life — and Jews, Infidels, and Muslim apostates/heretics are either subhuman, or “guilty” of affronts against God that demand their death.  Whether the person killed on the 72nd floor of the World Trade Center was a Jewish animal, an undeserving Infidel, a heretical Muslim apostate, or just in the wrong place at the wrong time was irrelevant to Osama Bin laden.  None of them were considered to be fully human or innocent human beings, and thus deserving of respect in accordance with the Universal Moral Code. 

Only by looking at these living, breathing people as targets — which is to say, not innocent human beings at all — was it possible to carry out the 9/11 attacks.  Contrast this with civilian deaths by haji-hating US servicemen.  We prosecute soldiers for rape and murder, and convene military inquiries every time there is an accidental or unintended civilian death.  The only “targets” we have are enemy soldiers and terrorists, and when they are captured instead of being killed in combat, we imprison them instead of summarily executing them.

Mr. Ingles therefore misses the point by arguing that “Islamic terrorists don't claim their victims are not human, they claim they are not innocent.” (Emphasis original.)  Innocence is part of the Universal Moral Code:  It is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life.  As I explained in my original essay, raping a prostitute is an immoral act.⁸  Despite the fact that she makes her living by having sex with men, no one has the right to forcefully rape another person, just as no one has a right to deliberately harm an innocent life by killing them.⁹

Contrast this with the killing that occurs during the prosecution of a war.  As I had previously explained:

The person who just tried to kill you seconds ago on the battlefield, and would justify you killing him first if for no other reason than self-defense, becomes an innocent life the moment he surrenders.  Not “innocent” of any crimes he may have committed through his previous actions.  That is a determination for a military tribunal or a civilian court of law . . . He is an innocent life because our innate moral code can instantly recognize the difference between both situations pre- and post-surrender.  This isn’t learned, and it isn’t taught.  [To illustrate moral vs. immoral actions], surrender by an American soldier is an indication that he has ceased immediate combat.  Surrender by an Islamo-fascist is a way to bring the enemy closer so you can kill him with a hidden gun.

For those who want to argue about just wars, legitimate state executions of convicted criminals, and other such matters involving the killing of non-innocent people, I invite you to read my original essay.  For purposes of this conversation, Mr. Ingles has failed to grasp what is meant both abstractly, and concretely, by the UMC’s prohibition against deliberately harming innocent human life, and therefore sees contradictions or exceptions where no such contradictions/exceptions exist.

8. Ingles’ misunderstanding of key issues

I focus on these points not to debate every word in Mr. Ingles’ essay, but because observations like these help illustrate why his essay completely misses the point in several key areas.  The true sleights-of-hand are the ways he intentionally — or inadvertently — engages in relativistic comparisons as well as subtle, but important misdirections of the discussion.

For example, another minor, but important point is the way Mr. Ingles characterized my original analysis by stating that, “A central theme [in Jackson’s thesis] is the example of a violent rape and murder of a five-year-old child. This, Dr. Jackson contends, is clearly wrong to all but a vanishingly small percentage of all humans throughout history.” 

Mr. Ingles has it entirely wrong.  Embracing the Universal Moral Code’s prohibition against the deliberate harming of innocent human life is not something that was once rather commonplace, acceptable behavior, and then over time has increasingly “vanished.”  I contend that such actions have always been the overwhelming, statistically significant exception to human behavior.  Humanity didn’t civilize itself through societal structures, improved education, increased global communication, etc., and as a result of talking to one another formed the consensus that such actions are wrong.  These actions have never been considered moral in the first place, regardless of time, location or condition.

My intention isn’t to nit-pick Mr. Ingles’ essay, which I believe overall is a sincere, honest effort to address the issue of whether or not there is a Universal Moral Code bestowed in us by God.  But since he starts his critique by focusing on certain words I used or phrases that supposedly reflect my central themes, it’s important to understand whether we, in fact, are discussing the same subject, or having something of a parallel conversation.

9. Physical vs. Metaphysical explanations

Mr. Ingles zeroes in on my use of the term “metaphysical” to discuss a category of answers that are different from those testable, observable phenomenon found in the physical world.  As I originally stated, “The only way a metaphysical explanation can stand is if all possible physical explanations do not fully account for an activity. Then, a metaphysical explanation at least becomes plausible.”  To this Mr. Ingles replies:

So far as I can glean the author's intent, he means 'the metaphysical' to be that which is 'supernatural' – "beyond the grasp of human understanding." A metaphysical mechanism to accomplish something (e.g. implanting a moral code in humans) would be not merely an unknown means of operation, but an unknowable one, something forever removed from human [kind].  Epistemologically, this is a troublesome concept. How does one, in practice, distinguish between something 'currently unknown but comprehensible' and something 'forever unknowable?'

The issue isn’t between knowing something and guessing, or knowing something and ascribing it to witchcraft, magic, or the machinations of friendly spirits, but rather between knowing something by way of the observable laws of nature, and knowing something that is just as real, but whose explanation lies elsewhere.  If society, education, genetics, etc. cannot account for the content of morality, then it’s fair to look to another source — God.  In this sense I use metaphysics as Wikipedia defines the term:

A central branch of metaphysics is ontology, the investigation into what types of things there are in the world and what relations these things bear to one another. The metaphysician also attempts to clarify the notions by which people understand the world, including existence, objecthood, property, space, time, causality, and possibility.  More recently, the term "metaphysics" has also been used more loosely to refer to "subjects that are beyond the physical world."

Because of the way Mr. Ingles has incorrectly framed the debate, the proofs he employs are off the mark.  We both agree that humanity is acting “morally” today with regard to prohibitions against child rape and murder.  But rather than demonstrate why such things were considered morally-neutral or morally acceptable in the past, Mr. Ingles simply presumes that the practice once was, but has since increasingly diminished over time. 

Moreover, if we accept that the only truths are those that can be directly observed in the physical world, then by definition everything else is inherently unknowable.  And, something unknowable is by definition, well, nothing more than one’s own personal beliefs, guesses, or out-of-thin-air conjecture.  This is not the same thing as saying that the possibility exists that there are things that are true, regardless of whether humanity can ever understand every detail and facet of them.

The fact that science cannot reveal a truth does not automatically mean that the truth doesn’t exist, or that we just need to wait a bit longer until science evolves sufficiently to explain it, as I discussed in my essay on “The Politics of Science and Religion.”  It means that there are limits to what can be known by relying exclusively on tangible, measurable phenomenon that you can touch and hold.

10.  Knowing what you supposedly “can’t know”

Einstein is said to have explained it this way.  Conceptualizing the creation and functioning of the universe is like a small child walking into an enormous library piled high with books written in a myriad of languages he cannot — and never will be able — to understand.  He knows that the books denote order, and within its pages are the answers to every question he might ask.  But even though he may formulate the right questions, not all of that knowledge will ever be directly accessible by him. And yet, despite his inability to fully comprehend everything contained in these books (or completely understand that which he can comprehend), the knowledge and information is real.  Its reality does not depend on our ability to fully, or even partially understand it.

To Mr. Ingles, this presents an insurmountable problem.  To me, it doesn’t.  When physical world explanations fail to account for something, and because of the nature of the question will never provide a full answer, it doesn’t mean the issue is “unknowable.”  It means that it must be accessed and understood by other means.  We can measure lust (i.e. sexual arousal) by looking at the physical changes a body undergoes when presented with sexual stimulation,¹⁰ but we cannot measure “love” by any exact physical measure.

Yet love is every bit as real as lust, even more so.  In this same sense we can never physically communicate with God, yet God exists.  God is only in doubt when we anthropomorphize Him.  Maybe we got it right by calling him Jesus or Jehovah, and maybe we didn’t.  And maybe our description of God’s ‘physical’ or ‘psychological’ attributes are accurate, or maybe they aren’t.  But all this is irrelevant to the fundamental question of does God exist?  Whatever we humans think about God doesn’t define whether God exists or not.  God is that which created the universe.  We may come to understand how He did it, and through that better understand Him, but as I said in “The Politics of Science and Religion:”

It doesn’t disprove the existence of God because I finally understand how something works.  If knowledge, in and of itself, was all that mattered, then my knowledge of how a car actually works would somehow disprove the existence of General Motors.  To those who are focused on the details of how we got here in the first place more than what we are supposed to do after getting here, when all is said and done, does it really make any difference whether you, personally, can figure out how God did something?  My two-year-old niece can’t understand Newtonian physics.  That doesn’t mean Newton never existed, or that the Earth, Venus, Mars and other planets don’t orbit the Sun according to his calculations. 

Therefore, discussing God and the nature of God-given morality is not the same thing as discussing one religion’s understanding of God, and the tenets and rules they create to express those beliefs.

So, returning to Mr. Ingles’ critique, embarking upon a lengthy explanation of ancient superstitions, meteors from space and cell nuclei is interesting, but not strictly relevant to my original thesis.  Science does not validate religion any more than religion defines science.  But just because science is better at explaining how the world works than religion doesn’t mean that science will ever have all the answers, because as Mr. Ingles did correctly surmise at one point, some things are beyond science’s ability to explain.  My difference with Mr. Ingles is that when confronted with this situation we don’t then say that issue doesn’t exist.  We instead look for other ways to account for it.

11.  Allowing for God as an “independent variable”

Failing to grasp this is why Mr. Ingles has trouble with the following quote from my original essay:

I realize that to some scientists, allowing for God as an independent variable is like asking them to include space aliens or an undersea civilization in their hypotheses. This is no more bizarre than to those on the other side who can't understand why God must automatically be excluded because He can't be observed directly.

Mr. Ingles appears to believe that by raising the possibility of a God-based explanation to moral behavior, I am somehow intruding upon the proper venue of science.  I contend that it’s exactly the opposite.  The issue with morality (a metaphysical subject) isn’t that it is attempting to hijack science.  Rather, it is that science has decided that this metaphysical notion can — and should — be explained, well, scientifically. 

This makes absolutely no sense unless one can demonstrate that science can indeed explain the content of morality.  Why is X considered good/moral, and Y bad/immoral?  God has no role in science because science automatically assumes, as Mr. Ingles explains, that God is unknowable — therefore God cannot be part of any explanation.  But this assumes that every question asked by man can only be answered by science.

Returning again to the notion of love, if your spouse asks “do you love me?,” do you rush to the nearest science table and measure your pulse, check your breathing, determine whether you have any physical arousal, or fill out a psychological profile, and then answer “yes” or “no?”  And if you can’t scientifically measure your love for a spouse, child, relative, friend, or any other human being, but you answer “yes” anyway, are you guessing, lying, posturing, or acting only on instinct?

This is a silly conversation because everyone knows that love cannot be scientifically measured, yet we’re allowed by the rational mind to accept the existence of love.  But, we’re not allowed by science to say that if the content of morality cannot be explained by genetics, social institutions, mere human consensus, etc., then God might be its source, because God is not scientifically knowable.

12.  What give the universal moral code its specific content? 

This whole issue of a God-based morality is moot if Mr. Ingles can demonstrate a scientific basis for the content of morality.

I focus on content because as I explained before, society, politics, and individual personal preferences do not give us our morality.  Rather, they work to suppress an individual’s recognition of morality, or to help bring that morality out in its fullest expression.  Take genetics for example.  An autistic child, because of his genetic makeup, cannot express love in a normal fashion.  The genetic defect suppresses his expression of love.  Love is not provided by a “love gene” that is missing in him, but present in the rest of us.  The same conclusions can be drawn about basic moral issues.  Genetics, society, education, etc. can all work to help inhibit or express the Universal Moral Code, but they do not give the UMC its content — i.e. define what is inherently right or wrong.

Moreover, “morality” is not the same thing as human consensus.  If it was, the United Nations would determine right and wrong for all of us.  Civilizations don’t inherently produce universal morals and values.  What’s considered economically moral in a capitalist society is often considered economically immoral in a communist society — yet both societies share the same identical universal view that raping and killing an innocent five-year-old child is an inherently immoral act.

So, having said all of this, what is Mr. Ingles’ proof that the content of human morality is either (a) knowable scientifically, or (b) not universally shared by all human beings as instilled by God?

13. Instilling vs. Imposing

To begin his critique, Mr. Ingles takes all that I said above (and in much greater detail in "What Kind of Car Would Jesus Drive?") and reduces it to a philosophical argument about "divine command theory."  This produces such questions as: Do the gods love the pious?  And, is there something about sacrificing animals that is intrinsically pious?

It’s a nonsense, straw-man way to treat the subject. Start by asking what did Plato and Socrates say about divinity and morality, then understanding what they said, assume that this now somehow helps define the inherent content of morality.  It’s interesting stuff philosophically, and it uses some of the same words I do (though in different ways), but in the end this line of reasoning tells us nothing about why all people are universally, morally opposed to harming an innocent human life; and why when they do, they consistently define-away its humanity or innocence to rationalize the action.  We kill cows by the millions without once ever considering whether they are human or not.  Why is it so important to make sure it’s a slave that’s being molested instead of a free child, or to label your enemies Infidels or heretics before you randomly slaughter them?  Or define that child as a tissue mass instead of a human being before you abort it?

The reason for this disconnect is that Mr. Ingles takes what I say about God “instilling” a universal moral code in every human being at the moment of conception, and analyzes this statement by speaking about a “divinely-imposed morality.”  This isn’t a case of substituting a word like “street” for “avenue” and quibbling about whether that somehow makes a difference in describing the same basic, paved roadway.  At best, it’s a way to knock down an argument I never made (and in fact rejected myself) as having anything at all to do with understanding the content of morality.  At worst, it’s a complete restatement of my thesis to reject a point that I took great pains to make myself.  Talking about religious teaching is not the same thing as talking about God Himself, or the direct instillation of a universal moral code in man by God.

I don’t believe that Mr. Ingles is deliberately trying to obfuscate the issue, however.  Rather, I think that his analysis reflects the basic atheism/agnosticism he embraces on his own website.  Where I see God loading the human soul with universal moral content, which we all then access as sentient beings to help understand right from wrong, Mr. Ingles talks about a supernatural, man-created God or gods imposing a moral creed on man.  And how does God/gods do this?  By using other men to give us moral and religious codes to live by.

But to drive the point home again, speaking about God is not the same thing as speaking about religion — which is a man-made vehicle that tries to better connect us to God.  However, anything man-made is, by definition, imperfect, even a religion that considers itself to be divinely inspired.  This is why the Christian faith has multiple religious institutions (Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox, Protestant — and within each of these groupings subgroups of their own); why there are multiple branches of Judaism; and why Islam and other religions are equally divergent.

A God-imposed morality, which occurs by way of man’s attempt to directly access God’s mind, is by definition imperfect.  Even if we accept that some religious teaching are divinely inspired, divine inspiration is not the same thing as totally, completely, unmitigatedly correct.  Thus the phrase “divinely inspired” instead of simply “divine.”  However, when God gives us a common moral code directly at the moment of conception it requires no human intervention to transport this code, other than the simple act of conception.  Thus a God-instilled morality possesses none of these problems.

14. Man’s vs. God’s morality

Mr. Ingles’ analysis fails because he constantly looks at morality through human eyes.  This is why he says “if morality is simply a matter of what God commands, then saying that ‘God is good’ becomes a vacuous, or at least tautological, claim.”  But in saying this he entirely misses the point.  It isn’t what men (Plato, the Nazis, the UN, you, me, or my next door neighbor) think God commands them to do that defines morality.  It’s what we intuitively understand within each of us; the content of which is instilled by God at the moment of conception because that is the moment when we all become human. 

And why is conception the moment when this occurs?  Because it is the one, singular, objectively-defined moment when human life begins.  Again quoting from my original essay:

You can take a trillion human sperm and a thousand human eggs and place them in two separate containers.  As long as they do not mix, human life is impossible. But allow a single sperm and a single egg to unite inside a woman’s body, and human life has begun.  One sentence, identifying the precise moment in time when the status of each constituent element fundamentally changes, is all that is needed to supplement this statement with the logic to support it.  Find me the same parsimony in words to justify an elective abortion at week 19, 30, 22, 15, or any point in between, and I’ll support the wisdom of that choice instead of labeling it what it really is, a rationalization disguised as a thoughtful choice to advance a political agenda.

. . .

The problem many people have with looking at human life . . . is that they focus on the surface issues only.  It must meet certain subjective criteria before they will feel comfortable admitting (or become convinced, or be forced to concede) that it is indeed a human child.  It must survive on its own outside the womb.  It must have a brain instead of a brain stem.  Its heart must be beating.  It must pass through the birth canal.  And so on, and so on.  This is the same subjective nonsense that allowed people to look at the color of a man’s skin and say that “it” did not fit the definition of a “human.”  Or make the same judgment based on religion, or national origin, or intelligence, or its expected or actual quality of life, or any other characteristic.  It’s all nonsense.  Rationalization disguised as objective analysis.

[Human beings don’t assign human status; God does.]  When I look at a newborn baby girl I don’t see anything that resembles a thirty-year-old woman.  The head and limbs are not in the same size or proportion, and its body shape is completely different.  It doesn’t communicate the same way, or have any appreciation at all for its surroundings.  I’d be just as justified calling it “proto-Mary” as I would be to call the adult woman “Mary” if I based my criteria on the same distorted logic that abortionists use to distinguish between a 19- and 20-week-old fetus.

Morality exists independent of what men want to define as moral or immoral. In fact, the more men try to define morality through common consensus (i.e. it’s okay to abort a baby at 19 weeks, but a crime at 20 weeks), or through a personalized interpretation of “God’s commandments” (i.e. Islamo-fascist rationalizations), the less likely we are to be dealing with an inherently moral issue than a self-serving rationalization, or a religious or secular flight of fancy.

15.  Confusing wants, needs and goals with moral choices

Mr. Ingles again fails to grasp the central thesis of this matter when he reduces the subject to an “is-ought” problem of the kind found in game theory, where there are statistical payoffs, and zero- or positive-sum winners and losers.  Game theory is excellent for deciding whether to rat out your friend and take a certain 5-year prison sentence, or hope he’ll keep quiet and you both go free for lack of evidence.  It describes how people “game” the world to maximize things in their own interests.  But human interests, desires, and goals are not the same things as human morality.  Mr. Ingles phrases the issue this way:

As humans, we have desires and goals as well. Some are very basic and inborn and apparently universal (air, water, food, sleep, shelter, etc.) and some are so common that only extremely rare individuals seem not to need them (e.g. the company of other people), and some are deeply personal and not common at all (a desire to write a novel, say). But like chess, might there be strategic rules that arise in the real world from physical laws and conditions, combined with our desires?

Fascinating as it is to play chess, or watch the game-theory maneuvering of ordinary people and/or politicians on the national and international scene, exactly what does it have to do with defining the content of morality?  Is-ought may tell us about how that decision was reached, but it says absolutely nothing about whether the decision is inherently moral or immoral.  The only way morality can be entered into this discussion is to conclude that consensus = morality.  If enough of the world wants Jews to be exterminated, or decides to electively abort children according to game theory logic, or has the desire/goal of killing all people of a different faith, then that’s a moral choice?  Hardly! 

The “strategic rules” of the real world do, indeed, arise from physical laws and conditions, combined with our desires.  But not every desire is inherently moral, and not every decision has moral implications.  It is neither moral nor immoral to prefer chicken to fish, or blondes to brunettes.  Again, Mr. Ingles focuses on what it takes to live our daily existence in the physical world without addressing whether these decisions and resulting actions are intrinsically moral or immoral.  He’s given us a road map to navigate from one point to another, which is something science is good at, but doesn’t give us any way of assessing whether we should be seeking that destination point in the first place, which is something the UMC will help us assess.  Unless the desire and process of getting there is equivalent to the morality of selecting that destination, we’re no more enlightened about morality from Mr. Ingles’ perspective than when he first began his analysis.

16.  Does morality = consequences?

Continuing with Mr. Ingles’ critique, even when we allow for the fact that it may be a positive-sum world, we’re still told nothing about the inherent content of morality; only about an individual’s willingness to cooperate, and the meta-rules and practical consequences of behavior.  According to Mr. Ingles,

I think we can agree that, overall, our lives in the real world are 'non zero-sum.' We have the option of cooperating with others, fighting, betraying, helping, lending and borrowing, and so forth . . . [We] know that fixed "rules of the game," combined with desires of agents constrained to follow those rules, can give rise to 'meta-rules,' useful strategies that the players can choose to follow – rules just as real as the basic rules of the game, though existing on another level. Can moral precepts be examples of such strategies? It would need to be shown that following such morals led to advantages for those who followed them. And these would have to be intra-universal advantages – not ones based on metaphysical, outside-the-universe considerations.

Trying to stop an Islamo-fascist from detonating a bomb may get me killed — that’s a “disadvantageous” consequence for me, personally.  But my death as a result of this action is not immoral or ‘bad’ because I died (a non-desirable consequence), and moral or ‘good’ if I survived the blast (a desirable consequence).  Acting to protect an innocent human life from a brutal murder is either moral or immoral, regardless of what the UN thinks, how well someone gamed a system, whether I cooperated with others or acted alone, or whether I (or the intended victims) lived or died as a consequence.  And it is no less clear when nations and policies are involved rather than individual choices.  Is the US fight against terrorism in Iraq a national advantage or disadvantage?  Ask twenty people today, and you’re likely to get twenty different opinions.

Mr. Ingles misses the whole point because, based on the misunderstandings with which he begins his critique above, he draws the wrong conclusion from a footnote to my original thesis:

Ingles:  Fortunately, Dr. Jackson acknowledges that moral behavior can and does pay off in the real world, and gives an example, though he relegates that admission to endnote 15. This is an important datum, which serves to undermine the contention that morality can't be derived from within the universe itself.

Original Endnote 15:  God doesn't have to overturn or circumvent the laws of nature to answer our prayers.  We all have the same innate moral code, but we don’t all recognize it or access it to the same degree.  Prayer can help focus the mind to bring this information out.  Or, it can make it more understandable if we have already accessed it, and help us apply it properly to the real world conditions we face.  This is how mortal man “talks to God,” and God “talks” back.  The more we become attuned to our innate, God-given morality through prayer, the more likely we are to see things more clearly and make connections in the world that would have escaped us earlier.  Sometimes these connections lead to truly “miraculous” outcomes.  But miracles aren’t things like winning the lottery. That’s simple probability and statistics at work. 

Rather, a true miracle is often something small that you can’t fully appreciate until many years later.  I had an opportunity at age 24 to make a rather benign, but unkind remark that I chose not to do because, although it would have been really funny and fit with my sense of humor, it seemed to cross some inexplicable inner line and didn’t seem right.  Had I done that, my life would have turned out radically different than it has today.  The person who I didn’t insult later became the individual most responsible for helping me to survive the crushing education debt I had through jobs and scholarships.  Without that help, I never would have been able to stay in school and receive my degree, which has led me to countless other opportunities in life.  That was a miracle, and it came though a simple reflection on a general principle of morality (“doing the right thing”).  And I’ve had a number of other small, but profound situations like that pop up in my life that all centered on a decision to take one path instead of another — some of which caused me long periods of grief at first, but paid off enormously as the years went on. 

Talking to God through prayer helps focus our thoughts and bring out our innate moral code.  People who think that God violates natural laws don’t understand what a true miracle is.  My “miracle” came by doing a small, seemingly insignificant thing (no major desire or strategic calculation here) that was intrinsically moral, thus illustrating that good can come from accessing the universal moral code — all of which ties back to the notion that morality isn’t what we decide it is, it’s what God places in all of us.  Knowing morality, therefore, is linked to knowing God, just as knowing God is linked to knowing morality. 

However, from this Mr. Ingles concludes that “this is an important datum, which serves to undermine the contention that morality can't be derived from within the universe itself.”  Because acting morally can lead to good things happening to you, Mr. Ingles suggests that ‘good things happening to you’ is therefore somehow connected to the content and definition of morality.  As he explains:

One very useful item of support comes from those who most vociferously exhort others to follow their moral precepts. While they frequently cite the alleged supernatural repercussions of vice, they also tend to devote plenty of time to its more worldly consequences. Violence, greed, gluttony, sloth, and so forth don't tend to bring about optimal outcomes on a regular basis. Indeed, who doesn't argue that life would overall be better for everyone, if everyone behaved morally as a matter of course?

This is absurd, circular reasoning.  First of all, “those who most vociferously exhort others to follow their moral precepts (emphasis added)” once again refers to Mr. Ingles’ confusing religion with God.  What men offer as moral principles in keeping with the tenets of their faith is not the same thing as a God-given universal moral code, as I explained at length in my original essay.

Morality is not what you believe personally, or what you glean from culture or society, or what a particular religion teaches about morals and values.  Religion may reflect the basic concepts of morality, as well as urge individuals to make proper moral choices, but it does not provide the content of that morality any more than society, culture, or an individual does.

. . .

[Confusing religious teachings with the universal moral code often leads to tragic consequences]. What has allowed elective abortion to supplant slavery as a national indignation is a combination of the factors I addressed [previously] — self-interest, rationalization, hidden agendas — but something else too.  Those who took the “moral high ground” in sparking this debate had their own set of vested interests and hidden agendas.  Beginning with prayer in public schools and other public institutions, they took key provisions of the Declaration of Independence and substituted their own religious preferences for “God” so that paying homage to “Jesus,” not following a God-given moral code, became the focus of their efforts.

Because of this approach, moral Relativists were able to seize the debate and frame their core issues in a deceitful way.  Since Religion A claims to speak for God, and the Constitution forbids the state to establish an official religion, then both Religion A and the God it speaks for must be completely removed from the secular world.  This logic prevailed because the Constitution is not the Declaration of Independence, and drawing inspiration and support from God is not the same thing as making laws that reflect God’s rules as expressed by a particular religion.  It didn’t matter if what Christians believed perfectly matched 95% of the beliefs of every other religion.  The Constitution, though inspired by God-given rights, was still man’s law.  And man’s law did not permit the establishment of an official state religion.

By hijacking God and linking Him to a battle to promote their values, not only did the Christian community lose their fight, it allowed the notion of “God” — the basis for their claim — to be wiped out with it.  This then led to an even more determined fight to infuse “politics with religion.”  Relativists became even more relative to prevent their opponent’s success, and as the Relativists carried the fight to its relativistic extreme, atrocities like abortion on demand became the law of the land.

This, ultimately, explains why a concept like abortion could take hold and flourish in a society that condemns human rights abuses, and even passes laws against cruelty to animals, but it will allow a healthy 20-year-old developing child to be killed without the same level of due process it demands for suspected mass murders and captured terrorists.

So yes, people who substitute their own judgments about morality, whether they take them from their religious teachings or pull them out of thin air, are no more automatically speaking about the substance and content of a universal moral code than Plato, Aristotle, David Hume, Joe Shlobtnik, or any Is-Ought, Game-Theorist, Prisoner Dilemma chess player is.  Mr. Ingles has again refuted a point I didn’t make, and in fact expressly argued against, while still shedding no further light of his own on where, exactly, the content of morality comes from.

Looking at desires, rules and consequences tells us nothing. Acting morally also got me fired from a job I held for 10 years.  There was no cause-effect reward here for good moral behavior.  If anything, the opposite occurred in this case.  I still believe, as I professed in Endnote 15, that on balance doing the moral thing will lead to better outcomes in life than acting against the dictates of the Universal Moral Code.  But nowhere did I imply in Endnote 15 or anywhere else that acting morally will always produce positive material advantages.  Morality is not about material gain, though that can be a pleasant byproduct at times.  It’s about following the inherent rules God gave us when interacting with others on this planet.

Doing the morally correct thing can be painful as well as rewarding.  Not aborting an unwanted baby can make life difficult for the reluctant mother.  Freeing the slaves could cut into your own personal wealth and power.  Not acting harmfully and hedonistically toward innocent human life, despite the “pleasure” you want to take from that action, could leave you lonely and frustrated.  What does any of this have to do with whether the action is intrinsically moral or not?  Acting morally can also get you killed, as I explained in my example about surrender in a time of war.  Several U.S. servicemen in Iraq were gunned down by terrorists feigning surrender, because unlike an American soldier for whom surrender is an indication that combat has ceased, surrender by an Islamo-fascist is simply a way to bring the enemy closer so you can kill him with a hidden gun.

Moreover, we can’t simply say that violence, to cite one of Mr. Ingles’ examples, doesn’t “tend to bring about optimal outcomes on a regular basis.”  Tell that to concentration camp victims freed by Allied soldiers fighting Hitler, to U.S. citizens protected by armed policemen ready and willing to use violence against vicious criminals, to the women who have fought back against men trying to rape them.  Violence is neither morally good nor morally bad.  Morality is attached only when we look at why that violence arose, and how it was employed.

17.  How science looks at social science

Mr. Ingles continues to err because he approaches the living of life (social science) from an abstract, data-driven, hard-science background.  In science, when one uses the word “water,” it’s interchangeable with “H20” unless modified by an additional word: heavy water, distilled water, pond-water, etc.  The only grey areas are whether the H20 is pure, distilled, contains micro-organisms or an extra isotope, etc.  No one confuses water/H20 with, say, petroleum, or sand, or a ham sandwich.

Now tell me what “justice” is?  Or “fairness?”  Or “greed?”  Or “sloth?”  And tell me in terms that are objective and universal, which require no one to interpret their meaning.  No matter how forcefully one professes that the glass of water they are holding is actually 93 octane premium gasoline, the objective truth of the mater is within our grasp.  But how precisely does Mr. Ingles propose to attach the same universality of meaning to his terms, so as to give substance to his understanding of morality?

What people and societies define as “violence, greed, gluttony, sloth, and so forth” varies from people to people, and society to society, and time to time — but the content of genuine morality remains constant.  The U.S. gives its citizens the opportunity to start a private sector business and hire employees.  We call them “entrepreneurs.”  In Cuba — 90 miles away from the U.S. — these same people doing the same things are called “bourgeois capitalist lackeys and counter-revolutionaries,” or the shortened version: “prison inmates.”  Same acts, same period of time.  Different cultures, different outcomes.  But as repressive a regime as Cuba is today, the leadership’s opinion about private enterprise will not always be the same.  Following Castro’s death it may tighten even further, relax a bit as it has in mainland China, or go the way of Eastern Europe and be abandoned all together in favor of adopting a free market system.  But the value judgment about child rape and murder will always stay the same.

Ask a small business owner whether an eight-hour work day is “normal” or “slothful.”  I own a SUV.  Am I materially gluttonous?  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  These are relative judgments, not universal standards.  Mr. Ingles’ concept of morality is based on a western value system in that he presumes to intuitively know what these moral-related concepts mean in practical life.  But in fact they are not universal concepts, but culturally-dependent ones at best.  It’s exactly the kind of thing I cautioned against in the opening pages to my original essay when I said that the moral answers we seek “demand that we apply universal notions of right and wrong to [all] situations.  Not my morality, or the guy down the street’s morality, or Western morality, or French morality (as an independent subset of Western morality), or any other relativistic moral judgment based solely on one’s culture, wishes, whims, or other individual variable, but morality, period.”

18.  Morality via evolution

Mr. Ingles believes that “morality, properly understood, is advantageous in the world.”  Therefore, he concludes, “would it be surprising to discover that evolution had helped adapt us to living and working with others?” 

No, it wouldn’t be surprising at all to think that evolution produces real-world advantages on a purely biological level.  Evolution, on the other hand, is not a moral issue, as I explained at length in “The Politics of Science and Religion:”

[Darwin] doesn’t address the question of why we exist, but rather how we might have been created.  Explaining why natural selection operates as Darwin suggests doesn’t answer the philosophical or metaphysical questions of life — who created us, what is our purpose on Earth, etc.?   Rather, it only addresses the mechanics of life — what natural processes were involved in how a species changed and adapted over the passage of time?

In short, if you want to know why the development of human language aided the advancement of technology, ask Darwin.  But if you want to know whether the application of Technology X (e.g. embryonic stem cell research) is moral or immoral, look to your innate moral code, not science.  Just because something is possible and yields specific results does not mean that “something” is moral.  It may be, or it may not be, but knowing something about evolution and human consensus/cooperation does not answer these questions.

19. And yet, we agree on the basics of morality

But we are making progress.  According to Mr. Ingles, both he and I agree that the kinds of things that I have described as universally immoral are, indeed, universally immoral.

[W]hile I disagree with Dr. Jackson as to the source of morality, we broadly agree on the content of morality. Harming innocent life is wrong, for example. Unnecessary restrictions on liberty are wrong as well.

. . . 

Regarding abortion, we're actually in fairly close agreement. For reasons outside the scope of this paper, I'm unwilling to restrict abortions before the end of the first month of pregnancy, but after that our positions appear to be identical. Abortion is not justified for the sake of convenience, or even in the case of rape or incest; but when there is a threat to the life of the mother, it's her decision whether to proceed with the pregnancy.

As to terrorism, I agree that it is also immoral. But I think Dr. Jackson engages in a bit of sleight-of-hand when he conflates terrorism and abortion as arising from identical mindsets.

So, despite our different approaches to this subject, Mr. Ingles and I still arrive at the same basic conclusions.  In spite of our divergent education, different genetic background, the different communities we inhabit and the different lifestyles we presumably lead, both he and I share a common, intrinsic universal moral code.  Why should this be so?

I’ll speak more later about the side-issue concerning abortion that he raised, but for now I’d like to focus on Mr. Ingles’ belief that the identical core judgments we share are the product of natural and societal forces, independent of God.  In arriving at his conclusions, Mr. Ingles does dismiss, as do I, the notion that genetics, by itself, forms a justification for morality.  But then he goes on to state that:

However, genetics does have another role to play in addition to forming part of human nature. I've hopefully established that morality, properly understood, is advantageous in the world. We have been living as groups of humans (with no significant change in what it means to be 'human') for around 200,000 years, and our near ancestors were living in groups for millennia before that. Other beings have formed a critical part of our environment for our entire existence. Would it be surprising to discover that evolution had helped adapt us to living and working with others?

In effect, Mr. Ingles assumes that because “people — all kinds of people, from countries around the world — routinely and apparently instinctively behave in a way that is not strictly rational but leads to a better outcome than if everyone was playing in a ruthlessly rational manner,” then this evolutionary/genetically-based cooperation is a subset, byproduct, or somehow intimately connected with the content of morality.

So, let’s examine whether the content of morality can be found by understanding the genetics and biology of how and why people act advantageously for themselves, their community, their nation, and the world.

20.  “Advantageous” does not equal “moral”

The first problem with this approach is that what is “advantageous” cannot simply be assumed, but must be defined in practical terms.  Abortion is “desired” by the U.S. today, in that it has been given legal protection by the courts and is practiced by many people.  But why is the killing of 50 million otherwise healthy human beings inherently “advantageous,” and therefore somehow moral, rather than merely ‘desired’ or ‘convenient?’

I contend that it is precisely the opposite.  Abortion is in fact disadvantageous to the country (we need to import new workers to fill the jobs that would have been performed by these aborted babies), just as it is disadvantageous to the mental health of the woman aborting her child, and last but not least, to the innocent child itself. 

So here we have a societal act of enormous magnitude, protected by law, and yet there is no consensus as to whether it is advantageous or disadvantageous.  Why?  Because as with the other concepts he employs throughout his analysis, these are relative terms that Mr. Ingles has assumed but not defined. 

It’s the hubris of science to believe that “advantageous” can be a universally knowable concept, particularly when social issues are involved.  And, it’s why pointing to a specific act (the rape and murder of a five-year-old child) as specific evidence of a universal moral code (it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life) is so remarkable.  Here I can present an abstract universal truth that is both knowable and testable.¹¹  Regardless of whether it’s a capitalist or communist society, primitive or advanced, contemporary or past, the answer is always the same.  And that answer is not provided by Darwinian science, but rather through something “metaphysical.”

The long neck of a giraffe is a genetically-induced evolutionary advantage.  But this is a biological observation that has nothing to do with issues of “right” or “wrong.”  It makes no sense to say that the giraffe was “morally right” in evolving a long neck.  Evolution in nature is morally neutral. 

“Evolution” in society is a value-laden construct that means good things to some people, and bad things to others.  I’m not talking here about the religious debate about the theory of evolution.  I’m talking about whether society “evolving” to a state where it has the ability, and political will, to authorize embryonic stem cell research is acting morally correctly.  The science and technology of the act, as well as the political compromise that allowed it, do not tell us anything about that act’s intrinsic morality.

This is why I don’t claim that abortion is immoral because it is somehow “disadvantageous.”  I claim that it is immoral because it deliberately harms an innocent human life, which violates our intrinsic, God-given universal moral code.  

21.  Does acting morally produce material rewards?

As I stated previously, there are times when acting morally will produce good results, as my now famous “Endnote 15” demonstrated.  But I also lost a job once for refusing to fire an individual who was unfairly accused of negligence.  It cost me a career I had spent 10 years devoting my life to.  It was the morally correct thing to do, and yet I did not materially ‘prosper’ from acting morally.  The fact that I found a way, eventually, to make the best of this situation and do well in spite of it does not negate the years of hardship and reduced income I experienced as a result of being terminated.  Doing well in spite of adversity doesn’t prove or disprove the inherent morality of an act.  Rather it is a reflection of character, family support, and sometimes a large dose of good luck.

The point here is that one can’t discern the content of morality from the results of an action.  The content of morality is not reflected in the outcome of an event.  This applies to society as a whole, in addition to individuals.  Societies can also suffer when trying to “act advantageously” on behalf of their fellow human beings.  Miranda Rights protect the accused’s civil liberties, but also put dangerous people back on the streets who can hurt innocent human beings.

All of which goes to show that while acting morally will, I believe, more often than not pay exactly the kind of positive dividends Mr. Ingles noted, (a) it doesn’t always do so, and (b) sometimes acting morally requires one to work directly against one’s own material interests, and (c) benefiting materially “in this world” is not the functional definition of acting morally.

Mr. Ingles has, in effect, confused outcome with content.  For all his intricate calculations about game theory and the like, he has yet to provide a universal definition of “violence,” “gluttony,” “greed,” etc. to validate his conclusions. These are not only culturally-dependent concepts, but their meaning also differs at time from individual to individual within the same culture.  And yet, when I speak about not harming an innocent human life, I can point to concrete examples that not only Mr. Ingles can accept (slavery, abortion and child endangerment), but can be shared by other people in other cultures in other time periods.

So we have an interesting dilemma.  I can tell you specifically why slavery, abortion, and the deliberate murder of innocent life are always morally wrong.  Mr. Ingles agrees with my conclusions, but cannot explain why this is so other than through statistical analyses and scientific theories that address how people think abstractly, but does not reveal why a specific act is intrinsically moral or immoral.

22.  Rational choices and morality

Once again Mr. Ingles’ approach suffers when he discusses whether rational thought leads to good moral choices, or actually inhibits moral actions.  He poses this question the following way:

[In the Traveler's Dilemma, a variation on the Prisoner's Dilemma] people — all kinds of people, from countries around the world — routinely and apparently instinctively behave in a way that is not strictly rational but leads to a better outcome than if everyone was playing in a ruthlessly rational manner. Are there explanations besides a divinely implanted impulse to be good? [emphasis added]

Well, yes!  God doesn’t “implant an impulse;” that is, instill a universal moral code in all of us, and then give us a shove (“impulse”) to follow it.  I haven’t made that claim, and I’m not really sure who has?  I did spend a while in my original essay speaking about how introspection and prayer can help us find this moral code if it isn’t already obvious to us.  And I did talk about how the exercise of free will gives us all a choice to follow this code or reject it¹² — though once again, rejecting/suppressing a moral code does not mean eradicating it from one’s body.  It’s there, just as it always has been, waiting to be accessed again should an individual choose to do so through the exercise of their free will, and stop behaving immorally.

So knock down another straw man, because no one is arguing that God is giving you an impulse to be good by giving you a shared moral code with the rest of humanity.  To use it or not is your choice, and your choice alone.  The horse, in effect, has been led to water, but the water cannot not make him drink.

So let’s limit ourselves to the first half of Mr. Ingles’ question: is the exercise of morality always rational and/or advantageous (as defined by the Prisoner’s/Traveler’s Dilemma, and other game theory elements that give meaning to Mr. Ingles’ use of this term)?  His conclusion is:

I believe I've established that moral behavior has practical consequences and practical justification, or at least have shown that such a notion is plausible. People willing to cooperate and behave morally with each other — willing to trust and work with one another as part of a group — have a powerful advantage over those who don't, in a very wide range of situations.

From this Mr. Ingles concludes that:

Such a moral sense would also include warnings when one contemplates doing something contrary to morality. It would be important to realize when one is doing something that others would frown upon. Since moral actions, by this model, are sensible and useful strategies, warnings when one contemplates violating them are useful. Sometimes people violate them anyway – the lure of short-term gains tempting them more than a long-term payoff. It's possible that it's even justified in some cases, the way chess masters may occasionally spot an advantage to sacrificing their queen.

So, people behave morally because moral cooperation is advantageous, and our moral sense warns us when something is contrary to morality.  Morality can be circumvented by people seeking short-term gains, which may or may not be justified in the long run.

I feel like I’m in a bad Forrest Gump movie — morality is as morality does.  What exactly is morality?  I still don’t know from Mr. Ingles’ explanation.  You can’t define “good” by saying that it means “goodly.”  I faced this issue myself in my original essay when I said that defining morality as “doing good” is meaningless, because anybody can assign the label good to any action.  Good needs to be specifically defined, such as doing no intentional harm to innocent human life, from which concrete examples can be drawn.

Mr. Ingle’s speaks about morality as if it is an inherently understood term.  It is, on an abstract level, but as Ross Perot is fond of saying, the devil is in the details.  Nowhere does he tell us what the content of morality actually is, other than to suggest that it is outcome-based.  If society considers something advantageous, by definition it must be moral.  I believe the Jews of Nazi Germany or the African slaves of 19th-century America would beg to differ on this account. 

What Mr. Ingles has done is tell us how human beings process information, leading at times to action.  What he hasn’t done is tell us whether the resulting action is “moral” or not.  It could be advantageous or disadvantageous to an individual or society, it could be short-term or long term.  He’s given us an insight into the chemistry and biology of how people think, but he hasn’t even come close to telling us how to evaluate their actions in moral terms.

Is aborting a healthy child who poses no risk to his mother’s life moral or immoral?  In America it’s legal, and in America a woman has a Constitutional right to abort that child for any reason within the first trimester.  Mr. Ingles’ can show us how that pregnant woman processed her information, and how the society as a whole arrived at the current abortion-rights compromise.  But he hasn’t shown us why this act is or isn’t moral.  If morality is results-based (society accepts it, therefore it's moral), then we must all be willing to say that slavery in 18-19th century America was moral — a position that Mr. Ingles has already (and quite properly) expressly rejected.

Human thought and consensus — rational, irrational; short-term, long-term; advantageous, disadvantageous; greedy, selfless; violent, passive; slothful, industrious — does not define the content of true morality.  It reflects only the present state of an individual’s or society’s thoughts, which can and will change over time.  Morality — true morality — is universal and timeless.

23.  The content of morality vs. the expression of moral content

Part of Mr. Ingles’ ongoing confusion can be found in a passage where he states that “recent research has indicated that damage to the brain can actually affect how people make moral judgments. If our sense of morality is implanted by a supernatural means, the details of that experiment are difficult to explain.” 

Not at all.  I too reject the notion that “supernatural means” somehow “implanted” a sense of morality in each of us, as I discussed at length in my original essay and repeated above.  Dealing strictly with the first part of Mr. Ingles statement (“recent research has indicated that damage to the brain can actually affect how people make moral judgments.”), let me refer again to the autism example I used earlier. 

A myriad of things can interfere with the expression of the UMC — and some (like prayer), even help magnify its expression.  What we’re dealing with, though, is the content of morality, not its expression.  What makes X moral, and Y immoral?  The fact that an Alzheimer’s patient no longer possesses his full faculties doesn’t mean that he’s just like my dog who possesses no morality.  His innate morality is what makes him human, whether he has the mental capacity to express that morality or not.  This is why we don’t kill ‘useless, infirmed or defective’ people the way we put down a sick dog.  And why we morally condemn those who do. 

The entire focus of Mr. Ingles' remarks has been on the expression (not content) of morality, on human theories about religious and philosophical matters (thus his focus on “supernatural commands”), as well as on game theory models of human behavior.  Nowhere has he even come close to telling us why slavery is immoral, and why it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human being.  He merely assumes that all the biological attributes and game-theory maneuverings he discussed lead to moral choices. 

In this view, slavery is immoral because it is, except for when it isn’t based on the psychology and biology of human interactions.  The fact that slavery still exists in parts of the world today does not disprove my thesis; it reinforces it.  People do not enslave their “equals” (their neighbors, or their kith and kin to borrow an ancient phrase).  They enslave their enemies and “inferior” human beings.  Like abortionists and Islamo-fascists, they can only justify their actions by denying the basic humanity of the people they injure.

In discussing abortion, Mr. Ingles says, “we're actually in fairly close agreement. For reasons outside the scope of this paper, I'm unwilling to restrict abortions before the end of the first month of pregnancy, but after that our positions appear to be identical. Abortion is not justified for the sake of convenience, or even in the case of rape or incest; but when there is a threat to the life of the mother, it's her decision whether to proceed with the pregnancy.”

So Mr. Ingles and I agree on 95% of the same things about abortion — even on the highly controversial subject of rape and incest — despite our different backgrounds, thought processes, etc.  But why should he agree with my conclusions?  I don’t believe the same things he does about science, or share any of the reasoning he used to arrive at these conclusions.  In fact, if anything, my reasoning process seems to work against the very models he postulates in his game theory models.  And yet, here we are in agreement.  Could it be that we both share the same, innate moral code?  And if so, how did we access both access it, despite our different approaches?

24.  The origin and content of the Universal Moral Code

Once again, the answer is found in a fundamental metaphysical truth.  If it’s God-given and universal, it’s always there.  If a person wants to behave morally, then he/she will find it through introspection, prayer, or simply by going through life and making decisions, some of which have moral implications. 

I believe Mr. Ingles to be a sincere, decent, dare I say “moral” human being, judging by the way he has treated me despite our differences, and the conclusions he has reached about abortion and other moral issues.  However, I don’t believe that he arrived at his moral-based conclusions due to game theory, platonic reasoning, scientific investigation, or biological imperatives, because he never really took his analysis to a practical level. 

I not only spoke abstractly about the UMC (“it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human life”), I gave practical real world examples of both “innocence” and “harm” – to which Mr. Ingles agreed.  For his theory to hold equal standing, he must do the same with his abstract terms.  But he can’t, because notions of greed, sloth, violence, even “advancement” are not universal concepts.  Therefore, they do not promote identical judgments or actions in all circumstances.  Therefore, they are meaningless as illustrations of a universal moral content.¹³

The only conclusion left from Mr. Ingles’ analysis is that there is no universal moral code, just different human judgments about morality which are influenced by a myriad of social and environmental factors.  There is, therefore, no objective right or wrong, only subjective assessments that may change, evolve, or be refined/fine-tuned as society seeks “advantageous” outcomes; with “advantageous” meaning different things to different people.  But if this is so, Mr. Ingles should be able to answer the question I posed in my original essay: “If there is no objective ‘right’ or ‘wrong,’ just equally valid differing opinions, then under what conditions would you say that raping and murdering a five-year-old child isn’t wrong?”

So, we are left with two opposing points of view on this subject.  Mr. Ingles believes that he can identify specific moral and immoral acts, but can’t explain the content of these moral issues by the various methods he employs.  He rejects metaphysical/supernatural explanations (meaning “God”), but has no other way to account for moral content.  Because science cannot explain moral content through observation and experiment, the answer is by definition unknowable.  It’s there — because Mr. Ingles himself can and has accessed the UMC himself — but other than to discuss how morality is expressed, or how needs and desires are rationally calculated independent of their moral content — that’s all we can say.

I, on the other hand, can point to the existence of a Universal Moral Code, which I demonstrate abstractly and with practical examples.  This universally-shared moral code, upon which all humans instinctively base their judgments, is directly infused by God into each human being at the moment of conception.  It does not depend on outside factors like social structure, culture, personal preferences and judgments, rational or irrational human thought, the presence or absence of specific religious teachings, game theory or prisoners dilemma-type constructs, or historical time periods.  Nor is found in a specific gene or gene sequence.  Rather, it is an intrinsic part of us.  People may violate, ignore, rationalize-away or suppress all or part of this innate moral code, but it is still there.  It always was with us, and always will be with us as long as we are alive, and is an essential part of what makes us “human.”

My “proof” is not science — because as Mr. Ingles and I both agree, science cannot answer metaphysical questions.  It’s found in the application of our, dare I say, God-given human logic, the same logic I use to know that I love my wife and child, not just simply care for them because of some social or biological imperative.  And, I also know this through the application of science's own methodologies and teachings, which tell us that physical-world explanations can never truly account for the universal nature of our common moral code.  Like love, a universal moral code can be shown to operate in the physical world, and therefore exists.  So why is it unreasonable to conclude that perhaps God had something to do with it after all . . . just like he had ‘something to do’ with creating the universe in the first place?

25.  Mr. Ingles’ exception on abortion proves the point

I’m a social scientist (which is to say, not a scientist).  Mr. Ingles is a scientist, which is to say that he has a predisposition to look at everything through the mantle of whether it can be directly observed or measured.  But even scientists love their spouses and children, so not every decision requires a scientific analysis.

I think Mr. Ingles arrived at his conclusions not by the scientific method, but rather because in sincerely pondering about the morality of certain actions, he’s intuitively come to understand right from wrong by accessing the UMC which is a part of all of us. I can demonstrate this clearly by his own exception to his judgment on abortion, which he stated as, “I'm unwilling to restrict abortions before the end of the first month of pregnancy . . ..”

Why make this judgment?  Mr. Ingles has not offered an explanation of his reasoning, but we can speculate rationally about it.  Is a 29-day-old developing baby not human, and a 30-day-old baby suddenly human?  If so, why does 24 hours make a difference?  Is “humanity” dependent on a functioning brain, even a neonatal one?  If so, is a brain-dead human child delivered at 9 months not really a human being?  Clearly an egg and sperm that united seconds ago does not have a brain, yet the zygote it just made is alive and functioning.  What’s the difference between that cell and a brain-dead embryo, other than one is a multi-celled organism, and the other is a single cell?

If a normal baby is born, but later suffers a horrific brain injury and becomes a little Terry Schiavo (or survives to adulthood and then becomes an actual Terry Schiavo), does it transition at this point from human to non-human status?  Is a person with half of a functioning brain only half-human?  Why does it matter at all if the brain functions, or has yet to develop from the fertilized egg?  It matters only if someone wants to arbitrarily assign a different value/status to that human being, because this allows them to do something to their body that the Universal Moral Code would otherwise prohibit them from doing.

Maybe it’s not the presence or absence of a functioning brain, but the ability to survive outside the womb that’s the criteria for assessing human status?  If so, we’d all better hope that when we get older we don’t suffer any physically-debilitating strokes and become unable to feed or care for ourselves.  Remove Steven Hawking from his wheelchair, and take away his nurses and personal servants, and you have an organic tissue mass that is incapable of feeding itself, caring for itself, and possibly even breathing on its own without mechanical assistance.  And that makes one of the most brilliant men alive today what?  Not human?

Thirty vs. twenty-nine days; brain vs. brainstem vs. zygote; independent survivability vs. complete dependency; these are all legal and personal rationalizations, not objective universal truths that define the nature of humanity.  Humanity is not something that is bestowed upon (or taken away from) others by consensus, political compromise, or legal fiat.  If so, every animal in San Francisco would have identical rights to you, thanks to the “progressive” nature of their city council.  Then we’d all be in a real mess trying to figure out whether one bark or two means a vote for Bush or Gore, not to mention the charge of murder-for-hire that would be brought against anyone pursuing a non-vegan lifestyle when they plunk down their buck seventy-five for a six-piece nugget meal.

My purpose in all of this is not to ridicule or cast aspersions on Mr. Ingles personally, but rather to illustrate by his own word and logic that in carving out this ability to electively abort an otherwise healthy, developing child who poses no risk to his mother’s life, he has not offered a moral judgment here, but simply a political or personal one.  Twenty-nine days achieves a political or social compromise, but 30 days doesn’t.  There’s no immutable facts attached to this cut-off date, no universal force of history or genetically-inspired grand compromise.  There’s nothing objective at all about this judgment because it is, simply, a conclusion based on personal/societal self-interest.  It’s precisely the kind of opinion that comes out of game theory and prisoner dilemma-type thinking.  It reaches an acceptable social consensus.  But consensus isn’t morality.

Unlike the clear-cut manner that Mr. Ingles can state, categorically, that killing and raping little children is always morally wrong, he can almost say the same thing about abortion.  Where he can’t, his conclusions are not driven by what is intrinsically moral, but rather what is ‘acceptable.’  It’s a secular judgment, not the expression of a moral truth.  And it stands out in such a remarkable contrast to his other conclusions about abortion that one can immediately see that this decision is not made on the same basis/criteria as his other decisions. 

25. Conclusion

Unlike what he suggests is the way moral decisions are made (game theory, etc.), Mr. Ingles’ core decision about the morality of abortion was made by accessing an innate understanding of right and wrong.  Only his judgment about allowing abortions in the first 30 days was made by other means — game theory and the like.  That judgment reflected a secular compromise based on many factors, of which the inherent morality of killing a 29-day-old developing baby was not a factor.  It may be a judgment that ends up having a very wide base of additional public support.  But all that means is that human consensus has rendered it an acceptable compromise, much the same way human consensus allowed each slave in Antebellum America to possess three-fifths humanity for purposes of taxation and representation.  It doesn’t speak to the inherent morality or immorality of aborting a 29-day-old baby, while allowing a 30-day-old baby to live because it was 24 hours older.

These are the calculations Mr. Ingles has taken us through in his analysis — calculations of politics, economy, and basic human interaction.  They have nothing intrinsically to do with the content of morality, but rather address how people act and think when a variety of motives are in play.  Consensus, cooperation, etc. can reflect a joint decision to do wrong (i.e. justify slavery) as easily as they can stumble across taking a morally correct action.  In the end, though, it is the content of an act as defined by our God-given universal moral code that determines its morality or not, not the judgments or rationalizations of men.

I appreciate the opportunity to expand on my original thesis, and for Mr. Ingles giving me a venue to further debate this subject.

Endnotes

1. There may be other abstract expressions of the UMC as well, but it only takes one universal expression to validate the existence of a Universal Moral Code.

2. “Harm” could mean any number of things: torture, injure through neglect, rape, kill, maim, mentally or physically abuse, etc.  I’ve chosen “rape” and “kill” as two real world examples because each involves a clearly-recognized harm that results either in death, as is in the obvious case of killing, or in mental trauma (i.e. an abusive violation of a person’s dignity or psyche), or physical trauma (i.e. bodily injuries) when the harm results from rape.

3. Such as your [adult] ex-girlfriend “deserved it,” all [adult] women are evil and “deserve what they get,” your [adult] neighbor (or a complete stranger) is the wrong color, race, religion, etc. and deserves to be harmed, etc.  Believing that it’s justifiable to rape all women because all women are evil doesn’t actually justify rape, or allow us to conclude that there is no universal moral code.  Rather, it is simply easier to rationalize harm to an adult (even a young adult) who can be held “responsible” for their actions (even fanciful ones) because it takes an exponentially higher leap of logic to assign the same willful, purposeful actions to a two-, three- or five-year-old child and rationalize that they “deserve” it.   Small children will still be harmed by people who ignore the UMC to follow their own immoral desires, since free will allows us to pursue evil as well as good.  But the percentage of people who deliberately rape and kill small children with no regard for the human life they are harming is infinitesimally small, as I discussed in my original paper.  And, those who do are always seen as immoral human beings by the remainder of humanity.

4. This belief that Jews are subhuman is, of course, a common theme among Anti-Semites.  Walter von Reichenau, a notorious Nazi, implored his men to commit atrocities against the Jews in the territories he captured by saying, “We have to exact a harsh but just retribution on the Jewish subhumans.”  http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/GERreichenau.htm  The “final solution” judged an entire race of people guilty of crimes punishable by death merely for existing.  A newborn child was no more innocent of any rationalized crime than an adult, and to be judged guilty (i.e. considered not innocent), no particular action was required by any individual.  Just drawing a breath was evidence enough of guilt, and justification enough to kill any Jew indiscriminately.  Islamo-fascists take this to the next level by offering a formal religious justification for similar actions.  Wahabbis are taught by rote that Jews are subhumans who should be killed as a religious duty.

5. To reiterate another point from my original essay, legal and moral are not the same things.  Slavery was once legal in the United States, but that didn’t make it moral.  Just because the law permits us to do something doesn’t automatically make it morally correct.  Morality is given to man by God.  It is not the byproduct of human consensus, genetics, philosophical debate or societal influences.

6. See http://www.answers.com/topic/indentured-servant for a brief overview.  These “rights” varied greatly at times, and were dependent upon the type of indentured servitude.  But as brutal and degrading as this life at times could be, indentured servants did have “rights” bestowed upon them by the state, unlike slaves or animals who had no such rights and were considered to be property.

7. Consider the following offered by http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/mohammad_khatami/2007/04/all_must_condemn_violence.html 

According to the koran the only people who can be considered innocent are Muslims. That explains the following verses from the koran (which are NOT taken out of context, as Muslims sometimes claim):

Qur’an Chapter 2 Verse 65:
And well ye knew those amongst you who transgressed in the matter of the Sabbath (Jews): We said to them: "Be ye apes, despised and rejected."

Ishaq: 250
The bestial transformation occurred when Allah turned Jews into apes, despised.

Tabari VIII: 28
When the Messenger approached the Jews, he said, ‘You brothers of apes! Allah shamed you and cursed you.’ …

Muhammad did NOT consider Jews or Christians to be innocent, and that is why he taught that a Jew or a Christian would be made to pay for the sins of Muslims. Look out for the words "innocent human beings" from Muslim leaders in the future and understand that these are coded words which are understood across the Muslim world, but are not presently understood across the non-Muslim world.

8. From my original essay:  I want to make sure we’ll all working off a common understanding of key terms.  “Harm” could mean any number of things: torture, injure through neglect, rape, kill, maim, mentally or physically abuse, etc.  I’ve chosen “rape” and “kill” as two real world examples because each involves a clearly-recognized harm that results either in death, as is in the obvious case of killing, or in mental trauma (i.e. an abusive violation of a person’s dignity or psyche), or physical trauma (i.e. bodily injuries) when the harm results from rape.  I chose a five-year-old child to illustrate an example of unmistakable innocence.  Even a prostitute who is raped is an “innocent human being” in that particular case, because the focus is on an individual act at a specific moment in time, not the legal or moral propriety of her occupation.

9. I urge anyone with doubts at this point to read my original essay.  There are genuinely guilty people in this world.  In the West their guilt is assessed by a judicial system that, while flawed as any human institution is, nevertheless follows a rule of law that is quite fair and just.  Guilt is determined only by a court of law, not by an officer summarily administering his own brand of justice in the field, or by the vigilante actions of a mob.  Contrast this with a kangaroo court, or the judicial system of a communist country, where “guilt” is often assumed first (and innocence must be proven), and punishment is meted out for thought crimes vs. actions against the public’s health and safety.  Racists, Nazis, Islamo-fascists, and other groups/individuals who decide that the mere fact that a person of a different race, faith or political persuasion exists constitutes “guilt” are the types of people I reference when saying that it is immoral to deliberately harm an innocent human being.  Innocence/guilt in this sense is not what Joe Shmo believes it to be.  It is defined by an individual’s own words and deeds that violate the universal moral code, not Joe Shmo’s sensibilities, or his religious or political preferences.

10. I didn’t really consider this to be much of an issue, but occasionally I’ll get a challenge from someone who says that “love” can be measured at least as concretely as physical attractiveness (i.e. “lust”).  Consider this brief excerpt from The Physical Attractiveness Measuring Stick:

“Scientists have discovered that the waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) is a significant factor in judging female attractiveness. Women with a 0.7 WHR (waist circumference that is 70% of the hip circumference) are invariably rated as more attractive by men, regardless of their culture. Such diverse beauty icons as Marilyn Monroe, Twiggy, Sophia Loren, Kate Moss, and the Venus de Milo all have ratios around 0.7. The ratio signals fertility—as they age, women's waists thicken as their fertility declines. The Body Mass Index (BMI) is another important universal determinant to the perception of beauty. The BMI refers to the proportion of the body mass to the body structure. However, the optimal body proportion is interpreted differently in various cultures. The Western ideal considers a slim and slender body mass as optimal while many historic cultures consider an embonpoint or plump body-mass as appealing. In either case the underlying rule applied in determining beauty is the BMI and hence displays how cultural differences of beauty operate on universal principles of human evolution. The slim ideal does not consider an emaciated body as attractive, just as the full-rounded ideal does not celebrate the over-weight or the obese. The cultural leanings are therefore just social emphasis on specific phenotypes within a parameter of optimal BMI. The attraction for a proportionate body also influences an appeal for erect posture. …  http://skingeek.com/reports/facialcontour/attractiveness.htm

While some notions of attractiveness are culturally-influenced, the key point is this can be objectively measured.  Now search the literature for similar detailed, objective criterion to measure or quantify “love.”  It isn’t there.

11. See my original paper “What kind of car would Jesus drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion clinic?” to take the test.

12. This is why the world has immoral people, despite the presence in all of us of a universal moral code.  It’s there, but not everyone chooses to follow the code.  But significantly, when they choose to behave immorally, they are still influenced by its presence, because all but the most criminally pathological will first attempt to rationalize-away the immorality of their actions by re-defining the human and/or innocent status of their victims.

13. To be sure, “innocence” and “harm” can be culturally-dependent concepts as well.  But I used these terms in an example that gave them universal meaning.  It is immoral to rape [i.e. deliberately harm] a five-year-old child [i.e. an innocent human life].  Mr. Ingles has not given any similar universal meaning to his terms.  It will be difficult if not impossible for him to do so, since he has chosen culturally-dependent value judgments, not universal truths.  If he does manage to give a universal example of “advancement,” for example, I predict that the content of advancement will relate back to not deliberately harming an innocent human life (such as, feeding the poor is a moral thing because it advances society in some measurable way by elevating the worth and dignity of these people, which is in keeping with the essence of the UMC).  If feeding the poor is simply a strategy or tactic to quell a potential revolution, that act — while helping people — was not taken in furtherance of the universal moral code, but was simply a strategy to benefit the ruling class by keeping them in power.  Strategies and tactics are not the stuff which define moral content, and make it applicable to all people, in all societies, in all periods of time.

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Political Theory, Humanities, Language, Academia, Histo

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