Dear Mamira, what's the difference between philosophy and religion?

By this I do not mean to suggest that there is no difference. My frustration with philosophical discussions of morality, which led me to work on these questions, is that philosophers now seem shy of asking metaphysical questions about what the good is and how to be good. Philosophers keep asking questions about how to know the good instead.

This fear of metaphysics is absent from religion, sometimes for the worse of course, but also as a reminder, even an inspiration to us, who may not be believers in the usual sense, to reach further than our armchairs in our meeting with questions about the good.

Perhaps we do not need religion with its heavens and hells and ghosts, but we do need that intuition that there is something, the good, true, beautiful, beyond mere opinions, and the need for safeguards against idolatry still, the gods, nation, ethnicity, money, that we worship now instead, Iris. That was me, producer Kayleigh, and director Mark, reading an exchange from the Philosophy by Postcard project.

To celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of famed British philosopher Iris Murdoch in 2019, the research centre In Parenthesis invited members of the public to send in philosophical questions via postcard. 100 questions were chosen and the selected questioners received a handwritten reply from a philosopher.

That reply you just heard was actually written by philosopher Jonathan Jong. The questioner was getting at a typical deception that always seems to pop up: Christianity and philosophy are two competing worlds.

Now we've done a lot of episodes here at Undeceptions highlighting the work of some brilliant Christian philosophers: Soren Kierkegaard, Miroslav Volf, even the Apostle Paul. But for how Christianity and philosophy complement each other, it's episode 57, called "Jesus Philosopher," that you should go to. In that episode, John was joined by Dolores Morris from the University of South Florida, and Angus Brooke of the University of Notre Dame in Australia.

These guests pointed out that not only is there a long and rich history of Christians engaging with philosophical concepts, but that Jesus is the ultimate philosopher. We're going to be spending some more time in the world of philosophy in Season 14, but before we get there, it felt right to head back to November 2021 and revisit some highlights of Jesus' philosophy. I'm clearly not John Dixon, but this is an Undeceptions Rewind.

If Plato had his powerful Christian interpreter in Augustine in the 5th century, Aristotle had his Christian champion in Thomas Aquinas in the 13th century. Many see Aquinas as the equal of and even superior to Augustine. But I don't want to start a fight.

You may have heard that the writings of Aristotle re-emerged in Europe in the 1100s. The Western Church was wary of the re-emergence of Aristotle.

Why? Because in the renditions that came back into the West, Aristotle was interpreted as separating reason from religion, scientific thinking from spiritual thinking, and the church didn't like that formulation. So for about 50 years, they were opposed to the reading and teaching of Aristotle. That is, until Thomas Aquinas.

He came to age exactly in this period and when he turned his attention to Aristotle, he ended up showing that in fact the philosopher, which is what Aquinas called Aristotle, was totally consistent with notions of divine revelation.

Religion may contain more than what pure reason can demonstrate, but it doesn't contain less than pure reason. But that's true of much of life when you think about it. Every time someone truthfully reports something to you about what they saw or experienced, that truth isn't something you could arrive at philosophically, rationally. But that doesn't mean it isn't true. It's just the

beyond the reach of philosophical reflection. In the same way, Aquinas said, true religion will be consistent with philosophy, but because it also includes things God himself has revealed, it will contain truths that are beyond mere rational reflection. So Thomas Aquinas' position is, in the most simple sense, is the argument that in fact you need both faith and reason working together

A core argument of his is basically this: that faith perfects reason, so that inasmuch as reason only gets you there, faith will get you the next steps. But he also argues in a way that some Christians historically have found uncomfortable. But he also says, "But faith can't contradict reason either." And I think it's really important. He basically says,

The truths of faith cannot be interpreted to contradict the fundamental principles of natural reason. It's funny, some of Thomas' most profound, I think, reflections on faith is actually him reflecting on what Cicero says about faith.

Because famously Cicero in On Duties says that faith is the basis of a just society. Faith is the basis of justice. And Thomas takes this to, in a way, to not only apply to a just society, a good society, a good person, but also to our quest for truth. That all of our efforts to use reason to get to the truth depend on trusting something. But also all of our...

Our goal in reason actually ends up by completing that faith. It completes that trust in a way.

Famously, Thomas Aquinas offered five ways to show rationally that God exists. But if all you've heard about these five proofs comes from Richard Dawkins' chapter on them in The God Delusion, it's possible you have no idea what they really are because, no offense, Richard Dawkins is a brilliant scientist, nor did Professor Dawkins have any idea what he was talking about.

I've read atheist philosophers who were embarrassed by Dawkins' account of the five ways. I think we should do a whole episode on the proofs of God. I do actually think God's existence is proven. But let me just say the briefest thing about Aquinas' arguments here. They are, one, the argument from motion. Basically, in a universe of constant change or motion, something has to be the original mover that isn't itself moving.

moved by something else. And that we call God, Aquinas said. Second, the argument from efficient causes. Things that are caused must have their source in a first cause that isn't itself caused. And that we call God, basically, is what Aquinas said.

Thirdly, the argument from contingency. Basically, this one says, unless there was one thing that exists necessarily, nothing would have begun to exist because existence can't pop out of non-existence.

Then four, the argument from degrees of perfection. I'm not really a fan of this, but Aquinas took it seriously, so I'm probably wrong. And he basically said that if there are gradations in the goodness of different things, there must be something that is maximally or perfectly good from which they derive their grade of goodness. And that we call God.

And five, the fifth argument is the argument from final causes. That's often called the teleological argument. This is my favourite of Aquinas' arguments, but it's also the easiest to get wrong, as Dawkins did. So I got Angus to help explain it. I want to be really careful here because Thomas Aquinas' teleology is very different from William Paley's teleology, right? And intelligent design today. Yes. So...

Think of it this way, William Paley was operating on a notion that nature is mechanical. And so he thought that you could in effect draw an analogy between a watch and nature.

William Paley was an 18th century theologian whose seminal work, Natural Theology, argues for the existence of God because of the intricate, intelligent design of human beings. So if you found a watch, you'd assume such a sophisticated piece of machinery had a design, and therefore a designer. So too with the sophisticated organisms on Earth. They must have an intelligent designer.

Now, that's not what Thomas Aquinas was saying. Thomas is not working within that analogy. He actually thinks that everything by nature has a teleology and that we can see that in the fact that everything moves and changes towards the completion of ends. So when he's putting forward a teleological argument, he's basically saying, well, things move.

And we can actually see before our very eyes that if I look out the window and I look at a tree, I know that that tree has grown from a seed to a sapling to a tree because that's its nature to move in that way. It moves towards the fulfillment of a purpose. For that purpose,

reason, he'd say, that we see that kind of teleological framework in everything that exists. So the question is, if there is teleological causality, if things move and change towards the completion of goals or ends, then there must be a unifying, overarching end.

that everything aims at. And again, he's going to say that's what we all call God. Yeah, I think it's fantastic.

I really do think it's fantastic. Aquinas isn't marvelling at how complex, say, the human eye is and saying, ooh, that must be God. He's noting that everything in the universe, from the tiniest particle to the outer reaches of the cosmos, operates according to elegant laws. There is mathematics built into the whole show. And that's what points to the great mathematician, the mind behind the universe.

the universe. We'll put some links in the show notes for where I think you can read the most sophisticated accounts of the true teleological argument. Dolores Morris has her own favorite Aquinas argument.

Probably the cosmological argument. Why is there something rather than nothing and there not being able to be an infinite series of causes? Although, again, I really do love the moral argument. That is the one that resonates with me at this stage of my life. I will say when I was younger, this notion of the untenability of an infinite series of causes, that was what grabbed me 20 years ago. So I think that says something that...

The cosmological argument, also known as the first cause argument, is often misunderstood. The argument isn't that everything has a cause, and so the universe must have a cause, and therefore God must be the cause of the universe. That's how you often hear it, even from really smart atheists like Daniel Dennett, who then turn around and say, well, if everything has a cause, who caused God? Aha! Right? Yeah.

No. The first cause argument says that whatever is caused is caused by something else. And since it is logically impossible for there to be an infinite series of causes, because if there's not a first in the series, there's not a second or third or fourth and therefore no series, there must be a first cause that isn't caused by something else. It's just logical. And that's what we call God, Aquinas says.

The only way out of this little dilemma is to say, as the ancient Greek philosopher Parmenides actually said, that nothing in the universe is caused or even changes.

then there's no first cause, right? Because no causes, no changes. Aquinas developed this further with the argument from contingency I mentioned earlier. That's the argument that says the things that exist in nature are contingent. It's possible, in other words, for these things not to have existed. They're not necessary things. Now, if it's possible for them not to have existed, there must have been a point in time when all these things did not exist.

And since it is impossible for non-existent things to bring themselves into existence, there must be something that necessarily exists and thus grants other things their existence. We live in a world where we find value beyond what we observe. And I do think God is the best explanation for that. I also think that we live in a world that exists.

And I think that this question, why is there something rather than nothing, one of the oldest philosophical questions, still needs an answer. I don't actually think that the Big Bang is an answer to that question, whether you take it as science, whether you are for or against the science behind it, even fully embracing it scientifically, it does not answer the question, why is there something rather than nothing, right?

It maybe gives an account of how, but not really of the why. It's fascinating how much we take on faith from the scientists.

Science explains a great deal of things. And that is, it's wonderful. I'm a big fan of science. I'm thankful to live in a time when science has made so much progress and so many things that are of value to our lives. But science hasn't scratched the surface of explaining everything. And there are still some questions that you need to step out of

science to consider. And the truth is it used to be that scientists did this themselves, right? Philosophy did not used to be its own discipline. If you look at the history of philosophy, the earlier, the historical great philosophers were also scientists because they recognized that in studying reality you had to also stop and ask these bigger picture questions. Okay, but what? What hasn't science explained? Give me an example.

Okay, consciousness, for example, there's a sense in which our study of the human body and the human brain is light years ahead of 1000 years ago, right? Incomparable. We have such, we have a tremendous grasp on what the brain does.

But there is still this question and there is a sense of which it's the same question that the Stoics were asking. It's the same question that we've been asking for the history of philosophy, which is why is there also consciousness? Why is there also experience? So we know what the brain does and we know what we do with our bodies, how we act in the world.

But why is it like something for us? There's a philosophical thought experiment from Frank Jackson. You imagine a woman, Mary, locked in a room. And you have to suppose that Mary is incredibly intelligent, right? And she's given all of the knowledge that can be given objectively. Everything that can be given from a third person perspective through something like a textbook.

about human perception and color vision, right? So she knows that people stop at red stop signs. She knows where the light is on a spectrum when it's going to trigger their red response, all of that. But it's not until she's allowed to leave the black and white room that she learns that all along there was something else going on as well. They were having these reddish experiences. She learns what it was like for them to see red. That jump is

From what the brain is doing, what the eyes are doing, to what it is like for the perceiver to have a perception is still a mystery to us. We can make progress on maybe what a brain has to be like in order to, we think, have these kinds of experiences. But how we get that jump from what's going on in the observable world to what is going on in this private realm of consciousness is still very much a mystery.

Existence, origins, necessity, consciousness, these are all the things Christianity has pondered from the beginning and with a philosophical energy that is often forgotten by skeptics and believers alike. And that's before we even ponder what Dolores reckons is one of Christianity's strongest suits, the so-called moral argument for God. ♪

I'm going to speak today about the relationship between science and human values. Now, it's generally understood that questions of morality, questions of good and evil and right and wrong, are questions about which science officially has no opinion. That's Sam Harris again, and you can hear he's got this really considered intelligent tone. And that's partly why he's so popular and why he seems to be convincing lots of people that religion is obsolete.

But his arguments really aren't strong. Before I run all this by Dolores Morris, here's a bit more from his famous 2010 TED talk arguing that science, not religion or metaphysics, science can answer our deepest moral questions. Now it's often said that science cannot give us a foundation for morality and human values because science deals with facts and facts and values seem to belong to different spheres.

It's often thought that there's no description of the way the world is that can tell us how the world ought to be. But I think this is quite clearly untrue.

One of the reasons why I wrote this book, in all truth, is because of Sam Harris. Because people are getting his books and they find him so persuasive, and academic philosophers who are also atheists largely find him embarrassing, right? Because the arguments are not good. In particular, he is convinced that there is no problem getting an ought from an is. So, as Hume first said,

You just cannot derive an ought claim from an is claim. You could look at a complete description of some situation, and from those descriptive facts, from the facts about what things are like, you will never, using those facts alone, generate a claim that somebody ought to do one thing rather than another. To get to an ought claim, you need another ought claim.

The example that I use in the book is a silly example where you show up at lunch and you don't have a sandwich. You realize you have forgotten your sandwich. And the person you're sitting with, your friend, has two sandwiches. And she only ever eats one, but she likes to have one as a backup. And you ask if you can have her second. She says, well, no, it's mine. I don't really like to share. And

You go through this dialogue. It's a little bit silly, but here's the point of it. The two of you can agree 100% on the descriptive facts. She has two sandwiches. She is only hungry enough for one sandwich. You are very hungry and have nothing to eat. If she gave you one of hers, you would both have one sandwich. All of these descriptive facts you can agree on. But if she doesn't believe that you should share with a person when you're able, nothing in the description of that scenario is going to persuade her.

You need a should claim. Harris thinks you don't. There is an addendum in later editions of his book where he responds to otherwise sympathetic philosophers who come back at him saying, you're just wrong about this one part. I think I know where he goes wrong. I think that Harris is 100% correct about

that a properly functioning human being can find the ought claims in observable reality. I think that when you live in community with other people and when you encounter people who are doing well, thriving, flourishing, and people who are suffering, it's very easy to see that the people who are thriving ought to help the people who are suffering. I think that's obvious. So these are moral facts. They are sitting there staring you in the face.

That's exactly right. I think Sam Harris is 100% right that there are objective moral values. The question is where they come from. He's right that they're there. He is right that we are, I would say, designed to find them, right? But he's wrong that they can be found in observable reality alone. He thinks they can because he is assuming, like all properly functioning human people,

that there are these moral facts and that we are obligated to follow them. But that's different from saying that they're just in observable reality. I think that we find them there again because we have something like a sensus divinitatis, because we have been created to see God's goodness in reality. But making sense of these objective moral facts in a world without God

is a great deal more difficult than making sense of it in a world with God, right? You need to have a moral law without a moral law giver. You need to have a standard of goodness without any standard bearer, right? I think a much better attempt is Eric, Eric Wielenberg is his name. And he has a book called Robust Ethics. And he at least, he also is an atheistic moral realist. He believes that there are just objective moral facts in a world in which there is no God.

But he ends up positing them as just brute facts. He thinks these are just features of reality that not only are unexplained, but that can't be explained. They're unexplainable. I think that is at least a better attempt than Harris, who frankly just seems a little bit confused about what it means to get an ought from it is. I don't think he quite, Harris himself says that he finds reading philosophy boring. So I think it would help him if he read a little bit more of this material to see just where things are going wrong there.

So can you, just to tail off that discussion, put very simply for my listeners what the moral argument for God's existence is and why you find it so compelling? Absolutely. So the moral argument says that there are objective moral facts.

And that my preferred version of the moral argument says there are objective moral facts. The best explanation for that is the existence of God. Therefore, it's very likely that God exists. Other people give this as a deductive argument where they actually want to go further and say, if there are objective moral facts, then God exists.

This argument claims that it is impossible to have objective moral facts without God. But there are objective moral facts. Therefore, God exists. Both of them proceed first by saying that objective morality is a real feature of the world that we live in. And second, by saying that that cries out for God, either necessarily or just probabilistically, that the reality of moral values is evidence for the existence of God.

Why do I like this argument? Well, I am fully convinced that there are objective moral facts. Even Peter Singer, another famous atheistic philosopher who really tried to do work without objective moral facts for a very long time, has now come around and he also is a moral realist. So what is the alternative to objective moral facts?

If moral facts are objective, then they're true or false, regardless of what we think about them or how we feel about them. I'm drawing from Robert Adams' definition here. He's right. Moral facts are objective if what they tell us has nothing to do with how we feel about them. And they're moral if they tell us how we should act, how we should live. Robert Adams is an American analytic philosopher specializing in metaphysics and philosophy of religion.

The alternative to objective morality is something like subjective morality, where it is up to us to determine how we ought to live and what we ought to do. This is a very, very popular view among a certain age group, a certain demographic. You hear it a lot in college classrooms. Why am I so convinced that relativism is untenable?

Well, I don't think that anybody actually believes it, at least at the level of the individual. If you had a friend who told you that they had developed a recent habit of murder, but don't worry, they don't actually believe that murder is wrong. And so they know that there's some legal risk here, and they're being very careful not to get caught. But because they don't actually believe that murder is wrong, murder isn't actually wrong for them. And so they are not doing anything wrong. Nobody believes this. Nobody actually believes this.

More people believe a kind of a close cousin, what we might call cultural relativism, that says, well, of course, individuals can't form these views on their own. You don't just get to make up morality. But cultures are responsible for their own moral code. And we could never judge another culture morally because, again, we have our morals and that's what's right for our community and our culture. And they just have theirs.

If cultural relativism is correct, then cultures as a whole get to decide what's right and what's wrong. But that's just a fancy way of saying the majority rules. But then it follows by definition that the minority voice is wrong. If the majority rules, the minority voice is wrong. And this makes it impossible for there to be a moral reformer internal to a community because the moral reformer has to speak against the voice of the majority.

And so if we embrace cultural relativism for morality, then we have to say that the abolitionists were wrong and the slave catchers were right. The moral argument says, really, you could even say it. There is at least one objective moral value. Really, we believe there are more than that.

But then the question is, where does it come from? I want to be clear. The moral argument does not say you have to believe in God to be a good person. And it does not say people who believe in God are better than the atheists. That is a nonstarter, right? That's nonsense.

The question is, what can we say about reality to make sense of the fact that there seems to be something like objective moral values? As Dawkins says, right, DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. The world of blind forces seems just a very unlikely candidate to have generated brute, independently existing facts about how human beings ought to live. It's worth pausing there for a second and soaking up this point.

The moral argument does not suggest you need God to be good. That may be how Christians have sometimes put it, and it certainly is how sometimes sceptics hear the argument. But the argument is actually philosophical, not pragmatic. The point is, what could possibly account for the fact of anything being morally right or wrong?

A universal accident can't account for that fact. Evolution can't. These are just descriptions of the conditions in which we have to make our moral judgments.

Science can't help either, despite what Sam Harris says. Science provides insight into our conditions, of course. It can also test what things might change those conditions. But it can't even begin to tell us which conditions are the most morally valuable. It can't tell us why we should act for one outcome rather than another. And it can't tell us for whose benefit we should be making these kinds of moral choices.

One way out of this, of course, is to say that there are no moral facts, no true right or true wrong. And a lot of people resort to that, especially amongst philosophers who can see where this is going. But if you happen to be someone who thinks that there are moral facts in the world, that it is right to act in some ways and wrong to act in other ways, then the problem remains. What are the logical grounds of these moral facts?

The Christian answer is that there's a creator whose own good character is imprinted on the universe. Those moral facts are there because they correspond to ultimate reality, to the character of God. An Undeceptions Podcast.