Conditional and unconditional vegans

Here is an interesting post on veganism that distinguishes what I would call “conditional” vegans from “unconditional” vegans. The former group opposes the current system of factory farming, but would, hypothetically at least, eat animals raised “humanely” and sustainably. They don’t think, in other words, that it’s inherently wrong for humans to use animals, just that, under current conditions, one should boycott the animal industry. Unconditional vegans, by contrast, think that it is inherently wrong to use animals for food (or clothing, medical experiments, etc.), even if they’re humanely raised, painlessly killed, and so on.

That’s a useful distinction, it seems to me. But this, regarding conditional vegans, isn’t quite right:

If you think that producing and consuming animal products is morally acceptable, then for you veganism is a boycott. Perhaps you’ve decided that veganism is a socially and environmentally responsible choice, but you don’t feel that animals have rights beyond “humane” treatment. To you, veganism is a choice, not a moral obligation.

That last sentence just doesn’t follow. If I conclude that, all things considered (environmental impact, treatment of animals, etc.), veganism is the right choice, even if under some very different set of conditions I might conclude differently, then I do consider veganism a moral obligation. It’s no less of a moral obligation simply because, were things different, I might not be obliged to do it. Similarly, I may believe that I am morally obliged to boycott non-fair-trade coffee, but not the fair trade stuff, because I think there’s nothing inherently morally problematic about consuming coffee. Or: I may be morally obligated to reduce my carbon emissions, but if I lived a thousand years ago or in sub-Saharan Africa or if the laws of chemistry or physics were radically different, I wouldn’t be.

It could be that the unconditional vegans are right and there really is a moral obligation not to consume animals tout court (or at least under normal, non-”lifeboat” conditions). I’m not a vegan and don’t really have, um, a dog in this fight, but the difference here is between two different moral positions, not a moral position and a non-moral one.

(Link via)

Orangutan and dog make friends

This is pretty great:

The Trinity as a model for human society?

From Mark D. Chapman’s article, “The Social Doctrine of the Trinity: Some Problems“:

In these various different discussions of the implications of the doctrine of the Trinity for life together in society, there is an implicit assumption that the picture of the relationships between the Father, Son and Holy Spirit is able to function as something of a blueprint for human society: God is spoken of in terms of an idealised society which in turn is capable of being mirrored here on earth through the witness of the Church. Although this is undoubtedly appealing, it is precisely at this point that a problem begins to emerge. Whereas all the conceptions of the social God discussed understand the Trinity as a community of mutually interdependent persons who necessarily exist in relation, it does not necessarily follow that the sociality of human societies, even ideal ones, is rooted in such a notion of being-in-relationship. Factually, it is patently true that human beings do not always act together in conformity of will and action; and yet the claim is that the social Trinity and its concomitant ecclesiology should provide a vision as well as a practical model for humans in society. It is this step in the argument that does not seem to be self-evident. It is at the very least questionable that human beings express themselves most fully and perfectly in terms of the harmony and balance of mutual reciprocity.

If it can be shown that tension, conflict and debate rest at the heart of human society, then the opposite might indeed prove to be the case. Indeed it may well be that far from an aberration or even sinful distortion, the normal and proper condition of society, and even of the Church, is one of dispute and conflict. And this leads on to a question: if we are to try to model the Trinity, then what place is there for the tensions and conflicts resulting from human diversity and difference? The harmonious understanding of God, which characterises so much of the social Trinitarianism discussed above, perhaps expresses a longing for concord and a conflict-free zone, but it seems quite divorced from the creative and constructive conflict that can plausibly be shown to be the foundation for democratic human societies.

It’s fairly common in contemporary theology–popular and academic– to leap from some idea of the Trinity as a “perfect community” to using that as a blueprint for ecclesiastical and/or social reform. Chapman’s concern here strikes me as well founded: even assuming we can describe with any confindence the “inner” life of the Trinity (itself a dubious notion), it’s far from clear that this is an appropriate model for human communities. In the traditional Christian understanding, the persons of the Trinity enjoy a unity of will that is not only rarely found among human beings, but probably undesirable.

Two episodes from Buffy season 7 seems a bit dicey…

But, otherwise, this is an interesting list of the top 25 “Whedonverse” episodes (i.e., shows from creator Joss Whedon, including, inter alia, Buffy, Angel, and Firefly).

(How) does Jesus reveal moral truth?

It occurred to me after the last post that there might be a subset or version of the first view (God is necessary for us to know the difference between right and wrong) which has a stronger claim than I gave it credit for. That is the idea that moral truth is revealed in the life of Jesus. Christians believe that, in Jesus, God has (among other things) revealed a what a human life completely suffused with love of God and neighbor looks like. Thus we might say that there is–on any Christian view–a kind of revealed moral knowledge.

However, one shouldn’t conclude from this, I think, that Jesus is the only source of moral knowledge. For starters, Jesus himself disclaims this repeatedly, appealing in his teachings not only to his hearers knowledge of the Mosaic law, but also to their common moral sense. Moreover, the picture of Jesus that we have in the gospels, while evocative of a human life that is shaped in a specific way, doesn’t provide us with anything like an answer key to all of our moral questions. Asking that it should is probably to to put more weight on that portrait than it could bear.

Another consideration: Jesus’ life and ministry are not, in general, a “transvaluation” of all previously held values, but something more like their consummation or the horizon point where they converge. Otherwise, it’s hard to see how people could’ve recognized him as good in the first place. That they could presupposes that people who encountered Jesus and responded positively to him had some prior understanding of good and evil, right and wrong, and recognized Jesus as the embodiment of virtues like compassion and self-giving love.

This isn’t to say that Jesus doesn’t add to our previously existing moral knowledge. But maybe what he adds is a vivid concrete actualization of values or norms that would otherwise remain abstract and incomplete. I’m not saying that Jesus is only a moral exemplar, as some liberal theologians seem to say. Christians affirm that his life, death, and resurrection are also the very presence and activity of God with us and for us. But at the same time he is not less than a moral exemplar. We might add that Jesus also shows us the depths of our own sin in that the world’s hostility toward him exemplifies the reaction of sinful humanity to the embodiment of perfect virtue and complete faith.

Do we need God to be good?

It’s often asserted, or assumed, that God is “necessary” for morality, not infrequently leading to furious argument about the relative virtues of believers and atheists. But there are several senses in which God might be related to morality, so it’s important to distinguish them:

God is necessary for us to know the difference between right and wrong. This is the view that moral truth is a subspecies of revealed truth, i.e., we can only know the difference between right and wrong by consulting the Bible, the church, or some other religious authority. Even within Christianity, though, this is a minority position. The more common view is that we can know the difference between right and wrong using our natural reason and observing the world around us, particularly what actions are conducive to human well-being, etc. There has been a tendency in some self-consciously postmodern theology to see morality as tradition-constituted or embedded in the practices of a particular community, which does in some ways hark back to the morality-as-revealed-knowledge view.

God is necessary for us to be motivated to do right. This may be more common than the previous view. In its crassest form it asserts that the threat of punishment and/or promise of reward by God (whether here or hereafter) is what provides the necessary incentive for us to behave morally. In a more sophisticated vein, one might argue that God’s valuation of the world and the creatures in it provides a motive–if we love God–to treat God’s creatures with respect and care. Yet it seems that atheists, agonostics, and other non-theists can be motivated to moral behavior by many other considerations that make no reference to God. Though one might wonder if positing a transcendent dimension to morality gives an extra incentive to, for instance, more self-sacrificial actions than some alternative views (e.g., naturalism).

God is necessary to make sense of morality. This is the view that God is necessary to account for the deep, metaphysical basis or structure of morality. We might say that God is the “truth-maker” for moral statements. This doesn’t necessarily imply that we must believe in God’s existence to apprehend moral truth; it simply means that what ultimately “makes sense” of morality is God’s existence and/or nature. Most Christians probably hold some version of this view. On the other hand, we may doubt its practical import since it seems possible to have moral beliefs that guide one’s actions without enquiring very deeply into their metaphysical foundation (if any). Not to mention, there are several competing accounts of the metaphsyics of morality, none of which, it’s safe to say, commands anything close to universal assent. And yet it doesn’t seem as though having such a satisfying metaphysical account is necessary for moral discourse to funciton effectively.

I think the second and third views are more plausible than the first, but both would be very difficult to prove. I think one could make a plausible argument that the existence of God makes better sense of moral values than at least some competing views and that belief in God may provide motives for moral virtue that aren’t available to other views, but that falls short of showing that God is necessary for morality in the strong sense sometimes claimed.

ADDENDUM: I left out yet another sense in which it might be said that God is necessary for morality, which seems obvious now that I think of it: God as causally necessary for morally good actions. Most Christians have held that, in some way and to some degree or another, God’s grace empowers us to do good works. This goes beyond merely saying that our knowledge of God’s commands or love acts as a motive for doing good; it’s the claim that God somehow strengthens our wills so that we can do things that, left to our own devices, we would be unable to do. Without this empowering grace, it is sometimes held, we would be utterly incapable of doing good. This also seems to imply that non-believers, to the extent that they do good, are also beneficiaries of God’s grace. Clearly this opens up a whole can of worms concerning God’s providential action in the world, as well as the relationship between divine action and human free will.

OT bleg

Any readers have recommendations for secondary material on the Book of Daniel? I’m looking for something a bit more specific than a typical commentary: information on the history of its reception and/or interpretation. Any book- or article-length suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

“There ain’t no party like my nana’s tea party”

One more from FOTC:

Friday Metal: Textures, “Awake”

Just discovered these guys this week. Kind of Meshuggah meets Faith No More (if that makes any sense):

One more (at least) on pluralism

Another thought occurred to me about John Hick’s pluralism hypothesis: that it risks introducing a moralistic distortion into religion. Since, for Hick, religion is primarily a practical rather than a cognitive enterprise (because the Real in itself eludes our cognitive abilities), the criteria by which he judges religion are primarily moral ones. Religions are vehicles for moving from self-centeredness to Reality-centeredness, where that largely means being more compassionate, etc.

But Christianity, at least, isn’t primarily about “being moral.” It’s primarily about a loving, personal God that longs to be in relationship with his creation. Because human sin disrupts that relationship, morality has a role, but it’s a subordinate one (and, in itself, insufficient for restoring the divine-human relationship). The primary story is that of God’s self-bestowal on creation–in creating all that is and calling it good, in the calling of the patriarchs, in the liberation of Israel, and in the conjoining of the divine and the creaturely in Jesus–not human efforts to be more moral.

Because Hick has prescinded from the particulars of the Christian story, though, he is left with little choice but to make the subordinate theme of morality central to religion. He’s hardly alone in this, since many people seem to think that the purpose of religion is to make people “good.” But, from a Christian perspective at least, that is really to miss the point–which is the overflowing love and grace of God. Ironically, then, Hick’s position ends up being more human-centered than Reality-centered, since the focus is on our moral self-improvement instead of on God.