RESPONSE 1:
| is_saint-production_a_valid_test.pdf |
UPDATE: I originally heard this argument in a debate between Paul Draper and William Lane Craig. It turns out that Paul Draper no longer thinks that there is sufficient sociological data to support this argument according to his disciple Jeffery Jay Lowder: "Draper now believes that there is insufficient sociological evidence to prove that theists do not live more moral lives than naturalists. I have chosen to follow Draper's lead, so I do not include this argument in my cumulative case for naturalism." http://secularoutpost.infidels.org/2012/08/are-christians-best-argument-against.html
RESPONSE 2 SUMMARY: There is more to an apparent moral life than just habit, there are FOUR conditions that need to be satisfied for some act to be virtuous: 1-(you know that the action is virtuous) you need to do the action knowing that you are doing something virtuous; 2-(you choose it because it is a virtuous thing, you need to have the right motivation) you need to decide to do the action because doing so is virtuous 3-you need to decide to do the action from a firm and unchanging state (arising from a state of character you have that arises over time). 4-You have to do it with pleasure or enjoyment, it shouldn’t feel like an imposition or inconvenience to the person.
Clearly, atheists and theists could be alike in habit and knowledge of right and wrong given our evolutionary inheritance, but the theist could be morally superior to the atheist in conditions 2-4 and not be empirically detectable in the studies that are used to make this case by the atheist. This
RESPONSE 2 FULL: I would like to share what I take to be defeaters of this argument: 1) If Christianity is true, then Christians are committed to the belief that they have the supernatural assistance of God to fulfill the demands of morality whereas the non-believer does not have this supernatural assistance.
2) If Christians actually do have this kind of supernatural assistance, then it is probable that we should observe Christians as being morally better in some relevant sense than non-believers.
3) We do not observe Christians as performing morally better than non-believers.
4) Therefore, Christianity is false.
Okay, let’s go to work on this argument.
RESPONSE 2 SUMMARY: There is more to an apparent moral life than just habit, there are FOUR conditions that need to be satisfied for some act to be virtuous: 1-(you know that the action is virtuous) you need to do the action knowing that you are doing something virtuous; 2-(you choose it because it is a virtuous thing, you need to have the right motivation) you need to decide to do the action because doing so is virtuous 3-you need to decide to do the action from a firm and unchanging state (arising from a state of character you have that arises over time). 4-You have to do it with pleasure or enjoyment, it shouldn’t feel like an imposition or inconvenience to the person.
Clearly, atheists and theists could be alike in habit and knowledge of right and wrong given our evolutionary inheritance, but the theist could be morally superior to the atheist in conditions 2-4 and not be empirically detectable in the studies that are used to make this case by the atheist. This
RESPONSE 2 FULL: I would like to share what I take to be defeaters of this argument: 1) If Christianity is true, then Christians are committed to the belief that they have the supernatural assistance of God to fulfill the demands of morality whereas the non-believer does not have this supernatural assistance.
2) If Christians actually do have this kind of supernatural assistance, then it is probable that we should observe Christians as being morally better in some relevant sense than non-believers.
3) We do not observe Christians as performing morally better than non-believers.
4) Therefore, Christianity is false.
Okay, let’s go to work on this argument.
First, as a matter of logic, it is fallacious to determine the truth of a worldview by the character of its adherents. This is known as the genetic fallacy. All persons claiming to be Christians could behave badly, even worse than non-believers, and yet Christianity can still be true. However, a skeptic should respond by saying that the genetic fallacy isn’t always a fallacy and in the case of Christianity, we have an exception to the rule since it is part of the worldview of Christians that they should be morally better than non-believers since they have the supernatural help of the Holy Spirit to go through what they call sanctification, or becoming Christ-like.
Second, I am not sure that as Christians we are committed to the view that we are supposed to be morally superior to non-believers, even with the aid of the Holy Spirit. This owes to a number of reasons: 1) Sanctification is slow and gradual, and not instantaneous, 2) It may be that “sinners” are the majority of people who come to have the proper contrition of heart, whereas people who are “good” here the Gospel, and find it hard to believe that they need God’s forgiveness because they haven’t done anything really terrible in their lives, and 3) it is also part of the Christian worldview that even believers still have an indwelling sin problem that interferes with their moral progress via the assistance of the Holy Spirit, 4) Non-believers are restrained in their sin by God's common grace: moral law, civil government, police, prison, etc., and 5) Christians believe that moral perfection is only achieved in the afterlife, but rarely, if ever before physical death. So it seems to me, that what Christians are committed to is the following: I am morally better than I would have been without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, but it doesn’t follow from that that I am going to be morally better than every non-believer, or even most non-believers.
Third, suppose it is true however, that Christians should be morally better than non-believers. How are we to go about quantitatively measuring such a hypothesis. When you think about it, it really isn’t clear how one could collect some relevant statistics to determine whether or not this is true for we would have to have a knowledge of peoples inner hearts, all their actions, and all the consequences that they produce starting from the beginning of human kind, and ending at some point in the future.
Let’& & s suppose that we can come up with this data. Most people would probably divide the survey into at least two broad categories: the known history of Christianity, and the individual Christians we know personally. Has Christianity been a positive force in the world, or even the most positive? Despite the inquisitions, crusades, and other tragedies committed in the name of the Christian God, the answer seems to be yes. According to Kenneth Scott Latourette , that great Yale historian who wrote the History of Christianity, “We have had much to say about the effects of Christianity upon mankind as a whole, here has been the most potent force which mankind has known for the dispelling of illiteracy, for the creation of schools, for the emergence of new types of education, from Christianity have issued impulses for intellectual and geographic adventure, the universities were largely Christian creations, music, architecture, painting, poetry, philosophy, owe some of their greatest achievements to Christianity, democracy as it was known in the 19th and 20th century was in large part the outgrowth of Christian teaching, the abolition of slavery was chiefly due to Christianity, so were the measures taken to protect the Indians against the exploitation by the whites, the most helpful movements for the regulation of war, for the mitigation of suffering entailed by war, for the eventual abolition of war owe their inception to Christian faith, the nursing profession had the same origin, the extension of western methods of surgery was chiefly due to Christian missionary enterprise, and the elevation of the status of woman as a whole.”
What about individual Christians, especially the ones we seem to know personally? Why does it appear to be that they are no better, morally speaking, then non-believers? I think that this is really where the argument goes astray. Notice that is assumes the following: if the amount of good in the world was increasing in the lives of Christians comparatively more than in the lives of non-believers than this would be empirically noticeable. Even if this assumption was true, I think the point above that Latourette makes is sufficient to verify that Christians have been morally superior then non-believers. However, I think that this assumption is plausibly false. In order to explain why, we first have to consider an argument for God that is based on a similar empirical claim to that being made in the above argument being made against God, and see how a non-believer responds in order to see that I am not special pleading for Christianity. Consider the following argument:
Argument VII:
Let us assume that defenders of a secular, naturalistic world view will not question premise 3 so far as it concerns the effects of virtuous action. In that case, they must either concede that morality is irrational (part, perhaps, of the absurdity of life in a universe without God) or argue that the good produced by virtuous action is not wholly or mainly in its effects.They may note in this regard important consequences of Aristotle's account of virtuous actions. Virtuous actions are not merely the means to the good, as plugging in the kettle is the means to heating the water. The good for a human being is a kind of living and acting: it is in part constituted by acts we perform and the dispositions behind them. Virtuous, good actions are worthwhile for the sake of the activity involved in doing them. They will have ends beyond themselves. Thus an act of generosity will seek the improvement of another's lot. But such an act also constitutes its own end. It is worthwhile doing it even if it fails in its external end. So, if a naturalist follows Aristotle, she or he can say that right action is a manifestation of the human good and as such the human good will in part exist regardless of the consequences of right action. So, there is a big difference between acting virtuosly and doing a virtuous act; merely doing the right action is not sufficient to have the moral excellences. This means that positively, that the amount of godd could be increasing in the world (that is, Christians could be morally superior to non-Christians) in a manner that would be empirically undetectable (i.e. Christians may have the same divorce rate as non-Christians, but Christians could have better characters within those marriages that last compared to non-Christians). On the negative side, Christians can also be superior to non-Christians when it comes to 'sins of omission' as well in an empirically undetectable manner. For example, Consider the case of Chester. Chester has a very strong desire to molest young children. If he thought he could get away with it, he would abduct and molest the children playing on the playground near his house. But Chester is very afraid of getting caught since there is a police station across the street from the playground. As a result of his fear, Chester never does in fact molest any children, and thus isn’t deserving of blame or punishment for his behavior in this regard. Despite this fact, there is still something morally wrong with Chester; he is deserving of blame for being the kind of individual that wants to molest children and would if he could get away with it. Suppose a Christian also doesn't molest children but not for fear of punishment, but for good moral reasons (intrinsic worth of persons, duty to treat others as you would want to be treated, the wrongness of the harm that the child would be caused, etc.). Here again, though the world wouldn't be able to empirically detect it, the Christian is superior to the non-Christian. One must also be the right sort of individual or have the right sort of character.For example, he is a detailed example taken from SEP:
"A virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a tendency to do what is honest or generous, nor is it to be helpfully specified as a “desirable” or “morally valuable” character trait. It is, indeed a character trait — that is, a disposition which is well entrenched in its possessor, something that, as we say “goes all the way down”, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker — but the disposition in question, far from being a single track disposition to do honest actions, or even honest actions for certain reasons, is multi-track. It is concerned with many other actions as well, with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset. (Hence the extreme recklessness of attributing a virtue on the basis of a single action.)
The most significant aspect of this mindset is the wholehearted acceptance of a certain range of considerations as reasons for action. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, practices honest dealing, and does not cheat. If such actions are done merely because the agent thinks that honesty is the best policy, or because they fear being caught out, rather than through recognising “To do otherwise would be dishonest” as the relevant reason, they are not the actions of an honest person. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, always tells the truth, nor even as one who always tells the truth because it is the truth, for one can have the virtue of honesty without being tactless or indiscreet. The honest person recognises “That would be a lie” as a strong (though perhaps not overriding) reason for not making certain statements in certain circumstances, and gives due, but not overriding, weight to “That would be the truth” as a reason for making them.
An honest person's reasons and choices with respect to honest and dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty and truth — but of course such views manifest themselves with respect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuing honesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honest people, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest. She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused by certain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeed by dishonest means rather than thinking they have been clever, is unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, is shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what is dishonest and so on.
Given that a virtue is such a multi-track disposition, it would obviously be reckless to attribute one to an agent on the basis of a single observed action or even a series of similar actions, especially if you don't know the agent's reasons for doing as she did (Sreenivasan 2002). Moreover, to possess, fully, such a disposition is to possess full or perfect virtue, which is rare, and there are a number of ways of falling short of this ideal (Athanassoulis 2000). Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree, for most people who can be truly described as fairly virtuous, and certainly markedly better than those who can be truly described as dishonest, self-centred and greedy, still have their blind spots — little areas where they do not act for the reasons one would expect. So someone honest or kind in most situations, and notably so in demanding ones may nevertheless be trivially tainted by snobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about their forebears and less than kind to strangers with the wrong accent.
Further, it is not easy to get one's emotions in harmony with one's rational recognition of certain reasons for action. I may be honest enough to recognise that I must own up to a mistake because it would be dishonest not to do so without my acceptance being so wholehearted that I can own up easily, with no inner conflict. Following (and adapting) Aristotle, virtue ethicists draw a distinction between full or perfect virtue and “continence”, or strength of will. The fully virtuous do what they should without a struggle against contrary desires; the continent have to control a desire or temptation to do otherwise.
Describing the continent as “falling short” of perfect virtue appears to go against the intuition that there is something particularly admirable about people who manage to act well when it is especially hard for them to do so, but the plausibility of this depends on exactly what “makes it hard” (Foot 1978, 11–14). If it is the circumstances in which the agent acts — say that she is very poor when she sees someone drop a full purse, or that she is in deep grief when someone visits seeking help — then indeed it is particularly admirable of her to restore the purse or give the help when it is hard for her to do so. But if what makes it hard is an imperfection in her character — the temptation to keep what is not hers, or a callous indifference to the suffering of others — then it is not.
Another way in which one can easily fall short of full virtue is through lacking phronesis — moral or practical wisdom.
The concept of a virtue is the concept of something that makes its possessor good: a virtuous person is a morally good, excellent or admirable person who acts and feels well, rightly, as she should. These are commonly accepted truisms. But it is equally common, in relation to particular (putative) examples of virtues to give these truisms up. We may say of someone that he is too generous or honest, generous or honest “to a fault”. It is commonly asserted that someone's compassion might lead them to act wrongly, to tell a lie they should not have told, for example, in their desire to prevent someone else's hurt feelings. It is also said that courage, in a desperado, enables him to do far more wicked things than he would have been able to do if he were timid. So it would appear that generosity, honesty, compassion and courage despite being virtues, are sometimes faults. Someone who is generous, honest, compassionate, and courageous might not be a morally good, admirable person — or, if it is still held to be a truism that they are, then morally good people may be led by what makes them morally good to act wrongly! How have we arrived at such an odd conclusion?
The answer lies in too ready an acceptance of ordinary usage, which permits a fairly wide-ranging application of many of the virtue terms, combined, perhaps, with a modern readiness to suppose that the virtuous agent is motivated by emotion or inclination, not by rational choice. If one thinks of generosity or honesty as the disposition to be moved to action by generous or honest impulses such as the desire to give or to speak the truth, if one thinks of compassion as the disposition to be moved by the sufferings of others and to act on that emotion, if one thinks of courage as merely fearlessness, or the willingness to face danger, then it will indeed seem obvious that these are all dispositions that can lead to their possessor's acting wrongly. But it is also obvious, as soon as it is stated, that these are dispositions that can be possessed by children, and although children thus endowed (bar the “courageous” disposition) would undoubtedly be very nice children, we would not say that they were morally virtuous or admirable people. The ordinary usage, or the reliance on motivation by inclination, gives us what Aristotle calls “natural virtue” — a proto version of full virtue awaiting perfection by phronesis or practical wisdom.
Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks about phronesis that are the subject of much scholarly debate, but the (related) modern concept is best understood by thinking of what the virtuous morally mature adult has that nice children, including nice adolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adult and the nice child have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know in order to do what he intends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallible and may also, on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lack of knowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack of knowledge is not culpable ignorance. So, for example, children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to set about securing the benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken. Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable, and frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in adults. Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more objective viewpoint. They are also, importantly, culpable if their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It is part of practical wisdom to know how to secure real benefits effectively; those who have practical wisdom will not make the mistake of concealing the hurtful truth from the person who really needs to know it in the belief that they are benefiting him.
Quite generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act well or “do the right thing”, we may say that practical wisdom is the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor, unlike the nice adolescents, to do just that, in any given situation. The detailed specification of what is involved in such knowledge or understanding has not yet appeared in the literature, but some aspects of it are becoming well known. Even many deontologists now stress the point that their action-guiding rules cannot, reliably, be applied correctly without practical wisdom, because correct application requires situational appreciation — the capacity to recognise, in any particular situation, those features of it that are morally salient. This brings out two aspects of practical wisdom."
Do you see? On the one hand, if the non-believer thinks that Christians and non-believers are to similar in their moral aptitude by looking at the world, then surely they will also have to concede that many people think that the amount of good in the world isn’t noticeably increasing; in fact, it may be getting worse. But this leads to a transcendental argument where God must be postulated in order to bring about good in the end in order to guarantee the goal of morality which is for good to flourish and be rewarded and evil to be punished in the end.
If the non-believer wants to hang onto the rationality of the moral enterprise without postulating the existence of God, then they must come up with a way in which good is increasing, but in a manner in which we cannot empirically detect. But if non-believers can do this to avoid a positive argument for the existence of God, then us believers can use the same response to undercut the argument against God that is the topic of this thread outlined above. The way to do this is to rely on virtue ethics, which by the way, Christians are primarily committed to (i.e. What would Jesus do?) Every moral act has at least three parts: 1) internal character (disposition, attitude heart, desire, intention, volition, etc.), 2) the act itself, and 3) the consequences. Now it is possible for the Christians and non-believer to match up almost exactly with respect to 2 and 3, but 1 could be worlds apart and it would be very very difficult to know. But it is 1 that Christians primarily improve upon via the Holy Spirit. It is our character that is transformed. For example, a Hindu, a Christian, and an atheist walk in to a bar. All three are married. A pretty girl walks by, and the Hindu and atheist lust after the woman in their hearts without actually acting on it and producing measurable consequences. However, the Christian neither lusts nor performs any adulterous action. So, here is an example of the Christians being morally superior to non-believers without actually leaving behind a measurable trace of moral superiority. In other words premise 2 is a false dilemma because it leaves out the possibility that Christians are morally superior to non-believers in a manner that is for all practical purposes, unobservable.
Of course, I think that both of the horns of the dilemma from above are plausibly true: 1) that the world doesn’t appear to be getting better, and so morality appears to be irrational, and that the only way to save morality is to posit a God who will make things right in the end, and 2), for all we know, the Christian is morally superior to the non-believer in terms of character, but such character is internal, and qualitative, and so not easily measured like the consequences of an action can be. Moreover, when we look at the broad history of Christianity we do see that it has had enormously good consequences; in fact, it has had the greatest consequences for good compared to any other worldview, society, or culture. Lastly, I am very skeptical of the intuition that any non-believer has that on average, across all of human history, past, present, and future, that non-believers perform just as many good acts as true Christians. How in the world can somebody reliably judge such a tremendous, complex, and unimaginably vast claim such as that. Ask them for hard empirical evidence for such a bold claim.
A final consideration is that there is a historical reason that Christians today (Protestants), may be saved and not exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. That historical argument has to do with what Richard Lovelace calls the Sanctification Gap, namely, that ""There seemed to be a sanctification gap among Protestants, a peculiar conspiracy somehow to mislay the tradition of spiritual growth and to concentrate on side issues. 'Liberals' sought to commend Christianity to its cultured despisers, and to apply its ethics to social concerns. 'Conservatives' specialized in personal witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16, and theological discussion of eschatological subtleties."
Overtime, Protestants became focused on doctrine, right belief, and justification. They neglected a rich history of spiritual disciplines that the Roman Catholic church has always retained and also reacted against Liberalism and its social Gospel. So, whereas Catholics are all sanctification, Protestants became all about justification and lost the riches that made it feasible for Christians to bridge the gap between where we are as new creations, and where we should be as new creations.
Second, I am not sure that as Christians we are committed to the view that we are supposed to be morally superior to non-believers, even with the aid of the Holy Spirit. This owes to a number of reasons: 1) Sanctification is slow and gradual, and not instantaneous, 2) It may be that “sinners” are the majority of people who come to have the proper contrition of heart, whereas people who are “good” here the Gospel, and find it hard to believe that they need God’s forgiveness because they haven’t done anything really terrible in their lives, and 3) it is also part of the Christian worldview that even believers still have an indwelling sin problem that interferes with their moral progress via the assistance of the Holy Spirit, 4) Non-believers are restrained in their sin by God's common grace: moral law, civil government, police, prison, etc., and 5) Christians believe that moral perfection is only achieved in the afterlife, but rarely, if ever before physical death. So it seems to me, that what Christians are committed to is the following: I am morally better than I would have been without the assistance of the Holy Spirit, but it doesn’t follow from that that I am going to be morally better than every non-believer, or even most non-believers.
Third, suppose it is true however, that Christians should be morally better than non-believers. How are we to go about quantitatively measuring such a hypothesis. When you think about it, it really isn’t clear how one could collect some relevant statistics to determine whether or not this is true for we would have to have a knowledge of peoples inner hearts, all their actions, and all the consequences that they produce starting from the beginning of human kind, and ending at some point in the future.
Let’& & s suppose that we can come up with this data. Most people would probably divide the survey into at least two broad categories: the known history of Christianity, and the individual Christians we know personally. Has Christianity been a positive force in the world, or even the most positive? Despite the inquisitions, crusades, and other tragedies committed in the name of the Christian God, the answer seems to be yes. According to Kenneth Scott Latourette , that great Yale historian who wrote the History of Christianity, “We have had much to say about the effects of Christianity upon mankind as a whole, here has been the most potent force which mankind has known for the dispelling of illiteracy, for the creation of schools, for the emergence of new types of education, from Christianity have issued impulses for intellectual and geographic adventure, the universities were largely Christian creations, music, architecture, painting, poetry, philosophy, owe some of their greatest achievements to Christianity, democracy as it was known in the 19th and 20th century was in large part the outgrowth of Christian teaching, the abolition of slavery was chiefly due to Christianity, so were the measures taken to protect the Indians against the exploitation by the whites, the most helpful movements for the regulation of war, for the mitigation of suffering entailed by war, for the eventual abolition of war owe their inception to Christian faith, the nursing profession had the same origin, the extension of western methods of surgery was chiefly due to Christian missionary enterprise, and the elevation of the status of woman as a whole.”
What about individual Christians, especially the ones we seem to know personally? Why does it appear to be that they are no better, morally speaking, then non-believers? I think that this is really where the argument goes astray. Notice that is assumes the following: if the amount of good in the world was increasing in the lives of Christians comparatively more than in the lives of non-believers than this would be empirically noticeable. Even if this assumption was true, I think the point above that Latourette makes is sufficient to verify that Christians have been morally superior then non-believers. However, I think that this assumption is plausibly false. In order to explain why, we first have to consider an argument for God that is based on a similar empirical claim to that being made in the above argument being made against God, and see how a non-believer responds in order to see that I am not special pleading for Christianity. Consider the following argument:
Argument VII:
- Morality is a rational enterprise.
- Morality would not be a rational enterprise unless good actions increase the amount of good in the world. (Morality has to be efficacious if it is to be rational.)
- There is no evidence that the amount of good in the world is increasing through our good acts.
- Therefore we must assume that there is extra-human agency on the side of the good.
Let us assume that defenders of a secular, naturalistic world view will not question premise 3 so far as it concerns the effects of virtuous action. In that case, they must either concede that morality is irrational (part, perhaps, of the absurdity of life in a universe without God) or argue that the good produced by virtuous action is not wholly or mainly in its effects.They may note in this regard important consequences of Aristotle's account of virtuous actions. Virtuous actions are not merely the means to the good, as plugging in the kettle is the means to heating the water. The good for a human being is a kind of living and acting: it is in part constituted by acts we perform and the dispositions behind them. Virtuous, good actions are worthwhile for the sake of the activity involved in doing them. They will have ends beyond themselves. Thus an act of generosity will seek the improvement of another's lot. But such an act also constitutes its own end. It is worthwhile doing it even if it fails in its external end. So, if a naturalist follows Aristotle, she or he can say that right action is a manifestation of the human good and as such the human good will in part exist regardless of the consequences of right action. So, there is a big difference between acting virtuosly and doing a virtuous act; merely doing the right action is not sufficient to have the moral excellences. This means that positively, that the amount of godd could be increasing in the world (that is, Christians could be morally superior to non-Christians) in a manner that would be empirically undetectable (i.e. Christians may have the same divorce rate as non-Christians, but Christians could have better characters within those marriages that last compared to non-Christians). On the negative side, Christians can also be superior to non-Christians when it comes to 'sins of omission' as well in an empirically undetectable manner. For example, Consider the case of Chester. Chester has a very strong desire to molest young children. If he thought he could get away with it, he would abduct and molest the children playing on the playground near his house. But Chester is very afraid of getting caught since there is a police station across the street from the playground. As a result of his fear, Chester never does in fact molest any children, and thus isn’t deserving of blame or punishment for his behavior in this regard. Despite this fact, there is still something morally wrong with Chester; he is deserving of blame for being the kind of individual that wants to molest children and would if he could get away with it. Suppose a Christian also doesn't molest children but not for fear of punishment, but for good moral reasons (intrinsic worth of persons, duty to treat others as you would want to be treated, the wrongness of the harm that the child would be caused, etc.). Here again, though the world wouldn't be able to empirically detect it, the Christian is superior to the non-Christian. One must also be the right sort of individual or have the right sort of character.For example, he is a detailed example taken from SEP:
"A virtue such as honesty or generosity is not just a tendency to do what is honest or generous, nor is it to be helpfully specified as a “desirable” or “morally valuable” character trait. It is, indeed a character trait — that is, a disposition which is well entrenched in its possessor, something that, as we say “goes all the way down”, unlike a habit such as being a tea-drinker — but the disposition in question, far from being a single track disposition to do honest actions, or even honest actions for certain reasons, is multi-track. It is concerned with many other actions as well, with emotions and emotional reactions, choices, values, desires, perceptions, attitudes, interests, expectations and sensibilities. To possess a virtue is to be a certain sort of person with a certain complex mindset. (Hence the extreme recklessness of attributing a virtue on the basis of a single action.)
The most significant aspect of this mindset is the wholehearted acceptance of a certain range of considerations as reasons for action. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, practices honest dealing, and does not cheat. If such actions are done merely because the agent thinks that honesty is the best policy, or because they fear being caught out, rather than through recognising “To do otherwise would be dishonest” as the relevant reason, they are not the actions of an honest person. An honest person cannot be identified simply as one who, for example, always tells the truth, nor even as one who always tells the truth because it is the truth, for one can have the virtue of honesty without being tactless or indiscreet. The honest person recognises “That would be a lie” as a strong (though perhaps not overriding) reason for not making certain statements in certain circumstances, and gives due, but not overriding, weight to “That would be the truth” as a reason for making them.
An honest person's reasons and choices with respect to honest and dishonest actions reflect her views about honesty and truth — but of course such views manifest themselves with respect to other actions, and to emotional reactions as well. Valuing honesty as she does, she chooses, where possible to work with honest people, to have honest friends, to bring up her children to be honest. She disapproves of, dislikes, deplores dishonesty, is not amused by certain tales of chicanery, despises or pities those who succeed by dishonest means rather than thinking they have been clever, is unsurprised, or pleased (as appropriate) when honesty triumphs, is shocked or distressed when those near and dear to her do what is dishonest and so on.
Given that a virtue is such a multi-track disposition, it would obviously be reckless to attribute one to an agent on the basis of a single observed action or even a series of similar actions, especially if you don't know the agent's reasons for doing as she did (Sreenivasan 2002). Moreover, to possess, fully, such a disposition is to possess full or perfect virtue, which is rare, and there are a number of ways of falling short of this ideal (Athanassoulis 2000). Possessing a virtue is a matter of degree, for most people who can be truly described as fairly virtuous, and certainly markedly better than those who can be truly described as dishonest, self-centred and greedy, still have their blind spots — little areas where they do not act for the reasons one would expect. So someone honest or kind in most situations, and notably so in demanding ones may nevertheless be trivially tainted by snobbery, inclined to be disingenuous about their forebears and less than kind to strangers with the wrong accent.
Further, it is not easy to get one's emotions in harmony with one's rational recognition of certain reasons for action. I may be honest enough to recognise that I must own up to a mistake because it would be dishonest not to do so without my acceptance being so wholehearted that I can own up easily, with no inner conflict. Following (and adapting) Aristotle, virtue ethicists draw a distinction between full or perfect virtue and “continence”, or strength of will. The fully virtuous do what they should without a struggle against contrary desires; the continent have to control a desire or temptation to do otherwise.
Describing the continent as “falling short” of perfect virtue appears to go against the intuition that there is something particularly admirable about people who manage to act well when it is especially hard for them to do so, but the plausibility of this depends on exactly what “makes it hard” (Foot 1978, 11–14). If it is the circumstances in which the agent acts — say that she is very poor when she sees someone drop a full purse, or that she is in deep grief when someone visits seeking help — then indeed it is particularly admirable of her to restore the purse or give the help when it is hard for her to do so. But if what makes it hard is an imperfection in her character — the temptation to keep what is not hers, or a callous indifference to the suffering of others — then it is not.
Another way in which one can easily fall short of full virtue is through lacking phronesis — moral or practical wisdom.
The concept of a virtue is the concept of something that makes its possessor good: a virtuous person is a morally good, excellent or admirable person who acts and feels well, rightly, as she should. These are commonly accepted truisms. But it is equally common, in relation to particular (putative) examples of virtues to give these truisms up. We may say of someone that he is too generous or honest, generous or honest “to a fault”. It is commonly asserted that someone's compassion might lead them to act wrongly, to tell a lie they should not have told, for example, in their desire to prevent someone else's hurt feelings. It is also said that courage, in a desperado, enables him to do far more wicked things than he would have been able to do if he were timid. So it would appear that generosity, honesty, compassion and courage despite being virtues, are sometimes faults. Someone who is generous, honest, compassionate, and courageous might not be a morally good, admirable person — or, if it is still held to be a truism that they are, then morally good people may be led by what makes them morally good to act wrongly! How have we arrived at such an odd conclusion?
The answer lies in too ready an acceptance of ordinary usage, which permits a fairly wide-ranging application of many of the virtue terms, combined, perhaps, with a modern readiness to suppose that the virtuous agent is motivated by emotion or inclination, not by rational choice. If one thinks of generosity or honesty as the disposition to be moved to action by generous or honest impulses such as the desire to give or to speak the truth, if one thinks of compassion as the disposition to be moved by the sufferings of others and to act on that emotion, if one thinks of courage as merely fearlessness, or the willingness to face danger, then it will indeed seem obvious that these are all dispositions that can lead to their possessor's acting wrongly. But it is also obvious, as soon as it is stated, that these are dispositions that can be possessed by children, and although children thus endowed (bar the “courageous” disposition) would undoubtedly be very nice children, we would not say that they were morally virtuous or admirable people. The ordinary usage, or the reliance on motivation by inclination, gives us what Aristotle calls “natural virtue” — a proto version of full virtue awaiting perfection by phronesis or practical wisdom.
Aristotle makes a number of specific remarks about phronesis that are the subject of much scholarly debate, but the (related) modern concept is best understood by thinking of what the virtuous morally mature adult has that nice children, including nice adolescents, lack. Both the virtuous adult and the nice child have good intentions, but the child is much more prone to mess things up because he is ignorant of what he needs to know in order to do what he intends. A virtuous adult is not, of course, infallible and may also, on occasion, fail to do what she intended to do through lack of knowledge, but only on those occasions on which the lack of knowledge is not culpable ignorance. So, for example, children and adolescents often harm those they intend to benefit either because they do not know how to set about securing the benefit or, more importantly, because their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is limited and often mistaken. Such ignorance in small children is rarely, if ever culpable, and frequently not in adolescents, but it usually is in adults. Adults are culpable if they mess things up by being thoughtless, insensitive, reckless, impulsive, shortsighted, and by assuming that what suits them will suit everyone instead of taking a more objective viewpoint. They are also, importantly, culpable if their understanding of what is beneficial and harmful is mistaken. It is part of practical wisdom to know how to secure real benefits effectively; those who have practical wisdom will not make the mistake of concealing the hurtful truth from the person who really needs to know it in the belief that they are benefiting him.
Quite generally, given that good intentions are intentions to act well or “do the right thing”, we may say that practical wisdom is the knowledge or understanding that enables its possessor, unlike the nice adolescents, to do just that, in any given situation. The detailed specification of what is involved in such knowledge or understanding has not yet appeared in the literature, but some aspects of it are becoming well known. Even many deontologists now stress the point that their action-guiding rules cannot, reliably, be applied correctly without practical wisdom, because correct application requires situational appreciation — the capacity to recognise, in any particular situation, those features of it that are morally salient. This brings out two aspects of practical wisdom."
Do you see? On the one hand, if the non-believer thinks that Christians and non-believers are to similar in their moral aptitude by looking at the world, then surely they will also have to concede that many people think that the amount of good in the world isn’t noticeably increasing; in fact, it may be getting worse. But this leads to a transcendental argument where God must be postulated in order to bring about good in the end in order to guarantee the goal of morality which is for good to flourish and be rewarded and evil to be punished in the end.
If the non-believer wants to hang onto the rationality of the moral enterprise without postulating the existence of God, then they must come up with a way in which good is increasing, but in a manner in which we cannot empirically detect. But if non-believers can do this to avoid a positive argument for the existence of God, then us believers can use the same response to undercut the argument against God that is the topic of this thread outlined above. The way to do this is to rely on virtue ethics, which by the way, Christians are primarily committed to (i.e. What would Jesus do?) Every moral act has at least three parts: 1) internal character (disposition, attitude heart, desire, intention, volition, etc.), 2) the act itself, and 3) the consequences. Now it is possible for the Christians and non-believer to match up almost exactly with respect to 2 and 3, but 1 could be worlds apart and it would be very very difficult to know. But it is 1 that Christians primarily improve upon via the Holy Spirit. It is our character that is transformed. For example, a Hindu, a Christian, and an atheist walk in to a bar. All three are married. A pretty girl walks by, and the Hindu and atheist lust after the woman in their hearts without actually acting on it and producing measurable consequences. However, the Christian neither lusts nor performs any adulterous action. So, here is an example of the Christians being morally superior to non-believers without actually leaving behind a measurable trace of moral superiority. In other words premise 2 is a false dilemma because it leaves out the possibility that Christians are morally superior to non-believers in a manner that is for all practical purposes, unobservable.
Of course, I think that both of the horns of the dilemma from above are plausibly true: 1) that the world doesn’t appear to be getting better, and so morality appears to be irrational, and that the only way to save morality is to posit a God who will make things right in the end, and 2), for all we know, the Christian is morally superior to the non-believer in terms of character, but such character is internal, and qualitative, and so not easily measured like the consequences of an action can be. Moreover, when we look at the broad history of Christianity we do see that it has had enormously good consequences; in fact, it has had the greatest consequences for good compared to any other worldview, society, or culture. Lastly, I am very skeptical of the intuition that any non-believer has that on average, across all of human history, past, present, and future, that non-believers perform just as many good acts as true Christians. How in the world can somebody reliably judge such a tremendous, complex, and unimaginably vast claim such as that. Ask them for hard empirical evidence for such a bold claim.
A final consideration is that there is a historical reason that Christians today (Protestants), may be saved and not exhibit the fruit of the Spirit. That historical argument has to do with what Richard Lovelace calls the Sanctification Gap, namely, that ""There seemed to be a sanctification gap among Protestants, a peculiar conspiracy somehow to mislay the tradition of spiritual growth and to concentrate on side issues. 'Liberals' sought to commend Christianity to its cultured despisers, and to apply its ethics to social concerns. 'Conservatives' specialized in personal witnessing activity, sermons on John 3:16, and theological discussion of eschatological subtleties."
Overtime, Protestants became focused on doctrine, right belief, and justification. They neglected a rich history of spiritual disciplines that the Roman Catholic church has always retained and also reacted against Liberalism and its social Gospel. So, whereas Catholics are all sanctification, Protestants became all about justification and lost the riches that made it feasible for Christians to bridge the gap between where we are as new creations, and where we should be as new creations.
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