A look at Morality pt 2
This is a very tricky subject in the overall debate between theists and non-theists. Theists seem to think it's a silver bullet argument...the one area where they can absolutely take the high ground...atheists have no counter argument, right?
Well, they're wrong. As usual.
Now, to be fair, it is, as I said, a bit tricky. They claim to have the Creator of the Universe as their authority and the source of their morality. What could atheists possibly have to counter that? To answer that, let's completely forget morality for a moment and talk about something else. Let's talk about your appendix. And, before you ask, no, this isn't an argument about evolution and vestigial organs...
Let's imagine that you wake up one day feeling like crap. Just run down, achy, maybe a slight fever. What do you do? Let's further imagine that you have great health insurance, so you call the nurse help line and speak with one of the nurses.
In case you don't know how these help lines work, there is an actual RN on the other end of the phone. She has a script to greet you and thank you for calling. Then she asks what's going on. You tell her that you're feeling bad. Ok, she says, are you having pain? Do you have a fever? How long as it been going on? And so on. As you're describing what you feel, she is going down a checklist or algorithm of some sort, looking for keywords. Fever? That's a big one. Abdominal pain? Her finger follows another branch down the line. Nausea, but no vomiting? Ok, narrows it down.
Finally, she arrives at some sort of tentative diagnosis. Fever, right lower quadrant tenderness, nausea...sounds like appendicitis. You need to get to an ER within 24 hours, she tells you.
So you get in your car and get yourself to to local ER. When you check in, another nurse asks you some more questions. Again, she's waiting for you to say specific words regarding your signs and symptoms. When you say "fever", she takes your temperature and sees that it's elevated. They take vital signs...she notes your blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and pulse rate. Then she looks at what rooms are available in the back and what kind of patients are sitting out in the waiting room. Based on the ER protocols, she decides you need to be put in a room right away.
Once back in your room, a bunch of people come in and start hooking you up to a vital signs monitor, starting an IV and getting blood samples, maybe someone gives you some Tylenol for your fever. Someone from x-ray or CT comes in to let you know they're going to be getting some pictures. Some of this happens may even happen before a doctor is assigned to you, again, based on protocols.
After you get your x-rays and CT scan done, after the results come back from your blood and urine samples, a doctor comes in and confirms that, yes, it is, in fact, your appendix. But, he tells you, based on your lab work and what the radiologist saw on the images, there is no need to rush you to surgery. You are to be admitted and observed. If and when something changes, whether for better or worse, you will be reevaluated. Maybe you'll end up having surgery, maybe not. Then he orders some pain medicine, antibiotics, and walks out to see his next patient.
A couple days later, you are discharged from the hospital with all the same parts that you came in with. No surgery, but the appendicitis has subsided and you're feeling much better.
So what happened here? How did they know it was appendicitis? Why were you prioritized over other patients? Why did you get pain medication? Why were you given one antibiotic and not another?
The answer to all of those questions is the same...medicine is objective, based on facts. Through research and experience, we are able to recognize patterns. We know what lower right quadrant abdominal pain indicates. We know that certain antibiotics work and others don't. Had this occurred 20 or 30 years ago, you likely would have had your appendix yanked out almost immediately...but studies have shown that it's not always necessary and better outcomes can sometimes come from antibiotics alone.
What's the point? Medicine works and improves because it is objective. It also changes, but that does not take away from the objectivity, as some might claim. It simply means that the facts have been updated due to new information. Cutting out an inflamed appendix was the best fact-based course of action 50 years ago, just as trying antibiotics is today...and both are objective. A couple hundred years ago, before the levels of standardization that we have today, we may have wildly different approaches coming from different countries...the German technique might be different than the American, British, or Japanese techniques...but each of the techniques were still based on the best information and facts available to their respective practitioners. This is still somewhat true even today, but not nearly so much as in the past.
So medical practices change over time and across cultures...does that make medicine subjective or relative? Absolutely not. Medicine is objective in the sense that it's based on facts and not emotions (as a very simple definition).
How does this apply to morality? I will try to finish this all up in a third installment (or maybe fourth, depending on how verbose I end up getting).
Well, they're wrong. As usual.
Now, to be fair, it is, as I said, a bit tricky. They claim to have the Creator of the Universe as their authority and the source of their morality. What could atheists possibly have to counter that? To answer that, let's completely forget morality for a moment and talk about something else. Let's talk about your appendix. And, before you ask, no, this isn't an argument about evolution and vestigial organs...
Let's imagine that you wake up one day feeling like crap. Just run down, achy, maybe a slight fever. What do you do? Let's further imagine that you have great health insurance, so you call the nurse help line and speak with one of the nurses.
In case you don't know how these help lines work, there is an actual RN on the other end of the phone. She has a script to greet you and thank you for calling. Then she asks what's going on. You tell her that you're feeling bad. Ok, she says, are you having pain? Do you have a fever? How long as it been going on? And so on. As you're describing what you feel, she is going down a checklist or algorithm of some sort, looking for keywords. Fever? That's a big one. Abdominal pain? Her finger follows another branch down the line. Nausea, but no vomiting? Ok, narrows it down.
Finally, she arrives at some sort of tentative diagnosis. Fever, right lower quadrant tenderness, nausea...sounds like appendicitis. You need to get to an ER within 24 hours, she tells you.
So you get in your car and get yourself to to local ER. When you check in, another nurse asks you some more questions. Again, she's waiting for you to say specific words regarding your signs and symptoms. When you say "fever", she takes your temperature and sees that it's elevated. They take vital signs...she notes your blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and pulse rate. Then she looks at what rooms are available in the back and what kind of patients are sitting out in the waiting room. Based on the ER protocols, she decides you need to be put in a room right away.
Once back in your room, a bunch of people come in and start hooking you up to a vital signs monitor, starting an IV and getting blood samples, maybe someone gives you some Tylenol for your fever. Someone from x-ray or CT comes in to let you know they're going to be getting some pictures. Some of this happens may even happen before a doctor is assigned to you, again, based on protocols.
After you get your x-rays and CT scan done, after the results come back from your blood and urine samples, a doctor comes in and confirms that, yes, it is, in fact, your appendix. But, he tells you, based on your lab work and what the radiologist saw on the images, there is no need to rush you to surgery. You are to be admitted and observed. If and when something changes, whether for better or worse, you will be reevaluated. Maybe you'll end up having surgery, maybe not. Then he orders some pain medicine, antibiotics, and walks out to see his next patient.
A couple days later, you are discharged from the hospital with all the same parts that you came in with. No surgery, but the appendicitis has subsided and you're feeling much better.
So what happened here? How did they know it was appendicitis? Why were you prioritized over other patients? Why did you get pain medication? Why were you given one antibiotic and not another?
The answer to all of those questions is the same...medicine is objective, based on facts. Through research and experience, we are able to recognize patterns. We know what lower right quadrant abdominal pain indicates. We know that certain antibiotics work and others don't. Had this occurred 20 or 30 years ago, you likely would have had your appendix yanked out almost immediately...but studies have shown that it's not always necessary and better outcomes can sometimes come from antibiotics alone.
What's the point? Medicine works and improves because it is objective. It also changes, but that does not take away from the objectivity, as some might claim. It simply means that the facts have been updated due to new information. Cutting out an inflamed appendix was the best fact-based course of action 50 years ago, just as trying antibiotics is today...and both are objective. A couple hundred years ago, before the levels of standardization that we have today, we may have wildly different approaches coming from different countries...the German technique might be different than the American, British, or Japanese techniques...but each of the techniques were still based on the best information and facts available to their respective practitioners. This is still somewhat true even today, but not nearly so much as in the past.
So medical practices change over time and across cultures...does that make medicine subjective or relative? Absolutely not. Medicine is objective in the sense that it's based on facts and not emotions (as a very simple definition).
How does this apply to morality? I will try to finish this all up in a third installment (or maybe fourth, depending on how verbose I end up getting).
Comments
Post a Comment