Why secular idealism is insufficient

Secular idealism defined

So, you have been reading these blog postings, and you have decided not to “give in” or “give up.”  In other words, you are not willing to accept that there is some perfectible path for you to walk, but you also aren’t willing to give up entirely on leading a “Good” life, so you will reject nihilism.  Where does that leave you?

One very popular option is “secular idealism.”  In fact, I think that the majority of my friends and colleagues would think of themselves as such.  Secular idealism is the belief that there is meaning to life, that there is a way to lead a Good life.  Hence, idealism.  But it is also a rejection of the notion that the source of that Goodness is somehow transcendent.  Therefore, secular. 

This is a comfortable position for many people.  They are able to respond to their own experience of right and wrong, and maintain the importance of pursuing the “right” and eschewing the “wrong.”  But they don’t have to put up with the falderal of Religion.  They neither have to believe in a God, nor follow the practices of any organized Religion.  “I can,” they believe, “be Good without God.”

And if my goal in life were to be a Good person, and to raise Good children, and to someday die knowing that I had increased the Goodness in the world, then this might be sufficient. 

But what if you choose to make claims against the world that it, too, must be Good?  What if you want not only to describe your own behavior, but also prescribe and proscribe the behavior of others? 

A world of hurt

For instance, one third of the world’s population lives in societies where the safety, the dignity, the rights of women are systematically denied.  Ought we to comment on this?  Ought we to act to change this?  Back in an earlier posting when we talked about “the cultural determination of meaning” we visited this same problem.  If you think that “all values are a function of culture,” then you are in no position to criticize the cultural norms of others.  If they treat their women as second class or worse, as chattel, well, that is their culture, and who are we to criticize?  To criticize such norms would be to assume that our values had a privileged position over their values.  But if values are merely creations of culture, then we have no such privilege.

Go ahead, then, and cut off your young daughter’s clitoris.  I certainly wouldn’t do that, but I am not in a position to say that you ought not to do it either.  If my idealism is not grounded in something other than the secular, materialistic world, then I am estopped from proscribing this behavior.  Secular idealism helps me to lead a Good life, but it prohibits me from demanding Good behavior of others.

And well you shouldn’t, I can hear some of you say.  Really?  Have you seen no behavior in the world that you would want to condemn?  Willful polluting of people’s drinking water?  Corporate greed resulting in lay-offs of thousands?  Overtly racist government policies? Kleptocracy in countries with people struggling with poverty?  War mongering for private gain? Human trafficking?  The mass slaughter of innocents?  Nothing rises to the level of outrageous, immoral behavior that must be stopped?  Forcible mutilation of a young girl’s genitals is awful, but who am I to judge the behavior of others?

Now, I admit that, as a professor of public health, I am probably quicker to condemn the positions of others.  It is part of the nature of public health to focus on human rights and the implications of those rights for health policies. 

But all, or at least almost all, of us have a point at which we would want to curtail the immoral behavior of others.  All , or at least almost all, of us would shout to warn the person who was about to be run over by a car, as we discussed in “Does the urge to care come from culture?” (February 24, 2015) And wouldn’t you all condemn the behavior of the person who urged you not to shout, so as to be able to watch someone die?

A transcendent ground

Here is the problem.  If you are a secular idealist, you have no ground on which to base your condemnation.  You might have your values that help you lead your Right life, but that gives you no position to act to stop another from acting Wrongly.  In order to make transitive statements about the behavior of others, you need a transcendent source of Right and Wrong to act as the foundation for your advocacy.

And the world desperately needs such advocacy.  The Wrong feels like they are winning in so many spheres of our world.  I feel a calling to react, to act to stop them, to stand up for the Right.  Yes, I condemn female genital mutilation.  And I condemn the miserable way that a third of the women in the world are treated.  They have rights that are being violated.  Natural rights.  Rights that are inseparable from their basic dignity as human beings.  Inalienable rights that seem self-evident.  And that must be grounded in some transcendent reality.

I never set out to be a religious person.  But for decades, I have been following the Path With Two Questions, and whenever I end up back in the Box, I recognize that this calling to righteous action that I experience is, in fact, very real, and to answer it requires me to accept that I believe that there are some moral values that transcend time and place, that transcend circumstance and culture, that are fundamentally compelling.  In the reality and substance of that experience of transcendence I have faith.

And in that existential moment, I find religion.