My Exit Story Pt 3

Links to Part 1 and Part 2

Shortly after choosing not to go on a mormon mission, I had essentially settled into a Marcus Aurelius version of agnosticism. If there’s a good god out there, he won’t hold it against me to be a good person that’s not religious. If there’s a being out there that will hold it against me, then such an asshole doesn't deserve worship. And if there’s nothing out there at all, then I’m not wasting away my life inside a church.

You'd think that this would mean that I was out of the church, right? Well, maybe not as much as you'd think. Childhood indoctrination is a powerful enough force that many of my default modes of thought remained mormon in nature. I called myself agnostic because the thought of moving on and calling myself anything beyond was repugnant; that part of my indoctrination was still alive and kicking. I didn't think of myself as a mormon, but I also couldn't really call myself anything else. Anyone that tried any drugs (even my best friend in high school who tried marijuana while in the military) was automatically an evil person in my mind, and I’d distance myself from them. Anyone that drank was a lesser person in my eyes. These are beliefs that I had only because they were religiously indoctrinated into me as a child, and they are some of the ways in which my line of thinking  remained sadly mormon in its defaults. This mode wouldn't really change at all until my life in general underwent significant change about a decade after I’d gotten out of high school.

At this point in my life, I was living a somewhat dreary existence. I worked a crappy job that was gnawing away at my will to live, and was essentially the same as the previous job I’d had, and the one before that. Each time I’d reach a point (about a year into the job) where I just couldn't stand the job anymore. Usually it would be solved by moving onto another job with another company, but that was only a temporary stopgap, and I was beginning to realize that. The job I’d move to was just like the old one, and once I’d spent enough time there to feel like I really knew what I was doing, the same things would once again make me hate my job.

I was getting ready to make the switch again. I had done an interview with a new company, and was mentally prepared to leave my job and move to the new one. I ended up not being offered a new job, but I was still mentally at the point where I’d quit my existing job. You ever put in a two week notice, and find your motivation to do anything at all non-existent during those two weeks? That’s where I was at, only I didn't have a new job to move onto. Being forced to work a job that I had already mentally let go of was excruciating. If I thought I hated my life before, I knew without a doubt once this happened; I was very miserable. Through sheer luck, a friend of a friend heard about it, and he mentioned that his mother worked at the local university. Whenever he had a friend that wanted to get back to school but didn't really know how, he’d direct them to his mother, and she’d help them figure out what needed to be done to get themselves back into school.  I met with her, got my shit together, and got back into school.

The largest part of school that helped form my third step in leaving were the philosophy courses I took; learning good philosophy can be an excellent foundation for rooting out mormon bullshit. I ended up taking a few classes from a specific professor, Chris, who was an excellent philosopher. After a decade away from school, she opened my eyes and taught me how to actually think. In trying to write term papers for her classes, I would end up in her office for brainstorming sessions, and they were always quite interesting. She never put forth specific conclusions or her own opinions, but would ask me for my opinion about a topic, and when I answered she’d simply point out some of the logical consequences of such a stance or belief. It was my choice whether I should come up with some sort of alteration or justification to overcome a consequence, or to change my opinion. No matter which way I chose however, each one of those also had logical consequences that would need to be considered as well.

Through this process she started teaching me how to think analytically. In addition to gaining a foundation of analytic thought, some of the specific subjects covered in the classes also dealt with directly moral issues. Discussions on moral realism and relativism certainly expanded my horizons, as well as those on free will and moral responsibility. By the time I had finished a couple of courses with her, I had access to several foundations for a moral base that no longer needed mormonism. And I found that morality was a subject that I enjoyed. Also, as I would have more brainstorming sessions, I found myself encountering logical problems with my default pseudo-religious views more and more often. The more I analyzed my default views, the more problems I would encounter with them. By the time I had finished those classes there were several previous viewpoints of mine that I had already concluded were definitely incorrect, and must be tossed. I did not feel bad for these lost views, however. The sheer logic that the change in views came from was such a powerful thing that the usual resistance to change was largely absent. By the time I had formulated a new opinion, I had already worked out the hows and whys of the new opinion, and was on solid enough ground that the change was not difficult.

At this point I was almost all of the way home. I hadn't been to church for years, I had a solid foundation for my own moral code without the need for the church, and I had learned to think for myself. While I had managed to shed a lot of my mormonism, I was sadly still very mormon in several fundamental ways. I still hadn't actually sat down and studied the mormon religion and its problems directly, and this last piece would be needed before my transformation was complete.

On The Spectrum Between Moral Realism and Relativism

One of the topics that really started my gears turning towards my more modern analytic self was a discussion in a philosophy class about moral realism vs. moral relativism. There are, I think, some interesting ideas to be explored within here.

First, a definition of the terms is in order. Moral realism is a belief that morality is unchanging. The things that define a moral act are the same in America as they are in China, and the same today as they were in ancient times. Morals are, in short, universal. Moral relativism is often defined as the antithesis of moral realism; what is moral depends on the place and time. This is not to say that what is legal changes with place and time, but specifically says that what is good changes with the place and time. When in Rome, doing as the Romans do isn't just smart, it's also (potentially) morally good.

To a theist (or to one indoctrinated by theism as a child), moral realism is often a default assumption. After all, why would we still be following those Ten Commandments from so long ago, if morality is ever-shifting with the times? Also supporting the default of such a stance is the use of absolute language within many religions: “their torment ascendeth up for ever and ever“. Eternal reward and eternal punishment only really make sense if ones’ actions remain good or bad eternally. If morality changes, then it would make more sense to only reap your reward until your actions are no longer moral with the times. And while there are some fascinating ideas there about your actions leading to cycles between existing in heaven and in hell, that discussion is for another day.

Another thing that draws people towards the default of moral realism is the “slippery slope” of relativism. For many, certain acts like rape or slavery are so bad, so evil, that they cannot condone any belief in which such a thing could ever be a moral act.

One of the things that I feel confuses the issue is the way that these concepts are presented. They are often taught (as they were to me) as a dichotomy. Either the universe is morally realistic, or morally relativistic: it’s one or the other.

For me, however, I do not see a system where there are only two answers. Whenever I am presented with only two choices, my default response is to seek a third. Just as Richard Dawkins presents a spectrum of beliefs between theism and atheism in his book, so too do I envision a spectrum existing between Realism and Relativism. And as a nod to Dawkins, I will attempt to present some possible moral views, laid out as a spectrum between the extremes.

1. Complete Moral Realism. This is the type that is usually presented in philosophy books; there is one set of defining morals, and those morals are absolute and unchanging. They might even be part of the fabric of the universe, for they are as unalterable as the cosmological constants of physics.

2. Mostly Morally Realistic. There are a couple of ways this one is (probably) most often applied. The first is to believe that the mutability of a moral is directly tied to its importance. In other words, the small and unimportant morals might change over time, but the big and important ones are unchanging. Caffeinated drinks might change morality, but the Ten Commandments never will.

The other way to take this stance is to believe that morals are only changeable by God’s Will.   This is the belief that god is the only exception to the immutability of morals, so that whenever he changes his mind, the morality of specific actions also changes. This is another popular view among theists, since almost every single religion has had its rules and doctrines change over time. The God Exception essentially lets them believe in the immutability of morals in the face of the history and the reality of their chosen church.

3. The 50/50 Split. Obviously, a moral agnostic would reside here. But aside from those that refuse to form (or give) opinions on the matter, this category would also be occupied by believers of what I like to call Dynastic morality. For such a believer, morals are largely fixed within the confines of any specific society. But those morals are modified by any sufficiently large changes in a society, such as a change in government type or the proliferation of a new technology that drastically alters how people live their lives. When the dynasty falls, so do its morals. There is obviously a lot of wiggle room in here. One person might believe that the morals of the US are largely unchanged for as long as the Constitution still stands, while another might believe that the spread of the Internet (and other forms of international communication) is combining the moralities of (formerly) separate regions into a single global morality.

4. Relativism With A Few Exceptions. This is a stance where most morals depend on the circumstances, with an admission that there are a few morals that simply do not change. Rape and slavery will always be Wrong. Altruism and selflessness will always be Right. But outside of a few absolutes, the rest depend on the “where”s and the “when”s, the “how”s and the “why”s.

5. Absolute Moral Relativism. This is the slippery slope that prevents many from embracing relativism. Each and every individual event will have its own different set of morals. The individual details of every event will be different, and these details matter, because they determine what is and is not moral. Any action can be moral, if the circumstances surrounding it justify the action.

As the descriptions imply, not too many people actually populate numbers 1 and 5; most people will be either a 2 or a 4. Which begs the natural (for this post) question: where do I lie? It’s not quite as clear-cut as you might think.

When I took the philosophy course that discussed this topic, I ended up writing a term paper on this very subject. I had to spend a lot of time considering the consequences and implications of different stances, and I ended up rejecting position 1; my arguments also largely sink number 2. The details are a bit long to list here, but I may post an updated version of the paper sometime if there is interest.

Okay, so wholesale Realism is out, but what flavor of relativism am I? If I use my imagination, can I come up with a situation where rape or slavery might be a morally good action to commit? I like to think that I could, if I really wanted to. Will such a situation ever happen in this world? No. And if it will never actually happen, then my ability to conjure up a scenario means little. So while I might be near a 5 in theory, in practice I’m more like a 3.5. Where do you fall in the spectrum, and why? Feel free to post your thoughts and opinions.