Where do *you* get your morality from?

I was recently made aware of the following "debate" between the Chief Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks and Professor Richard Dawkins, and in particular the schoolboy's question at 59:07:



The question is not a new one, though at least more eloquently expressed than the usual "What's to stop atheists from having an intimate relationship with a 12-year-old?" (WARNING: links to Aish website). For those who can't or won't watch the video (I don't blame you), the question as put by the young man is as follows:

I wouldn't claim that belief in a deity is necessary to have morality, but what I would ask is, surely in the absence of a divine lawgiver, morality loses its intrinsic value - it's not written into the fabric of the universe. You cite the moral zeitgeist argument: surely that deprives morality of any philosophical legitimacy? It's merely a human construct. Why should I be altruistic? Why should I care about anyone else when fundamentally morality has no further value?

Dawkins gives a weary but serviceable answer, referring to the notion of collectively agreed social norms, after which Lord Sacks goes on to give his reply in which he drops a mere two names (very below-par for him - is he ill?) - Sir Bernard Williams and Alasdair MacIntyre.

But - as the questioner alludes - Dawkins has already made the convincing point earlier in his speech on "the moral zeitgeist argument", which can be found from about 32:00. The key argument he makes, which I think is hard to disagree with, is that morality changes broadly across society and a particular ethical stance can more easily be identified by era than by religion. As he summarises from 33:33:

There's far more in common between a liberal, enlightened Jew and a liberal enlightened atheist today, morally speaking, than there is between either of us and somebody two hundred years ago, or even one hundred years ago.  And so, the moral zeitgeist advances historically for non-religious reasons, and religious people and non-religious people advance hand-in-hand, from decade to decade; it's not to do with religion, it's to do with advances in moral philosophy and legal philosophy in the general discourse of society. That's what's changing, that's what gives us our moral values.

This, I think, nicely answers much of what The Chief (whom as a whole I quite like in this debate, if I'm honest) says about "Jewish values". I'm very happy for him to read in contemporary values and interpretations of the ancient texts, and he is right to bang on about subsequent commentaries which have mollified or otherwise transformed those Biblical stories or injunctions which Dawkins takes to be misogynistic, racist, infanticidal and so on. It does, however, seem clear to me that those messages are derived from modern moral norms, and then crowbarred into the Biblical text, rather than being inherent to them. As such, it is disingenuous to describe such values as "Jewish values", except insofar as they are values which (liberal (Liberal?) enlightened (Enlightened?)) Jews have, because they happen to live now and not then.

But as for the question of where moral authority comes from, I cannot understand why religious people - particularly Jews - think this argument helps them. If I follow it through (something they invariably fail to do), I can't help but arrive at a destruction of their belief system, rather than my own (which is too hazy and shapeshifting to destroy anyway, muhahaha).

1. Let's accept the premise that morality without authority is no good. It changes with the times, it floats in the breeze, it can be changed and rewritten or even left up to individuals to decide for themselves. This would mean that we require an absolute morality, with divine authority, which (as the questioner quite poetically puts it) is "written into the fabric of the universe" (though what that could actually mean I'm not sure).
2. This morality, then, must be either innate in us, as part of the universe, or communicated to us by its author or some enlightened party. Given that Orthodox Jews hold the Torah to be the absolute and true word of God, it must be the communication - the blueprint - by which we may know morality.
3. Given that it is directly from God, any conflict between our understanding of morality and the Torah's prescription must indicate a defect in our innate morality
4. This is troublesome inasmuch as we are created in the image of God, unless we think of our morality as being not innate but dictated by societal norms and pressures (which, according to our premise, is bad).
5. And yet, any of the things which we consider moral truths are not only not derived from the Bible, but they actually contradict it. Abstract notions like "Love thy neighbour as thyself", or supposed "messages" such as "Don't sacrifice children", cited by The Chief are all well and good, but what about (and it's so obvious I'm almost annoyed that I have to bring it up) slavery? Courtship by rape? Execution for normal adolescent behaviour, genocide, blah blah, take your pick.
6. So, as Dawkins invites us to ask, if you think those things are morally bad, where do these beliefs come from? You can kick the can down the road by saying that the Oral Law was given at the same time and therefore (in effect, though many would seek to deny this) has authority to overrule the Written Law.
7. Ultimately, however, a Supreme Code, such as the Torah, is only as authoritative as its interpretation and application. Both of these have been subject to the very changes over time that the religious claim are the main flaw in atheism. Without concessions to those changes in morality over time, the moral standards of our distant (and in some cases not so distant) ancestors would be abhorrent to us all.

Where do theists get their morality from? The same place as the rest of us. The charade of reverse-engineering ancient texts to accommodate modern morality is a bit silly but ultimately no-one else's business. My annoyance is directed at two consequent claims.

First, that society should thank religion for giving them the values which in fact religion derived from society.

Second, that atheists have no authority for their morality, even though religious people simply have (broadly speaking) the same morality, which they pretend came from God.

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I Am The Lord Of The Dance, Said Who?

This seems to be becoming something of a theme on this blog. My first post, for those of you who didn't get the reference, took its title from a Church of England hymn, called To Be A Pilgrim (or, after the first line, He Who Would Valiant Be), which we used to sing at school in assembly, and which opens with the following verse:

He who would valiant be ’gainst all disaster,
Let him in constancy follow the Master.
There’s no discouragement shall make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim.

I then wrote a post about two Jewish versions of the classic British daytime television programme, Songs of Praise (which, by the way, seems to be the source of the YouTube video linked to above, but I'm not sure about that). I deemed it worthy of mention because of what I considered to be the extremely Christian nature of the show, and how that had always seemed somehow alien and inaccessible to me. It was a bit like seeing... I don't know, Julie Andrews singing in Yiddish? Or some American hip-hop artists sampling Miami Boys Choir. (Two of my favourite clips in the world by the way - hope you enjoy them.)

Now, however, we have the other way around. I did see this video, featuring some Charedim playing Lady Gaga, do the rounds a while back:



And that's all well and good. The video I've just come across, however, is much more... striking, I suppose, because instead of Ultra Orthodox Jews taking the tune of a camp, gaudy, over the top, very-not-Ultra-Orthodox very-not-Jewish song (link: the old Yidden/Dschinghis Khan plagiarism by Mordechai Ben David), it is an Irish Christian hymn. Take a look, and then I'll list some of the reasons that this is, to me at least, so wonderful.

1. As I said above, this is an explicitly Christian hymn, usually sung in the style and tempo of a Celtic jig.  The "Lord of the Dance" referred to is Jesus, obviously. How many of them know what the song is?
2. The lyrics are, as hymns go, quite antisemitic, blaming the crucifixion of Jesus on "the holy people" (you can see a few of them in the background of this video) who "whipped" and "stripped" and "hung me high" and "left me there on a cross to die".
3. The looks on the faces of the chassidim in the background are completely priceless (somewhat like the Shaya and Perry song) - and, contrary to the title of the song, no-one is dancing (until the tune changes).
4. The violinist has so much more concentration and kavannah when playing the Christian hymn.
5. You can see through the mechitza from about 1:40 onwards. Scandalous.
6. The video, according to the description on YouTube, is filmed in London, which just goes to show that the eccentricities of Britishkeit are rivalled nowhere else in the world.
7. Depending on the sect these guys are from (anyone able to identify?) they may have their own version of Jesus, who is their very own Lord of the Dance.
8. It's Christian, for God's sake!

Well, those are my thoughts. One of my new favourite clips.

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Hat tips

I'm obviously new to blogging, but I've been following lots of blogs, as you will be able to see from the Blog Roll on the right, and I intend to link to much of their material.  But I've noticed that when this happens, it's the done thing to give a hat tip to whoever was the source of the find in question.

I realise that this doesn't just happen in Jewish blogs, but of course there is a long tradition in Judaism of citing one's sources - Pirkei Avot 6:6 says, "Behold, you have learned that whoever tells something in the name of the one who said it, brings redemption to the world, as it is said (Esth. ii. 22), 'And Esther told it to the king in the name of Mordechai.'"  The lovely irony there, of course, is that no-one is quoted as the source for the tradition. Not so at b.Megillah 15a (pdf), where we find the same thing, except instead of "Behold you have learned" it says "R. Eleazar further said in the name of R. Hanina" - not just a source, but someone citing someone else as the source! Phew. We have a source.

But not in b.Hullin 104b (pdf), where that same phrase is used to explain why something is repeated: "Rather what the [teacher of our Mishnah] tells us is merely that the first Tanna [whose opinion is expressed anonymously] is R. Jose; for whosoever reports etc." Something that R. Jose had said was reported without his name being mentioned, so this rectifies it.  But again the dictum itself is left anonymous.

There are lots of other rabbinic sources that deal with this issue, and some of them are collected and can be read here (which has the obligatory Woody Allen metaphysics exam quote) and here. Neither of those (excellent) pages, however, as far as I can see, mentions a particularly apt midrash here, which is found in Bereishit Rabbah 88, and which I shall embed here from The Talmudic Anthology:




Rabbi Oshaya literally lies to his face.  Maybe he read the Septuagint version of Megillat Esther, where he would have found instead of the version we've seen above, verse II:22 reads: "declared to the king the matter of the conspiracy."


Nevertheless, in spite of the Septuagint's and Rabbi Oshaya's silence, I shall endeavour to quote and link to as many sources as I can. And I will leave you with this essay which features another cute irony, about a work that apologises for not citing all its sources and ends up being "obliterated by incorporation" into a later work.