The Price of Autonomy

Stokes begins the penultimate chapter of his book with this summary:

I began my discussion of morality with Dostoyevsky's nagging question, if God is dead, is everything permissible? You've no doubt gleaned that my short answer is yes: without God there are no universally binding moral rules. Sure, there are all manner of "moral" rules that we impose on ourselves and others. But none of these are actually binding in the way we imagine moral laws to be. If naturalism is true, there's no morality apart from what humans value, want, or prefer. Morality is purely a matter of taste, In short, naturalism implies moral nihilism, the view that there are no human-independent moral rules.

But despite this logical connection, most atheists are not nihilists. Why wouldn't they follow the logical path set out by Stokes and agree with his conclusion? Stokes concludes that the reason is basically that nihilism is too disturbing. He writes, "Ted Bundy? Jeffrey Dahmer? The Asmat people of New Guinea? Their behavior isn't wrong? Could it be true that there's nothing wrong with skinning someone alive? Is it plausible that my revulsion toward this kind of horror differs only in degree from my revulsion toward cold, slimy asparagus? It's going to be hard to get naturalists to sign up for this; nihilism is not an easy position to rally around." To the Asmat people of New Guinea, the nihilist can only say, "I wouldn't do that, but I guess you can."

As philosopher Albert Camus said, "It is always easy to be logical. It is almost impossible to be logical to the bitter end."

Then one has to consider that if the conclusions of nihilism are wrong, then perhaps nihilism is wrong, and then perhaps naturalism itself is wrong. If naturalism cannot authoritatively state that Ted Bundy's actions are wrong, then sober skepticism should call into doubt the validity of naturalism and have us consider the validity of the alternative: the existence of God.

To me, and Stokes mentions this, the battle of worldviews comes down to the question of autonomy. If nihilism is true, one could argue that we are not bound to any morality. What we endorse in the deepest recesses of our hearts, is up to us: "Autonomy, you'll recall is really the most important thing that humans can value, according to Enlightenment thinkers. They wanted the freedom to think, say, and act as they wished, without any interference from "the Man," whether it be the church, traditional philosophy, the state, or whoever."

Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre laments that autonomy: "man is condemned to be free: condemned, because he did not create himself, yet nonetheless free, because once cast into the world, he is responsible for everything he does."

Perhaps, with nihilism, the Enlightenment got more than it bargained for.

We'll wrap this series up on the next post.