At 11:10 PM 07/09/2000 +0800, Stephen E. Jones (responding to Tedd Hadley)
wrote:
>SJ>An atheist, especially one brought up in a Christian home (as many were),
>>>might already be aware (as I wasn't) that some things are immoral and
>>>avoid doing them by virtue of his/her upbringing. But the atheist would
>>>have no reason *within his/her atheism*, for not being immoral.
>>>Any reasons he/she had for not being immoral would be found
>>>*outside* his/her atheism.
>
>TH>That's vacously true because atheism doesn't claim to address
>>questions of morality. By analogy, you might as well argue that
>>the scientist would have no reason *within his/her science*,
>>for not being immoral.
Ted, a good deal of the research (including my own) done over the past
decade into the moral decision-making processes of scientists is beginning
to show that, in many cases, your suggestion above is false. Based on my
own investigations, it is turning out that bench scientists and research
managers in medical research labs and biotechnology firms display a strong
tendency to derive moral norms precisely from the scientific community of
practice they inhabit. In other words, it is precisely *within his/her
science* that many (perhaps "most"; the numbers vary a little) scientists
find the ethical standards that guide them toward "not being immoral."
Most interesting (and, initially, most dismaying) to me was the fact that,
among those researchers sampled, those who had been working in the field
continuously for 20 years or more and who were rated by their peers as
exhibiting "excellent" or "very good" ethical standards, "religious values"
ranked last among the list of possible sources for their moral standards.
These people (the morally-excellent 20-year veterans) reported that the
standards of moral rectitude that were implicit in the actual practice of
scientific research were their primary source for shaping their ethical
conduct. Again, these same people reported that "religious values" played
a very small role in determining appropriate choices and behavior when
functioning in their professional scientific role. For what it's worth.
>If Ted is an atheist, then this is a damaging admission which his fellow
>atheists might not agree with?
>
>Because it would mean that atheism is not a complete worldview, like
>Christian theism is, and indeed atheism would be parasitic on other
>worldviews, like Christianity:
>
>"Worldviews should be tested not only in the philosophy classroom but
>also in the laboratory of life. It is one thing for a worldview to pass
certain
>theoretical tests (reason and experience); it is another for the worldview
>also to pass an important practical test, namely, can the person who
>professes that worldview live consistently in harmony with the system he
>professes? Or do we find that he is forced to live according to beliefs
>borrowed from a competing system? Such a discovery, I suggest, should
>produce more than embarrassment." (Nash R.H., "Worldviews in Conflict,"
>1999, p.62)
This is a subject I have been mulling over for the past few years. Why
would anyone think that Christianity comprises a "worldview"? Certainly
the New Testament writers and early church fathers were, with few
exceptions, focused on the single historical event of Christ's crucifixion
and resurrection, and the soteriological implications of that event -- they
don't seem the least bit interested in crafting "worldviews." Aquinas and
the later medieval scholastics constructed "worldviews," but the
sixteenth-century reformers, particularly Luther, were deeply skeptical of
treating Christianity as a "worldview."
It is, however, entirely possible that Theism comprises such a worldview.
Ralph Cudworth, who coined the term "Theism," did so in his aptly-named
*The True Intellectual System of the Universe*, published in 1678. This
"true intellectual system" which is Theism, was spawned in the midst of the
seventeenth-century fascination with scientific methods and results, and is
the effort to produce Lockean empirical certainty in religion by rendering
Christianity a kind of scientific discipline. But it looks radically
different from ancient Christianity (an observation which also troubled
Newton, who rejected Cudworth's Theism, among others -- Cudworth was at
Christ College, Cambridge at the same time Newton was at Trinity,
Cambridge).
Although I am a committed and active Christian, I am beginning to suspect
that I am no Theist. Although the two share some basic common ground, they
are rather different in scope and emphasis, something perhaps most easily
seen in the Theistic confection of a "worldview."
Tom Pearson
__________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
Thomas D. Pearson
Department of History & Philosophy
The University of Texas-Pan American
Edinburg, Texas
e-mail: pearson@panam1.panam.edu
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