Critique of Morality and Religion by Dr Hans-Georg Moeller

I recently discovered a channel on youtube that contains conversations between a student and his professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Dr Hans-Georg Moeller.

I will cite some notes and quotes (as I heard them by Dr Hans-Georg Moeller, removing the interjections and the repeating words) from the video regarding morality and religion, so as to facilitate the process of the things you will hear.

Notes:

About philosopher Wittgenstein: “there are two different ways in which we use the terms good or right either we use them in a relative sense or in a trivial sense”, “it’s good or right relative to a certain perspective to a certain activity, “what he means with relative, that it is relative to a specific criterion”.

Critique of Sam Harris’book: “he tries to bridge these two usages of the word good or right and he thinks if we really find out what is good in any specific sense namely that it contributes to well-being then, we can somehow make this step and speak and find out what is morally good”, “it totally makes sense to scientifically find out what contributes to well-being the point however is well-being always in a relative sense, the well-being in this way for that person in this context with regard to this criterion”.

Critique of Sam Harris’ book using Wittgenstein’s point of view: “if we use the term relative, if we use the terms good or right in a specific sense it’s not only relative it’s also trivial, trivial in which way, then he gives another example which I find very impressive, he says if we could write a book in which the words good and right would be used in an absolute sense then all other books would explode. What does he mean by this, well if we would be capable of saying in language this and that or that is absolutely good and right then all other books, which speak about what is good and right would be insignificant, compared to this other book we wouldn’t need to read them”. “it’s not even desirable to try to speak or to imagine that there would be such a book because then everything that we did so far everything that we do in every moment of our life would be trivial would be insignificant” “if you really claim that you are identifying moral truth in an absolute way then implicitly you say what everyone else is doing is insignificant and trivial to my endeavor so, it devalues implicitly all other human activities and Ι think that is already a very major problem of morality and also of religious discourse”.

About morality: “that moral truth or a universal morality does not exist it is impossible to, you know, speak of it in language and in addition again it is not even desirable to speak in that kind of mode or to think in that kind of mode or to act in that kind of mode because it implicitly devalues basically everything else and therefore it’s even a kind of a dangerous, arrogant attitude that isn’t very helpful and that does not improve human well-being”.

What is morality: “is a form of communication”, “morality is a specific discourse, a specific way of acting that relates to and derives from making unrealistic assumptions about something that doesn’t exist”.

Dangers of morality: “once they start think and act in terms of good and evil that, for instance, sometimes can be used to make them do things that otherwise they wouldn’t do, for instance kill other people, so this kind of discourse, this kind of communication, this kind of thinking is not always, but potentially, very dangerous and it is very often typically just like religious discourse”.

The moral reasons behind beating students in school: “the actual reasons why people beat students in school, well they beat students in school and they have been beating beaten’s you know children in education for hundreds and thousands of years, because they think someone who doesn’t study well is morally bad and this gives you the right or not even the right, even the duty, to beat them in order to transform them from bad people into good people in a moral sense”.

About human flourishing: “again flourishing, that actually exists and makes sense, is always relative specific flourishing, absolute flourishing again I think does not exist and if it would exist it couldn’t be expressed and if it would exist and could be expressed it wouldn’t be desirable because every other flourishing, that we actually experience, then would be trivial and insignificant, so it would actually destroy most of the flourishing that we actually experience, but of course flourishing, concrete, relative, actual flourishing is something that you know we always naturally prefer over not flourishing”.

Absolute goodness as a religious mode of thinking: “civil religion, he’s bringing religion to a secular level where like these divine duties become just like you know humanist duties or something like this”.

What is philosophy good for: “the social function of philosophy historically, empirically over hundreds and thousands of years, both in the eastern and western contexts, is that it critiques religion and i think that’s a very useful function”, “so, I don’t think the function of philosophy is to abolish religion or to you know replace it with something else but to critique it and to provide a very important counterweight to religion”.

Scientific relativism: “but I’m not in favor of moral relativism, I’m in favor of scientific relativism that is making truth claims with relative to specific conditions ,to you know, to specific, concrete circumstances, nothing is absolutely good, something is good for something in a certain context, every truth is a limited truth. The problem with religion is not that its beliefs are wrong, the problem with religion is that its beliefs are so intensely held that they made so absolute, so dogmatic and thereby be held in a fanatic way, and that’s the opposite of science because all science, scientific truth we learned that it’s always falsifiable, there’s always a certain skepticism involved in the establishment of scientific truths, it’s only valid until proven wrong by another theory right”, “people are over confident in the religious mode and at the same time they’re super ignorant and in science we have the opposite, people actually know stuff, they’re not ignorant but they’re not overly confident, because they just wait for the other scientist, the next scientist to modify your claim or even to disprove it”, “the difference between science on the one hand and religion and morality on the other hand, this marriage, this unholy marriage between confidence and ignorance is not only a problem of religion it’s equally a problem of morality, so that’s really how it is distinguished from the scientific approach to truth, so I’m not against truth, but a truth that is always, I mean, I’m speaking as an academic, we’re always speaking in the mode of you know truth, we always make the distinctions between this is the case and this is not the case, but we do so under recognition of the limits of these kind of statements and morality and religion tries to make unlimited truth claims”

I found the above quotes very fascinating. I was always very skeptic regarding religion. But, the thing is it’s not religion particularly, it’s this kind of thinking. This mode of thinking that says that there is an absolute truth that is indisputable. And when somebody thinks that way, either he is religious or not, means that they took a definite decision. Think about the Euthyphro dilemma that is found in Plato’s dialogue Euthyphro.“The question Socrates asks can be framed something like this: - Are right actions right because God commands them? - Or are right actions commanded by God because they are right?” And consider this more generally. Are these actions right because the political party, that I support, did them or are they right on their own merit? And what does right mean? Something is right relative to a specific criterion. At the end we have to decide under which criterion something is right, but at least it’s important to clarify our decisions. To say for instance that I suppport this party, because they took this decision that is right for these people in these circumstances. In other words, by thinking critically our decisions we are aware of what exactly we choose to support. And our decisions are not taken emotionally or from habit, but are linked to a very specific reason.