Nancy Melucci wrote:
> So perhaps it wasn't the best argument I've offered in my
> life, but I don't think it is qualitatively the same as refusing to
believe in
> evolution despite the evidence or racist beliefs that are held despite
> the evidence.
It's certainly not the same thing. There's an important distinction that is
being handled in a somewhat sloppy manner here. You wrote that you believe
spanking is immoral. That's a moral judgement, not an empirical statement.
It's not as though you wrote that you believe spanking is (or is not) a
contributing cause for alcoholism.
G. Marc Turner wrote about a fictional person's statement that "I believe
to not spank your child is immoral". That's also clearly a moral judgement,
not an empirical statement.
He also wrote about a fictional person's statement that "I believe that
(insert minority group here) are inferior". That one could go either way,
right? I read it as an empirical statement, assuming "inferior" in some
specified way. But it could be a general value judgement instead.
He also wrote "I'm sure many people would argue that belief in evolution is
immoral and wrong, and no evidence to the
contrary will make any difference to them". The belief that "belief in
evolution is immoral and wrong" is a moral judgement, not susceptible to
empirical evidence. The belief in evolution is well-supported by empirical
evidence. But if I held (as do at least some of the creationists) that it is
nonetheless immoral to believe in evolution, I have made a moral judgement,
not an empirical one (of course, some creationists have certainly also made
the mistaken empirical judgement against evolution, but that's a different
matter).
Even if you hold a strict consequentialist ethic (essentially, "what's
right is what produces good effects"), you're stuck with non-empirical
judgements about the criteria for "good effects". Witness my comments about
the pro-corporal punishment folks' argument that spanking is good because it
produces folks like Limbaugh (an argument I assume most of us find roughly
180 degrees "out of whack").
As long as I'm this far out on a limb, I might as well admit that I believe
that the typical member of the religious right has consciously decided that
lying in service of his/her religious beliefs is a good thing. I can believe
that quite a few people are honestly as ignorant as one would have to be to
believe those arguments. But I believe that the majority, and perhaps the
vast majority are somewhere between dimly aware and well aware that most of
what they say is untrue. I give you once again as example Tom Delay's
comment late in the summer that the violence in our country is the result of
teaching evolution. That's not an ignorant statement by some uneducated
dolt. It's an intentional lie.
This comes up because I believe that for most people who hold that "it is
immoral to believe in evolution", that value judgement quickly reduces to
"it is immoral to believe the truth". That's unacceptably shaky ground for
an ethical system, whether consequentialist or non-consequentialist.
Paul Smith
Alverno College
Milwaukee
