Andy Bannister vs Peter Singer • Do we need God to be good?

welcome to the big conversation here on unbelievable with me Justin Braley the big conversation is a series of shows exploring faith science philosophy and what it means to be human in association with the Templeton religion trust today our conversation topic is evolution morality and being human do we need God to be good the big conversation partners I'm sitting down with today are Peter Singer and Andy Bannister Peter Singer is professor of bioethics at Princeton University and a noted moral philosopher he's the author of books such as animal liberation practical ethics and the most good you can do Peter's an atheist and has argued that our view of morality and human value shouldn't be driven by religious views about the sanctity of life but by the ability of any living thing to have preferences and cognitive faculties Andy Bannister is a Christian thinker and speaker with the soleus Center for Public Christianity and author of the book the atheist who didn't exist or the dreadful consequences of bad arguments he believes that morality and human value are tied to the fact that humans are created in God's image he believes that while Peters viewpoint is consistent with his atheism it has chilling consequences for our commitment to human rights well today we're going to be asking what is the basis for the value we absque Ribe to human life is right and wrong something we invent in the evolutionary struggle for survival or is morality discovered as part of the fabric of the universe and grounded in a source beyond ourselves namely God so welcome along to the program both Peter and Andy great to have you here thank you good to be here Peter we'll start with you you're an atheist is that a point of view you adopted early on in your life I think I was probably never really a religious believer maybe you know in my early teens I had some dads and might have called myself an agnostic or something like that but yes for most of my life I've thought that you know one can never totally exclude the possibility I suppose that there is a God but it seems to me to be so improbable that I'm prepared to describe myself as an atheist have you ever met any kind of argument that's given you pause for thought or had any inclination towards wishing that there might be a god oh one could always wish that there might be God as long as it was a better God than the one is supposed to have created this world I don't know that I would really want there to be such a God but if there were a God who was going to look after everything and prevent the suffering of innocent beings which is obviously a major feature of this world that would be terrific but you know that's just like wishing there were fairies in the bottom of your garden I mean from your point of view do you tend to live your life and the ethics you espouse on the basis that this life is all we've got this is obviously the one life we have in the sense you've made it quite a name for yourself in this area and in some some respects you've become quite a controversial figure as well to some groups for instance those who advocate for disability rights and so on have protested sometimes some of the statements you've made and the events you've been at what is it about what you say that promotes that kind of a reaction would you say if you're asking specifically about the reaction of people where who are advocates for disability rights it's probably merely that I state things that a lot of other people believe and indeed act on because after all it's it's very common for people to have prenatal testing to see whether the fetus that they're carrying will have a disability and in most of these cases for example if the disability is Down syndrome typically something like 85% of the pregnant women will opt to terminate the pregnancy and you know I think that that's a defensible decision and I think it's a defensible decision because I think it's reasonable to prefer to have a child without Down syndrome than one with Down syndrome but because I say that explicitly whereas other people are just doing it in the privacy of their medical clinics and decisions I think I attract opposition from people who try to maintain that you know life with disabilities is just as good and we should not as I say discriminate against people with disabilities obviously as I say you know most people do discriminate and I think that's a kind of that's a justifiable form of discrimination and when it comes to those kinds of issues how do you arrive at the view that you know it's preferable if you like to to not have a child with disability and so on what's the kind of the ethic that you've been well the cases which are easiest are ones where the child will suffer significantly if they are born with a disability and for that purpose I have to say Down syndrome is probably not a good example I chose it merely because it's a common disability and people do up to terminate pregnancies with dance but the the underlying ethic that I hold is a utilitarian ethic that is that we ought to try to reduce the amount of suffering in the world we ought to try to promote the amount of well-being happiness or if you want to describe it in the world and but I think that when you have children born particularly with conditions that lead them to suffer greatly or ones that are very difficult for their parents to cope with and again especially in societies that don't provide good support for that then I think it's a reasonable choice to say I'd rather have a child without that condition hmm and this touch is as well on on the whole question of how you view a child as opposed to say a full-grown adult with lots of options in front of them and preferences and so on you've developed the idea of personhood being the important thing when it comes to the kinds of value and rights we should ascribe to a person you want to just explain what what that is oh yes I'm happy to explain that but it's slightly misleading to say that I think personhood is so very important I simply have used the term person to refer to beings who have a sense of their future and I have preferences for that future and that's really what I think is important and what underlies those decisions and it's it's particularly clear where somebody is able to make choices then I think most people would see the difference between somebody who can make a choice whether they want to go on living or not and I think under certain conditions we ought to try to respect that choice and other circumstances where you have someone who's incapable of making that choice possibly because they don't even have the sense of themselves as an independent being living at present but with a possible future mm-hmm and in that sense for you it's not so much about every human having a specific intrinsic value but rather the the value is more attached to any any living things ability to to to reason to have preferences to to have options if or merely to be capable of suffering and enjoying their life oh yes certainly that's another aspect of my view that I think what species are being is is not in itself morally crucial so if by being human you mean being a member of the species Homo Sapien and people do run those two things together of course then I don't think that that's in itself morally decisive I think that we ought to look at beings for what they are and of course there are some non-human animals who are more capable of understanding their situation in the world of making choices and certainly more capable of suffering and enjoying their lives then some very profoundly disabled particularly profoundly intellectually disabled members of the species Homo Sapien and obviously a lot of what you've done is focused on the ethics around animals and animal welfare and so on that's that's an important part of your body of work I suppose it has led to those situations where some people are concerned that you're you're you care more almost about animals than humans sometimes I mean that's obviously the way they characterize it what would you say to those who you know when you run that thought experiment about is it better to savor a burning barn of of pigs or you know a one week old baby and so on is that sort of helpful or is that not really what you're oh well it's certainly misleading to say that I care more about animals than about humans and I'd like to know exactly what those people are doing for humans another aspect of my thought that we haven't yet talked about is that I think that people like us living in the affluent world ought to be doing a great deal more for people in extreme poverty then we are and that's one of the easiest things we can do to help humans the fact that there are people living on $2 a day whereas we spend $2 on a cup of coffee without a moment's thought says to me that there's something wrong with this we could hear we hear our we could double somebody's income for the day by sending them money we spend on a cup of coffee and of course there's many more expensive things than that that we spend money on that we don't need and so I not only preach that if you like I act on it I give the moment something like 30 to 40 percent of what I earn to effective charities that are helping people in extreme poverty so the people are saying that that's not enough that we should all be doing more for our fellow humans fine I'm will admire them for doing that but if they're not doing something comparable to that I don't think they're in any position to say that I'm not caring about human interesting will obviously be getting into the whole issue of the morality evolution value of humans with Andy Bannister our other guest on the program today Andy thanks for joining us always good always good to be here and you've been engaging yourself in this area for some time before we get into that just give us briefly your background you've been a Christian for some time what led you into wanting to engage in these sorts of areas of moral philosophy and you know how we ascertain good and right and wrong yes I got as a goner for a couple of questions so I was a born raised in a Christian home but I think as listening to this show who've encountered me before of her be told a story I kind of sort of drifted away from that crisis of faith call it what you like in my kind of late teens where really I think I let I came across the sort of thought that I need to ascertain and be able to know whether things like being taught are actually true and so actually began pressing into this sort of era of philosophy and the reasons why we believe the things that we do and then I think what really was significant in my journey is my academic background is not in philosophy though it's going to it's in conversation with Peter today my PhD is qur'anic studies and I I was having conversations with Muslim friends in London who were asking me very very good questions about what I believed and I was wrong I realized I don't know anything about what they believed and following that journey - it's sort of logical conclusion actually led to doing a PhD and my doctoral work in Islamic studies not biblical studies and so my academic background is as the study of the Quran I'm still involved in lots of academic projects around that but for loss if he kind of developed as a sideline because there's like a lot of graduate and post graduates post graduate students rather I needed to pay the bills and so when I was doing my PhD there was I'd minored in philosophy earlier and there was a need for the college where I was teaching to have somebody teach philosophy so I sort of volunteered and then not knowing actually that would be useful for these kind of public conversations because part of my job at solace is taking conversations about faith out of the doors of the church and public square' spend most of my working life on University campuses and actually philosophical questions come up yeah and and on that basis I'm sure you're regularly interacting with people who are atheistic in their outlook like Peter what where do you find the conversation often goes does it come to these kinds of philosophical issues around right and wrong moral values I think what I really value about the chance to interact Peter and Peter's you know work which I read as a young student I think is that actually so often when atheists and Christians you know or others discuss we can get into sort of abstract questions of whether sort of God theoretically exists or or whatever and but I like the kind of more than more practical end and the philosophy about I remember Pete Rose are sort of you know refreshing women reviewer biography I think you said somewhere that sir you know when you were a young philosophy student you decided you could sit around and just have you know meaningless conversations about where the tables exist or you could actually get out there and and think about things that really matter I think questions of right and wrong what is the good life look like how should we live you know that kind of is you might put it the pointy end of philosophy kind of interests me because it gets it grounded in the real world and I find questions around yeah good evil right wrong justice meaning purpose and those kind of things they draw huge audiences whether I'm talking in university settings or business settings so that's what's intrigued me that people are fascinated by the big questions of human life and ultimately is it your view that these questions the big do point back to God at some level presumably you do believe that as a Christian yeah I think so I think as Christians you have to be rather careful in going you know how can we be good there for God and why is the real God I think that's quite a jump in logic and philosophers and non philosophers are sometimes guilty of you know sort of doing great kind of leaps of thinking but I do think I like the imagery of signposts that's the one I often like to use with folks of going I think there are a number of signposts that taken together point in a in a significant direction and I think is interesting around the question of a morality and human flourishing which we're going to talk about in this this conversation that throughout the centuries I think there's been a sort of a fair degree of recognition and I think having God there at the foundation does can does contribute something and even if Peter lined up mr. green which we will I'd be foolish if I said that atheism had nothing to offer to the conversation I don't think Peter from what I've read would tear on and dismiss the whole of Christian thinking on this I think there's there's an area where we have a discussion and I think God contributed something to that discussion well maybe opening up this this whole area of whether humans have some intrinsic moral value or whether that's a wrong way of looking at the question it's interesting that this is I think the 70th anniversary year of the universal declaration of human rights Peter and I was just looking out the other day and article one states all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights they're endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood I mean do you fundamentally agree with that or would you put it a different way or would you say no I don't think that's quite how it works it depends how we're supposed to take this right if we're supposed to take this as a kind of ringing declaration of things that we want to put out there and hold up in some way a general principle then I don't really have an objection to it it may do quite a lot of good but if we were to think of it as philosophers and to take it carefully and go through it word by word and analyze it then I don't think that it is actually right and also of course it is as you say a declaration of human rights and as such it tends to exclude well it does exclude non-human animals and claims that all humans have dignity tend to imply that nonhumans don't have the same kind of dignity that humans do and I think that's not defensible either perhaps we should look at this term dignity for us and say all humans are supposed to have this whatever it means right so all humans includes those who are let's let's say annika Felix right and then O'Keefe ellic is an infant born with only brain stem with essentially with no cortex with no capacity for consciousness and an angelic will not smile at his or her mother won't recognize his or her mother presumably is not capable of experiencing or feeling anything at all but that is a human being you know same chromosomes and so on now compare that with a chimpanzee or a horse or you know choose your favorite non-human animal if you like why should we think that this human who can have no experiences has more dignity than the chimpanzee or the horse or the dog who can respond in so many complex ways to their so essentially you you would contest the statement quite simply all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights there are some all yeah and there are exceptions to that and so in the sense that you couldn't philosophically speaking put your name to that that kind of a declaration you've done quite a bit of work on the idea of human rights yeah I mean let me say a couple of things one thing by way of response to Peter Byrne flesh up my own thinking I mean I think what's interesting is on the other hand I think Peter y-you you know take examples of human beings who are born profoundly disabled I still think you'd recognize they had a degree of dignity there because I think he'd if you better parents of a child who was born like that who is proposing not just committing infanticide but then chopping the corpse into little bits and frying them on the barbeque and having with a salad you'd think that in some way such that there was the binos peter failure of moral reasoning there to recognize that in that that even in that tragedy there's a degree of dignity but i think the confusion around extreme disability is actually something what's it's interesting if you look at some of the great kind of ethicists throughout the centuries people like Hobbes Locke Kant argued that I can't the same thing that the Equality that we're talking about is not grounded in an ability that you have or you don't have because that of course leads to a sliding scale that says well okay maybe we say that the rationality is what grants people you know inclusion of moral community well you're a brilliant philosopher if we put you up next to Justin and we have to make a choice Justin may not be part of a beam into me yeah we're the immense mix we can just say there's a there's a minimal threshold which we could go that route or we could go the routes that Hobson pants and others and I think even actually even some of the great utilitarian think is sort of flirted around with that it is actually our capacities that are essential that are morally relevant and I want to say something here about animal rights Justin was mentioned earlier on that's that's a passion for me as well and aside from the areas of disagree on I think one thing I want to say that I hugely respect Peter for is that that your book are on Animal Liberation put animal rights and the way that we treat non-human creatures onto the table in a way that other books haven't and so even though he may disagree on some things philosophically I think you did a tremendous amount of good what I would say though in terms of animal rights and treat and justice for the animal kingdom I want to say that's actually grounded in human dignity because I have a duty to the animal kingdom to treat in a particular way now if we're dealing with a higher form of life such as a pig or a chimpanzee I think that duties there but I would extend that and say that even if I treated something that didn't have sentience wrong are in a way that was ill or if I went out and for example set fire to vast tracts of rainforest you know plant life isn't changed sentient unless you follow more two extreme philosophers I have still behaved sub morally I have behaved in a way that's inappropriate towards that aspect of the natural world but that's grounded in my duty that flows from my from our human nature not in some sort of hypothetical set of rights but the entity out here has so I think we might in some ways you do think that your duties to the an archipelago grounded in some rights I think that it's again a grounded in duty I think though so you don't think there's a distinction then between the N and Kubelik and the no I think the human but I think I come back to where just didn't put the question to you I think that all human beings whether they have a capabilities or they don't belong to the human family and with that come rights and dignity so I would agree with the UDHR but then I would ground animal rights which is what you're also famous for I would ground that in the same basis on the same platform because ultimately you and I know who that I have a moral duty to the wolf if the wolf have all brakes in here in each one of the three of ours or Liam Neeson has in the film the gray the wolf hasn't actually acted immorally it has no duties to ours well because the wolf doesn't have the capacity to make those choices and that's why I would say I would agree that the wrongdoing of the various acts you described whether it's burning the rainforest or torturing a cat or doing something to humans is grounded in the fact that we have the capacity to make choices and to think what those choices are so so we have moral agency I would say rather than rather rather than our dignity I'd say is what its rounded in and the wolf lacks moral agency the wolf just behaves as a wolf I guess sees something it can eat and goes ahead and tries to kill it and eat it so yes there is a distinction between those humans capable of moral agency which of course is not all humans no babies are capable of moral agency and non-human animals but that's I think a different question from the question of whether in terms of how we ought to treat them we ought to put all humans including the nhf Alec and a kind of higher plane by saying that they have rights that the others don't and I think that's what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is trying to do yeah I was gonna say what's interesting is I think actually if I'm going to be iconoclastic pee dream I may be on a more common ground here because I've for a long time suspect that I think rights language boulders down a number of ways hmm if we're if we're in favor of trying to see that animals are treated more fairly we somehow feel we need to sort of start assigning rights to members of the animal kingdom and in fact actually the the rainforest example was not a random one I think it was Brazil recently some politicians there are arguing that rainforest should be granted rights in order to protect them from logging and I'm reading this and thinking this has rights language gone mad well I do think that we have juicy and responsibility and an annus and it was interesting actually I was but one of the things I did to prepare for this discussion as listen to the last time you were on the unbelief bull show Peter and you debated discuss with Christian philosopher Richard VI carte and one of things Richard pushed you on was interesting he pushed you on sort of famous is thought dilemma and ethics and you said something to the effect of I should have written it down I was driving in the car at the time so wasn't able to take the note so I had to remember the gist of what you said but you said something to the effect I've spent most of my career trying to avoid the you know the adult kind of issue but then it was interesting again preparing for today all based language is all over here all over your work to do X well let me let me put this question to in that sense then Peter so you you believe in moral agency you believe in you know that there is a right and wrong way to act with respect to other people and all the whole of the the living world I think for many people like Andy would say but where does that sense of moral duty come from and what what's it grounded in ultimately what why should someone act in the best way they can towards you know why should someone adopt a utilitarian principle when they could simply say well I don't want to do that in in a universe where there is a God where there is potentially some sort of moral arbiter some kind of moral lawgiver one might be able to find a way to saying well that's where this this Duty this oughtness about the universe comes from in the universe where there is no god I think a lot of people ask well what is that grounded in how can we get to this sense that we should let's go back to the claim that in a universe in which there is a God then it's grounded are we to say it's grounded simply in the will of God in in the arbitrary will of God this is a argument of course that goes right back to Plato are we to say that if God had willed that in fact we cut up babies and eat them on the barbecue then that would have been the right thing to do because III certainly wouldn't want to believe that and I don't know whether Andrew wants to believe that but if you reject that then you have to say it's not arbitrary that God tells us that it's wrong to torture babies and that it's better to be kind to them because that reflects a more basic underlying truth and if there is such a more basic underlying truth that it's better not to let's say gratuitously cause pain then that's something that we have access to and that can ground error and is independent of God so it is you seem to be stating rephrase dilemma that this idea that it's either you're right it's it's it is if but but essentially yes it does God command the good because it's good or is the good what we should do independent of what God commands the okay this this is a common response to this their so-called moral argument it was interesting because I because a Peter so prolific i refresh my memory because I think the addition of practical ethics on my shelf was like an early one perhaps not the first addition recent one on Kindle and I'd forgotten of course you had a you you know you had a reference in there early on to the youthful fro dilemma slight disappointed that you don't do much engagement with with the literature because of course as many people have pointed out the answers of the Euthyphro dilemma is actually found in Plato himself because when poet Plato is positing that dilemma he is using the word God and the gods ready to describe the gods of Greek mythology he were very much largely creatures within creation much physical they're physical beings and then of course later quotes forward the idea of the good which in English we would probably tend to render that with a capital T in a capital G who really is the kind of sort of metaphors to cook metaphysical standard of of goodness it is of the good hmm and Christian theists have always generally since August in connected those two haha that's what Christian theism is talking about it's not that God goes or watch like command let's have some fun and command this or I God looking some standard outside of himself but but God is goodness and therefore it's not personal the good is not personal like really for Christians it is I would so if I don't think you know I could I won't say exactly except Plato's metaphysics but I could let's say say well yes there is something that is objectively the good and if you like you know the it always is there and it always would be there has the potential to be there so so I could say it's timelessly true that to gratuitously inflict pain is is a bad thing but that doesn't get you anywhere in terms of saying there's a God because this is not a personal being no and that's a good question now I mean I would say a couple of things there Peter one is interesting I forget where I read but I read a recent interview with you where you made a comment to the effect of that you're just beginning sort of nudge towards the idea that there may be standards of objective I said that you're a few years out of date so I think I think it was in the interview did in 2016 with the Journal of applied ethics was where you were quoted as saying that and I think that's interesting because actually I don't think you can avoid that I mean for example I'm in Jeremy Bentham it's the same issue he ultimately had to admit the utility principle you can't really give reasons for you have to take it as a as a foundation which is interesting that you raise plate a because I really think your force with two choices you either have to posit a kind of personal God like the god of Christian theism all this sort of platonic realm of things such as you know moral duties and those kind of things that are external to ours and objective two hours they discovered and that was a question you raised at the start I want I want you to ask because I think is important to get to this point so you do believe at some level Peter in the idea of objective moral values and duties and those things exist independently of us in a sense in our evolutionary history and that yes the word exist is is could be could be misinterpreted but perhaps you could say in a similar way to mathematical truths existing and again there's a lot of discussion among philosophers as to how you understand mathematics but rather than us inventing the things that we think are good they actually exist independent of us we discover them in that sense and obviously that seems to cohere many would say with Christian theism the idea that there is a God who has as it were woven this into the fabric of the reality that we live in but it's harder to reconcile with naturalism which I assume is that you do I'm not a doctor you're not an actor I'm not a naturalist in the ethical sense okay time can describe myself as a naturalist in terms of understanding the universe broadly speaking I see but but not in every respect perhaps where where does the the realm then if it exists so when we're talking about ethics naturalism is the idea that Andrew referred to before that you can derive or judgments from his judgments in other words that you can go from facts to values I don't think that's true I think that there is if there are independent normative truths which I'm a little doubtful about saying they exist if that suggests that in some sense they there is an a realm where where these things could be discovered or seen but but I think that they're something that we have access to as we have access to principles of logic or principles of mathematics that if we're if we're rational beings we can understand them that's interesting because I meet many atheists who deny that altogether yes there's another view which I did hold for a good bit of my career which says that essentially when we make moral judgments for expressing attitudes and these attitudes are not really true or false or sometimes people say prescriptions my former Oxford teacher RM here said that their prescriptions that we're prescribing things which again are not true or false just as if I say to you shut the window and that's not true or false it's a command it's not a description it's not like saying the window is shut so that is another possible position that many philosophers hold and what's led you to the belief that actually there really is this objective realm of moral values and duties so I for a long time I tried to reconcile the non Objectivist if you like the prescriptivists view with the idea that reason plays a role in reaching ethical conclusions and I tried to do that broadly within the framework that RM hare had set out but eventually I concluded that that couldn't really be done and at the same time I was persuaded by a number of philosophers Derek confort there's one who's been influential with me Tim Scanlon Tom Nagel that it's reasonable to think that there are normative truths that are objective that we don't have to go into any really weird metaphysics you know in order to accept that so we don't live in a world where we're all beholden to basically whatever owners opinion is on on their particular merit it's not subjective in this we can say if you're behaving wrongly you ought to be behaving this way we can certainly say that and I'd go further and say in saying that we're not just expressing our own attitude like we're saying I really liked a lot of garlic in my spaghetti sauce and someone else says no I don't like garlic we're talking about something where there is a right or wrong answer so why for you should this make Peter at least open to the possibility of theism Andy rather than a sort of whatever maybe well I would say a couple of things but thought about just in the first thing I want to say is I want to be very careful in because in the context of this being a collegial discussion it's very tempting for both Christians and for atheists to sort of try find gotcha moments ago and I don't want to be careful yeah in doing that what I wanted then say as well I also respect I think how Peter arrived that that position because I think if you do say that ethical statements have no have something no no content there that they're meaningless I mean that was something sort of right out of the whole sort of annals of logical positivism and AJ as and others we end up with a very strange counterintuitive conclusion that somebody who decides they prefer helping the poor and giving lots of money a way to help people in difficult parts the world that's no different from somebody who decides they want to you know invade East and Europe and try and you know start the Third Reich and there's there's no difference between them and that's so counterintuitive something's got to be wrong with it I also want to say as well that I think the other thing I think that's interesting around ethics is ethics requires grounding and a framework I don't think you can do F the call statements like you could do mathematics ethics belongs in the context of relationships and that's sometimes where is this go wrong they kind of abstract things from the context of family and community and interpersonal relationships and trying to analyze them logically and I think on this bigger question the metaphysics behind it the same the same applies I don't say you can abstract ethics from some kind of bigger framework where I think things do get interesting and where if I were on Peter side of the table I would at least be sort of scratching my head slightly I think is that if one is not careful you do end up with I forget which philosopher sort of coined this phrase you end up with a sort of extravagant Platonism that you have this realm wherever you put it in which we have moral values and duties mathematical objects other abstract objects and it sort of grows and grows and grows and it's all of these things rather than for the Christian theism to go well okay we actually only have one sort of metaphysical object as it were which is which is God and those things are grounded in the mind of God not least that's helpful because moral Commandments do follow moral duties do follow between people and so rather than thou shalt not murder floating around abstractly out and avoid doing nothing until human beings have evolved to such a point that suddenly it applies to them in the same way as the law of gravity applies to them actually we have a divine person and duties and so forth follow between persons I think there's something around that that intrigues me why does that not follow for you that these duties and moral values should be grounded in something I suppose beyond ourselves in in the form of God ultimately well to answer that we would have to get back to questions about whether there are reasons for us to believe that God exists and especially as we're talking about morality and they claim that morality is grounded in the existence of God or the will of God I do think you have to look at the world around you and you have to say there is an immense amount of suffering that goes on which I don't believe an all-powerful omniscient and good morally good being would permit because this is not simply suffering that occurs to those who do bad things it's not even if you were to believe what I think is a repellent doctrine of original sin that all humans have sinned because Adam and Eve sinned and therefore it's okay for us to be punished because even if you accept that non-human animals not being descended from Adam would not have original sin and yet it's clear that they suffer and not only at the hands of humans they suffer because I come from Australia you know they're seasonal drats out there in the arid centre of Australia there are droughts and many kangaroos and other animals will slowly die of thirst a miserable death I cannot for the life of me see why a good God would permit that so so so really the fact that you can't place these moral duties and values in the framework of God is because there are there are other aspects of God that you just find calm calm bring it that's certainly a major reason for yeah I mean Andrew said objected to extravagant Platonism and seem to imply that belief in a god is somehow less extravagant we could have a debate about you know probably what creates a more metaphysical extravagance and that would be another issue that we could raise and and also I still haven't really heard Andrews answer to the question of whether God is simply you know whether the things that God says a good heed they could it could have been different or not I haven't I know he said it's something part of the idea of goodness but then well let's open send this back to you Andy because I think there's a couple of questions there are this this challenge over whether you you know you can resolve you throws dilemma and you know whether God actually does come on the good and so on but also the problem of suffering you know Peter says I'm not I know it God's not even on the table as long as the world we're in is is the world that God has created because it yeah I can't reconcile that with a God God of love as you seem to be able to that's a there's a lot of good things no but let's take that that latter one PDX I think that's a that's a hugely you know significant question and of course you know as a philosopher who is you know no slack should be aware there's a whole branch of philosophy that deals have got with that from average perspective which the whole branch of philosophy and theology known as as theodicy so I think it'd be interesting to do some digging into that if one's going to use that as an argument what I what I find interesting is right from the word go that actually that brings a whole moral dimension to bear on the world that we live in because of course our instinctive reaction when or hopefully our instinctive reaction whether it's kangaroos dying of thirst in the centre of Australia or whether it's you know a hurricane or order the causing some kind of natural disasters we don't just view it coldly dispassionately we actually bring the all to bear you ought not to be like that the world ought to be different and that that autumn this has somebody want to describe is a bit like the bubble on the wallpaper you know you wallpaper a room and there's a nun bubble over here and you push it down it and it pops up over here we can't seem to avoid making those those kind of value judgments now if that was all there was to say then I think if the Christian story was simply god is good and has created this world and hey isn't it wonderful then I think we'd have every duty to come along and go well hang on just a moment but of course that's not that that's not at the beginning of the story nor the end of the story the beginning of the story is that something has gone wrong with creation with all due respect Peter you you slightly mischaracterize the Christian doctrine of original sin which is not the reason the world is in the state as in is because God goes huh because of Adam and Eve I'm just gonna you know kill those kangaroos unless that's the Australis the Av the Australian actually that's actually fundamentally twisted and broken creation both our relationship with God and creation so what if God is all-powerful why can't he fix it that's all so glad you asked that question I before I get to that I also points out interestingly I don't know if you're aware of one of our most iconic lassic iconoclastic atheist philosophers here in the UK is John Gray formerly london school of economics and john either in his book heresies or in Straw Dogs I always forget which one this is found in talks about the doctrine of original sin and the fall and says much as I disagree with much that Christians have said he said that's actually the one thing I think Christianity has got right just look around you human beings are a badly broken animal now your question about why does God allow if God had simply sat there in heaven and done nothing about it then I think we'd have we would be able to erase that very charge of going well it's alright for you you're sitting up there in heaven life is pretty miserable down here but of course the Chris the whole of the Christian story is what God has and is doing about it in and through the cross and through Jesus and whether or whatever you make of Jesus of Nazareth certainly the heart of the Christian story you have the ability to go the one thing you cannot pin on the God of the Bible is this it's not a God who knows something who knows nothing about suffering and injustice and interestingly Justin that brings us full circle because one of the things I would also want to bring to the table as a Christian about human value and dignity is that value is also conferred by what somebody's prepared to pay and the God of the Bible and then the cross and in Jesus you have got making a tremendous statement about the value of human beings such that he'll be willing to go through that the person is Jesus this is still very strange right because if we believe that Jesus was God's Son and God sent him to earth quite early do right so that happened about 2,000 years ago right and yet the world still has all of the suffering so so here's this supposedly all-powerful being who created the universe and everything and who doesn't like the suffering that goes on and who tried to do something about at 2,000 years ago and yet the suffering is still going on doesn't seem to be really better so it seems like he's a bungler he made a bad mistake in thinking that sending his son to be crucified would somehow fix all the suffering in the world and it plainly hasn't well actually was going to be wonderfully sort of cheeky I'd go actually Steven Pinker was sitting in that chair not long ago who says the world has got increasingly better in the last but not as not as I agree with Steven but not as much better as it ought to regard we had an all-powerful crispy here's the interesting thing that answer I think that question of course is race right for a very very beginning because therefore the first Christians who went out across the Roman world and began preaching the Christian message and saw Christians go from being naught point naught naught nor 8% of the Roman Empire to 51.2% in three hundred and twelve years they knew full well that Christians were thrown to the Lions that earthquakes happen that disease happened yet they still believed that God had come in the person of Jesus risen from the dead but that was the deathblow structor evil and that was the beginning of God's new creation a strange false belief I think well interesting you say false belief one of the things that intrigues we got the suffering question as well and to go this is a this is a rabbit trail of its own but I think it's a fascinating one one of the things that began to intrigue me as I talk you know university level courses on that on the problem of evil was it's a peculiarly Western question it's not about to make it doesn't make it an irrelevant question but when I would travel to the east and I have many many friends living in situations where they've experienced horrific suffering persecution I've met people who've lost their homes their families had been tortured in prison for their Christian faith or experience other things these questions don't arise it was pointed out after the tsunami the Asian tsunami it was Western newspapers that were running editorial was with where is God that question wasn't being asked because they don't really believe in that God did we believe well Christian's caught up in it which Muslims would have done those questions and we're not we're not being asked and that just tells me something I think it tells me that whilst this is not an unimportant question we forget that we all ask our question from a from a physician we approach our philosophy from a physician and we're approaching this as Westerners and I think there is something when you draw that lens back similarly historically to go if the problem of evil was such a spectacular argument against belief in a good God then I think as the oxford professor CS Lewis famously asked how did that belief ever arise in the first place men are crazy not as not as crazy as that so I think we need to wrestle with the question but I think is actually a question for both atheists and for Christians to wrestle with because it gets us to the issue I don't see why it's a question for atheists I mean we we understand the world has having evolved from very simple beings that we're not conscious there's no plan to the world for an atheist evolutionary viewpoint it just happened through random mutations and unfortunately you know if you like it's indifferent as to whether it causes suffering or not in terms of how things evolve well so I don't see why it's at all a problem for atheists that they will explain why I think if atheist were simply content to leave it there that would be one thing but the fact that when that when natural disasters happen we find atheist quit Jews and I should of course and I've never denied that we should use more or less where does where does the autist come from it's just evolution doing her thing or his thing oh it's not at all not at all that would be the naturalistic fallacy and that's why I said to Justin before I'm not a naturalist no it's that we can understand as rational beings that gratuitous suffering is a bad thing and that from beings to experience joy and pleasure and happiness is a good thing and moral language follows from that so I don't think there's any problem for an atheist in in using moral language and I think that problem the problem of suffering is therefore uniquely a problem for those who believe in a God who has these three attributes of omniscience omnipotence and omnipresence let me back not the issue but not being a problem Peter you you wrote sorry I was just beginning my iPAQ because I thought I actually wanted to read you something you said far from justifying principles that are shown to be natural a biological explanation can be a way of debunking what seemed to be eternal moral axioms when a widely accepted moral principle is given a convincing biological explanation we need to think again about whether we should accept the principle that's right and so funking explanation that means we don't support the you that we might hold because it helped us to survive and reproduce the the fact that a value helped us to survive and reproduce doesn't prove that it's false but should lead us to a certain skepticism exactly and in the same way that our instinctive reaction to when we see suffering in nature is all that's a terrible thing we could debunk the same thing in fact aja is I think it was who famously said the debunkers should be forced to waive his own demon king sword over his own cherished beliefs in public and so I think actually evolution when you apply it that way it becomes a universal asset I don't think it does and I've argued in fact in a hate-filled called the point of view of the universe that the idea of universal benevolence the idea that as the late 19th century utilitarian philosopher Henry Sidgwick said from the point of view of the universe the interests of each being can't the same if they're similar sorts of interests that's something that you cannot explain in evolutionary terms why we should hold that belief because it actually would be more advantageous to our survival in reproduction if we said no beings who are not any kin of mine or not in a reciprocal relationship with me their interests don't count and of course a lot of people do actually act on that and it's not surprising given that we are evolved beings who descended from ancestors who succeeded in reproducing it's not surprising that we should have tendencies to act on that and when you refer to the idea of human nature as being broken I think it's simply something that we can understand in evolutionary terms why we do not act with universal benevolence to all but as rational beings I think we can see that that would be the right way to act so I think that that's an ethical principle that is not debunked by evolutionary explanations I'm less so sure I'm less sure I mean it was interesting you you know you mentioned there some of the in your last comment around evolution there one of my favorite erm you mentioned Tom Nagel early one of my other favorite iconoclastic philosophers is a isn't Australian well wasn't Australian Dave the late David stove it wrote a wonderful book called Darwinian fairytales I think really doing a fantastic with debunking attempts to use evolution to get his only form of ethics but although his nice little language uses their that we continually people who want to whet their belief system field in evolution continually keep applying patches to the theory to try and come up with why human beings are altruistic because of course human beings seem to use out altruism everywhere on the other hand you know you're criticizing human beings for not displaying you know care sort of equally to all but actually we have invented all kinds of ways of helping people who are not biologically connected to us and if you're an evolutionary socio biologists like yeeowww Wilson that causes you a tremendous headache but one thing I think is interesting I would like to pick you up on is that something I've comments I made earlier about ethics and morality existing within within relationships and I think of course particularly where they exist is within resume and human is within familial relationships so I think you've argued in several places that in theory there's it's there's no more but there's no necessarily good moral reason for if there's a house on fire and you could rescue your biological offspring or rescue someone else's offspring why you should pick your own your own child but you admitted elsewhere that in the case of your daughter's you know if there was a house fire you probably grabbed those who were your kith and kin and left and not the others I'm sure I would because I'm also a human who is descended from others who've evolved to have these strong question is I'm just too convinced that's a bad thing because I think one of the things we've been dancing around a little bit in this whole discussion is of course if you look at classical ethical theory if you take this back to Aristotle and and the such like we get into the issues that ethics is about character in fact ethics comes from the Greek word ethos that means character and for Aristotle and many others that the key question would be how do we generate the heri build citizens and human beings who have a certain kind of character both your earlier preference based utilitarianism and the now the hedonistic utilitarianism that you would say is your is your framework and the idea of her you know promoting good and avoiding pain I was sitting there thinking about this last night while feeding my son banana and peanut butter we believe in you no good no good healthy meal yes he rejected the salads and so this is there anything you would get Christopher to eat at half-past six last night but suddenly occurred to me that in the in the context of my parenting relationship in my three-year-old sure you know avoiding pain is certainly part of it I shouldn't clobber him around the head of the frying pan when he puts like a breaking ball but on the other hand that is a remarkably thin ethic because most of my parenting relationship with my son and my daughter is around how do i form them to be persons of character how do i shape them and mold them more so at first and as they get older to reins less tightly because success looks like for me not a child who's happy well that's to me oh that's that's a good plan B or C but a child who is good a child who's noble the child who is brave a child whose self sacrificial will hold that all that long list which would come under what the ancients called character and I think one my slight concerns with this whole kind of discussions that we abstract ethics into this sort of a zero-sum game of you know adding up happiness points versus negative points and the idea we should all be treating everybody absolutely equally irrespective our relationship to them ignores those kind of familial settings ignore the duty that we have to just siblings to spouses here we've made commitments and so on and so forth ethics can't be abstracted from close relationships and from character would you agree with that Peter I agree with a great deal of that yes I certainly think we ought to bring up our children to have a good character and good moral character in various ways and not just to be happy in themselves if you like selfishly happy and I think it's also possible that in fact bringing them up to have a good moral character is a good way for them to be happy and fulfilled and there's some good psychological research that shows that but I think the the broader utilitarian framework that I hold can accommodate that because we don't simply want to try to bring up everyone to be completely impartial between their own children and those of the children the children of strangers because in fact we know that in order to have children who have good lives and a psychologically well-adjusted bringing them up in a close and loving family relationship is the best way to do it and of course they've been various experiments over the centuries to try to bring them up in a more abstract or communal way and it seems they don't work particularly well so they don't suit nature so as utilitarians we can actually encourage people to be the kind of loving father that you obviously are to try to bring up your child to have a good moral character and I think that's that's compatible with the broader utilitarian ideal of wanting people to I mean well-adjusted and live in a good society I often come across people though who were worried philosophically about where a strict utilitarian ethic leads you and so for instance I know one of the some of the things that people are projected to in terms of the the points you've made on this I think you once wrote regarding a utilitarian argument for euthanizing disabled children when the death of a disabled infant will lead to the birth of another infant with better prospects of a happy life the total amount of happiness will be greater if the disabled infant is killed the loss of happy life for the first infant is outweighed by the gain of a happier life for the second and I think a lot of people look at that and think will that make sense in a utilitarian framework but it doesn't feel right it doesn't feel like we should be killing off a child a because child B that would replace it would be happier potentially right the statement that you read doesn't say that we should show off their child it says the total amount of happiness would be greater which is not in itself a value judgment okay and it's in the context of a discussion about two different views both utilitarian one of which is a view that says to maximize the total amount including the happiness that would be experienced by beings who we would bring into the world who would not otherwise exist as against what I call and you're quoting from practical ethics one of my books you're what I call the prior existence view which says we ought to focus on maximizing the happiness of those beings who either already do exist or will exist independently of anything we do so in saying the total happiness will be greater I'm not necessarily saying that's the right thing to do okay I'm saying that's what is implied by this total view of happiness and I'm leaving it open at least at that point as to whether that's the view we ought to follow or the one that is concerned we I mean I are you in a sense though open to that idea that people well I'm open to the idea that yes it's it's in considering whether it's better on the whole that our being with without good prospects of happy or worthwhile whether that being should live or die in considering that question it's relevant to ask if this child dies will there be another child who was brought into existence and who would have a good and rich and fulfilling life and who would not have existed if that other child had not died I think this is where often that the disability advocates have a problem though isn't it Peter in as much as they they say well who are you to judge the value of the life of the disabled child over against a able-bodied child because it's not that that's perhaps too simplistic a way of understanding this well of course there are many factors and it would depend I mean it's not simply that you know of any disability that this is true but there might be some of whom I think you clearly could say a child who has a condition for example called epidermolysis bullosa which is one where the skin keeps breaking and it's impossible really to to stop the skin breaking and and wounds developing and infections developing and if you try and bandage it and then you change the bandages you just pull off more skin and in very severe cases that's a life of misery and suffering and the child will die predictably within months or a couple of years so I think it is possible to say objectively really that that is not a good life that is better if that child whenever born or if they are born that they die swiftly and humanely rather than they we try to prolong their life as long as we can I mean where where do you stand on this then because I'm take it that for you the principle of human value is is broader than simply whether that child will awake experience a certain degree of pain in their life there's a whole number of things going on here I mean I think firstly I think we need to be very careful I mean I'm not I don't like wielding slippery slope arguments but there is a slight one here if going how far before we have a an issue and I mean so to you know use an analogy just enough you and I were tasked with you know demolishing a building near here in London and you and my supervisor and you said to me before we press the button Andy your job is to go through this building or you know sort of 14 stories of it and just check there's no human beings in there and I come back and I report you all well I don't think there's any human beings you can press the button would you press the button and demolish the the building based on my I think there might not be anybody in there and I think I get a bit worried when you say well we think the quality of life is such here's a here's a clear-cut case that's that's problem number one secondly I think the other problem with with utilitarianism I mean it's been subject is that there's a reason it's not believed particularly widely and I think it's subject to two pretty critical critiques first as it does tend to absorb the the individual into the whole and you start trying to add up or you know and do sort of you know add up the happiness and subtract their the suffering that becomes a huge problem you know for example you know we we might enslave you and put you to work for Peter and Peter's happiness goes up by vast amount and your happiness goes down my little bit less but I think somebody would still smoke people so that we'd wronged you by using you to gain to benefit Peter even if the we could somehow zero-sum it and I think the other issue as well that often gets missed and utilitarian discussions is of course how we um is how we measure net happiness anyway I mean do we do we add it up do we average it if we have ten people with ten units of happiness each well obviously the average amount of happiness for person is ten or if we have one person over here perhaps a utility monster as Robert Nozick the great American philosopher might put it one person over here with ninety one units and everyone else has one well the average is still is still the same and I think all of those thought experiments show that I think once you start trying to weigh happiness or subtract suffering or all these other kind of things you hit a problem and so I think that's why I think the founders the fault of those who formed the UDHR did an absolutely brilliant job it's not perfect there are discussions to be had but grounding it in nature grounding it in dignity grounding in what as philosophers we call ontology is a much more secure founding than subjective sort of statement of well I think that person's life is so so I mean youyou obviously ground that in a sense the value of a life in in the ability of that life to have preferences to be able to reason the happiness and so on that there's potential within that life and it appears is saying well those are measures but they they may mislead us and in fact there's there's something intrinsically about a human life even if it might be one which on your scale doesn't necessarily seem to have prospects of happiness and and so on what's the problem you have with Andy's sort of well there are a number of problems but one is why would you think that this intrinsic value again just only in members of the species Homo Sapien when it comes to dogs for example if you have a dog who is getting old and ill or has some condition that they the vet says the dog will not recover from we all think that at some point we ought to make the decision to take the dog to the vet and say look I think enough is enough would you please humanely in the life of my dog and that's that's a tough decision to make and people will a ganache over whether they've made it at the right time or not but we recognize that it's better to make that decision than to allow the dog to continue to suffer at least it's at some point now if that's true of dogs why is it not true of infants with conditions where they are also going to suffer considerably and where we have to make a decision one way or the other I mean it's not as if you can say as you could in the case of the 14 story building you could just say look let's not demolish this building now I'm not sure let's get somebody more careful than Andrew is to go through the building and really make sure that there is nobody in that building where as but but in the case of a suffering child or a suffering dog to just say well let's not take the dog to the vet is effectively to make a decision that at least today the dog will suffer for another day even if we change our mind tomorrow and the same would be true of course of a child in that situation so that I think that is a good question and why do we treat our animals different to the way we tend to treat humans right way so it are we simply talking about the same kind of thing it's just about minimizing suffering at the end of the day I think I think know in a nutshell I think that we have a duty of care to animals were very very much so and I think for me that flows out of who we are as human beings so you know you Peter story of the of the dog I mean identified with very much like remember we had to have our first cat put down because he was very very ill and that was a you know emotional moment that if that cat was was very dear to us but it was also cats and my relationship with the cat was different than my relationship to my to my wife and I think about that flows that thankfully well I think that flows out of who we are as human beings and look one thing I think we've been dancing around a bit for me in some of this discussion we've mentioned his name a couple of times Aristotle the Greek philosopher famously said in terms of explaining anything given the court we know what the cause of anything is there are four causes whether we talk about a table or a human being there's the formal cause that's all metaphysical we'll just put that to one side there's the efficient cause so in your case what you're made out of so the material cause what you're made out of the efficient cause how you came to be birds and bees and there's some things if you need to know just in a weekend if I talk to you after thank you but then the most interesting one that really I think comes to bear on this conversation is that is that what he called the final cause what something is made for and I think this is interesting because as Michael Sandel the famous you know Harvard ethicist puts it he said you know we can't really have these conversations without actually ascertaining what a good life looks like and actually what the good society looks like and it was interesting I mean you know the book that Peter is famous famous for many books you put people like me have just published three inter into the shade but only practical ethics I was I read that again yesterday because I've been some years since I read it and it occurred to me reading it was a wonderful book but there was also for me a gaping hole and a gaping hole perhaps again illustrate to the thought experiment if I got back to Dundee this evening and on the way back I visited the airport book store and I burst into my house and Dundee and say to my wife honey we're going to the week we're going to the beach on the weekend because I've just bought practical canoeing and it's a book that tells you how to make canoes and sail canoes and I dragged the family off there even though it's raining in Scotland it never rains in Scotland and I load the kids and the wife into the canoe and off we go paddling out to the North Sea and I explained all the wonderful features of my canoe how practical it is and at some point my wife will probably look at me and say well Andy honey where where where where are we going what's the destination I'll go don't ask don't ask foolish questions see how wonderfully constructed the canoe is I confess that was slightly my takeaway from practical ethics and some of this discussion that I think unless we know where we go in what it is that you do assume in Aristotle certainly assumed that there is a final purpose right the very best summer has a purpose very and that I think is an unscientific view I think if we understand a scientific view of the universe it exists life has evolved on this planet it has evolved the point at which there are sentient beings beings with consciousness beings also capable of making choices but there is no I'll alternate end of the universe and and that's it's a mistake to ask that question about about life in general we can ask what are your purposes and what are my purposes because we're purposive beings and we can decide as we've been saying what are good things to do and what a bad things to do but I think there isn't a final end in terms of humans somehow all having some end which how do we decide then how do we decide on what we're here for what what well we're not here for anything as well except the ends that we ourselves choose to have I suppose though then how do we decide between the person who decides that their best end is to live selfishly get the most amount of money and play golf until they die and the person who gives their life away for the poor and the needy and so on which which is there a way of deciding which of those is is the way we should live or is it simply to ultimately doubt the way we should live as an ethical question is not only to think of ourselves but also to think of others and helping the poor is obviously an important part of but that sounds like there is a purpose then no no no that's not a purpose it's that some things put it this way I would say that some states of the universe would be better than other states of the universe so state of the universe in which everybody suffers agony every sentient being is in agony for its entire existence and then dies is a worse state of the universe I'm going to state of the universe in which every sentient being is enjoying its life for its entire existence and then dies but that doesn't mean that the universe has an ultimate purpose or that it's somehow the purpose of the universe that being should not suffer and should enjoy their lives I think go back to the bubble on the wallpaper again but I think what's interesting I mean Justin I think you asked Peter a good question here I think it depends what what you decide the goal is a note you just remember you say that something is better for example that's question that becomes the questions better to as to what for example if I you know if I put a part a part of if you could see a pile of wood in my backyard and I say I spent all day making that part it was better than my last three attempts while it's probably important to know was I trying to build a bonfire Guy Fawkes Day and I want something that I can put a guy on top of my kids have a bonfire party or if I'm trying to build Mike Mike my kids are windy house it's probably important to know what better is it's with regret because you're a purpose of being and you have purposes in your judgment of yeah exactly but I think the fact that the problem is though Peter I think in this discussion we're not just weighing purposes within someone's purposes if you decide that if you decide the purpose of your life is to help as many of the poor as possible then we can weigh your decisions and there in the in the light of that and decide okay is Peter living his life in such a ways to bring about the nearest to that possible goal or if someone decides they're going to spend their life playing soccer we can do the same thing how they achieving that goal but in terms of weighing two people's choices and actually I thought you can't you came close to this in the practical ethics where you sort of use the stamp collecting example that was all the saying well we probably ultimately someone who chooses stamp collecting or playing football versus somebody who chooses something that a person in your mind would be more noble we can't really weigh between them you really do have I do think if we're making an ethical question we can weigh between them and the the choice that leads to more beings enjoying their lives and suffering less is is the better choice and that's probably not going to be stamped but then I would put the question back to you better according so it's what we've been to this through this right I think we had yes better according to those values which as rational beings we can understand the correct values I've as we said before I do think that there are values that exist that are objective in the world and we can see what those values are there's room for dispute there's room for disagreement about them but as we said before I think there are correct decisions and incorrect decisions in terms of what is about what really is a good value and what isn't and that's how we ought to judge the as again as I said if we're thinking ethically that's how we ought to judge the various life choices that would you would you say and I I confess this this is a slightly leading question would you say that the perhaps the test of a practical ethic is how it plays out in the real world and we take that out of the classroom and we actually try and measure it out and then conversely how we live our lives here reflects our ethic the reason I ask that is just in raised you know obviously some of the things that you have said of course see and we've talked about that but one of the things that intrigued me the most as I read a bit more around you I confess I'd you you know two of your books in particular but not a lot of your background was and forgive me for raising this example I I didn't mean to cause any offense but was the story of what happened with your mother a few years ago when your mother contracted Alzheimer's and eventually so the lost I said sort of sense of who she was and as I understand it had sort of made some requests about not sort of you know the way she wants to be treated towards the end of her life but you and your sister I understand no that's not true that we didn't follow her okay you enjoy and insofar is it that it was not would not have been legal for us to carry my point being as towards the end of her life she is by the definitions that you've used for disability is effectively moving into not on personhood but you spent a lot of money on her personal care and I remember there's an interview with a journalist that really struck me where you said I quote I guess things are different when it comes to I think that was a somewhat misleading statement I mean I I felt them yes certainly obviously you feel them strongly as you felt the decision to put down your cat very differently from I don't know whether you eat animals at all but whether you know you might have felt the decision to kill a pig or Macau so yes you feel them differently but I struck then that by that I just wonder when you take that sort of cold almost sort of spoke like utilitarian ethic and it becomes a very close very personal very difficult appreciate with been difficult family situation for actually that's when the tension is felt and then actually use that almost that realization of maybe this ethic doesn't quite work in the real world and therefore that real world very personal very difficult very complex situation as one of your reviewers pointed out did it take you know sort of did it take that for after 30 years of teaching ethics for you to perhaps just realize that maybe some of these ethical decisions are slightly more complicated no I think I use the Dover contract and of course we don't control all the factors in the world and as I said one of the factors was that euthanasia in Australia was not legal for somebody in my mother's situation there's no doubt that my mother had said that she would not want to live in the state that she got to and that if euthanasia had been legal she would have no doubt previously signed a request she was a paid-up member of the voluntary euthanasia Society of Victoria and we would have my sister and I would have asked the doctor to carry out her request but given that it was not legal and we did not want to put ourselves in the situation of breaking the law we did want to make her comfortable we wanted to not to allow her to suffer even though maybe the greater Goods you could have taken a sensible action the money that we spent on her could have done more good elsewhere I was you could have helped her out the door legal consequences and well when it when it when it came to a point at which she developed a pneumonia and then we talked to the doctor and the doctor was prepared to not treat that so that she didn't live as long as she might have lived if she had been treated with all possible medical technologies to keep her alive as long as possible so it's not that we didn't take any steps to say yes you know this is not a life that's really worth living I mean all of this simply brings me back to the point that you you are like all of us trying to do the best that you can in the world that we live in and that in a sense you you are guided by the principles as far as you can be that you've espoused in your books and and in the philosophy of developed Peter what's been fascinating to me in this conversation is that as an atheist you've said there is a way we should be living there is a an objective realm of moral values and duties that we are all beholden to so we aren't simply choosing you know whether to spend our life in idleness or whether to help the poor there is actual one of those options is a better option is the option we should be pursuing in life even though that's developed in a purely in a sense of random purposeless universe there is nonetheless this this purposeful aspect to to the universe that's that's baked in at some level to it well it's not a purpose but they feel like you you could say there are values that exist independently of choosing them I'd be prepared to say that just as you might say mathematical theorems might be true or false and I know that you you have a problem with saying that God grounds those types of values and duties obviously Andy believes that that that is a good explanation for for where for where those come from and why we we should abide by them but do they strike whose mysterious that this realm exists in and that we happen as an evolved species to have grasped on to that and we have evolved in in tandem with this other moral realm that exists and for me does is there not something about that that might suggest there's something going on there's there's evolution has taken us to the point where we can adopt this moral framework and this is the reason that we're here if you like almost well evolution has brought us to the point where we're capable of reasoning and of thinking reflecting on the nature of the universe but when you said that's why we're here no I don't see any reason for thinking that this is why we're here or that we're here for some purpose and again I would go back to the point I made it seems to me very hard to believe that a God particularly a God like the Christian God would have gone through this incredibly long evolutionary path with and the immense amount of suffering that that process has brought in its wake in order to achieve this state where we can grasp what values are good and what about as we start to wrap this up oh and if you've got any comments on on the fact that Peter does obviously believe there's a realm of objective moral values and duties that we're beholdin to but obviously feels that that is just something that we happen to have come to a point in our on purposed evolution that we're able to to access I mean just in the question you puts Peter was a good one because I think the the conundrum that poses is exactly as you described it to go or firstly of course where is it located and then you know what is it about suddenly the point Weavin that we've arrived at an evolutionary scale if that's the way of the way we've got here at evolution is the only game in town as Professor Dawkins once memorably put it suddenly we you know one of our hominid ancestors woke up to find that not just merely the law of gravitation but the law of you know loving their neighbor suddenly applied how it was their reaction wonderful I'm now a moral agent or bummer in our car you know Club the primate next door over the head in the club so I think that's that's that's an interesting one and I think you know one of the things I'm always very interested to to explore and we don't have time to go into this now really but I think all these discussions raise this right is to go I always want to believe hold to the virtue of epistemic humility ever realizing Christians do not have all the answers tied up with a neat bow on the top and anyone who tells you they do isn't thinking nor do a theist have all of the answers tied up with a bow on the top what we do is we place the evidence on the table and ask which best explains the range of evidence that we have even if there are things that we wrestle with and pick up and find where that piece goes and I actually think you know ultimately the reason I'm a Christian is that I think the fact that there is this you know objective morality outside of ours isn't the only piece of evidence on the table but it's one that if we're on a theist I'd find very hard to fit into there and then I bring that into play with other things for example it's interesting that you quoted Thomas Nagel to this end Tom wrote tom is an atheist philosopher for listening so you haven't come across him wrote a really colorful very well very well very heavily commented on book recently called mind & Kosmos why the naturalistic view of reality is almost certainly wrong and he puts forward moral values that the Peters pointed to he was puts forward consciousness which is interesting and also in interviews as well I believe I've seen talks about freedom and you see this is an interesting one and this is one of the conversations that I wish we had time to pursue actually because underpinning all of this is this assumption that we can be free to choose morally but of course if we are just governed not just by the forces of evolution but by the blind forces of physics and chemistry and vollentine so forth are we actually free and again I wish I had time to explore this Peter and I when I read your accounts in that latest edition of practical ethics about what happened to you in Germany well in one of the little marginal notes I wrote down is is actually Peters ultimate value freedom that you believe in you know because you made its impassioned you know sort of plea there for academic freedom but maybe academic freedom actually doesn't serve the common good and of course unless we're free we can't choose what we do with this realm of objective morality and say for it's a freedom and consciousness and all these other things all go into the path of disgust on the table we hope you don't have time to dig into it I'll show that but freedom consciousness I mean there are a range of things which seem incredibly important to us and which some people including Andi feel don't fit well with a naturalistic understanding of the universe I mean do you just find that the problem is God isn't a satisfactory explanation for any of those either say you'll you'll stick with your atheism even if there isn't that would be the short answer yes I think if God is a less satisfactory explanation than the kinds of accounts that I've given but I you know I do agree with your view that not and neither of us or anyone in the world for that matter has everything neatly wrapped up with the pink bow and there are interesting philosophical questions to pursue and that's a good thing as a professional philosopher I'm glad that you know we haven't just said finis okay we hope we'll all go and do something else so certainly there are good questions to continue to discuss and I think Tom nagels interesting book mine and cosmos does discuss those questions and and there are things that perhaps don't fit with when Tom says with a naturalistic view of the universe he's not saying that the alternative there is necessarily a theistic view of the universe he's rather saying perhaps as I've been saying that there may be a realm of reality that is not open to scientific exploration and this realm of reality might be things like ethics ethical values and might be things like the nature of consciousness and and tom thinks freedom I'm not sure that I agree with him in terms of freedom as opposed to determinism but but it's possible and there are things that we don't understand fully from that respect so yeah those are those those remain open questions as to how we must understand them I'm I'm intrigued that one of my as a Christian you wouldn't be surprised you know one of my so the philosophical heroes is CS Lewis and just to be cheeky of course it's interesting that you know Lewis was an atheist for thirty years of his life before just beginning the journey led him back to Christianity of course the first step on that journey was from atheism to idealism which is the idea that basically material physical things not the only things that exist as also this realm of abstract whatever's and then he slid from idealism 2d ISM deism to theism and theism it's Christianity but he said the biggest jump was that one from atheism to idealism so I catchy can you say halfway there Peter come on I noticed that you used the verb slid which is not necessarily desirable form of progress so I'll I'll stop sliding I think at that point it's been fabulous having you based on the program today and perhaps just as we end we could just have a your short answer to the final question that I'm going to put you both which simply is it tell us from your point of view Peter where do we find the value of a human being what where where is that what is it exactly what what's it grounded in for you to me the value of human being as with the value of many non-human animals consists in our capacity to have conscious experiences to have minds to suffer to enjoy things and to find things favourable to us and find things unfavorable and finally Andy where do you believe the value of human beings comes from I come back to the idea that it's in human nature that as the Bible says God created human beings in His image which means it doesn't matter what your capacities are doesn't matter what your race is as a matter of your gender is any of those things that you bear that that value and that dignity and and everything else flows from there including as I've said time and time again which is hugely important to me as I know it is to Peter how we treat the the nonhuman creation that I have a duty that comes from there to the rest of the other non-human world that God has made which I can also of course see as a gift of the same God who made me Andy Peter thank you both for being on the program today thank you Justin and thank you Andy it's been a pleasure talking likewise Peter thank you so much things coming all this way and Justin thanks for having a space but updates bonus content and exclusive debate clips from the series of sign up at the big conversation dot show you

Channel: Unbelievable?

Views: 78,293

Keywords: unbelievable, justin brierley, premier christian radio, christianity, atheism, philosophy, faith, theology, Peter Singer, Andy Bannister, the big conversation, God, abortion, euthanasia, disability, human rights

Id: JiM8ul3oRxE

Length: 79min 38sec (4778 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 02 2018

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[u/metalhead82]

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