Mere Morality by Dan Barker–An Extended Book Analysis (Part 1): What’s the Passing Grade for Morality?

Recently, the former fundamentalist preacher turned atheist Dan Barker has come out with a book entitled, Mere Morality, in which he essentially makes two arguments: (A) Morality is the result of evolutionary forces, and (B) The morality found in the Bible is, in fact, horrible and immoral. In fact, this topic of morality was one of the questions Mr. Barker and I addressed in our recent debate. (My full comments on that issue can be found here and here). All that said, though, I thought it would be worthwhile to expand on my thoughts and opinions of Barker’s book.

Barker explains in his book that he got the idea for the title Mere Morality from C.S. Lewis’ book Mere Christianity. Just as Lewis attempted to distill all the various beliefs and practices of all Christian branches and denominations into what he called “mere Christianity,” Barker set out to distill all beliefs regarding morality into what he calls “mere morality.” After raising the question as to where morality comes from—it is conscience, it is some kind of transcendent code or prescribed rules?—Barker says,  “I would like to suggest Mere Morality as the starting point. It is a C, a passing grade, a driver’s permit.”

And so, in this new book review series, I am going to evaluate the arguments Barker lays out in his book and see if, in fact, he gets a passing grade in logic and reason. These posts are going to read more like my on-going conversation with Barker’s book. I am simply going to start from the beginning and work my way through it, commenting and critiquing Barker’s arguments as I go.

Preface

Barker begins his book by relating an incident he had at an airport one time in which he caught a baby that had begun to fall off of some luggage upon which his parents had set him. Barker comments that he didn’t cognitively process and think through his actions, but just instinctively reached out to catch the baby. He writes: “The action was beneath the level of rational and moral judgment. It was biological” (15).

Now, on one level he might be right: that decision was not a result of some deliberative process. But I find that his immediate jump from that action to making the claim that morality is a matter of biology is quite the jump indeed. First, I think most of us would “instinctively” try to catch a whole number of things—a phone, a computer, a doll—that was about to fall off some baggage in an airport. I don’t think we should consider the impulse to catch a falling object, be it a computer or a baby, as necessarily a moral act.

Secondly, what biological evidence is there that our sense of morality is, in fact, a matter of biology? Instead of providing actual evidence to support his assertion, Barker instead just provides more assertions: “We are animals, after all. We come prepackaged with an array of instincts inherited from our ancestors who were able to survive long enough to allow their genes—or closely related genes—to be passed to the next generation because they had those tendencies. An individual who does not care about falling babies is less likely to have his or her genes copied into the future” (15).

To clarify, to support his assertion that morality is a matter of biology, Barker then asserts human beings are nothing more than animals, and then implies that morality is an instinct passed on genetically and that it is a beneficial instinct to ensure the survival of our species.

Assertion. Assertion. Assertion.

First of all, yes, we are biologically related to the animal kingdom, and so, in a biological sense, what Barker says is true. But he then assumes that there is nothing unique about human beings at all. And here’s the problem: when faced with something unique to human beings that is not shared anywhere else in the animal kingdom—namely, a sense of morality—Barker is faced with the reality that there is something unique about human beings that set us apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. This reality contradicts Barker’s assumption that human beings are nothing more than animals.

And so, in order to provide an explanation for this utterly unique sense of morality in human beings, Barker asserts that our sense of morality is an instinct that is genetically passed down for the survival of the species. Of course, there is no evidence of this at all. As we will see in the course of these posts, though, Barker makes this assertion time and time again: morality is an instinct passed on through our genes that has the evolutionary effect of propagating our species. I will elaborate on why this is wrong when Barker expands his thoughts on this later on in the book. But for now, it cannot be stressed enough: there is no evidence for Barker’s assertion, and all he gives to support his assertion is more assertions.

In any case, after making his assertion that our sense of morality is a product of instincts and genetics, Barker then takes aim at “religion,” or more specifically, Christianity. Of course, his attack on Christianity can be described as little more than cheap shots and shallow caricatures. He writes, “Faith is irrelevant to morality. Prayer might give believers the illusion they are doing something meaningful, but it is no more effective than random chance. Prayer is inaction. Believing in God is not the way to be good” (15).

Let’s be clear about this: that description of “faith” might sound convincing to someone who already is antagonistic to Christianity, yet who has no intention of actually trying to understand what Christianity actually teaches about things like faith and prayer—but for all practical purposes, that statement is  word salad. What does he mean by “faith”? How does he think prayer works? Illusion? Inaction? What does any of that mean? Such statements might be the equivalent of catnip in an atheist echo chamber, but for all intents and purposes, they are made from a position of ignorant caricatures.

Perhaps the only way to respond to such statements is this: “I would appreciate it if you first took the time to define your terms before you launch into such babbling invective.”

Three Moral Minds and the Harm Principle

That being said, if there is one thing clear in the preface, it’s this: Barker does not think Christianity…or “faith,” or “prayer,” or anything like that…serves as a good basis for morals. Instead, the basis for morality is to be found in evolutionary instincts and genetics. But let’s face it, that still really needs to be teased out a little more. And this is precisely what Barker attempts to do in his next chapter, Three Moral Minds. In it, Barker alters the image of a person with an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other, with Reason as the head in the middle, Instinct (the “biological outcome of the decisions  made by the minds of your ancestors”) on one shoulder, and Law (the decisions of society) on the other shoulder.

Essentially, Barker argues that one must use one’s reason to navigate between one’s instincts and the rules of society in any given situation to assess what is the least amount of harm—what Barker calls the Harm Principle. Whatever causes the least amount of harm, therefore, is what is to be deemed moral, and whatever threatens survival of the species is to be deemed immoral.

On the surface, that might sound pretty good, but as soon as one just begins to think about Barker’s proposal, one will see countless problems with it. First, his definition of “instinct” is rather odd: the biological outcome of the decisions made by the minds of your ancestors? Instinct isn’t a decision—it’s an instinct. We can decide whether or not to act on any given instinct, but to claim that the instinct themselves are the result of conscious decisions that are then somehow passed down from our ancestors is nonsensical.

Second, do we really want to use Barker’s harm principle and say that whatever is a threat to our species is to be deemed immoral and that whatever promotes the survival of our species is moral? If you say yes, then just realize that the worst human atrocities in human history have been done precisely with the justification that it was to promote the health and survival of the human species. Communism sought to scientifically breed a better human being who would embrace Socialism, and Nazism sought to purify the master race. And the thinking behind both of them was that of the Eugenics movement.

The point is that if Barker’s harm principle is the basis for morality, things get very subjective and vague very quickly. Both Hitler and Stalin claimed mass killings of “parasites” was necessary for the survival and improvement of the human race. Shockingly, in my debate with Barker, when I posed this to him, he actually said that Hitler’s gassing of six million people wasn’t really immoral, because Hitler thought he was improving the species. We just have deemed the Holocaust immoral because we don’t like it.

Hitler, Jephthah, and a Bible Lesson

And so, it turns out that Barker’s attempt at defining what constitutes morality leads to a kind of subjectivism that is not only diabolical but is also highly inconsistent. For throughout most of his books (as well as this one) Barker spends an extreme amount of time condemning various passages (or more rather, various cherry-picked, decontextualized verses) in the Bible as being immoral. The result is something like this: “Look at Jephthah’s killing of his daughter! What kind of God would tell someone to kill his daughter? The God of the Bible is a genocidal, homicidal, immoral maniac! But Hitler’s gassing of six million Jews? Well, we say that’s immoral, but it really isn’t—Hitler thought he was doing something good.”

Not only is that assessment of the Holocaust unreasonable and flat out insane, but that assessment of the story of Jephthah is also just ignorant and biblically illiterate. The Book of Judges (along with Joshua, I/II Samuel, and I/II Kings) was compiled during the Babylonian Exile. It wasn’t made up out of whole cloth, mind you—it was based on earlier records that the Jews had brought with them into exile. And the point of all those books (Joshua to II Kings) was pretty simple. The Jews were in exile because they had broken their covenant with YHWH. And so, these books were written to answer a basic question: “How did we end up here?” These books sought to look back through their past and understand how things went so wrong. Therefore, what we are reading in these books is a cold, hard look at their failures, despite how many times YHWH continued to give them chance after chance.

And so, when we get to the Book of Judges and the story of Jephthah, the book is not exalting Jephthah as some sort of morally upright figure or paragon of virtue. He is clearly a brutal warlord whom YHWH uses to save the Israelites from Ammonite oppression, but at no point is Jephthah portrayed as a morally-upstanding fellow. Heck, after his defeat of the Ammonites, he turns around and starts a fight with his fellow Israelites.

And to top it off, he sacrifices his own daughter to YHWH, as if YHWH was just another pagan deity. Nowhere in the story does YHWH ask for a child sacrifice. The story should be shocking. The Jews reading this story during the exile wouldn’t be thinking, “Good for you, Jephthah!” No, they would be thinking, “How did we end up in exile? Oh yeah, we have a history of leaders who were essentially pagan in their thinking and actions. Whoops!” And what they would have realized is that, despite their sins, YHWH attempted to work with them time and time again.

But context and using intelligence and reason to understand the biblical text isn’t really a priority to Barker. He has an agenda. In my next post, I will look at the odd why in which Barker contrasts “human values” with “religious values.”