Christian views on The Moral Instinct

[JohnHarthover]

Hi, I was wondering what the views are from Christians on Steve Pinker's recent article in the New York Times, entitled "The Moral Instinct" (Currently #9 on most e-mailed articles). Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. I was wondering whether Christians find what he wrote to be consistent with Christianity and general views on it.

This is a link to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/m...em&ex=1200546000&en=61b714508a224f25&ei=5087

 

[ebia]

I got bored about half way through, but what I read wasn't inconsistant with Christianity any more than (say) the theory of gravity is.

 

[Digit]

If there is a part of it which you feel may pertain to us, please can you quote it directly, so we may comment on it. I too gave up after a few pages, sorry but I don't have that much time.

Cheers,
Digit

 

[Stinker]

H I think he was trying to maintain that the source for general morality is in our genetics.

 

[MarkRohfrietsch]

Hi, I was wondering what the views are from Christians on Steve Pinker's recent article in the New York Times, entitled "The Moral Instinct" (Currently #9 on most e-mailed articles). Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University. I was wondering whether Christians find what he wrote to be consistent with Christianity and general views on it.

This is a link to the article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/m...em&ex=1200546000&en=61b714508a224f25&ei=5087

Read some of it.

Moral instinct is in line with Christian doctrine in that mankind obtained the knowledge of good and evil (along with original sin) at the fall in the garden of Eden.

Even non Christians seem to know how to be kind and charitable without faith.

 

[Lukaris]

While Borlaug is a dedicated humanitarian, Gates not the bad guy he can be made out to be, I stopped at the point where it said that Mother Theresa extolled suffering to the sick in well financed missions. That is doubtful, since those she prayed for in this case were the terminally ill (& discarded) in a home she founded for since Calcutta hospitals are already full. Perhaps worldly wisdom deems praying for the salvation of the terminally ill is "mean."

 

[salida]

True even nonchristians know how to be charitable because God wrote his laws into mens hearts. Men know good from bad deep down.

 

[RXDrugs]

God determining morality?

That seems very, very silly to me. Wouldn't what's 'good' be rather arbitrary if this were the case?

 

[Lukaris]

Considering the fact that most animals also don't generally cannabalize eachother (that isn't really a good trait to allow your species to survive) or are randomly mean to others it can be argued that it is part of our instinct and not directly attributed to humanity created by god.

Christians consider all traits that point to life as from God and all that point to death as from fallen nature (the consequence of sin). If one wants to consider randomness a determining factor it seems to negate the conclusion. Randomness can be an aspect of fallen nature but it does not act as what determines the universe to a Christian.

 

[JohnHarthover]

Well for those that decided to stop half way through, he later argues something along the lines of: our naturally endowed moral sense is flawed and that we should use logic rather then just feeling to make moral choices. He uses our response to global warming as an example.

I am also intrested to know how Christians feel about his disection of morality in general.

 

[ebia]

Well for those that decided to stop half way through, he later argues something along the lines of: our naturally endowed moral sense is flawed and that we should use logic rather then just feeling to make moral choices. He uses our response to global warming as an example.

I am also intrested to know how Christians feel about his disection of morality in general.

Well, logic can only make moral choices if you feed in some moral assumptions (ie values and a worldview) - it can't build a morality from scratch. So it's likely to be as "fallible" as anything else. I don't see any evidence that the "myth of progress" is capable of delivering, let alone is delivering, on its promises with regard to human behaviour (individual or collective).

Additionally, if our feeling is based at least in part in our (very good) ability at pattern matching its likely to be a lot better than our ability to apply strict reason to real world complex situations.