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Dinesh D'Souza: I think,
the argument about morality is not the fact that we couldn’t be good
without God. Think about it this way, if moral rules are universal, then
that is something very odd, because if we are evolved primates, driven
by an impulse to survive and reproduce, it is conceivable that one
group or another might have, through some set of accidents, come up
with a set of rules that cut the other direction. Think about the
essence of morality, it is to militate against self interest. If
morality were congruent with self-interest we wouldn’t need it. Nobody
needs to tell you to go out and make money. There’s is a natural drive
telling you to do that. No one has to tell you to be powerful, to seek
what you want. Morality is the voice that tells you against what you
want to do. You’re walking on the river bank. You hear, “Help, help,
help, I’m drowning” You’re not a very good swimmer. Your natural
instinct is to keep going. That guy is nothing to you. It’s not your
brother, it’s not your wife, it’s a stranger. But, the little voice in
your head turns on and says, “You should try to help. At least put out a
stick.” Now what I ask is, where does this voice that has no Darwinian
explanation whatsoever, call it the voice of pure
altruism, and can cannot be explained by reciprocal advantage, or
genetic kinship or any of the other elaborate theories…. [come from?]
Christopher Hitchens: “Animals
do it. Animals do it.”
Dinesh D'Souza: “Well if
animals do it that’s interesting in its own right, but it doesn’t mean
that that there’s a Darwinian explanation that’s been given. You’ve
simply extended the problem further.”
Christopher Hitchens: “Animals
do it.”
Moderator: “OK. With that, with that… (laughs)…”
Christopher Hitchens: “Primates
do it. Many other mammals do it, for the obvious reason, for the
survival of the species…"
Moderator: “With that we must call this part of the debate to an
end.” |
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Paul
Kurtz, who is who is considered to be the Father of Secular
Humanism, is editor-in-chief of
Free Inquiry,
professor emeritus of philosophy at the State University of New York at
Buffalo, and founder and chair of the
Center for Inquiry. The
above quotation is taken from an article in the
Free Inquiry
magazine, Volume 24, Number 6. The article was adapted
from Kurtz’s book, (Prometheus Books, 2004), Forbidden Fruit: The
Ethics of Secularism (revised edition) which presents the
case for secular ethics. |
