Of Moral Compasses and Society

In the Garden of Eden, one of the choices which faced the first humans was a choice between what is good for the community and what is good for the individual. Adam and Eve faced a moral choice to either obey God’s community standards or obey the voice of selfishness personified in a snake. We know very little of the thought processes of Adam and Eve in that prehistoric garden, only the vignettes God reveals in the words of Genesis 2, 3, and 4, and we do well to learn what God seeks to teach us through their lives.

Genesis 1 begins with the Creator as a community of persons creating a marvelously interwoven interdependent biosphere.[1] The emphasis is on the blue planet, third from the sun in our solar system, but of course the entire universe is God’s creation and humans are asked to care for it all. The Creator, in his first instructions to humanity, gives them the task of caring for all that has been created.[2] There are a couple of clues that this is a community task and not the individual responsibility of one couple. First, we get an indication that the creation is so large that two would not be able to care for it all. Secondly, Adam and Eve receive the instructions to be fruitful and multiply so that there may be more people to join in the care of the garden, the planet, and all of creation. There is much more that could be said of the plan God has for the care of his creation, but most of it comes down to the fact that humans are created in the image of God and are designed to care for what he cares about. Thus, humans must care for God’s creation, which of course includes other human beings. The task God gives humans is daunting: take care of a whole planet and indeed a whole universe, but the Creator makes the planet (and the universe) remarkably self-sustaining and self-renewing.[3]

Then, going back to the Garden of Eden, we read of that first choice: to do what is good for the community of humans and for the creation, or to do what enhances personal knowledge and personal power. The temptation that is offered is devious and enticing for any human: trust that what God has said is right for his creation or take control and do things our own individual way. Listen in to the insidious temptation: “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden?’ … You will not certainly die, … when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Confusing words for any listener. “Wait, what did God say? What did the snake say?” Ultimately, a choice is made between following the instructions of the One who knows how the universe works (following the manual – so to speak) or choosing to do what enhances the individual.

Ever since that first inflection point of choice, we have seen humanity come to similar places of decision over and over again. When tribal families in geographic areas face a new group of families with similar or different lifestyles, they must decide whether they will fight against them for the resources of that place or collaborate together in an expanded community. When the great empires and kingdoms of the world rise up, the individual must choose between obeying the community/kingdom laws or choosing what is good for themselves/their small family. When democratic governments rise to the forefront and recognize the tensions and balances between the individual, the society, the family, and world cultures, the individual must again make choices between personal pursuits and the pursuits of the society at large. In current vernacular, the individual must ask, “Should I work to ensure there is enough hand-sanitizer to meet the needs of the community or stockpile the product and sell it for a profit?”

Keith Boag, an opinion columnist for CBC News, recently wrote an article which describes the tension in our world today: the right of the individual to pursue happiness and the obligations of those who live together in society. Boag’s examples are taken from recent incidents in the United States of America but are written as a caution to all people and particularly to Canadians. His words are more political than theological, but I would suggest that the roots of the tensions go back to the moral choices of the Garden of Eden.

Boag gets to the heart of the matter when he quotes Christopher Beem, director of the McCourtney School of Democracy in saying that “… Americans need to challenge the idea that everyone is just pursuing their own happiness as individuals…. When we live together in society, we depend on each other. And therefore, we have obligations to each other."[4] Truly, this is a very old tension: the good of the individual and the good of the society. The article gives several examples of the bad behaviours that can occur when individuals take advantage of the society in which they live and pursue their own happiness as individuals (read the entire article and be prepared to be angry). Of course, the article also exposes our own hearts and our own susceptibility to making the wrong choice in any given circumstance. Both of Boag and Beem challenge us to reconsider the importance of the society or societies within which we live. They are suggesting that the happiness of a society as well as the individual is something to be pursued.

From the very beginning, God knew that we would face the choices we are facing today. He knows how societies, cultures, and planets work best and has given us his guidance. He knows that we are susceptible to the temptation of individualism, tribalism, and selfishness and yet he allows us to choose our own paths forward. Like Adam and Eve, we get to choose where we will find our moral compass.

  

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[1] Granted, one must look closely for hints that the Creator is a community of persons in Genesis and one needs the larger arc of the entire Bible to understand the nature of a Creator who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit (see for example John 1:1-3 and Colossians 1:15-20) but the seeds of this theology are definitely sown in the beginnings of our Bible and the beginnings of creation.

[2] Genesis 1:28 says, “Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue (or steward) it. Rule over (or take care of) the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky and over every living creature that moves on the ground.”

[3] There are many examples of how the biosystem works in harmony. A simple example is the earth’s water cycle as explained in the article entitled “Water Cycle” in Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle

[4] “Coronavirus puts a spotlight on the moral compass of America,” Keith Boag, CBC News, March 23, 2020, https://bit.ly/3drSMjs

Pedestrian Fatality and Autonomous Cars

(Click on thumbnails for larger image)

A recent pedestrian fatality involving an autonomous car is simply the first such tragedy. Science News reported that a woman died crossing the street when a self-driving car, deployed by Uber, hit her.[1] Writers, engineers, and computer science experts had predicted this for some time. What will this mean specifically for the autonomous car industry and artificial intelligence in general? What algorithms, if any, need to be rewritten? What logic did the self-driving car’s onboard computers use in choosing to enter the area when a human being was also in the street?

I have previously discussed this possibility and its implications in other posts.[2] A number of questions now come to mind. Did the car make a decisive choice to hit the pedestrian to avoid harm to those in the car? Could the onboard AI have made a different choice? How could the outcome have been changed? Investigators will need to ask these and several more questions to get to a place of assigning responsibility for this accident. What will the law have to say? Who could be fined? What sort of lawsuit could be filed? We await the outcome to see how manufacturers of autonomous cars might learn from this incident and the ramifications for all car makers.

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[1] http://bit.ly/2FOICfm

[2] http://bit.ly/28VmLE1 and http://bit.ly/2AsuDZI

Good without God?

Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote that “If God does not exist, everything is permitted” (The Brothers Karamazov). Others have taken up this thought and asked the question, “Can we be good without God?” and John Stackhouse asks the question this way,

Are there adequate grounds to make categorical moral judgments if one jettisons belief in a divinity at least something like the God of Abraham—a God who is all-good, all-wise, and all-powerful, and who has communicated a sense of goodness to humanity and expects us to discern and follow it?[1]

Fyodor Dostoevsky was a Christian who wrote from a perspective that suggested that God exists and that we need God if we are ever to make judgements about good and evil. On the other hand, Friedrich Nietzsche, in his book, Beyond Good and Evil, came at things from an atheistic, or at least agnostic, position and concluded that we live in a world where there are no moral absolutes. He would suggest that the voices we hear today are merely the views of individuals or groups. Each may be strongly convinced of the obvious and intrinsic rightness of their view but we have no measure by which to choose the views of the white-supremacist society over the Christian church group or humanist think-tank.

Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, two brilliant thinkers of the nineteenth century, make it clear that such determinations indeed come down to a matter of faith. We either start from a perspective of faith in the idea that God does not exist, without being able to prove it; or we start from a perspective that God does exist, without being able to prove it. Once we have chosen one of these two paths, things become clearer, but not completely clear. Stackhouse points out that we still must use the mind we have been given (or for the atheist, the mind that has assembled out of the primordial stardust) to make decisions about how we will live.

Stackhouse concludes that,

… we may find that we lack good (enough) reason for holding to this or that opinion, and we might therefore be open to changing it. We may find instead that we have very strong grounds to keep believing what we believe, and so we will. In both cases, we are better off taking the time to think things through, rather than just blithely (or bellicosely) assuming we’re right.[2]

Paul, the Apostle, concludes that, “Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.” 1 Corinthians 13:12 (NLT).

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[1] Can we be coherently good without God? John Stackhouse blog, 2017-12-19, http://www.contextwithlornadueck.com/2017/12/16/im-sorry-patton-oswalt-but-we-have-to-pick/

[2] Can we be coherently good without God? John Stackhouse blog, 2017-12-19, http://www.contextwithlornadueck.com/2017/12/16/im-sorry-patton-oswalt-but-we-have-to-pick/

Autonomous Cars

Self-driving cars, without humans in the driver’s seat, are being tested on the streets of some cities. I used to joke with my nieces that once they were driving I would be turning in my driver’s license. Now, I am not sure whether I should be filled with awe at this amazing autonomous technology or fearing for my life. There are still many questions about how robots will make critical choices (see Robotic Laws). The tech companies readily admit that putting autonomous cars on the streets is a form of beta-testing and that there will be accidents involving cars without human drivers. However, the rationale for putting autonomous vehicles on the streets is that, ultimately, robot cars will lead to fewer accidents and fewer traffic fatalities on our roads. This is the argument in an article in Science News: “When it comes to self-driving cars, what’s safe enough?” by Maria Temming, November 21, 2017.

What kind of backlash against these autonomous cars can we expect when an autonomous car collides with a car piloted by a private citizen or professional driver? Temming gives us a possible scenario and asks, “What happens when a 4-year-old in the back of a car that’s operated by her mother gets killed by an autonomous car?” This is a real possibility. Will the public be quick to blame the robot or the human? How much will driving conditions factor into the investigation? How will Canadian winters affect autonomous cars? The title of the article is indeed the pertinent question, “What’s safe enough?”