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A Functionalist might very well forward the argument, that in a deterministic world — one where outcomes of interactions are governed by predictable, knowable laws — the “purpose to life” question is as insignificant as asking what is the meaning of the electromagnetic spectrum, gravity or equal and opposite reactions. They have no telos; they just exist. “Purpose of life” is just silly romanticism, at best. Another group that would forward a similar argument, coming from the Philosophy of Religion and having a large overlap in membership, would be atheists.
A Functionalist might very well forward the argument, that in a deterministic world — one where outcomes of interactions are governed by predictable, knowable laws — the “purpose to life” question is as insignificant as asking what is the meaning of the electromagnetic spectrum, gravity or equal and opposite reactions. They have no telos; they just exist. “Purpose of life” is just silly romanticism, at best. Another group that would forward a similar argument, coming from the Philosophy of Religion and having a large overlap in membership, would be atheists.
While it isn’t a requirement to be an atheist to espouse a Functionalist viewpoint, I’m not convinced that a religious Functionalist is a logical possibility. The existence of a divine being works directly against a deterministic universe; the possibility of truly supernatural events (ones that completely violate physical laws) does not fit into the casual nature of observed phenomena. It might be easier to prove the existence of god than it would be to find a theistic Functionalist that is rational and has truly thought both positions through. I must concede my agnosticism to the existence of a real theistic Functionalist, but like god, I’d love to meet one; I have many questions to ask.
It might seem that the atheistic Functionalist worldview would be as morally bankrupt as Shelley painted Dr. Frankenstein before he had seen his monster. It might seem that if the only thing I need concern myself with is continuing to live and producing more of my own kind of life, then I could do an amazing amount of damage to the greater society around me and not be obligated to feel any guilt or remorse. Logically speaking, what is to stop a Functionalist from being unethical, if you cannot have morals without god and it is unlikely that a Functionalist could reconcile the religious “soul” concept? I ran across an example of that exact concept in a post by Jeff Mason, on Talking Philosophy, The Philosophers’ Magazine Blog.
Teaching ethics a number of years ago, I was told by an earnest student that there can be no morality without God. He seemed to agree implicitly with the idea that “If God does not exist, then all things are permitted.” He also believed in a visceral way that without God’s restraining hand, people would become riddled with vice, steal, kill, rape, take drugs and indulge in sinful sex. It is as if humans are just waiting to escape the leash and run amok. On this view, there is no reason whatsoever to be moral without the promise of heaven in the next life or the threat of hell fire. I found upon asking that many of my students felt the same way.
That attitude is best described by the divine command theory of ethics, where a god decided what was right and what was wrong and all a person has to do to be good and moral is follow his commandments that are conveniently in (normally cryptic) religious books. If that theory and the students’ sentiments were true, you would expect to see the highest crime rates in the communities that hold college degrees — especially neurosurgeons, since working in that field it would be very difficult to not see the mind as only the brain, and they see the brain every time they go to work.
People that don’t believe in the mind (ba, soul, or what have you) are less likely to treasure the promise of future rewards or fear the wrath of a god, and while immorality and sins are not crimes, at least in Christianity it is a sin to commit a crime. Since Functionalism claims that the mind is reducible to the brain, the concept of a naturally immortal brain is completely lost on them. Therefore, because some form of Functionalism seems to be a major philosophic influence in most disciplines, a college education, particularly in the sciences, should be some kind of precursor to criminal behavior.
College should be a gateway institution to prison. First hit of Plato or Rand is free, and then you’ll start moving into some Locke and Mill. Next thing you know you’re into the really heavy stuff like Kant and Rousseau. Soon enough you’re going to find yourself living out the rest of your days in Dickens’ Newgate, and that’s if you’re lucky. You could end up strung out on the stacks at a dusty library looking for your next hit, or huddled over a clay tablet in some foreign ditch with a dead language. Dead in a ditch!
People that dedicate their entire lives to trying to understand the universe in deterministic terms seem the reasonable choice that would also think of the mind in a deterministic ways. That is not to say that all scientists are Functionalists, because the scope of science is so broad that many would not likely form an opinion on this topic, as it would be too far removed from their own specialty. Still, they are far more likely to examine deep metaphysical topics than people that hold dogmatically to their faith to inform them on everything.
So, it would be reasonable to expect a greater number of scientists, which by the nature of their fields require a significant amount of post-secondary education, to be criminals than religious believers. However, we see just the opposite. The higher the education level a person has, the less likely they are to commit a crime.
The ratio of American Christians matches the ratio of American Christian criminals, but the same ratio doesn’t hold true for the number of Atheists to prisoners. In fact, Christians are 50 times more likely to commit a crime that would lead to a jail sentence than a godless atheist. And yet atheists are still (most likely) only trusted about as much as (or distrusted more than) known rapists, but Muslims are definitely more trusted than Atheists are in almost all situations (I hate margins of error in statics).
About 1% of the total US population is sitting in prison right now. There is approximately one Atheist per ten people in the US, but three out of four Americans are Christians and one out of seven is some other religion. For every 190 Americans, there is one Christians in prison, and for every 600 citizens there is one person of a different faith in prison. However, (and this is the important part) it takes a population of 68,000 Americans for there to be one Atheist in prison. In a city like New York (assuming national average which is lower than the actual crime rate), of 8.1 million New Yorkers there are 57,000 in prison, about 56,890 of them are religious, but only 110 of them are Atheists (despite the fact you could expect about 810,000 New Yorkers to be Atheists). That gives the Atheist community a criminal rate of 1:10,000 verses the “Faithfull’s” rate of about 1:20. (I don’t have to worry as much about having to bail my atheist friends out of jail than I do my religious ones. I have never personally seen a gathering of 10,000 Atheists, but I know I have been to many churches with over 20 people. How many hardened criminals was I exposed to as a child?)
Yes, I am beating this dead horse. I do it only to make the point that atheists are WAY less likely to violate another human’s rights than people of faith. As far as I can see, a well-reasoned Functionalist would be an atheist. Religion is a factor in what causes people to be criminals, but that is post for another day.
So, 90% of “faithful” Americans, being 133 times more likely to commit crimes, distrust 10% of Americans that do not believe in a god, even though, statistically speaking, the Christians and members of other religious groups are vastly more likely to be criminals. So how can it be that one of the least trusted groups happens to have the lowest per capita incarceration rates?
W. T. Root, professor of psychology at the Univ. of Pittsburgh, examined 1,916 prisoners and said “Indifference to religion, due to thought, strengthens character,” adding that Unitarians, Agnostics, Atheists and Free-Thinkers are absent from penitentiaries or nearly so. (Link)
So how does indifference to religion and rejecting a presupposed meaning of life “strengthen character”, encourage someone to be more law-abiding and potentially more virtuous? Believe it or not, it is rather simple. The rational person that rejects the divine command theory of ethics, after examining both religious and nonreligious teachings, is capable of accepting whatever moral dictates stand the test of reason, no matter where they come from. The truly devout religiously faithful must follow the dictates of whatever religion they profess.
That is not to say that all religious people follow every commandment faithfully. A person that holds to the direct teachings of Christ would rarely fall on the wrong side of the law. However, we would call people mass-murderers if they blindly followed the commands and examples found Deuteronomy, Exodus, Leviticus, Proverbs, 2 Chronicles, Zechariah, Numbers, 1 and 2 Kings, 1 Samuel,Isaiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, Jeremiah, 1 Samuel, Joshua, Judges, the teachings ofthe apostle Paul in Romans, and the example of Peter in Acts, just to name a few.
The Functionalist has a variety of theories of morals to examine, and for the past five millennia (since the time of Socrates) there have been continuing secular efforts to base ethical behavior on reason and logic, and not arbitrary lists of rules purported to be handed down from a god. Mind you, good portions of the early thoughts on this have been completely lost. Sometime after the fall of Roman Empire, we actually forgot how to read Greek (about the same time when most of us forgot how to read altogether), so we have no idea how many great works ended up lining medieval birdcages, but hey, graecum est; non legitur. For hundreds of years the Church leadership from time to time did try to burn every heretical book, everything that did not agree with the approved Bible, but I guess that was better than burning the heretics themselves. Although one cannot blame the lack of surviving works solely on a zealous few. Time robs us of more precious knowledge than any other source, and if a book was written on a papyrus scroll, and that scroll was not painstakingly transcribed again and again by the dwindling literate population of the dark ages, it ceased to exist when the paper rotted away, and hey graecum est; non legitur.
Some lucky archeologist might just find some lost texts hidden away under our feet. The sites of ancient cities are generally good places to build modern cities for the exact same reasons. Considering that 46% of all the land in Europe is either paved over or under continuous human use, and 5% more is wetlands and bodies of water, hidden texts could be difficult to find. Even if we did find them, it is doubtful that they would shed more philosophic light on the topic than the 17th-21th century Ethicists have.
I say all of that to show that one does not need religion to be a moral person. Nor does one have to believe in ba, a soul or even a mind. The Functionalist can be on even ground morally, ethically and legally with any religious devotee that can be named since the beginning of Western Civilization. In fact, the Functionalist is likely on the moral high ground, because the devil is in the details, and the modern Philosophies of Ethics have proven far more nuanced than the divine command theory, which stagnated 2,000 or so years ago. So, let me return from the Philosophies or Religion and Ethics to the realm of the Mind.
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