Columbine and God
A Response to Tony Woodlief

Sullivan directs us here where Woodlief, writing on the anniversary of the Columbine murders, says this:

There’s little left to say about evil, in a secularized culture with a Christianesque patina, once the tired whipping boys of culture and video games and bullying are laid aside. They weren’t gamers? Weren’t bullied? Weren’t molested or obsessed or wrongly medicated? Well then. Could have happened to anyone.

And, again, on behalf of our allegedly deterministic culture:

Why would two young men dream of slaughtering hundreds? A pin fell out. Could have happened to anyone.

But Woodleif responds:

We none of us can ask whether these parents labored as best they could to bring their children to a knowledge of the Living God, because polite, educated people don’t talk that way.

Here's some stuff about which I think Woodlief and I agree:

We have, as a culture, shown at least some tendency to move in the direction of determinism. There is a kind of middle-brow, Discovery-Channel-level view of ourselves and our minds that is inclined in the direction of determinism. No one seems to bat an eye when, every other week or so, we hear some report of a neuroscientific experiment--often badly misinterpreted--that is supposed to put another brick in the determinist wall. My students have been told that they are, in essence, robots programmed by their culture, and many of them seem to believe it. The intellectual and political left, of course, is passionately devoted to excuse-making, and so has a natural inclination to accept our robotification, as responsibility evaporates along with freedom.

This semi-conscious slide into determinism is alarming in part because we seem so sanguine about it. You'd think that the abolition of man would get more of a rise out of people.

Now, just because determinism is tragic doesn't make it false. But I'm not addressing its truth or falsity here. I'm just saying that if determinism doesn't discomfit you, then you're probably not paying attention. (Though you might be a compatibilist--something which is tragic in its own, different way...)

And here's a second problem: at the same middle-brow level, it often seems as if we as a culture may be sliding toward moral nihilism, or its infinitely-more-confused cousin, cultural relativism. It seems, for example, almost impossible for my students to write about right and wrong without putting the words in scare quotes. In fact, they generally seem unable to write about right and wrong at all, but instead commonly write about what is "considered right" and what is "considered wrong." This, too, should be alarming to us.

On all this, I think Woodleif and I might agree.

Now for the disagreement: Woodlief mistakenly believes that God is the answer here.

If we're worried about the fact that determinism and/or moral nihilism might be true, God doesn't help. God could make a deterministic universe or a non-deterministic one, and whether we are free or not has nothing to do with him. We might live in a liberatarian, Godless universe, or a deterministic Godly universe, or in either of the other two combinations. The question of the existence of God and the question of free will are almost certainly unrelated to each other. Christianity seems to be committed to libertarianism (that is, to the view that we are free), so if Chrstianity were true, then we'd be free. But we don't need God to be free and responsible. Ergo we needn't teach people about God to teach them that they are free and responsible.

There's a common misconception that God is required for morality--but it's just that, a misconception. Again, Christianity seems committed to moral realism, so again Christianity is one way out of nihilism, but not close to the only way. Most moral theories don't require God in the picture, and work just as well without him. Only divine command theorists really seem to require God--and the divine command theory is as conclusively refuted as philosophical theories ever get.

So, intellectually speaking, God can't help us out.

The only way in which God or appeals thereto might help here is that some people might be more strongly inclined to be good if they believe in God. Perhaps the promise of heaven or the threat of hell helps to keep them in line. Most people don't require such incentives to be good, but some do, so the view might have some utility. But, again, it's not required. Most people are motivated to act morally without threats about the afterlife--and among those who aren't, wordly threats tend to do just fine.

Woodlif's suggestion that speaking more to the Columbine shooters about the allegedly "living God" was the key to stopping the murders is just not really plausible. Now, I'm all for stopping our semi-conscious slide into determinism and nihilism, and I think you're a fool if you think that such theories have nothing to do with how people actually act. It would be extremely surprising if we could tell people over and over again that nothing they could do is really blameworthy without having some effect on their actions. That is, it would be surprising if such a theory had no practical consequences. But none of this means that we have to teach people Christianity--Christianity is not the only alternative to nihilism. It's just one view among many, and not the most plausible. There's a heck of a lot of space between "teach them they're robots living in a morally featureless universe" and "teach them about Jesus."

And, finally, we ought to note Christianity's role in nudging us toward nihilism. Christianity has had an inclination to make patently absurd claims about morality--for example, it has had an inclination to identify all non-marital and non-reproductive sex as immoral. This, I think, has led to much of the current skepticism and cynicism about morality. We grow up hearing the "sex is sin" mantra, and eventually most of us see it for the lie it is. Some, unfortunately, go on to infer that if claims about the immorality of sex were fictitious, then perhaps all claims about morality are fictitious. Christianity itself has given morality a bad name through promiscuous accusations of immorality. If Christians want people to take morality seriously, one thing they could do is get seroius about it themselves, and save the concept for, as we'd say back home, lyin' cheatin' and stealin' instead of sex, drugs and rock'n'roll.