Virginia Tech, AstroProf and Morality
AstroProf has just written a very thoughtful and heartfelt post about the incident at Virginia Tech. I’ve come to really appreciate his thoughts and writings, his blog is of the highest quality, full of original posts from the mind of a critical thinker with deep convictions.
If he presents ideas in the classroom anywhere near as well as he does on his blog, I feel deprived because I never benefited from his teaching when I was a student. I would have loved to have been in one of his classes.
I’ve learned from his post that he is a man of faith, and that he has reconciled any perceived incompatibilities between science and religion. I find that to be an extraordinary accomplishment, one I am envious of. Personally, I struggle with concepts of religion, universal absolutes, anthropic principles, higher beings, fate, and anything that places special importance on humanity in the universe.
I know many astrophysicists who are devout Christians or otherwise spiritual. Studying astronomy really gets to a person sometimes, it certainly does me. The more I learn about the infinite possibilities that our universe contains, the more it touches me on a profound level. While I am an athiest, I find it impossible to look at the Hubble Deep Field and not feel an overwhelming sense of humility and veneration when I think about what that picture means. I see an aestheticism and elegance to the universe that fills me with what can only be described as worship.
In his post, AstroProf asks Why? Why did something like this happen? He hints that perhaps we need to offer more in university besides knowledge.
I’m not saying that we need dorm Bible studies, or a campus religion, or any such thing. Faith comes from within, between God and a human, not from other humans. I am merely saying that we need to think about filling students with something other than knowledge and not leaving them as empty shells. You don’t have to be a Christian to know that what this guy did was wrong. But, you do need to know that it was wrong, and that comes from a moral code that is based on your world view, and your world view is based on how you perceive yourself fitting into the world, and that often is based in faith. There’s more than book knowledge out there. You need something inside yourself to hold onto when the going gets tough.
As to the issue of
You don’t have to be a Christian to know that what this guy did was wrong. But, you do need to know that it was wrong, and that comes from a moral code that is based on your world view…
I feel I have something to offer because embedded in that phrase is a glimpse of why this incident may have happened. I would like to humbly offer my thoughts on the matter of morality and the question of why. I do so from a perspective that is not religious because I am not a religious man, rather these are simply conclusions I have come to and beliefs I hold based on my experience with life. I would never presume that they are right or even accurate, they are simply my thoughts, and as regular readers of this blog have come to learn, reading my thoughts is fraught with peril.
Technorati Tags: atheism, morality, Virginia Tech
In his book, Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth, Andrew Newberg writes that morality is a continuum and is usually defined in terms of acceptable behaviors and how individual actions affect other members of a group.
Virtually all groups, or societies, have some kind of social pact that denounces and punishes killing or harming others. Without it, the group can’t survive.
Individually, our moral code is developed early in a person’s life and the quality of that development is affected my a host of issues including how a parent raises a child, any mistreatment suffered while growing up, our place within our group, etc. These experiences, along with a host of biological factors relating to childhood development, end up defining how strong a person’s moral compass becomes.
In this way, morality becomes individualized and must be reconciled with the norms of any given society. It is vital to note that they are NOT always compatible.
Individuals within the same group have conflicting moral values, e.g, most people think lying is wrong, yet will tell lies to spare feelings or lie to a police officer to avoid getting a ticket. Further, most feel that killing is wrong, yet many support the death penalty. These are conflicting moral values and they exist everywhere to varying degrees.
Our morals appear to be strongly influenced by how connected we feel to our particular group. We generally act with compassion and generosity to those whom we feel an affinity and we put up emotional distance and blocks between us towards those we don’t (we also treat them with MUCH less empathy).
In short, we never treat well those people whom we don’t understand or feel any connection with.
Our social and cultural differences contribute to this distance, pulling us apart within our group - it becomes easier to act immorally to those whom we don’t agree with.
The guy who went on that rampage and killed all of those people at Virginia Tech, appeared to show numerous signs that he was disconnected, that others around him did not share his beliefs.
(Perhaps, as AstroProf wonders, he felt particularly disconnected from physics and engineering types. Perhaps that is why they are disproportionately represented in the casualties. This is a complete guess on my part, I have no clue, it’s just a thought. It could just as easily be a coincidence that so many physics and engineering people were there at that time.)
So, what can we do as a society? AstroProf is doing it. Within every group there will always be those who are not connected, a percentage of us will always feel disenfranchised. Because of that, it will be easier for them to treat us poorly and in ways that shock us. AstroProf is setting an example of behavior, discipline and morality that his students can learn from, feel connected to and embrace. He is in a position to affect the moral compasses of his students.
By showing tolerance and compassion and empathy for those whom we do not agree with, make them feel included and part of us even though we don’t share the same beliefs, will go a LOOOONNNNG way towards reducing these kinds of occurrences. AstroProf is way ahead of us in that regard. He is on the front line of that battlefield.
I, for one, am glad he’s there. Thanks man, for all you do for us.
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