Theism does not entail realism

Twitter Tuesday #12

There is no good evidence that most ordinary people are moral realists or antirealists. However, people will sometimes argue that since most people believe in God, that therefore most people are realists (see this example). At the very least, the implication behind such claims is that theism is positively associated with moral realism, though one might make stronger claims, such as that theism entails realism. I don’t take these claims to be very strong rationales for believing that most people are moral realists. I raise several reasons to doubt such claims.

(1) Whether most theists are realists is an empirical claim

It may “seem obvious” that if someone is a theist they’re probably a moral realist. But facts about people’s beliefs are empirical questions. However obvious something might seem, the final arbiter of questions about what people believe is the data itself. 

The relationship between theism and realism is no different: it’s an empirical question. It is not one that we are entitled to presume from the armchair. 

One might think that if the official doctrine of most major world religions involves a commitment to moral realism, this would indicate that the adherents of these religions are moral realists. This does not follow. The degree to which adherents endorse or are even aware of the official doctrine of their religion is an empirical question. We are not entitled to presume that all or most members of a religion know the complete doctrine of their religion and endorse it.

One might think that theism somehow entails realism. For instance, one might think that if the typical conception of God is of a being that is omnibenevolent, that this benevolence must be cashed out in terms that entail realism. It’s not clear that this is true, but even if it were, ordinary people are not obligated to adopt beliefs in accordance with the logical entailments philosophers believe are associated with a given belief. 

In other words, even if P logically entails Q, we cannot conclude that because most people believe P, that therefore most people believe Q. And if philosophers want to insist this is necessarily true, they're also not in a position to do that. Facts about how humans reason are empirical questions. Philosophers aren’t in a position to presume that whatever conclusions they reach about how logic works necessarily apply to how nonphilosophers think.

(2) A substantial number of theist philosophers explicitly endorse moral antirealism

The 2020 PhilPapers survey has data on the correlation between theism and moral realism. The correlation is r = 0.179. 15.1% of the theists responding to the survey endorsed moral antirealism. If theism entailed moral realism, shouldn’t philosophers be aware of this? Why would the antirealism rate be this high if it were a simple matter of entailment?

It is not clear that theism in general entails realism. Even if some forms do, it does not follow that these conceptions of theism are widely held among ordinary people. Even if they were, it does not follow that people must necessarily believe the entailments of their own commitments. At every juncture, we confront empirical questions. Facts about what people believe cannot be settled from the armchair.

(3) People may endorse divine command theory (DCT), which may be a form of antirealism

DCT, or at least some forms of it, are sometimes regarded as a form of moral antirealism. Even if theists have metaethical views (I don’t think most of them do), they could be antirealists. It could even be that most theists are antirealists. Again, this is an empirical question. And the metaethical status of DCT as a form of realism or antirealism is a matter of contention. If DCT is a form of antirealism, and most theists endorse DCT, then it could be that most theists are antirealists. This indicates a serious problem for the claim that theism = realism. Whether or not it does is a live matter of contention even with respect to well-developed metaethical perspectives cast in distinctively theistic terms.

(4) It’s not clear any major world religions are explicitly committed to moral realism

It is not clear that any major world religion’s scriptures or doctrines are sufficiently and explicitly engaged with contemporary analytic philosophy that it’s unquestionable whether or not, and to what extent, the doctrines of those religions entail moral realism. That seems like an open matter of contention.

(5) Adherents to a religion don’t have to endorse its doctrines

Even if (4) is false, and one or more major world religions does entail some form of moral realism, that doesn’t mean all or most adherents to that religion are moral realists. It would be absurd to presume that all adherents to a religion subscribe to a particular interpretation of the scripture, no matter how philosophically defensible that interpretation of the scripture or doctrine is. 

The reason for this is simple: the actual tenets people endorse may or may not conform to what the most philosophically defensible account of the doctrines and tenets one ought to subscribe to. For instance, it could be that despite widespread belief in eternal conscious torment among Christians, that this doctrine actually has little scriptural or theological basis. It would not follow that therefore most Christians don’t believe in eternal conscious torment. The actual content of what adherents to a religion believe is an empirical question; it cannot be presumed to be whatever your interpretation of the text happens to be.

Second, we cannot presume that even official doctrines of a particular religion or denomination necessarily reflect what all or most adherents believe. For instance, despite the Catholic church’s opposition to abortion, attitudes among Catholics vary widely. In the United States, a majority (56%) believe abortion should be legal in all or at least most cases. Of course, legality isn’t a direct indicator of moral status, but these findings show that all members of a religion are not uniformly in lockstep on a matter of substantial religious significance, even when the religion in question has a clear doctrinal hierarchy and regularly makes its official stance on a matter clear. Other religions are even less explicit about their doctrines, and are more fragmented and unclear about official doctrine. Even Catholicism cannot secure a majority of assent.

(6) Proponents of the theism-realism connection may have theological biases

Another reason to deny that theism more or less entails realism is that anyone making such claims may have very distinctive conceptions of theism in mind, e.g., monotheistic religions with a single omnipotent and omnibenevolent god. But theism doesn’t require one to believe such a thing. Does Greek polytheism entail realism? Does Hinduism entail realism? 

I don’t know, but I doubt mostly Christian and secular analytic philosophers have sufficient expertise in the theological underpinnings of most religions around the world to have any good reason to be confident in presuming they know about the metaethical commitments of most religions. Even secular analytic philosophers are disproportionately likely to be much more familiar with Christian theological views than other religious perspectives, and this may skew their presumptions about the relation between religion and realism.

(7) There are antecedent reasons for doubting that most people are realists

Direct empirical efforts to assess ordinary people’s metaethical beliefs have not yielded compelling evidence that most people are moral realists. My own assessment of this data suggests that most ordinary people do not interpret questions about moral realism and antirealism as intended (see Bush, 2023; Bush & Moss, 2020). I propose that this is because ordinary people don’t endorse realism or antirealism, and that a commitment to one or the other does not figure into most ordinary thought and discourse. If this is correct, then we’d have grounds for doubting most people are moral realists.

References

Bush, L. S. (2023). Schrödinger's Categories: The Indeterminacy of Folk Metaethics (Doctoral dissertation, Cornell University).

Bush, L. S., & Moss, D. (2020). Misunderstanding metaethics: Difficulties measuring folk objectivism and relativism.