By Neil Ormerod
ABC RELIGION AND ETHICS | 17 NOV 2010

JUSTICE REQUIRES THAT ACCOUNTS BE SETTLED AT THE END OF THE DAY. BUT IT MUST NOT SIMPLY BE A MATTER OF PUNITIVE JUSTICE, BUT ALSO OF RESTORATIVE JUSTICE.

Let me begin on a positive note. While I have all sorts of problems with many aspects of the fierce diatribes of the likes of Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens, the one admirable thing about these high profile atheists is their passion for the truth. This is coupled with a conviction that truth must be the product of reason – however they might conceive of reason, which is usually understood in terms of scientific method.
This connection between truth and reason is very significant. One thing you cannot say about the present wave of atheists is that they are postmodern relativists. Truth is not some relative matter, as though something might be true for you but not true for me. The truth of God’s existence or non-existence is not just some personal option, but something which either is true for all or false for all. There is no middle ground in that regard.

Moreover, access to this truth comes through reason. Again, on such a view, claims to reason are not some Nietzschian “will to power,” as it is often taken to be within postmodernism. It is not simply a mask for some prior ideological stance. Rather it is a privileged mode of access to reality.

In this regard, these atheists’ appeal to the power of reason is refreshingly anti-postmodern. Indeed, perhaps surprisingly, in these two matters they are very close to traditional Catholic positions on truth and reason. The differences would lie more in an understanding of the relationship between reason and faith, but that is a matter for another time.

To be sure, some commitment to the absolute nature of truth is fundamental to questions of social justice and peace. Equivocation on questions of truth does not serve the cause of justice, and enormous social injustices can be perpetrated on the basis of untruth.

How many of our recent military interventions have been built on lies, most notably the famous and illusive “weapons of mass destruction.” And once the fighting begins, truth is often the first casualty.
We can think too of the era of apartheid in South Africa, where an entire political and economic system was built upon a lie, that white people are somehow superior to black and coloured people.

It is significant that in the post-apartheid era, the primary instrument of justice was the “Truth and Reconciliation Commission”. What victims wanted, indeed needed, was the telling of the truth about their injustice. There can be no justice, no peace, without a foundation in truth. Or as Jesus said, “the truth will set you free.”

We could also identify the lies which continue to operate within our globalized world, lies about unlimited economic growth, about the power of unregulated free markets to solve global poverty, and about the ability of our natural environment to absorb all our waste, all our carbon dioxide, all our industrial poisons without long term consequences for the planet. The victims of these lies, largely those in the Two-thirds World, also want the truth told about their plight.

And so I applaud these atheists’ commitment to truth, a truth to be arrived at through the use of reason. Without such a commitment social justice has no foundation, and in fact the struggle for social justice is reduced to competing “interest groups” all vying to gain the ascendancy.

However, as the examples above indicate, what is at stake is more than questions of epistemology, of truth and reason. Truth has an existential dimension, something also recognised by atheists. If God does not in fact exist, then it would be absurd, indeed morally wrong, to live as if God did exist. And so for Richard Dawkins and others, truth matters for how we should live our lives.

This connection between truth and morality runs counter to a prevailing ethos, which goes back to Scottish philosopher David Hume, that you cannot derive an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’, that moral obligation cannot flow from a matter of fact.

Alasdair MacIntyre, a former Marxist and now Catholic philosopher, has pointed out that Hume’s conclusion does not hold in cases where the “fact” in question is about purposefulness. In this regard atheists seem to hold, at least implicitly, that human beings have a purpose, to live according to the canons of truth and reason. To violate this orientation, this purposefulness, is to violate something intrinsic to being human. Hence the moral outrage which some atheists seem to express in their exasperation at believers, such as myself, who persist in our beliefs.

This interconnection between truth, reason and moral consequence, is foundational to the efforts to achieve social justice and peace. While this connection may only be implicit in the stance adopted by many atheists, it is clearly present.

Where it is made explicit is in various documents by recent popes, for example in the encyclical Veritatis Splendor, or “The Splendour of Truth”, by John Paul II, which was a teaching on questions of moral theology. On the basis of this connection between truth, reason and moral consequence, John Paul II taught that slavery and torture were absolutely prohibited. In doing so he implicitly acknowledged that the Church had failed in the past in condoning such practices.

What I am suggesting is that while there is obviously disagreement between atheists and believers, there are also points of agreement, and these points of agreement are significant in the struggle for justice and peace. They differ importantly on two matters: on what the conclusions of reason might be, and in what reason itself might consist. Clearly they differ in regard to questions about the existence of God, but they also differ in their conceptions of reason, of what is “reasonable.”

There is, I would suggest, a self-imposed limitation placed on reason by some atheists which would limit its scope to the empirical and material, to scientific reasoning. Indeed it would seem that the greater the success science has in understanding the material cosmos, the more we seek to limit reason’s applicability to that arena alone. I think such a limitation is both unnatural and unnecessary.

But let me focus on an observation made by Pope Benedict XVI in his encyclical on hope, Spe Salvi, concerning justice and atheism. It is probably simplest to quote something that I wrote for The Drum three years ago when the encyclical first appeared:

“Interestingly his challenge to atheism is on the question of justice. The desire for justice is deep in our hearts, but when we look at the world, we know that so often that desire lies unfulfilled. And many of our human attempts to create justice seem to result in more cruelty and suffering. Benedict suggests that perfect justice will never be achievable in human society. Indeed in a very personal voice he notes: ‘I am convinced that the question of justice constitutes the essential argument, or in any case the strongest argument, in favour of faith in eternal life’. He is asking, what hope for justice is there in a world without God?”

Now, it is well-known that Marx suggested that religion was the opiate of the people, that religious belief – particularly belief in the afterlife – actually undermined the cause of justice and peace. One might refute Marx by tallying up large numbers of people who have been inspired to work for justice and peace precisely because of their belief in God and the hope that this belief gives them (for instance, the Jesuit martyrs in El Salvador, Archbishop Oscar Romero, and so on).

On the other hand, it is true that religion can be used by powerful people to suppress dissent through appealing to some hope of a future reward, but this misuse does not invalidate the proper use and would find no solace or precedent in the Gospels, for example.

What then is the point of Benedict’s criticism? Can we expect to achieve complete justice and peace in this world of our’s. Clearly not, unless we can turn back time and undo all the injustices of the past. How can we provide justice for the millions of victims of the Holocaust, or of Pol Pot’s killing fields? How can we provide justice to the original inhabitants of this land who have already died in poverty, dispossessed of their land?
If justice is restricted to what can be achieved in this life, then the project to achieve justice is futile. Perhaps, alternatively, we may be able to achieve perfect justice in the future, to create a utopian society where justice reigns and perfect peace is attained.

However, as Catholic philosopher James Schall has noted, “the effort to create a perfect, self-conceived society on earth invariably seems to result in a kind of incarnate hell.” I am reminded of Gandhi’s remark that we keep on dreaming of societies so perfect that no-one has to be good.

Justice requires that each person be given their due, that accounts be settled at the end of the day. But it must not simply be a matter of punitive justice, of punishing the wicked and rewarding the virtuous, but also of restorative justice, of restoring to the victims something of what has been lost.

Does it make no difference in the long run if I live my life like Adolph Hitler or like Nelson Mandela, like Kerry Packer or like Mary MacKillop? And if I die dispossessed of my land and dispirited through constant humiliation because of the colour of my skin, is that the last word for me? Is nothing more to be said? It seems to me that this is more a counsel of despair than grounds for hope.

For me this is where the atheist position falls down. Perhaps it might offer us Stoic courage, a stiff upper lip in the face of an absurd universe which is indifferent to the demands of justice or the goal of peace. How does one then keep at bay a temptation to despair, or to retreat back into one’s own comfort?

If in fact the world is this bleak, then as philosopher Martin Heidegger noted towards the end of his life, perhaps “only a god can save us.”

Neil Ormerod is Professor of Theology and Director of the Institute of Theology, Philosophy and Religious Education at Australian Catholic University. His most recent books are Creation, Grace and Redemption (Orbis, 2007) and, with Shane Clifton, Globalization and the Mission of the Church (T & T Clark, 2010).