Another discussion revolves around whether, given an atheistic worldview, one would necessarily be bound to a universalizing of “the golden rule” sentiment. Why should one universalize it in application to all human beings, let alone to all non-human beings? It is terribly difficult to locate, let alone retain, a compelling rationale for such universalizing, especially if one’s dominant narrative is atheistic and evolutionary.

What I’ve encountered are suggestions that humans now have evolved consciousness such that we now may subvert or alter evolutionary forces and drives that otherwise would hinder our retention and promulgation of “the golden rule.” There are many questions answering back to this. One asks whether evolutionism even permits such an option. Can the theory subvert the theory? Another asks—given that evolution is seen as much more than merely biological—whether it is even meaningful to speak of “human beings” in the context of such discussions. The latter inquiry suggests that perhaps such de-texturizing and de-diversifying of humanity is itself a noble lie—one that, apparently, nature (including “human beings”) continues to resist.

Moral maturity would be when one arrives at treating another with the same regard that one desires for self. That will look different depending on one’s personal moral level and moral temperament.

It seems that Habermas is saying that the Enlightenment project has failed, and was destined to fail in virtue of not understanding its hidden theological genealogy and source of energy, and that we need something like the Noble Lie of Christianity to sustain the kind of society we now desire (whatever the precise ontological and historical foundation this society has, and whatever the reason for our quite Christ-like, yet secularized, desires), one that has a robust sense of the common good and one in which persons (well, whomever we define as fully human, not unborn babies or Palestinians in Gaza) must be considered ends, not means.

Well, for those who don’t want to base their society on a lie or a myth, there must be another option than the Noble Lie.

What we are talking about, putting it most simply, is the need for a society where people actually love each other enough not to treat them as means to their own selfish ends. This is what “rights” means, ultimately. According to Christianity, the ability genuinely to love another requires grace, the forgiveness of sins, and repentance, as well as a truthful reason to love one another. The reason is because God does. I don’t see how a Noble Lie could ever replace this reason effectively, either privately or publicly, and I don’t see why it ever should. What are the political ramifications of the Incarnation? Political liberalism is certainly one of these ramifications, for Rawls’ pious devotion to tolerance, freedom, personal rights, etc., couldn’t exist without the Incarnation, but it is a very distorted and insufficient one all on it’s own, as Habermas tells us.

In other words, I don’t see, and I don’t think Wolterstorff can see, how a just society is possible where Trinitarian Love doesn’t provide the cultural and political form of the society, and the basis of its political mandate of personal rights. Now, we pluralist Americans, of course, do not all subscribe to a belief in the existence of Trinitarian Love. But in the absence of a communal belief in the only persuasive reason to love one another, because God does, I don’t see how anything other than a communally held Noble Lie can “work.” I don’t think that is what we postmodern, anti-meta-narrative mythbusters really desire—or is it?

If Goodness is fully revealed in the historical Incarnation of the God-man, and if the Church is the continuation and institutional embodiment of this Incarnation in time and space, and if justice is basically a term that means political goodness, then I do not see how a society that doesn’t recognize publicly the ontological status of this Church as the main locus of our access to this Goodness—particularly in the Eucharist (see William T. Cavanaugh’s Theopolitical Imagination)—can ever be truly just, or else just just enough to measure up to our “secular,” yet quite morally severe and theologically inspirited, standards of “rights.”

Evolutionists can’t be sure of anything. Because of Darwin’s “horrid doubt” that “the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals” i.e., by a purposeless process like the natural selection of random mutations “are of any value or at all trustworthy” (Darwin, 1898, p.i:285), which “convictions of man’s mind” would include Darwinism itself (not to mention any theory of evolution that was fully materialistic and naturalistic and denied design, and indeed Materialism and Naturalism themselves).

Tom Rees: The golden rule ‘Do unto others’ is shared across cultures not because of any god, but because it is a successful evolutionary and societal strategy. That will remain the case in the future, just as much as it was in the past.

What does secular history have to say for human rights apart from Christianity?

In fact, hearing what Wolterstorff would make of Habermas’ proposal would be very informative and would likely clarify what Wolterstorff means about the necessity of a theistic grounding of inherent rights. He’s certainly not wanting to claim that one must be a theist to honor or be concerned about rights. Rather, the project seems rather Kantian: that the position of secularist concerned with justice as rights is sort of rationally unstable or unwarranted. But do all who are concerned with justice as rights have to have a warranted account of such? Or is it enough that someone can provide such an account?

If either of those two assumptions is not fulfilled, then the logical conclusion is that whatever morals we have now are not absolute and never have been. Thus, the complaint that “If this framework erodes, I think we must expect that our moral subculture of rights will also eventually erode and that we will slide back into our tribalisms” is erroneous. Since we developed our moral subculture of rights perfectly well without any moral absolutes, a realisation that they do not exist will not plunge us into a spiral of moral decay.

In fact, even an atheist could argue that there are moral absolutes of some kind—since we share a common understanding of morality as a result of our evolution. The golden rule ‘Do unto others’ is shared across cultures not because of any god, but because it is a successful evolutionary and societal strategy. That will remain the case in the future, just as much as it was in the past.

All this discussion about moral absolutes and the implications of their possible (probable?) non-existence is a distraction from real, meaningful questions in sociology!

“Now, one need not believe in theological premises in order to understand what follows from this [morally charged distinction between Creator and human creature], namely, that an entirely different kind of dependence, perceived as a causal one, becomes involved if the difference assumed as inherent in the concept of creation were to disappear, and the place of God be taken by a peer—if, that is, a human being would intervene, according to his own preferences and without being justified in assuming, at least counterfactually, a consent of the concerned other, in the random combination of the parents’ sets of chromosomes…. Would not the first human being to determine, at his own discretion, the natural essence of another human being at the same time destroy the equal freedoms that exist among persons of equal birth in order to ensure their difference?” (Habermas, “Faith and Knowledge”, in Mendieta, ed., The Frankfurt School on Religion, 336).

One reason for Wolterstorff’s hesitation, I think, is that he does not want his claim for the necessity of theistic grounding to alienate potential secular interlocutors. But what if, instead of making this about theism vs. atheism, all concerned would try, with Wolterstorff and Habermas, to get at the kind of ‘difference’ Habermas mentions above? For is not the question, finally, (and it is one that Hannah Arendt also encourages us to ask): How do we need to understand the world and human beings so that we don’t permit ourselves to treat others (including non-human others) instrumentally or as superfluous?

We need a plurality of voices to address this question, both religious and secular. Personally, I haven’t yet given up hope for the possibility that generous scholars like Stout and Wolterstorff will be able to explore together the terrain opened by such a question. As Habermas demonstrates, however, an absolute allergy to theistic insights on this question will not take us very far.