So the question remains: How are we to lay down priorities and preferences on a purely rational basis? Purely philosophical arguments to establish essential values have not come up with anything conclusive. They have never got beyond problematical generalizations, which all tend to break down precisely in those exceptional circumstances where people do act in a way that is by no means to their own advantage or for their own personal happiness, but in a way which may involve a sacrifice; even, in an extreme case, the sacrifice of life itself.
I will break in here and note that this is the huge problem that "altruism" is for natural selection which can't include unselfish acts. The more numerous or significant those unselfish acts are, the less natural selection AND EVERY PHILOSOPHICAL OR SO-CALLED SCIENTIFIC FRAMING THAT TAKES NATURAL SELECTION AS A GIVEN can coherently explain things.
That failure, though, has certainly not been admitted to or noticed by even supposedly rigorous philosophical or almost all academic scholarship. In this book, about Christianity, that failure is absolutely central to the problem it addresses and the solution to that problem it advocates.
How do we know today what we can still rely on, in the last resort? Certainly every day we receive more and more rules of behavior, "traffic regulations," maxim. But as we all know, regimentation is not the same thing as having values. On the contrary, the more regulations, regimentation, planning, and organization we have, the more laws, requirements, forms, and the "pressure of circumstances" gain control in all spheres of life, the more people feel disorientated and lose insight and oversight, and the more people feel to be losing control over their lives, the more they demand clear signposts to help them through the confusion of rules, regulations, and outside pressures. In this disorientated age, people long for a fundamental orientation, for some system of essential values, for a commitment to these essential values, not to society's superficial rules and regulations, which is the theme of this book.
I should break in here to note that this is not, as I'm sure some who skim or comment on this without reading it will assume it is, a "proof" of God or a "proof" of Christianity, that's not its purpose. It is a book of persuasion, of explanation, a case for why someone may retain Christian belief or, as in my case, choose it. In that the foremost arguments are based in human experience of what works to solve problems that we have, to provide a basis in which a solution may be had or even hoped for.
I am sure some objection will be made that this appeal to what works is intellectually dishonest. All that shows is how successfully the very basis of science, of mathematics, of logic, even of the most basic intellectual activity IN HUMAN CHOICE is not only denied but it never even occurs to such people that whether or not we admit or remember it, all of our intellectual holdings are founded in human choices to believe our own experiences and observations. The idea that there is some kind of compulsion that demands we make choices to believe by some automatic, natural event, which, by the way, is so notably wrong in so many cases.
I will also note that there have been many a time when I've argued natural selection or the multiverse or other questions of science, unable to come up with anything even resembling a "proof" the advocate of them will make recourse to them "working" of their utility in explaining things (even when they really don't) and, if pressed, will assert that that very standard of something "working" to produce a desired end is the equivalent of proof in a practical sense. If it "works" when the desideratum of the, often, materialist can be gotten, then Christianity working to produce things like equality and the other things attributed to it by Kloppenberg, by Habermas, by FDR and, myself, then that is as valid a reason for its adoption as other things obtained through that standard of evidence. I think the Jewish insight that God is evident in the workings of history and human experience is right, I certainly think it is a valid belief in general and appealing to it in an argument of persuasion is totally fair.
As I said, I am not a pessimist. People are no worse today than they were in the past, when values were more abundant. Young people have always been "bad," according to their elders. But this much must be said, if we are to understand the present younger generation in particular; social change has never come about with such speed and complexity as it does today. Consequently, it becomes increasingly difficult to hold on to essential values, and the danger of spiritual homelessness and rootlessness is growing all the time. Everyone - young and old - is trying to work things out for themselves, often quite naively. Some people orientate their lives by the horoscope, others - more scientifically minded- by biological rhythms; some organize everything according to a planned diet, others according to yoga; one person swears by group therapy, another by transcendental meditation, a third by political action. But it is not merely a question of individual values, it is a matter of social values as well. Ethical questions abound; nuclear energy, gene manipulation, test-tube babies, environmental protection, East-West and North-South conflicts and it is becoming increasingly clear that such questions are exceeding the comprehension and overtaxing the powers of individuals. Today we can do more than ever - but what we should do we simply do not know.
I think this question of the difference of individual or social morality is an important one, especially in the contemporary Western world in which we have been encouraged and coerced into an abandonment of all generally society-wide notion of moral absolutes. The replacement of even nominal Christianity and the loosely held and, to say the least, imperfectly implemented teachings of Jesus and Paul in the canon of the Second Testament by secular law, not only in the rightly secular realms of government administration and, with more dangerous ambiguity, the civil law but in all social interactions and actions has been far from salubrious for the equal right to a decent life under egalitarian democracy, it certainly has been a tool for courts to allow all kinds of terrible things which destroy peoples lives, devalues people into objects of commerce and trade, which kill them.
This secularization has had the effect of hastening the syphilitic dream of Nietzsche, the day when a de-religionized society would give up the last remnants of Christian morality, even those who most strongly wave their Bibles and make pretenses of their Christianity have done that, as can be seen in the "evangelical" support for Trump. If they held the government to the teachings of Jesus, the Law, the Prophets, Trump would never have had the possibility of getting their votes. Theirs is a Christianity devoid of the Gospel of Jesus.
Nietzsche's prediction of that anti-millenium would be a world in which nothing but the most ruthless and ready to destroy violence would rule, not morality, certainly not the common good. Even learning, even science would be secondary to the power of strong-men. As Michael Polanyi noted, something similar was asserted by the supposed alternative vision of the Soviet Union in the 1930's in which science, it was asserted, would not serve a search for truth but the dictates of the Party's five year plan.
But that last point is made out of my motives as a political blogger.
I'll give Hans Kung the last word in this.
It is obvious that I cannot address all these complicated questions in this brief reflection. But perhaps I can say something of fundamental importance toward their solution, something to which our educational system, geared as it is primarily toward the acquisition of knowledge and diplomas, ought to pay more attention. Perhaps I can say something that will help provide some ground under our feet, a vantage point, from which all individual problems may be judged; the basis for a commitment to the essential values, that is to say the essential Christian values.
But it is at this very point that inhibitions arise. So, after this first section on the crisis of values, let me in the second section make a few comments which will lead us in the right direction. In this context I should like to introduce the important distinction between what is "nominally Christian" and what is "truly Christian."
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