Morality Without God? by Sinnott-Armstrong Walter

Author:Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Published: 2009-06-05T16:00:00+00:00

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Real trouble seems to arise for a harm-based account if any immorality is harmless. Then that account covers only part of morality, not all of it.

Most proposed examples of harmless immorality concern sex. The Bible and traditional religions condemn masturbation as immoral. Some even say that masturbators are bound for Hell. Why? Usually the reason is that masturbation is dirty or unnatural. It is obviously not unnatural in the sense that it violates laws of nature, like the law of gravity. If it violated laws of nature, nobody could do it; but they do. Masturbation might be unnatural in the sense that it is artificial, at least in some cases. However, being artificial would not make it immoral. There is nothing immoral about artificial flowers. Instead, the best argument against masturbation claims that our sex organs have a natural function or purpose, which is to reproduce, and masturbation uses those sex organs apart from or contrary to that natural function or purpose.

The situation is not so simple, however, because sex organs have more than one function. The extensive nerve endings in our sex organs are there for the purpose of giving pleasure. That is why we evolved to have so many nerve endings in that location. Thus, masturbators use those organs—the nerve endings—for the purpose that they evolved (or were designed?) to serve. In this respect, masturbation is natural even in the sense that refers to purpose or function.

Moreover, even if masturbation did not serve the natural purpose of our bodily organs, it is not always immoral to use our organs for new purposes. It was not immoral for Houdini to untie knots with his toes during his magic tricks.

What about using bodily organs contrary to their natural purpose or function? It is dangerous to use your teeth to open a bottle, because they were not made for that purpose. Granted—I do not advise opening bottles with your teeth. But why not? Because it risks breaking your teeth, which will hurt a lot and make it harder to chew food. Again, we are back to harm. In the old days, some moralists claimed that masturbation was harmful, because it supposedly made masturbators unable to resist temptation or to enjoy normal reproductive sex. Today, however, experts report that masturbation is extremely common, and there is little, if any, reason to predict that masturbation will cause harm. Even if it did, it would probably cause harm only to masturbators themselves, so it would be only irrational and not immoral. But imagine that somehow masturbation caused harm to others, such as by breaking up a marriage or by causing serious loss of self-control that left masturbators unable to resist cheating in harmful ways. That still would not spell trouble for my harm-based account of morality, because then what made masturbation immoral would just be the harm that it caused to others.

Why am I talking about masturbation at all? It is not a pressing moral issue in our culture. One point is to show

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