JAMES P. writes:

Bruno claims that Catholicism is a “very harsh doctrine” because it requires that one sacrifice materialistic pleasures like buying a new car or new home or taking a vacation in order to have children. Even if one accepts the argument that the requirement to procreate and raise children is “very harsh” (though humans throughout history have somehow happily done this), what exactly is the point of belonging to a Church that makes no demands on its members? If all you want to do is what makes you happy, why belong to a Church at all? No doubt Bruno will respond that this is exactly why he does not belong to a Church. However, he appears blissfully unaware of the numerous moral and practical objections to his philosophy of selfish hedonism.

We might note that liberalism makes very harsh demands on us all, including economic demands in the form of greatly increased taxes, and imposes these demands on liberals and non-liberals alike. When the government takes my money and uses it for any of the many purposes of which I disapprove, I regard that as far more harsh than a requirement that I voluntarily give up some transient personal pleasures in order to provide for my own children. But perhaps Bruno is a libertarian (or Right-liberal), not a Left-liberal, and thus disapproves of all forms of government transfer payments because they impose harsh demands on him and interfere with his personal happiness.

Did Bruno make any sacrifices in order to obtain his education? Did he spend any time studying that could have been spent more pleasurably? Did he spend money on college that could have been used for a new car or a trip to Paris? Did he take out student loans that required a long time to repay? If so, why did he choose to enslave himself to the very harsh doctrines of the Church of Higher Education and make repeated offerings at the altar of Sallie Mae? Oh, he felt that obtaining an education would provide benefits and happiness over an entire lifetime that were worth foregoing short-term pleasures like trips to Paris. Well, parents feel that having children and raising them properly provides benefits over an entire lifetime (indeed, beyond their own lifetime!) and that children are well worth the sacrifice of a few vacations or material purchases.

Catholics at least have a doctrinal basis for asserting that they are right to prioritize the long-term benefits of having children over short-term material and personal gratification. What is the basis for Bruno’s assertion that any long-term pleasure should be preferred over any short-term pleasure? If your life revolves only around “happiness” (personal gratification) then there is never a reason to prefer anything but immediate pleasure, since, for example, if you choose to sacrifice in order to achieve a long-term gain, you might die before you achieve your long-term gain. Why even go to work in the morning? Bruno might as well sit in the basement playing video games. Of course, such a lifestyle is unsustainable for society as a whole, as one person cannot sit in the basement playing video games unless others are willing to sacrifice in order to provide the basement and the video games.

Writ large, Bruno’s life as a childless pleasure-seeker is only possible because others are willing to make the sacrifice of having and raising children in order to keep society running. For example, Bruno will only someday enjoy a nice retirement with adequate, affordable health care if other people have children. When Bruno wants to sell the shares from his privately funded 401K plan so he can retire, there have to be younger workers willing to buy those shares. The more younger workers there are, the higher the demand for those shares, and the higher the price he will receive for selling them. At the opposite extreme, if there are no children, then Bruno’s shares are literally worthless — their value drops to zero and it’s time to break out the ramen noodles. Similarly, if there are too few younger workers buying health insurance, then health care for the elderly Bruno is unaffordable if it is available at all, because the pool of shared risk is too small. Europe suffers from precisely these problems today — not enough younger workers to pay for the needs of older retirees. The older generation is thus reaping the bitter fruit of its past selfish hedonism. Ironically, for purely self-interested reasons, as well as to avoid the nasty stigma of being a social and moral parasite, Bruno should wish to reproduce himself and to encourage everyone else his age to do so! I hope his girlfriend, at least, changes her mind about not having children before it is too late for her.

Bruno’s denial that there is an objective morality and his claim that appeals to objective morality “never helped any society in any way” are laughable. He is as poor a historian as he is a philosopher. The most stable, orderly, and long-lived societies in history believed in objective morality. Organized religion based on objective morality is absolutely essential for the maintenance of civilization. Our society is collapsing into anarchy because it has abandoned its belief in objective morality. Bruno argues that everyone, Christian and unbeliever alike, should “obey the laws and respect the mores of society.” What mores? There can be no mores if there is no objective morality, because without morality there can be no agreed upon set of norms, virtues, or customs; every individual will follow his momentary desires in his search for “happiness.” These desires will often conflict with the desires of others — ergo, no mores.

Without objective morality, on what grounds could Bruno reject the mores of the Aztecs, whose ordinary customs included cannibalism and human sacrifice? Or to pick a more relevant example, if a large number of Muslims moved to Bruno’s city and voted, in a free election, to institute Sharia Law, on what grounds would Bruno challenge the resulting change in laws and mores? Would Bruno happily accept honor killings, slavery, the veiling of women, the stoning of homosexuals, and so forth? Lack of belief in objective morality has disarmed Europe in the face of Muslim invasion, and they have only just begun to suffer the consequences. As for laws, if they do not have their ultimate basis in objective morality, they are a house built on sand. Numerous depraved regimes have, with the full force of law, committed any number of atrocities.

Others have noted the obvious contradiction between Bruno’s rejection of objective morality and his assertion that everyone should accept “the test of happiness.” Azetcs and Muslims did what made them happy, and psychopaths do what makes them happy, yet this does not make their actions morally correct. “The pursuit of happiness” alone is simply not the basis for a rational, moral, or even practical social order. It is a recipe for a brutal anarchy in which the cruelest and strongest achieve their pleasure at the expense of others. And who can say they are wrong if there is no objective morality?

Bruno’s claim that “many Christians” are secretly internally miserable smacks of projection. In the main, it is the amoral, nihilistic hedonists who are terribly unhappy, not the Christians.* It is true that Christians have great difficulty resisting the pursuit of pleasure in a world that glorifies this pursuit above all else. Yet the fact that some people fall into sin hardly proves the non-existence of sin, or that the attempt to live virtuously is mere “hypocrisy,” or that the sinners are actually the happy ones.

* Evidence of this unhappiness:

Religiously unaffiliated subjects had significantly more lifetime suicide attempts and more first-degree relatives who committed suicide than subjects who endorsed a religious affiliation. Unaffiliated subjects were younger, less often married, less often had children, and had less contact with family members. Furthermore, subjects with no religious affiliation perceived fewer reasons for living, particularly fewer moral objections to suicide. In terms of clinical characteristics, religiously unaffiliated subjects had more lifetime impulsivity, aggression, and past substance use disorder. No differences in the level of subjective and objective depression, hopelessness, or stressful life events were found.

[JP: If you are a selfish hedonist and life ceases to give you pleasure, why not pull the plug?]

                                                              — Comments —

Bruno writes:

That is a very powerful argument, I have to admit. I’ve thought about that a few times, actually. All I have to say, I believe, is that he who refrains from having children himself should help others support their children in some way. Not as a legal obligation (taxes for bachelors would be preposterous, in my opinion), but as a moral one. Childless couples could help their relatives with their children from time to time. Perhaps allowing them to travel to Paris, how about that! [Laura writes: Ha!]

What neither Bruno or David seem to understand is that in the radical liberal paradigm, their “right” to seek and live in happiness IS/WAS and WILL ALWAYS BE subordinate and subservient to their mothers’ “fundamental right” to annihilate them in utero.

Thus, we see in the nihilist/hedonist a total toleration for their own hypothetical demise. Not only must they assent to this “order of things” to stay true to the principle of “living” however one desires, but their hypothetical annihilation must be seen as a “good thing” for it was a mother exercising her “fundamental right.”

Without an outright rejection of this liberal “order,” there is no reason to accept the “truths” that Bruno and David propose to offer. There is ample evidence that both Bruno and David had no desire to exist “in the first place.” As David clearly stated, his annihilation in utero would have been “fine.”

Not hedonists… Not nihilists… Self-annihilators. It is contagious. Our children should be our immunity.

David S. writes:

Josh F. writes: “Thus, we see in the nihilist/hedonist a total toleration for their own hypothetical demise….but their hypothetical annihilation must be seen as a “good thing” for it was a mother exercising her “fundamental right….As David clearly stated, his annihilation in utero would have been “fine.””

David writes: This is total jibberish. “Toleration for their hypothetical demise”? How can you tolerate, or not tolerate for that matter, a hypothetical? That’s why it’s hypothetical. There is no danger of it happening.

Laura writes:

But you yourself appraised a hypothetical. You wrote:

Any rational person would say: The world could have been different. I might have never been born, or even conceived, for various reasons. In such a world, there would be no pain for me, or any other unpleasantries, since I wouldn’t even exist. It goes without saying that there would be no injustice visited upon me in that world. So indeed, that world would have been “fine,” at least as far as I’m concerned.

The last sentence, in particular, is nonsense. So indeed, that world would have been “fine,” at least as far as I’m concerned.

How can the world be fine from your perspective, if you don’t even exist?

Alissa writes:

What Josh F. has written can be related to the problem of evil in this post. Non-believers would rather non-existence (e.g. transformation from the existence of the soul to its non-existence) than exile (e.g. Hell) and this makes their belief system positively evil, contrary to their claims that God isn’t good.

Mary writes:

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