"I Don't Know" Is Not Really An Option

STR.org:

Marvin Olasky did a great job of pressing an ungrounded moral claim to its real conclusion. He writes:

The prestigious Oxford University Press sent me the new book Morality Without God by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, a Dartmouth professor. (I'm going to quote him a lot, so I'll use his initials.) WSA begins by complaining that his students quote to him Dostoevsky's favorite line, "If God is dead, everything is permitted." WSA then argues that we don't need God: We all should simply agree not to harm others—cause death, pain, or disability—unless there is "adequate reason."

Wondering if WSA is one of those exceedingly rare secular professors with the courage to be pro-life, I emailed him to ask. He responded that there is no "simple solution to this complex problem . . . the moral problem of abortion cannot be solved by citing religious texts or religious leaders."

Hmm . . . How can it be solved? WSA wrote, "What matters is the present and future harm to the fetus and others. This does not solve the problem, but it tells us where to focus our discussions. I hope this helps."

Hmm . . . It helps only if WSA can tell us how to compare "harm to the fetus" (death) to other harms, so I emailed him again. He responded, "The bottom line is that I think some moral problems are insoluble....They are just too difficult for us to figure out. . . . The answer, 'I do not know,' should become common.

Olasky points out why this agnostic posture is a facade:

But WSA suggested in his book Moral Skepticisms (2006) that since we don't know whether abortion is morally wrong, it's unfair for employers to insist that health plans not pay for abortions.

Hmm . . . Health plans should pay for an abortion even though we know abortion does not protect the health of the unborn child? I asked WSA, and he responded by saying that abortions can promote the health (physical and psychological) of the employee.

So there we go. In theory, a person might say he doesn't know what's ethical in regard to abortion. In practice, he or she has to choose. Should a college cover abortion in its health plan or not? Gotta choose. A young man calls up and says his girlfriend is pregnant. Gotta choose. A professor claims to ride the fence. Gotta choose.

We really do have to make moral choices in real life, and often we're not left with the luxury of answering "I don't know." That is a convenient way of ducking the responsibility of justifying a moral view. WSA really does have a moral view and he should offer a sufficient grounding for it. People who pretend to be morally tolerant really aren't - and can't be. We all have moral views and we need to justify them. The morality left without God that Sinnott-Armostrong porposes isn't sufficient for grounding everyday moral choices. Christianity has a better alternative.