THE MORAL COMPASS
Where do our moral values come from? In a world of atoms and molecules what authority can our moral ideas really have? Ard Louis and David Malone embark on the final stage of their journey which takes them from rural India to Vacaville Prison in California. This is the introduction to the final film.
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TRANSCRIPT TO INTRODUCTION
BEN OKRI: How do we know the moral boundaries of life, how do we know if you, if you live in a place where no one has told you don't do that, that's gonna hurt somebody, how do you know? We only know because people tell us. And even when they tell us we don't really know we only begin to know when we can start to feel how the other person might feel.
NARRATOR: Light and dark. Life and death. Opposites imposed by the universe itself.But what of good and evil? Are these ideas humans have just created for themselves? Or are they, a fundamental part of the universe, perhaps like north and south?
Is there something which draws the needle of human nature, telling us good from bad giving humanity a moral compass.
JOHN COTTINGHAM: There’s something about genuine moral truths which exerts a pull on us, which exerts a demand on us whether we like it or not.
NARRATOR: But what if there is no moral North and South - No moral compass? What would direct us then?
ARD LOUIS: We are driven, by the same emotions of guilt and shame and anger and fear. There are no fundamental moral values.
NARRATOR: If ideas of good and bad are just invented and then folded into us, different from culture to culture. Would this mean that the only arbiter of right and wrong would be mere preference or force?
In this last film of our series Oxford physicist and Christian, Ard Louis and Film maker and non believer, David Malone ask where moral beliefs come from? And in a world of atoms and molecules what authority can moral ideas really have?
ARD LOUIS: If we take scientism really seriously, so you and I are nothing but atoms and molecules then in that case we may think that we have access to morals that are outside of ourselves but they’re nothing more than a convention.
DAVID MALONE: And what do you not like about that?
ARD LOUIS: Because I think once you start from the premise that we’re nothing but atoms and molecules then the idea that humans have equal value independent of what drive they’re from or what family they’re born in or what colour they are you have got no real way of justifying that.
DAVID MALONE: I think we worry less about whether they’re true in any absolute sense and say yeah but is it a good idea? Does it provide you with a sense of meaning and purpose and if it does then that’s a value that’s separate from whether it’s true. I’m saying there are true things untrue things and then a whole load of stuff that are neither, they’re neither true or untrue, but I would say they’re some of the most important things about life.
ARD LOUIS: So I would say something slightly different I say …
DAVID MALONE: You didn’t like that at all …
ARD LOUIS: I didn’t like that at all.
DAVID MALONE: I can see the fluff-ometer going … ping.
ARD LOUIS: So I think there’s a difference between saying thigs are true and not true or our ability to know if they are true or untrue.There is something maddeningly fluffy about half of what David says. He just doesn’t seem to get that for moral beliefs to have any real force they have to be grounded in something that gives them a more lasting authority than just what your culture happens to think.