This blog post is part of the ‘God’ series.The ‘God’ series will be a collection of blog posts dedicated specifically to addressing the ‘God’ question. The most popular philosophical arguments put forward by believers to argue for the existence of ‘God’ will be critically examined, in addition to arguments for why its most likely that ‘God’ does not exist.
This post will examine the most popular form this argument takes, as is presented in debates between Christian apologists, and atheists.
Christian apologist and philosopher William Lane Craig summarises the moral argument as follows, in a debate with atheist Ingmar Persson:
If God does not exist, then objective moral values do not exist. Many theists and atheists alike concur on this point. For example, Michael Ruse, a Canadian philosopher of science explains:
Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth …. Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, [ethics] is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says, ‘Love thy neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves, … Nevertheless, … such reference is truly without foundation, Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and any deeper meaning is illusory ….
Friedrich Nietzsche, the great atheist of the last century who proclaimed the death of God, understood that the death of God meant the destruction of all meaning and value in life. I think that Friedrich Nietzsche was right.
But we’ve got to be very careful here. The question here is not: Must we believe in God in order to live a moral life? I’m not claiming that we must. Nor is the question: Can we recognize objective moral values without believing in God? I certainly think that we can.
Rather the question is: If God does not exist, do objective moral values exist?
Like Ruse, I just don’t see any reason to think that in the absence of God the morality evolved by Homo sapiens is objective. After all, if there is no God, then what’s so special about human beings? They’re just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust called the planet Earth, lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe, and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. On the atheistic view, some action, say rape, may not be socially advantageous and so in the course of human development has become taboo.
But that does absolutely nothing to prove that rape is really morally wrong. On the atheistic view, there’s nothing really wrong with your raping someone. And thus without God there is no absolute right and wrong which imposes itself on our conscience.
But the problem is that objective values do exist, and deep down I think we all know it. There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. Actions like rape, cruelty, torture, and child-abuse aren’t just socially unacceptable behavior. These are moral abominations. Some things are really wrong. Similarly, love, equality and generosity are really good. Thus we can summarize this third consideration as follows:
PREMISE 1: If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist
Objective moral values are moral values that do not depend on social custom or individual acceptance. It is simply a fact of the matter as to whether any given action is morally permissible or impermissible.
The claim by Christian apologists is that for moral values to be objective they have to be grounded outside of subjective human emotions. There has to be an external standard against which all actions are evaluated, and they say this standard lies within ‘God’. So without ‘God’ grounding these moral values, according to champions of the moral argument, they cannot be objective – and thus one would have no basis for declaring an action objectively right, or objectively wrong. Without ‘God’, they say, right and wrong amount to nothing more than personal opinions.
The problem with this view is that it is not established how ‘God’ grounds objective moral values, and any attempt to do so raises the immediate question:
“Does ‘God’ command the good because it is good, or is it good because it is commanded by ‘God’?”
This is known as the Euthyphro Dilemma.
-
If ‘God’ commands the good, because it is good, it implies that the objective standard for what is good does not rest in ‘God’, but in ‘good’ itself, or some other external standard or ‘good’.
-
If on the other hand, a good is good because ‘God’ merely declares it so, then ‘good’ is arbitrary, and subjective (to ‘God’) rather than objective. This understanding of good is called Divine Command Theory – where good is whatever God says is good. This is problematic for believers because if ‘God’ were to decree that murder and theft are good, would that make it so? Most Christians are reluctant to go down this slippery slope. It also becomes problematic to refer to ‘God’ as a good god, if good is whatever ‘God’ willed on a whim. The term ‘good’ thus loses any real meaning.
This dilemma thus poses a problem to any notion of objective moral values being grounded in ‘God’.
In order to escape from this problem, theologians and Christian philosophers have postulated instead that objective moral values are actually a reflection of the nature of ‘God’ – thus, with this understanding, ‘God’ is still the objective standard for moral values, and the resultant moral values are not subjective, because ‘goodness’ is an essential property of the nature of ‘God’.
This postulation, unfortunately, does not rescue them from the dilemma, because the same question can also be posed to the nature of ‘God’ which they think objective moral values are a reflection of:
“Is God’s essential nature good because it is good, or is God’s essential nature good simply because good is defined as whatever God’s essential nature is?”
Again:
-
If God’s essential nature is good, because it is good, it implies that the objective standard for what is good does not rest in God’s essential nature, but in good itself, or some other external standard of ‘good’.
-
If on the other hand, God’s essential nature is good because good is whatever God’s essential nature is, then ‘good’ is subjective rather than objective. This is because if God’s essential nature was such that he considered rape to be a ‘good’, and it is true that objective moral values are grounded in ‘God’, then rape would be objectively morally good.
-
It also does not follow that just because an entity has an essential nature, that concepts derived from it, or dependant upon it, are objective. As a human being, my genetic make-up imbues me with predispositions towards all kinds of feelings, impulses, likes and dislikes – this is my nature. But this does not mean that the moral impulses that arise from my genetically determined predispositions represent intrinsic truths about reality. No. They simply represent my subjective feelings on an issue. Therefore, even if it were true that ‘God’ exists, and has a nature, and that nature was synonymous with ‘goodness’ – any moral values derived from ‘God’ would still be subjective. So even if it could be established that objective moral values do exist, they could not possibly be dependant upon ‘God’.
In response, apologists usually invoke the ontological argument to try and show that ‘God’ being maximally great is necessarily morally perfect. They then conclude that God’s nature is good neither because of the way ‘He’ happens to be nor because of any reference to an external standard of goodness. Unfortunately for the apologist, this defense of the first premise creates a whole new problem altogether – because it presupposes that the ontological argument for the existence of ‘God’ is sound. Notice that if it does so, it means that the first premise presupposes that ‘God’ exists. In other words, using this defense, the first premise of the Moral Argument can only be true if it presupposes its conclusion – rendering the argument circular, thus invalid.
Non-theistic models for objective morality:
Apologists defending this first premise also have the task of demonstrating that it is impossible for a non-theistic model of moral realism to account for objective moral values. This is difficult, because even if it were the case that all currently existing non-theistic models of establishing objective moral values fail, it does not follow that it is impossible for one to do so. I could just mean none have been formulated as yet. To try to argue that it is impossible for a non-theistic model of ethics to account for objective moral values (as the first premise suggests), the apologist would have to either demonstrate that a logical contradiction would necessarily entail from any and all possible non-theistic account(s) of objective moral values (which they have not), or demonstrate that they (the apologists) have omniscience (which they don’t).
The first premise of the moral argument remains unsubstantiated, and therefore, fails.
PREMISE 2: Objective moral values do exist
Can moral values be objective? Can there be moral values that do not depend on social custom or individual acceptance? Proponents of the moral argument, including Craig do not offer any arguments to demonstrate that objective moral values actually exist. To quote Craig again:
But the problem is that objective values do exist, and deep down I think we all know it. There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. Actions like rape, cruelty, torture, and child-abuse aren’t just socially unacceptable behavior. These are moral abominations. Some things are really wrong. Similarly, love, equality and generosity are really good.
Examples of rape and child abuse are introduced in order to force the atheist to admit that under no circumstances would he consider those actions right – no matter what the context. After the atheist does so, an apologist will use this as evidence that even the atheist concedes that objective moral values exist, thereby confirming his second premise.
Objective moral values – Non-theistic:
Indeed, there are many atheists (and even theists) who argue for some form of non-theistic system for establishing objective moral values.
Many of these systems adopt a utilitarian approach, in which they basically argue moral values can be determined by evaluating to what degree an action maximises the well being of individuals while minimizing unnecessary harm (or satisfies the most number of desires whilst thwarting the least number of the same). Justifiably, critics will ask what would happen if it were the case that the entire society thought that rape was good – or that raping a woman maximised the desires of the majority. Using the atheist’s own utilitarian argument, in this particular example, it would imply that it is objectively morally good for women to be raped. Thus, basing objective morality on the degree to which that action maximised the wellbeing (or fulfilled the most desires) of the most individuals puts the atheist in an awkward position of having to endorse atrocities, should the majority find it agreeable.
And that’s just one problem with this approach to objective moral values.
The other problem is that morality under this system would still end up being subjective, because any measure of what action maximises the well-being of the majority would be nothing more than an aggregate total of individuals’ subjective reports on the degree of well-being that particular action has yielded.
Is the position of the theistic moral objectivist any better, with regards to objective moral values?
No.
Objective moral values – Theistic:
An apologist who insists on claiming that objective moral values come from ‘God’ needs to explain why Christians hold widely divergent views on many moral issues – such as divorce, abortion, homosexuality, hip-hop music, tithing, etc. If objective moral values do exist, there must be a single objectively moral position on all these issues, yet there are many divisions among Christians regarding what is objectively moral and what is not. On what basis are Christians supposed to decide what the objective moral truth is when there are several competing alleged objective moral values among Christians?
The proponent of each side will claim their viewpoint is consistent with the objectively moral nature of ‘God’ while providing no objective criteria by which we can determine that contrary view points do not qualify as consistent with the objectively moral nature of ‘God’. Basically, under theism, there exists no framework for determining what exactly objective moral values are, or if they exist at all.
Whenever this objection is raised, apologists like Craig will often argue that this objection addresses moral epistemology, rather than moral ontology, which the moral argument seeks to address. But this is ridiculous. If they want to claim that ‘God’ is the source of objective moral values, then it´should be the case that there´is a reliable way for determining what those values actually are. They do not offer any besides just asserting:
..objective values do exist, and deep down I think we all know it.
The problem with this line of reasoning should be transparent. Adolf Hitler knew ‘deep down’ he was doing something objectively morally right.
So because he knew it ‘deep down’, would apologists accept that Hitler’s actions during World War II were objectively morally right? It is doubtful they would – but that is the logical consequence of the line of evidence they are offering for determining what objective moral values are.
The Bible / Holy Scriptures:
The bible is not a very useful guide for determining objective morality either.
The Old Testament is full of horrific accounts of ‘God’ ordering the Israelites to massacre inhabitants of land they were promised by ‘God’ (such accounts are numerous). If was objectively morally right for the Israelites to exterminate whole tribes and nations as they wandered through the wilderness because they were acting on the orders of ‘God’, how can Christians accuse today’s Islamic suicide bombers of doing something objectively morally wrong if they killed ‘infidels’ also under instruction of their ‘God’?
As you can see, if one posits the existence of objective moral values, and claims that they are grounded in ‘God’ – a religious radical would be justified in committing any and all manner of horrors and be able to claim that it is objectively morally good, as long as he or she says his ‘God’ mandates it. After all, the apologist has not provided ANY framework for establishing what objective moral values are (besides reliance on subjective personal intuitions). Of course, once this impasse ensues, adherents of various faiths will refer to their scriptures and attempt to argue for a particular interpretation of scripture that they think is consistent with the views they hold regarding the alleged objectively moral nature of the action in question. Once this happens, however, whatever morality they advocate will be SUBJECTIVE – because it will be based upon a personal interpretation of that scripture which they will be unable to ascertain as objectively true.
Thus, BOTH the believer and atheist who posits the existence of objective moral values – if they are to be consistent – would find themselves unable provide an objective basis for denouncing horrific acts of violence with the criteria they have offered for determining what objective values are. We have seen that any basis they offer will end up being SUBJECTIVE in nature.
There is insufficient evidence to demonstrate that objective moral values do exist. The second premise of the moral argument, therefore, fails.
CONCLUSION:
Neither the first premise, nor the second premise, have been demonstrated to be true. The Moral Argument for the existence of ‘God’ is therefore unsound. If apologists try to invoke the ontological argument in defense of the first premise, then the first premise will inadvertently presuppose the conclusion, rendering the Moral Argument invalid.
The argument therefore fails as a proof for the existence of ‘God’.
Freethought Kampala 
15 comments
Comments feed for this article
September 3, 2010 at 5:39 pm
gordonokc
You have written one of the best essays on the Euthyphro dilemma I’ve had the pleasure of reading so far.
September 3, 2010 at 6:06 pm
James Onen
Wow, you think so? Thanks!
September 3, 2010 at 11:42 pm
Keith
”On what basis are Christians supposed to decide what the objective moral truth is when there are several competing alleged objective moral values among Christians?”
Let me attempt to answer that pertinent question, my answer is by following what the entity called God has actually said you should do. Not what they think he meant. Divergent moral view points exist because people choose to follow what they think and feel. Not what they should. Its for that same reason why we have laws to govern our civilization, yet some choose to obey them and others don’t. Some interpret them one way and others another. In other words, man is incapable of ever being truly objective! Yet that doesn’t mean that something objective ceases being objective just because those dealing with it can’t deal with it objectively. Morality I’m convinced is objective. However, man’s ability to deal with it and interpret it never can be. For we didn’t create it. We only become aware of it the same way we become aware of the laws of nature. We are like characters in a book trying to find out how and why the book was written. But we can never know such answers for our very kind of existence constrains us from doing so.
Basically we do not truly know the author of our type of existence minus a faith position. For we have no way of proving how and what put the laws of physics were put in place. Whether it is nature or God entity we ascribe them to.
To explain further, It’s like when we study science. We are learning to understand why and how what is in existence is there. Yet no matter how many times we improve our understanding or change our form of understanding, our view point will never be anything other than subjective. For we are constrained by the laws of time that make our view on existence strictly a subjective one. Unless we can learn to travel in time. We are forever bound by the laws of this existence to exist subjectively. Unable to prove definitively which answer to the God dilemma is a right one.
Since only that which was before time can be objective. Our duty in my opinion is to find out what was there or if possible to find a way to operate outside the constraints of time to get our answer. Rather than spring up with a ”God of the gaps ” type argument or claim like a Hawkings that spontaneous creation out of nothing is possible. Because frankly both position are rather lame. For they leave the why and how of what we are doing here totally unanswered.
Any way I digress. You’re essay as the above poster said is excellent and well argued.
September 3, 2010 at 11:48 pm
Hoodedthis
First of all, I envy you for your objective philosophical analysis, critique and reasoning portrayed in your nifty article. Believe it or not, I was forced to use my Artha Dictionary over and over again, in order to understand all what you have mentioned and verbosely explained. The last time I had to do that, was when reading “The God Delusion”. Nonetheless, this proves that you are a deliberate, talented and expressive writer, that was able to persuade me and others with his conclusion.
However, I recommend you not to us Adolf Hitler as an example, since it will only make your argument weaker. For in my opinion, he didn’t ‘deep down’ know he was doing something objectively morally right, but simply he was a lunatic.
September 4, 2010 at 12:21 pm
James Onen
Hi Hoodedthis,
Thanks for your comments. I appreciate 🙂
Allow me to explain to you why I think the Hitler example applies to the issue at hand. You see, it is the Christian apologist (in this specific case Craig) who says that the reason we can know objective moral values exist is because:
“.. deep down I think we all know it.”
This is their criteria for determining what objective moral values are. The problem is, as I have shown, if everyone relied on their intuitive feelings to determine what objective moral values are, what would happen if a believer sincerely believed that murdering people is something ‘God’ wanted him to do? What if he thought that murdering Jews was an objectively moral action consistent with the nature of ‘God’?
That is exactly what happened with Adolf Hitler, who said he believed he was “acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator”.
Your claim that Hitler was a lunatic might also be a bit problematic. There isn’t much evidence by way of psychiatric tests that are available to confirm such a hypothesis. But even if this were the case, I don’t think it affects my main contention, which is that reliance on personal intuitions for recognizing objective moral values leads to absurdities even the theist would not want to accept. Hitler was just one example.
Besides, personal intuitions are exactly that – personal – thus, subjective.
September 4, 2010 at 1:06 am
dexter
This is a very well thought out, well written essay. I would only expand a bit on how the statement: “objective values do exist, and deep down I think we all know it” is a very dangerous appeal to pathos. You touched on it a bit, but it’s especially important when the argument is being made in a public debate, where logic isn’t the only factor at play (even if it should be, as this example shows). I think a good way of approaching it is to present the results of studies done on moral thinking based on evolutionary and cognitive psychology. If you’re equipped to do this, then when addressing the second premise you can take the theist’s charge head-on and say, “First of all, there are non-theistic philosophies that address this [i.e. Kant or the teleology you mention]. But, since none of them are conclusive, I don’t think that anything, including [all the terrible things mentioned by the theist] are necessarily wrong in a universal sense, despite the fact that for you and I they are deeply wrong in a very personal sense. And now, let me tell you all about the part of your brain that’s currently recoiling at that statement and explain, scientifically, why it’s doing so.”
On an unrelated note, I find that constantly writing ‘God’ in quotes is a little disruptive. I mean, I understand what you’re doing on principle but for some reason it still gets kind of irritating. We get the point.
September 4, 2010 at 12:48 pm
James Onen
Sorry about the ‘God’ thing, Dexter. Ha ha… I guess its a habit now.
Nonetheless, thank you so much for your comment. Much appreciated. You’ve given me an idea for a future post on morality!
September 4, 2010 at 2:17 pm
TaleSlinger
It seems to me that if there is no God of the Jewish/Christian/Islamic bible, then the Bible (Old and New Testements combined), read as historical documents are excellent texts to demonstrate that morality is not absolute. Rather it is relative, and changes over time.
Lets take the example of women’s rights. In Exodus, your daughter can be your slave, in Leviticus women can be murdered for not being virgins on their wedding day, and when conquering nearby kingdoms, its permissible to enslave and rape the women.
In the New Testament, Jesus says that the old laws should be honored (e. g. all of the above), but doesn’t reiterate those laws against women specifically, and Paul discusses “a new covenant” which seems to be built on “love your brother as yourself” and “do unto others as you would have done unto you”, rather than “an eye for an eye” (which comes from The Code of Hammurabi). Timothy does however admonish women against speaking in church, and the role of women remains subservient to men throughout the new testament.
Today, we have International laws against the rape of the conquered and the enslavement of anyone (though neither is universally followed throughout the world), and you would be hard pressed to find a religious congregation to publicaly endorse such policies.
In fact, today, most enlightened societies are moving toward equal treatment of all, rather than preference for men, the rich and their own social group. Women can be pastors or priests in many religions/sects/denominations, notwithstanding Timothy’s admonition.
However, there are many other religions/sects/denominations which have not embraced this equal treatment of women, arguing that the very same infallible text (with Timothy’s quote at the center) forbids it.
Following both the changes in attitude of the text and the changes in attitude of various religions/sects/denominations over time, it seems to me that one can only conclude that (a) morality is relative, (b) that the historical texts of Judiasm/Christianity show this, and (c) that the actions and beliefs of the faithful religions/sects/denominations show this as well.
September 4, 2010 at 3:07 pm
Agatha
Chief !
Every society has rules which govern behavior. Humans instinctively know it is wrong to kill, to torture, to steal, and to lie.. These moral laws, written indelibly on the human heart, must be obeyed under all circumstances. They transcend man-made laws. The universal recognition and acceptance of these laws presupposes the existence of a Lawgiver greater than any human authority. This Supreme Authority is God.
September 4, 2010 at 8:33 pm
James Onen
Hi Agatha,
You said:
Not at all. It doesn’t presuppose anything – however it is great evidence that we have evolved many these intuitions we label ‘moral’ through natural selection.
“The basic reason that social animals live in groups is that opportunities for survival and reproduction are much better in groups than living alone. The social behaviors of mammals are more familiar to humans. Highly social mammals such as primates and elephants have been known to exhibit traits that were once thought to be uniquely human, like empathy and altruism.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality
‘God’ is a made up, imaginary, concept.
If you wish to defend the Moral Argument, which this post is actually about, then you can start by defending its premises. I have demonstrated that they are unsubstantiated, rendering the argument unsound. So as a proof of God’s existence, it utterly fails.
November 25, 2010 at 11:10 am
Jeremy
@ James Onen
im not sure how the “The universal recognition and acceptance of these laws” is somehow “evidence” for evolving moral values. That doesn’t follow at all. The universal acceptance of these laws could be there simply because we are all human, created in the image of God. That makes more sense than trying to explain it away via any form of naturalistic explanation.
“it is great evidence that we have evolved many these intuitions we label ‘moral’ through natural selection.”
Just because the values simply exist doesn’t mean or imply that they have evolved through conditions that humans may find “beneficial”. This is not “evidence”, its assumptions based on pure speculation and leads to more questions than reasonable answers.
“The basic reason that social animals live in groups is that opportunities for survival and reproduction are much better in groups than living alone. The social behaviors of mammals are more familiar to humans. Highly social mammals such as primates and elephants have been known to exhibit traits that were once thought to be uniquely human, like empathy and altruism.”
Happiness and Empathy in animals, or humans for that matter, is NOT morality. I could hold no values at all and could still show compassion or hatred toward someone. Animals exhibit these qualities all the time when they are trying to survive and protect their offspring or mate. Creatures that exhibit modification of behavior for survivability and progress in a social structure is NOT morality. Just because animals exhibit some traits that humans do as well, doesn’t mean that therefore “morality has evolved”.
“If God’s essential nature is good, because it is good, it implies that the objective standard for what is good does not rest in God’s essential nature, but in good itself, or some other external standard of ‘good’.”
Goodness is not an “external” standard apart from Gods nature.
“Good” is not subjective in terms of Gods very nature.
” if God’s essential nature was such that he considered rape to be a ‘good’, and it is true that objective moral values are grounded in ‘God’, then rape would be objectively morally good.”
This is correct. But you are misunderstanding that God cannot logically contradict his own nature of goodness. This is like saying, “if a square decided that it would be better to be round, then that makes it objectively true” . Therefore an objective morally good sense of rape cannot exist because it contradicts Gods moral nature. While God does enforce moral rules upon humans, God himself holds the capability to determine what acceptable events take place in order to accomplish this good.
” my genetic make-up imbues me with predispositions towards all kinds of feelings, impulses, likes and dislikes – this is my nature”
It’s not in your genetic makeup to always have feelings one way or another about particular believes or feelings. You are not somehow ‘”bound” by your genetic makeup to not begin preferring apples over oranges. Likes and dislikes are different from morality as well. You cannot argue from the basis of what you may “prefer” and use that line of argument to justify that those reasons logically imply that morals are this way as well.
In the end, you sound like more of a skeptic. If you are an Atheist who is basing his reasoning on doubt rather than careful consideration of the arguments put forth, you should re-evaluate your skepticism.
No one knows the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God, and that’s the reason why Christians hold widely divergent views on many moral issues.
But its not like we are going in blindfolded from the start.
Don’t let your skepticism create an agenda for constant doubt.
November 25, 2010 at 3:46 pm
James Onen
Hello Jeremy,
Thanks for dropping by.
Social animals thrive better when they have a greater inclination towards cooperation, don’t they? If that is the case it’s only obvious that genes that predispose individual organisms towards behaviours that tend to foster and enhance cooperation will be propagated more successfully in a given population. The behaviours that tend to foster cooperation in a population are the ones typically described as ‘good’, and those that do the opposite are the ones typically labelled ‘bad’. Societies have codified these sets of behaviours (in oral or written form) and have called this codification a moral law. The details of this ‘moral law’ may vary from society to society, but they frequently intersect (which is what you’d expect, given that as members of the same species we share the same general fears, anxieties, aspirations and desires – such as the desire to survive and not to be harmed unnecessarily) There is absolutely nothing mysterious, or mystical about this, Jeremy.
If by ‘values’ one means something akin to an individual’s or a society’s attitudes towards particular behaviours then, of course, they have everything to do with what we have evolved to find beneficial, or conversely, harmful to us. When we perceive certain behaviour to be beneficial to us, our attitude towards it is generally positive – and when we perceive certain behaviour is to be harmful to us, our attitude towards it is generally negative. This is obvious.
Of course it is evidence. That you refuse to accept it is your problem, really, and not mine – especially since you’ve failed to demonstrate why it isn’t.
I did not say it was.
I think you are contradicting yourself. The very act of showing compassion or hatred necessitates a prior value judgement on your part. Actions require motivation. For an individual to be motivated to perform an action he/she needs to have first made a value judgement favouring such an action (over another action, or over inaction).
I did not say that morality had evolved. What I said was “we have evolved many of these intuitions we label ‘moral’ through natural selection” and I’ve already given you an account of how evolution by natural selection can give rise to these intuitions and predispositions for certain behaviour. No mysticism required.
Don’t just assert it. Demonstrate it, because that’s the matter in contention with regards to the first premise of the moral argument!
But you see, you need to first demonstrate that this ‘God’ even exists before we can speculate about what qualities it may or may not have (which qualities also require demonstration of their existence). You don’t get to define ‘God’ into existence. If that’s what you want to do, I’d be more than happy to provide you with the standard refutations of the ontological argument(s). Let me know.
In order to show that rape contradicts God’s moral nature, you would first need to demonstrate what God’s moral nature is (not just assert it), and then, show on what basis you have established that rape is bad, for it to be deemed to be against God’s moral nature to begin with. And this is where it gets interesting, because how would you show that God’s moral nature is good, besides falling back to a tautology? i.e. that God’s essential moral nature is good because it is good, and good is what God’s essential moral nature is… and round and round you’d go…
You, sir, may need to do your research on this matter. Our genes play a very important role in determining our preferences.
They are exactly the same thing. You see, I’m a moral error theorist, meaning that I don’t believe there is such a thing as an objective morality, or objective moral values. Moral intuitions are subjective, and reflect only the subjective personal feelings, or preferences (i.e. likes and dislikes) of individuals with regards to certain behaviour.
Are there objective moral values? If that is what you believe I invite you to demonstrate it. That is the matter in contention with regards to the second premise of the moral argument.
No need to psychoanalyse me, Jeremy, and I’ll grant you the same courtesy. I mean, given the inadequateness of your response to my views, I feel equally tempted to speculate about your motives and even your reasoning capacity… but I’ll refrain from doing that. Let’s stick to the arguments, ok?
Then let them not pretend or claim that objective moral values exist. The moral argument is intended to argue for the existence of ‘God’ by appealing to the purported existence of objective moral values – whose existence is yet to be demonstrated.
You’ve done it again! Ok, I’ll play along:
Jeremy, don’t let your indoctrination and credulity constrain your reasoning.
April 29, 2011 at 7:26 am
tyler olson
Youre so awesome, man! I cant believe I missed this weblog for so long. Its just great things all round. Your design, man…too amazing! I cant wait to study what youve got next. I adore every thing that youre saying and want much more, much more, More! Maintain this up, guy! Its just too great.
February 6, 2012 at 4:39 pm
Kenneth Kwesiga
Just a few simple questions. And I would appreciate a simple answer; Yes or No.
If you came across 10 men raping your sister, would you grab a coke and stand to watch, because its “morally ok?”
Someone stole your android phone last year, why were you displeased about it. Its hypocritical to suggest that morals established by God are not a foundation for social morals or norms.
Friedrich Nietzsche, have you taken a look at his life, and that of Karl Marx, Mao Tse Tung, Rousseau, men whose style of leadership was based on total renunciation of God? There lives reek of mental and physical illness, suicide, depression.
And you are asking me to follow that same train of life? Hahaha.
No, sir. Common sense dictates that I use Jesus as my role model, not any of the unstable clowns who champion humanism, atheism and relativsm
June 19, 2012 at 1:03 pm
The Moral Argument for the Existence of ‘God’ « Freethought Kampala « Fr. Griggs
[…] viaThe Moral Argument for the Existence of ‘God’ « Freethought Kampala. Like this:LikeBe the first to like this. […]