[Note: This is a continuation of a conversation involving atheist philosophy graduate Malin Freeborn and myself (Jonathan McLatchie) regarding the moral argument for the existence of God. This is part 1 of 2 of Malin's rebuttal. Part 2 of his response will touch on my objections to his arguments from Scripture. For Malin's first guest post, see here. For my response, see here.]
Seeking a Definition for Transcendental
In the previous post I requested a definition for
transcendental. I hold that the word is
generally used simply for writers to hide behind, but I’m willing to work with any definition,
and a definition was given. So here’s
the new challenge, as given by Jonathan - we must find an objective standard of
ethics. An action or behaviour[1] must be
wrong or right regardless of people’s opinions.
I know that objective morals, in
the required sense, do in fact exist.
However, I disagree with the statement that gods exist and disagree that
any god can make ethics objective which would not be objective without the god.
At this point, more ambiguous language is used. Morals are ‘grounded in the moral character of God’ or have an ‘ontological foundation in god, themselves being a reflection of God’s character and attributes’. I know how to ground a house or how to ground a lightning rod, but of course that is not what it meant. So what is meant? I think I see what is being pointed at, but whether or not I understand the position (or indeed, if anyone really does) this is not a good way to show that ethics are objective.
The presuppositional theists’
story seems to be something like this:
For morals to
be transcendent, they must be objective.
If they are to be objective, they have to be unchanging - not simply
jumping around as different cultures arise and fall, each with their own
values. We already know that we can look
back in time to ancient Rome or across the seas, to different cultures, and
find that they did things which are objectively wrong. Therefore we need an account of this. This account is that Yahweh holds certain
attributes. While I like arbitrary
things like my own family and certain foods, Yahweh empathises with people
(that is, he is compassionate) and he
gives things to people (that is, he is generous). Yahweh will not change his mind, nor his
attitudes - he is, in this sense, timeless.
Therefore, we can now say ‘That practice is wrong’, and when an ethical
relativist says ‘Wrong in regards to what?’, we can say ‘In regards to
god’s perfect moral character’, which is the standard by which we judge
actions.
The problem is twofold. Firstly, we can derive morals without this
argument. Secondly, this argument does
not in fact give us a solid foundation for morals. Yahweh may be unchanging, but even if he
existed, this would not be enough.
Imagine for a moment that I find a rock and carve into it a set of
injunctions - this rock now contains ‘Do not steal’, ‘Do not kill’, ‘Do not put
anchovies nor pineapple on pizzas’, ‘Do not disrespect the rock’, et c. Now imagine that the rock is timeless and
unalterable - it will never change. Is
it a good foundation for ethics?
Certainly not, because it is arbitrary.
So
we must ask - why should the character of a god be a good source for
ethics? You might say that it is because
god is good. But what is good? How do we know that the character traits of
Yahweh are in fact good? Simply because
they are Yahweh’s traits? Because
Yahweh simply is good? It doesn’t
really answer the question.
This
is known as the Euthyphro dilemma, and there is no way around it because it is
an exhaustive divide[2] - if
something is good and X shows it to be good, then it is either good with or
without X, or it is good because of X.
We cannot escape it by saying that Yahweh’s ‘character’ rather than his
words make it good. We cannot escape it
by saying that Yahweh is perfect, because we then have to ask, ‘Perfect in
regards to what?’, and if the answer is ‘Perfect in regards to everything,
including morals’ then we are back at square one.
Gods, if they existed, could aid
our moral epistemology, but never our moral ontology. Without gods, not everything is permitted -
and this is precisely the point.[3]
Alternative Moral Systems
I have given a list of
alternative moral systems, including:
● Kantian Ethics.
● Utilitarianism (a form of non-relative
naturalism).
● Virtue Ethics.
● Theological ethics.
● Relativism.
● Intuitionism.
This list is not complete, there
are others. However, they are the bulk
of theories[4]
which Philosophers have been discussing since records began. Jonathan seems to have little regard for them
and offers a short disproof. If Jonathan
has provided a successful disproof, then he would have succeeded in bringing a
final answer to over two thousand years worth of very detailed
discussions. However, I do not think
that he in fact succeeded. We should
have a brief look at his answers:
●
Relativism: ‘Of course, Meyer responded at length to
moral relativism, and few are able to maintain this position consistently.’
This part succeeded - relativism
is a dead philosophy. We can indeed hold
it consistently, but only at the expense of all morals.
●
Intuitionism: ‘Intuitionism and theological ethics are
perfectly compatible because, as Christians, we believe that God has written
the moral law on each of our hearts. We thus have an intuitive knowledge of
right and wrong. In the absence of the transcendentalism provided by theism,
however, what is to say that one man's intuitions are more valid than another?’
Intuitionism may be compatible
with theism, but that’s hardly the point.
The point is that it can be argued for on its own. I don’t think that the theory is up to much,
because people disagree about ethics, and if we all disagree, then our
intuitions do not lead to objective morals.
This should indeed lead us to abandon it. However; if ‘God has written the moral law on
each of our hearts’ then why do we disagree about ethics? It’s easy to say that we do not and than
people simply want to do evil things, but this view cannot be backed by the
evidence.
Consider
that many of the vegetarians of the world consider rearing animals in captivity
for the purpose of eating them to be unethical.
They don’t simply find the practice distasteful - they really do think
that it is immoral. If a theist admits
that some people find eating animals to be unethical, and also that some people
find that eating animals is ethical then not everyone has the same sense of
ethics, and therefore no standards of ethics is intuitive, or ‘written in our
hearts’.
So
if we are to discount the other moral theories, we must also argue against
Intuitionism.
●
Utilitarianism: ‘The problem with ethical systems like
Utilitarianism, which is defended by neo-atheist Sam Harris among others, is
that it presupposes morality inasmuch as it assumes that the greatest good of
the greatest number is to be preferred on ethical grounds.’
Utilitarians, such as I, presuppose
nothing. We are not ‘presuppositional
moralists’, I can assure you. Instead,
we argue for our case.
●
Kantian Ethics: ‘With regards Kantian ethics,
Christians generally believe that Christian ethics are deontological, and so we
are mostly in agreement. It would seem warranted to compare Jesus' golden rule
to Kant's categorical imperative, other similarities are treating people as
ends rather than means.’
Jonathan seems to have lost the thread of the argument at
this point. I said in the original post
that theism is not required to create an objective standard for ethics, because
there are other possible systems.
Obviously, as a Utilitarian, I believe that they are wrong, but we can’t
simply say ‘All the other systems are wrong, so mine must be right’. We must argue our case. And so far, it has not been argued that
Kant’s categorical imperative cannot secure a good foundation for morality on
its own.
●
Virtue Ethics: ‘There are Christians who are virtue
ethicists as well, although Platonic virtue ethics are unable to ontologically
ground objective moral duties.’
Why? If you do not
argue your case then you are simply stating that the other moral systems are
incorrect. The virtue theorists may as
well make glib comments about theism being far too long-winded, and conclude
that the ontological foundation of morals is the virtues.
Does Free Will Imply the Existence of God?
Jonathan states that a god is required to allow us to have
free will, because we can only believe in free will if we are dualists and we
can only be dualists if we believe in a god.
The first premise here is that free will requires
dualism. In fact I think that dualism is
an incoherent philosophy altogether.
Adding dualism allows us only to replace one ill-defined and anti-empirical
notion with another and thus shift the topic of debate, though being a dualist
in no way logically entails having free will.
A quick
question for any aspiring dualist, from Sam Harris, is this: Why is it that
whenever we damage a part of the brain, a part of the mind is also damaged in a
predictable manner? If one part of the
brain is damaged, our memories can go.
When another part of the brain is damaged, our emotions leave us. Yet apparently if the entire brain rots away,
the mind will lift off, intact and whole and conscious. Can we explain this? Could we even coherently claim that this is
the case?
As to the idea that dualism requires a god, a brief argument
is given:
I would refer readers to Angus Menuge's brilliant book "Agents
Under Fire: Materialism and the Rationality of Science." Menuge
differentiates between "strong agent reductionism" (which denies the
legitimacy of the notion of agency, human intentionality and practical reason)
and "weak agent reductionism" (which claims that, though evolution is
void of any kind of agency, humans nonetheless have the real thing). Strong
agent reductionism is internally incoherent. It is also corrosive to the
scientific enterprise because science presupposes robust notions of practical
reason and intentionality. In the case of weak agent reductionism, then, Menuge
explains, "what may show that even [this] is false is a demonstration that
the capacities of human agency cannot be given a materialistic explanation
because these capacities are contingent on another, nonmaterial agency." I
think it would be extremely difficult to explain, given atheism, how a
nonmaterial mind could arise that is not contingent on some pre-existing
agency. Determinism also presents a number of problems for the ethicist as if
our moral decisions are the product of deterministic natural processes it is
problematic to argue that people ought to be responsible for their actions.
I will leave this aside from now,
as the argument is vague and certainly not sound in its present, brief form.
An Invalid Argument
Meyer stated that one of the
implications of naturalism was that humans and animals should be treated the
same, while another implication was that we should kill both humans and animals
when it suits our purposes. The first
argument had false premises (it stated that naturalists hold that there is no
qualitative difference between humans and animals) and the second argument was
invalid.
Jonathan
stated that the ‘point that some naturalists claim that there is indeed a qualitative
difference between humans and animals is largely irrelevant since the real
question concerns the implications of naturalism (not the views to which
naturalists inconsistently hold).’
I
am not sure what this means. Perhaps
Jonathan has failed to grasp that treating humans and animals alike is not
an implication of naturalism, since naturalists do not have to believe that
there is no qualitative difference between humans and animals. Perhaps not.
The reading is unclear.
The second argument given by
Meyer has been shorn up by Jonathan. So,
in full, the other thing which is supposed to stem from Naturalism is:
1. If there is
no qualitative difference between x and y, then there is no reason to treat the
two differently.
2. If atheism
is true, then there is no qualitative difference between humans and animals.
3. Therefore
(given atheism), there is no reason to treat humans and animals differently.
4. We treat
animals in way x (killing them when it suites our purposes).
5. Therefore
(given atheism), there is no reason not to kill humans when it suits our
purposes.
Premise 1 happens to be untrue - there may be many reasons
to treat things differently despite their having no qualitative difference[5] - but
that does not matter as naturalists are not bound to it, whether true or
false. Premise 2 has similar problems -
it’s simply not true that atheism implies a lack of qualitative difference
between humans and animals.
In Premise
3 we are told that there is no reason treat humans and animals the same, and in
premise 4 we are told that we do in fact treat animals rather badly. The first problem here is a re-hashing of the
old is/ought distinction. Simply because
we have reason to treat animals and humans alike, tells us nothing more based
on how we do in fact treat animals.
The second problem is that we generally treat our fellow humans with
respect, or at least basic rights.
According to this argument, we have reason to do the same to the other
animals (for recall Premise 3). But of
course this is absurd - if we have an obligation to treat x and y
the same way, and we in fact do not, it does not follow either that we ought to
treat x as we currently treat y, or vice versa.
This old
is/ought fallacy was smuggled in by using the phrase ‘no reason to’ instead of
‘we should not’, but the same rules apply to what we have reason to do and what
we in fact do.
Conclusion
It has still to be shown that
theism can provide a moral system which does not suffer from the Euthyphro
dilemma. Even if it could, there would
then be the problem of choosing a deity from which to derive our morals, and if
a deity could not be found which can provide a coherent framework then the
theory that ontology is grounded in some god will not be very fruitful.
It
must further be shown that free will requires dualism and that dualism in turn
requires a god. After this has been
shown it must also be shown that we ought to believe in free will in the
required sense. Only then will there be
some reason to believe in a god. This is
a heavy ontological commitment, with a long history of debate.
Finally,
it has been shown that naturalism does not imply the kind of automatic
contradiction which Meyer suggested, for both ‘Naturalism Take 1’ and
‘Naturalism Take 2’ had invalid premises.
Further, ‘Naturalism Take 2’, was invalid in both its original form (due
to an is/ ought fallacy) and in its updated form (due to a nuanced is/ ought
fallacy).
I would advise any theists not to
attempt an argument of ‘death by a thousand tiny cuts’ - that is, I would
advise against a large number of small arguments. Instead, it is better to take one’s strongest
argument and make it work. If the
strongest argument cannot work, then the project should be abandoned.
[1] Many philosophers think that actions
and behaviour are the wrong place to look for morality, but I’ll leave this
aside as it is not central to the debate, and actions are a good place to start
when defining morality.
[2] I was not, as previously suggesting,
providing a false-dilemma.
[3] Consider that if you found out that
no gods existed that this would not change your behaviour in regards to
foundational morality, say theft and murder; though it could change morality in
regards to your attitudes to clean and unclean animals or homosexuality.
[4] Another important one is ‘Social
Contract Theory’, with Nozick’s interesting recent addition of the ‘Veil of
Ignorance’ theory.
[5] For example, if there are two packs
of rice in the supermarket, both of which are £5, one of which is 400g and the
other is 2g, then we ought to take treat the largest as more valuable, though
there is no qualitative difference between the two.
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